Ahow

By Ahow

Open Letter to Mayor-Elect McGinn;

First of all, congratulations on your win. We appreciate your willingness to take one for the team, and accept one of the hardest jobs in the state. It always amazes me that there are multiple candidates willing to consider the task, so thank you.

Now on to bugging you, already. Crime. We’d like less.

Guns/violence, gangs, property theft, drugs, prostitution and the like are a constant source of chatter right here at our RVP. As a matter of fact, one of the more lively (and long) comment threads of late was devoted to a local establishment, Angie’s in Columbia City; specifically the City’s recent consideration of revocation of its liquor license.

The commentary seemed to me to boil down to a question: Is the management of Angie’s responsible for the nefarious activity going on in that pocket of Columbia City? Personally, I think they’re being made into a non-chevre producing sort of goat (an unpopular variety.)

Some would like to see the joint shut down. Refusing to renew their license would be a particularly tidy and expedient way of disposing with what was deemed by some of our commenters, a “cesspool” and “dump”. Others shared their experiences at being offered (sometimes aggressively) drugs and other “vices” outside and around Angie’s doors.

Yet other commenters pointed out the fact that there is a Youth and Family Services Center next to Angie’s that could be complicating a clean implication of Angie’s. Additionally, the mere proximity to an alley and parking lot at the far end of a typical CC visitor’s pedestrian tour makes for a convenient “vices to-go, drive-thru.” Location, location.

Still, one has to wonder if that’s really the issue. Tutta Bella, Columbia City Ale House, Wabi Sabi and soon-to-open Spice Room make for quite a cozy, comfortable yuppified quadrant of gustation in our jewel of a business district.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be rapping my fingers on Spice Room’s windows like in that commercial, “Open! Open!”

Yep, Angie’s is “retro”, and not in a “we-hired-people-to-make-it-look-like-this” way.

Combine this with the perception that crime down here is at a level where people are looking for a good, old-fashion, town-square burnin’. Catharsis can feel good, but the aftermath isn’t often what we’d anticipated.

After all, if what is going on outside of Angie’s was really our concern, shouldn’t we be addressing this as a community issue? Not just a problem for the proprietor of the establishment where a few do-badders stop for a brew (though Angie’s has a responsibility to run an especially tight ship at this point.)

Mr. Mayor-Elect, you are a lawyer. If the owner of Angie’s starts refusing service to customers on the basis of “suspicion of being a drug dealer, pimp or prostitute”, how long do you suppose it would take for them to accumulate a stack of lawsuits?

Even if they hire a goon squad to stand around outside, the goons can only move the unsightly “business” down a door or two. Get ready Wabi Sabi, welcome to the South End! Or even better, “business” moves on down the road right in front of everyone’s favorite new ice cream joint. Great for the kiddies. MiNt cHiP anyone?

Some have suggested a private security force for Columbia City. Should neighborhoods with customers who can afford to throw in for private security have the privilege of shuffling their drug dealers and pimps down the street to become someone else’s (Hillman City’s) problem? Do-badders know that private thugs won’t follow them down the street. They’ll just waive at them from the block they’re being paid to stand on.

I hold no degree in criminology. I am not a cop.  I have little but my gut and some encouragement from our veiled anonymous contributor, “South Seattle Cop” to go on here, but in your own campaign you have cited making a police presence in the community a priority. There is something to be said for seeing “Blue” on street level, at non-motorized speeds. Maybe even getting to know a local cop or two, by name.  It makes the do-gooders feel warm and fuzzy, and the do-badders feel… not so much.

A presence on the street might signal a new era for the do-badders. One where doing bad has higher risks, because cops are “about”. And the citizenry is chummy with the cops, making the info flow a little easier. Maybe the risk reward calculation for doing bad can be fundamentally changed, for a few. In the least perhaps doing bad out in the open for our children to witness will be less of an everyday, “Well, Johnny, ducks like the rain… Don’t stare at that hooker selling crack!” kind of occurrence.

I believe in specific requests so here’s mine:

Foot and bike patrols for Southeast Seattle. Friday, Saturday and Sunday during “peak” hours on Rainier Avenue South, between South Alaska and South Orcas. If that goes well, maybe shuffle patrols around as “activity” shuffles around. Let’s try that before we go boarding up peoples’ livelihoods.

Thanks for giving it a think.

