A city of people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well.

Our second longer visit in Seattle, summer 1995, we stayed in Madrona. Or more accurate, exactly on the verge between Madrona and Central District, CD. Madrona, one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Seattle and CD, one of the poorest. Also the verge between black and white. To get from Madrona and Madison Park, the also wealthy neighborhood north of Madrona (both facing the shores and beaches of Lake Washington), to Downtown you need to drive through CD, something the Madrona and Madison Park residents preferably did with their car doors locked.

Our first experience of Seattle was two years earlier, staying on the Eastside of Lake Washington, in Juanita, Kirkland. Three months in Suburbia didn’t give us any friends. We watched the sports cars leave early morning, coming back late evening. But we didn’t see any people, even more didn't meet any.  It was like living in a deserted place. It felt safe though. 

At the corner of Columbia and 33rd Avenue on the verge of Central District the police cars were frequent, but in a week we knew all the neighbors and we met our for-life-time friends, the Smitt-Heffron family. It was through them we learned how to not be scared picking up the groceries at the Red Apple Market in the CD valley at nights, where the police cars were even more frequent. From that point, I have never been afraid in Seattle.

Seattle is a part of King County, which includes the areas north and south of the city, as well as Eastside of Lake Washington where cities like Bellevue and Redmond are thriving with Microsifties and those alike. And Seattle neighborhoods as well as King County are going through a crucial change.

I mentioned Madrona and Central District as examples of rich and poor neighborhoods. But of course most neighborhoods are, or should I say have been, somewhere in the middle. Because that’s what’s changing. You can say the Seattle middle class is disappearing. Since 2000 95% of the new Seattle households have been either rich or poor. Only 5% could be considered middle income.

Between 2000 and 2012, King County grew by 85,000 households. More than 40,000 of these households are low-income, earning less than half the King County median income (or about $35,000 in 2012). Roughly the same number are high-income, with earnings at more than 180 percent of the median (or about $125,000 in 2012). That means there was barely any growth in the middle-income group — just 3,500 households earning between $35,000 and $125,000. A note to Swedes, yes, Americans make more money than we do. King County Executive Dow Constantine makes this remark about the change of the county: “It’s people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well.”

The map is stunning. And there is actually a map, cheek it out (although for some reason this won’t turn to a clickable link, see if you can make it work better than I do):  file:///Users/mariaalidastolterman/Desktop/Mapping%20King%20County’s%20disappearing%20middle%20class%20%7C%20The%20Seattle%20Times.webarchive

Large portions of King County have become poorer. Spots have turned into middle class. But the chock is pretty much all of King County has become richer. The map is screaming rich, rich, rich!!! There is one very peculiar thing though.

To get from Seattle to Eastside you need to cross either the highway 520 bridge or the 99. On our first stay, the one in Juanita, Kirkland, we took the 520 route several times a week. On both sides of the bridgehead at the east side of the lake there are extremely wealthy neighborhoods. At the south side Bill Gates dug his way into the rock for five years before his masterpiece of home was completed, an entertaining show for every Seattle-Eastside commuter.

Medina, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point and Yarrow Point, those are neighborhood names where I don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who lives there. Besides Bill Gates the only name I know of is the saxophone player Kenny G.

Anyway, the peculiar thing is: 100 percent of the household growth in these neighborhoods was in the under-$35,000 bracket! How could anyone live there on that income?

There might be a two-word answer, which underscored Constantine’s espresso economy notion: au pair. But there’s another, more likely two-word explanation: capital gains. It turns out that investment returns, which many of the ultrarich live on rather than salaries, are excluded from household-income calculations by the Census Bureau, which made this report.

On top of this there is another map. The household income needed to place in the top 5% of each city’s income earner, grew faster in Seattle than in any other of the U.S 50 largest cities between 2012 and 2013. Seattle is out of control when it comes to making money!

So what about our corner of Columbia and 33rd? Is Central District changing too? Yes it is. I was often surprised it was what it was, located right in the middle of Seattle, between Downtown and the Lake Washington-close wealthy parts of town. But CD has a history too. Once a mostly Jewish neighborhood before Japanese residents began moving in, the neighborhood became largely African American during the 1960s and ’70s. By 1980, some two-thirds of the residents were black. 

And 2015? Now, a majority, about 58 percent, are white; 22 percent are African American and 9 percent Asian. The households with medium income and even high income are growing. Crime at the always troubled corner of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street is down by 80% since 2008. The crummy housed are sold as tear downs and the lots filled to the rim with shiny new homes. The word is gentrifying and the black population is moving south.

