Cherry memories

I am told this weekend is the peak of the cherry trees blooming in Seattle, I wish I was there!

My first memory of the tree blossoming season in Seattle was 1993. We arrived March 22 and our first Seattle home was actually over at Eastside. The cherry tree blooms covered the ground for Trouble & Trouble 4 and 6 years old to play with outside our townhouse in Juanita, Kirkland. We had left the white spring-winter in Sweden for the great adventure, and the cherry trees were snowing!

For me, one of my most exotic Seattle memories is from spring 1997 when we had our home for the year at Portage Bay. Packing our downhill ski equipment on and in our 1981 silver Buick while the cherry trees in the alley told Swedes it was summer. Driving the one hour trip up to the Snoqualmie ski area. Met by tons of snow and great skiing. In the late afternoon heading back to Seattle welcomed by summer. I can still feel the fascinating magic of it.

To Seattleites that’s all spring. But to a Swede from the northern parts of the country it’s summer and winter in a wonderful and amazing package. 2 for the price of 1! I remember Trouble 2 (now 9) having a burger in the sun at one of the ski drive in restaurant porches announcing: this is life!

During my commuting years following I loved packing my bags here at the end of the road this time of year, crossing the ocean, landing in Seattle. Filling my lungs with the fresh sent of moist red cedar and my eyes with the white and pink color from the cherries blooming all over town. Still now, I can sense my body and mind expanding from joy of once again arriving in my second home so different from my first; Away is Home, Home is Away. Just wanting to stay there forever.

I celebrated my 45th birthday on one of those visits. It wasn’t a happy birthday, at least to start with. I was separated going for divorce. I felt old. I had a future in mind which I knew wouldn’t happen. But I had a new semi professional video camera!

I woke up in the morning feeling heavy and sad about my whole situation. But I made a conscious decision to pick myself up. And I started playing with my camera. As soon as I looked through the view finder my heart went pounding. I put the gear in my car and headed towards Seattle from Lynnwood where I stayed at my friend/sister Autumn’s. 

I still remember the footage I shot at the marina east of Gasworks Park. Lying on the docks composing the pictures with houseboats, water and blooming cherry treas. I felt a lot better!

Continuing to Seattle Center. The sun was out, and the colors and shapes of Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project making me go on for hours, and yeah, catching the Monorail through it!

I remember someone calling me on my way to the parking lot, might it have been Craig? By now I felt so good about the day I told him it was my birthday. Like I had to share it with someone. And of course he congratulated me and I have this image of cherry trees surrounding me, is there even cherry trees at the Seattle Center parking lot?

In the evening my friends all gathered in a Madrona pub for me. It feels surreal now but they were all there: Matt and Elisabeth and daughter Becca, Terry and Doug and kids Reed and Zoe, Maria and little Niko, Annie and Harold, and of course my aunt Helen. My sister Autumn didn’t show though, she basically stood me up!

I was pretty darned disappointed and mad at her as I drew back to her house. Hours later she walked in. Well, the thing was, she had been delayed at work. Which I think had turned to a bar or pub thing. Because there was this new guy… and he was trouble…

I actually got to meet this new guy (shall we call him Trouble 3?) some days later. I frankly didn’t think that wold last. I was vey wrong. She stood me up for the Man in Her Life which she met on March 14, my 45th birthday, meanwhile the cherry trees were blooming on all of us.

The Nordmaling and Robertsfors of Seattle. And why.

When I first came to Seattle in 1993 I was struck by how the city was laid out between the waters of Elliot Bay to the west, Lake Washington to the east and around Lake Union in the middle of the city. The hills and the waters made it easy for the eye to navigate. Queen Anne Hill, Capitol Hill, First Hill, West Seattle over the bay. In the middle the dense Downtown as the obvious city center surrounded by neighborhoods were people lived their lives.

I was fascinated by the neighborhoods. Wallingford, Madrona, Madison, Central District, Ballard, Montlake, Queen Anne. I remember writing letters (!) home trying to explain how Seattle had a city center surrounded by small-towns like Nordmaling, Robertsfors, Vindeln and Vännäs, places of about 2-3000 inhabitants when I grew up in Västerbotten Region where Umeå is the main city. Places with local downtowns, schools, shops, most everything you needed. Built up by single homes, mostly.

In 1993 the Seattle population wasn’t far from 600 000, Greater Seattle about 2 million. In 2014 about 668 000 and Greater Seattle 3.6 million people. I’ve been thinking the fact the City of Seattle hardly been growing during these 20 years is because it’s squeezed in between the waters and have very little chance to expand. And the expansion that’s after all been happening is upwards with the Downtown condo rises. It’s not until this summer I have learned that I’ve partly been right in my guesses, and why.

The Seattle neighborhoods are protected single-family zones! I don’t know why I never even questioned the fact that the Nordmalings and Robertsfors of Seattle are only residential areas with quite streets and basket hoops in the back yards and alleys, although they are in the middle of the fastest growing major city in the U.S.! Maybe because Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard all have their souls, their communities, their self-evident space in the fabric that is Seattle. 

They say a city without building cranes is a city without a future. In that case both my cities sure have a future. For as long as I have known Seattle, building cranes have been a part of the skyline. That’s also true for Umeå now.

Due to my body restrictions I unfortunately haven’t been back in Seattle for three years. That stay was though, speaking in terms of getting out and about, my most difficult one. I stayed in lower Queen Anne in a penthouse with a killer view (google Seattle views and the first one you will find was mine!), but it became a tower from which I dreaded to climb down. Partly because of my back, but mainly because of the location. Well, the location on the map is great, close to Downtown, but to drive from there to Downtown or Capitol Hill through the Mercer (street) mess, was a nightmare of road work, traffic gridlock and construction sites. I feel claustrophobic even thinking about it.

Yet it seems like the three years after 2012 have totally crazed Seattle. Amazon is taking over the former wear house waste land (umebor, think Västerslätt) South Lake Union, made it it’s campus adding more than 15 000 workers to Seattle with capacity of 30 000 within e few years. Last time this kind of company development happened in the Seattle area was Microsoft in the nineties, although in Redmond east of Lake Washington. Now it’s happening right in the core of the tight Seattle city center with already packed freeways and over-crowded buses. As much as I miss Seattle and always long for the Emerald City, this picture makes the claustrophobia take a seat on my chest.

So, where will everyone live? Downtown condo high rises, yes. But, it might be that the Seattle neighborhoods will be changing. The single-family zoning may very well be in jeopardy. That’s in the Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s panel on housing affordability, because here is another issue. As Seattle’s booming is going through the roof, who but the Amazons and the Microsofties will afford to live here? A lot of the new high-rises planned for Seattle aren’t condos but apartments (unthinkable in the nineties, only losers were renting), because people just can’t afford to buy on this market anymore!

Wallingford, Madrona and Ballard might look different in the future. In the recent draft  of the panel on housing affordability’s recommendations, the committee argued for converting Seattle’s single-family zones into “low-density residential zones” allowing more types of housing, such as “small-lot dwellings, cottages or courtyard housing, duplexes and triplexes.” 

I can see how this stirs up feelings all around Seattle. The neighborhoods are beautiful and generally safe. Privileged, if you so will, some very privileged. To buy a home in either of those neighborhoods is money. But maybe, if the development is restricted to mother-in-law backyard units and modest town houses, it won't be worse than tearing down a bungalow replacing it with an oversized McMansion blocking the view? And might it add something to diversity?

Now, is building cranes always a sign for a a better future? Well, that’s a different topic.

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.”