-Ahow

P.S. Please go to McGinn’s idea engine website: www.ideasforseattle.org and search for this “idea”.  The title will be, “Foot/Bike Patrols for SE Seattle.”  Vote for it. Easy as pie. C’mon my RVPeeps, UNITE!  The site’s highest ranked issue (last I checked) had 66 votes. We can beat that. Or write your own letter with your own reasoning. That would be lovely too. Maybe if we all ask for the same, simple thing, we can get somewhere.

Ahow is a frequent contributor to the comments section side-show of the RVP. She resides in the Rainier Valley with her animals (husband, two kids and BIG dog). Read more of her stuff here.

UPDATE (4:45 pm): After just a few hours, Ahow’s idea for foot and bike patrols in the Rainier Valley has jumped to Number 2 on Mayor Elect McGinn’s Ideas for Seattle web site. Go here to vote now!

Related:

• New Ordinance Would Crack Down on Problem Properties (11/2/09)
• Angie’s Liquor License Up for Renewal: City Lobbies for Denial (10/29/09)
• New RVP Night-Life Columnist Reviews Angie’s Tavern: “a Diamond in the Rough” (9/22/08)

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By Ahow

Some people are telling us that this is an assault on our way of life, on democracy itself.

Don’t believe it. Newspapers aren’t dying, just having a mid-life crisis.

Is this the death of the REAL way information should be collected and dispersed? Or just the death of our innocence, as we realize our reliance on ink and paper as “truth” was simple minded?  It’s hard to take responsibility for what we consume. But maybe it’s high time to roll up our sleeves and do our own homework.

I’ve become accustomed to checking where my food comes from. Wheat gluten from China?! Fuhgetaboutit…  So I guess I’ll have to face the fact that I must be as vigilant about who is fertilizing my information. Sigh.

You can’t remove the humans from the writers, editors, publishers or the corporation/owners. They’re all human, and subject to conflict. Egad…they always were?!? Could this be… (whispering) the down side of capitalism? Shh. Don’t want to attract the “tea baggers”.

Did you ever think they were truly omnipotent? Unbiased? Unfettered by millions of dollars of corporate ad relationships that paid for those fancy “hallowed doors” of democracy’s watchdogs?

I’m flashing on the obsequious conversation during the nomination hearings of Justice Sotomayor. We pretended that judges are bi-pedal computers.  Data in…Judgement out. No interpretation, no bias, no world-view. Right. That’s why we have a series of courts that all lead up to the highest in the land. Courts that hear the appeals of the exact same cases with the exact same facts, coming to conflicting conclusions.

As humans, why do we keep setting up institutions based upon a premise that something other than a human will have to be in charge? Why has humanity become a deadly sin? Isn’t it better to acknowledge and disclose? Put the conflicts on the table (since they are there, one way or the other.) Then allow people to filter and sift for themselves? And if necessary, tar and feather where appropriate.

Oh…but we’re warned not to believe anything we read on that www.acky. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, but we’ve actually evolved to the point where we know how to work the hay-yall outta google. We can sort out fact from fiction and untangle Internet viral myths from the good stuff.

Besides, the only thing that saved newspapers from the whole Bush/Gore “Florida” debacle was that the presses were too slow to get hit by that particular train.

And before you get going on how we’ll all be whipshawed by misinformation and the “lacksidasical” reporting standards of blogs and Internet news sources let me just say… I would much rather rely upon multiple sources of varying size and reach to check and question my daily dose, than just blindly accept my medicine from one giant “reputable” source that’s effectively sleeping around or pimping out for their particular backroom billionaire.

I may come to the wrong conclusion or destination, but I’d like to know how I got there. Like navigating Lake Forest Park with a Garmin.

I just saw something on the Food Network about how with all of our technology, CT scanners/MRI’s and whatnot, a HUMAN still has to check eggs in egg factories! It’s “candling”. After being passed through a computerized scanner that checks for “abnormalities” the eggs must again be viewed by human eyeballs to be properly graded. A computer can’t do it.

Imagine that? A human still has to check.

And so do you.

Ahow is a frequent contributor to the comments section side-show of the RVP. She resides in the Rainier Valley with her animals (husband, two kids and BIG dog).

More from Ahow:

• You Know You’re a Seattleite if… (10/7/09)
• Ahow to SPU: Why Are We Paying Ourselves 12% Interest on a Loan From Ourselves? (3/30/09)

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By Ahow

Every city has its character.  The ways and mores of its people.  Tribes, clans and cliques form.  But overall, visitors to any great city undoubtedly leave with a sense of the “personality” of the people who call themselves locals.

