An old love letter to Seattle

So much has happened in a decade.

My last Seattle latté.

When my husband and I left Seattle nearly a decade ago, a lot of people thought we were crazy.

Back then, the Emerald City was still the kind of place people talked about with envy, full-blown fantasies featuring the Space Needle and breaching orcas in their eyes.

But the truth is, by then that vision had already become tarnished and frayed.

I wrote the below love letter (really a ‘Dear John’ letter) just as we left in February of 2015. In it I cite affordability as a key reason for our departure, but that’s denying the rest of the truth, like a person leaving an abusive relationship who’s not fully ready to admit her partner’s failings. I no longer felt safe walking Seattle’s streets or riding its buses, where I was threatened and harassed by the drug-addicted mentally ill on a near-daily basis. The quaint neighborhood that had drawn me to it in 2005, “a drinking village with a fishing problem,” had embraced urban density, losing its views to tall, mixed-use buildings and its livability and character in the process. While below I credit Seattle’s lack of ethnic strife as a positive, I’d witnessed the worst kind of elitist racism there, as well as a class and political intolerance trumping anything I’ve seen in any other city.

Key in our decision to leave Seattle is the fact that Anthony and I realized the urban dream had been a myth all along. In moving to that storied burg, we had been chasing a lifestyle that once (sort of) obtained, did not ultimately fulfill us. We lacked a real community and history to ground us in that place. Staring at the future, we could see ourselves working like dogs into old age, our seemingly dazzling salaries paling in the face of a cost of living that always outpaced our wage increases. We also feared clear signs of waning empire: the slow, agonizing collapse of the fossil-fuel economy, food insecurity, and urban decay. The social unrest came later, and it has come in spades.

It turns out we were ahead of the curve. At no time in the intervening nine years have we wished we could move back to Seattle; in fact, we’ve only been glad we got out when we did.

However, it’s worth considering how powerfully that urban myth still holds sway over young people, and it does: The bulk of Seattle’s residents are in the 25-34 age range. I suspect many of them are attracted to the same, hopefully still-vibrant cultural scene I memorialize below. But it’s doubtful our most medicated generation in history will find lasting happiness at a rock concert or public art space, even if they are allowed to smoke weed legally now in both places.

With zero regrets about moving away from it, I offer you this glimpse into all I was perfectly willing to give up back in 2015. Now it strikes me that it wasn’t very much at all. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Dear Seattle,

I’m leaving you now, but I don’t really want to. But I do. I mean, I guess what I’m saying is, you’re an incredibly hard city to leave.

I’ll miss your concerts and your KEXP and your free neighborhood music festivals all the glorious summer. I took my stepson to his very first concert (Alt-J!) here. I saw John Prine and Paul Simon and Joan Jett and the Black Keys and The National and the Decemberists here, plus lots of other acts on small stages all over the city, not to mention every summer for ten years what I danced to at the Ballard Seafood Fest. I love how you keep the dream of the 90s alive, Jet City. Please keep on rockin’ it.

I’ll miss your foodie culture, which infuses everything with everything else and makes sure it’s all organic, free-range, unionized, shade-grown, free-trade, cruelty-free, and so on and so on. I’ve made fun of you for all this, but the truth is, I’m glad someone’s policing our food for us. It really needed it! And my belly has been so happy here.

Speaking of my belly, I don’t know what I’m gonna do without your late-night happy hours, and all those cleverly named drinks with ingredients I can’t even pronounce. Now when I want a Judy Blooming with chamomile-infused vermouth and a laphroaig rinse at 10 pm, I’ll have to trudge down to the kitchen and make it myself. Which means I’ll be drinking milk and Pepsi from now on.

And your art! Your investigative, inquiring, whimsical, at times silly but rarely disappointing art. I just want to hunker down in that ship’s hull piece tucked into the cleft of Olympic Sculpture Park and stay here forever, admiring all the pretty things Seattleites make with their hands. Oh, God. Now that I’m writing this down, I can’t believe I’m leaving all this art! How will I cope in the land of scrimshaw and scrapbooking? I guess I’ll just have to come back here every once in a while and meditate in Light Reign.

While I’m on the culture train here, let me just say that I will pine for your live theater scene. Some of the best performances I’ve ever witnessed happened at the Seattle Rep, ACT Theater, and all those lovely little neighborhood theaters, Ghost Light Theatricals, the Green Lake Bathhouse, and Theater Off Jackson... Only you know how much I want to be a playwright when I grow up.

Glimpses of the water from any angle anywhere in Seattle. The sounds of seagulls and ship horns. That briny smell. It’s in my bones.

The friendships you’ve given me. They know who they are and that they have an open invitation to visit me anytime. They’re of course encouraged to bring you, Seattle, with them.

I’ll miss your “openness within reason” attitude. You’re a city in which anything goes, as long as no one gets hurt. I’ve felt safe to write whatever I want, to carry on as a middle-aged single person without kids, and to get married and worship God the way I want here. And I thank you for that.

Seattle, I’ve been happier here for the past ten years than I’ve been anywhere else in my life. And I’ve lived in a lot of places. While Tacoma keeps trying, you don’t have to try; you just are. You care much more for your environment than Miami does. And while you certainly don’t have to encounter the nuances of racism in the same way the average St. Louisan does, you’re far less contentious. And unlike the suburbs of my vast American military childhood, you have so much THERE there.

I would totally stay in you if it were possible for me to have both you and a comfortable retirement. But you see, you’re making me choose. And that’s not fair. In my new small town, I bought a house (a house! with a yard!) for a fraction of the price of one of your micro condos. I’m just sayin’.

Now I’m going to ask you to do something I know will be hard, especially since I don’t believe in them. Can we try a long-distance relationship? I promise I’ll commit to making it work. I really love you. I do.

Yours always,

Lisa 

P.S. I know you’re uncomfortable with the fact that I’ll be just as close now to Portland as I am to you, Seattle, but I promise there’s no reason to get jealous. Portland ain’t got nothin’ on you. Don’t give me that “Powell’s Book Store” look. You know I love you.

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Back then we’d left Seattle for a small town a couple hours south of it, where we lived for two-and-a-half years. Then we moved again to St. Louis, which we’ve found on balance to be a superior city to Seattle, despite conventional wisdom on that point. For the cultural offerings relative to cost of living, St. Louis is way up there. We have also retired our Gen X debts, provided the kid with the perfect place to retreat to when Seattle breathed down his neck too much, reconnected with my side of the family, built a once very successful mom-and-pop business, and created a little city homestead. So, yeah: No regrets.

All that said, we’re still encountering some urban pressures and trying to decide if this is indeed the forever home that will house us through oldsterhood. To be alive in this time means, it seems, to feel perennially unsettled.

How’s this trip down memory lane hitting you? Do you feel at home in your own locale?