What to think about this? Well I don’t think anything good can come out of a city turning to a place of “people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well.”

Three Swedish hearts and one Chinese mystery

It’s a bit embarrassing. Because you are actually supposed to hate it. But I remember very clearly my first encounter. In my kitchen, late eighties, and there was this music filling the room from the radio. Making me stop. What is this?

It was Kenny G. Yeah. For those who don’t know, Kenny G is a saxophone player having sold 75 million albums worldwide of his slick and soothing tunes. And what grabbed me and didn’t leave me that day was his Songbird. I fell in love. There is no other way to put it.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know. I can still not nail down why his music did find it’s way right into my heart. But I think it has something to do with it being so vocal. I wanted to sing it. And I did, my god I did! Bought the record, turned the volume up, even brought the loudspeakers outside to fill my fields with this elevator friendly music. And the lyric writer in me wanted to put words to those melodies. I heard somewhere his mother was a singer, and that makes sense - if it’s true, he is singing on his saxophone.

I didn’t know at that time that he lives in Seattle, and I didn’t know that I would live there either, and this is not going to be a story about how we met, because we didn’t, this is a story about not only me being captured by his melodies, but most of China! And especially one of them: Going Home.

For years the tune, in all its seductive woodwind glory, has been a staple of Chinese society. Every day, “Going Home” is piped into shopping malls, schools, train stations and fitness centers as a signal to the public that it is time, indeed, to go home. One recent Saturday afternoon, as the smooth notes of “Going Home” cooed over the ordered chaos of Beijing’s famous Panjiayuan Antiques Market, hawkers packed up their Mao-era propaganda ashtrays, 1930s telephones and “antique” jade amulets while the last bargain hunters headed for the gates. To ensure no stragglers miss their cue, the melody plays on a loop — for the final hour and a half. According to a manager, Panjiayuan has used the tune since 2000. She did not know why. 

For a generation of Chinese youth, “Going Home” has featured prominently on the soundtrack of their lives. It’s played at wedding banquets, for kicking student out of the school library, on the street, at home, everywhere. On the popular Chinese video-sharing website Youku, “Going Home” accounts for four of the 10 most-played videos in the saxophone category, with 313,786 plays over the past three years.

So what does Kenny G himself have to say about this phenomenon? Touring China in the 1990s, he heard “Going Home” playing in Tiananmen Square, in Shanghai, on a golf course and “in a restroom in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “It made me feel great to know there was no language barrier to connecting with music. And I don’t ask questions because I like to leave some of the mystery,” he says.

As Kenny G had his grip on me as well in the early nineties, Trouble & Trouble were haunted too. He was often their soothing evening lullaby, in competition with Swedish saxophonist Jonas Knutsson. So, moving to Seattle it was kind of special knowing he was in the same town. And we did have one encounter, although not in person.

It was late fall 1996, and one of those unpleasant wet-snow-turning-into-slush weather conditions. One of those evenings you don’t want to drive in Seattle. I am used to all kinds of snowy roads from Sweden, but our 1982 Buick wasn’t the best companion in this game and Seattleites in general not either. But there was this concert with Kenny G at the Key Arena and we had tickets! Trouble & Trouble had been looking forward to this for months, and so had I. This music that had accompanied us since the boys were babies, was it for real, really? Is there a person in flesh and blood behind the soundtrack of our life?

Yes, it was. Our seats were way up, where we climbed after an adventurous ride from Portage Bay to lower Queen Anne. And the evening was long. The singer Toni Braxton opened with a full act, and it was bedtime even before she started. Then a gospel choir got delayed because of the weather. But, hey, we were at the Key Arena looking forward to Kenny G, we were in a good spot!

What I remember the most is how he handled the waiting for the choir situation. It didn’t even feel like a delay. He made the sold out 16000 seat arena comfortable improvising us forward, and the moment where he played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to his 3-year old son at the front row was adorable.

I was a bit preoccupied by how I would make it back to Portage Bay in the slush though. Distracted. Tried hard to be present in this can’t-wait-to-be-there moment, but wasn’t 100% there.

What about Trouble & Trouble then? Well, at the age of 8 and 10 a dark November night they were tired already when we got there. And Toni Braxton was new to them and didn’t quite catch their attention, Sandman was visiting already before Kenny G entered the stage. But I was happy. I was sitting under the Key Arena ceiling, in between my two sons, who woke up at the familiar sound of the saxophone. And then fell asleep again, leaning towards me as I held them. Of course. As they should. In the arms of their good night lullaby. Before Going Home.