If you visited or moved to Seattle from New York, Atlanta, Burlington, San Antonio or Des Moines… what would you make of us?  I’ve lived here most of my life.  I’ve also lived in the NE, SE and currently have immediate family in the SW. Been in all corners, including BFE. How do I sum up “what it’s like” in Seattle to “the others?”

You know you’re a Seattleite if:

• You love to eat salmon, but only if you can order it. You spend a lot of time asking others how to cook it, but it’s too expensive here in Seattle to actually experiment with trying to DIY. If you actually knew how to cook it, you’d be from Alaska. And if you knew how to catch it? Well, then you’d be Canadian. And if it were cheap to buy? You’d likely be a Texan.

• You grill. A lot. But not with charcoal. That’s too hard. And it rains too much for that. You tell people you can’t abide by the use of a non-renewable resource that pollutes, but it’s really all about the rain and the waiting for the coals, impatient on all that caffeine. Really.

• You are clearly part of the most tolerant, egalitarian, “PC”, color-blind and liberal community in the country.  We are a reliable blue state on the Magic Map. And yet we are the most self-segregated; what’s-in-it-for-me?; NIMBY!, no YOU’RE the NIMBY!; I pay more taxes than you, so THERE! group of people I have ever known. So much for that Magic Map. John King fake ‘n bakes anyway. That really is soooooo NOT Seattle…

• You LOVE you some pho, khal-bhe and pad-thai and knew what they were while people in Florida were still trying to wrap their heads around a non-fried spring roll. But you also LOVE to rant about “Why do THOSE people have to talk SOOO loud?!” and make “Asian driver, No survivor” jokes.  Of course you’d only do so with your non-Asian friends. You wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings! You feel bad about the Asian driver joke and immediately invite your third-generation Japanese co-worker out for a drink. And you pay. There, karma repaired. Namaste!

• You support the use of eminent domain to seize private property for the construction of more off-leash dog parks. You feel a certain sense of social injustice at the identification of those facilities for animals of a certain persuasion. You support the re-naming of said facilities to “Off-leash Quadruped Areas”.  Cats and pot-bellied pigs are people, too! And you see no conflict between feeling this way toward animals and (prior to having your own children) feeling that people under 12 don’t belong in public except at their own designated off-leash areas.  Of course once you had your own “diminutive adults-in-training”, well…you know. It takes a village.

• You regularly impose upon a certain friend with a certain medical prescription (or your buddy on Vashon, and if you don’t have a friend of either description then you aren’t really a Seattleite). And yet you wouldn’t touch a Red with a ten-foot pole and regularly shoot the stink-eye at people who have the nerve to light up within a kilometer of a doorway to anything. Including to their own home.

• You would NEVER, nevernevernever utilize that depressor in the center of the steering wheel of your vehicle under ANY circumstances. You wouldn’t want to honk and cause an accident. Or make someone think you were mad when really you just need them to pull up so you can turn right… But you’re happy to shoot your longest finger as you whiz on by in your modified bio-recycled, caffeine-powered, fish-bone vehicle.

• You think, “Oh wait, did that fish suffer in the making of my vehicle? I’ll have to consult the Shoreline Management Act and see if there’s a remediation I can make. I’ll plant a willow on my property line-totally pissing off my neighbor.” You figure if they complain, you’ll turn them in for permit violations they committed last year in their remodel. And still wave at them while you mow your lawn.

• You can TOTALLY relate to each of these points. But not for yourself. Someone you know. Totally.

• You still say “totally”. Like, all the time.

What is our collective personality? Hmmm. I love Seattle. Really. And I don’t miss the blatant racism on display for all to see that’s rampant elsewhere. But there is a certain comfort in knowing where you stand…

What, you don’t agree? Well too bad.  I’m hiding behind my moniker so you can’t respond to my face. I told you I’m a Seattleite. Looking for more of a productive suggestion at the end of my bitchin’? Well that makes you a Seattleite too. Now be a smart one and figure out the moral of the story yourself.

Ahow is a frequent contributor to the comments section side-show of the RVP. She resides in the Rainier Valley with her animals (husband, two kids and BIG dog).

More from Ahow:

• Ahow to SPU: Why Are We Paying Ourselves 12% Interest on a Loan From Ourselves? (3/30/09)

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