I just have to laugh at Fox News’
coverage of what is going in Seattle these days. If you listen to what passes
for “news” on Fox, you’d think chaos reigns supreme on the streets, with
rioting and looting everywhere. Of course, Fox News—which generally views
Seattle as being governed by a communist regime—apparently has managed to find
under a few local rocks persons who would “corroborate” such claims, even if
the imagery doesn’t exactly back it up. For example, Tucker Carlson found a man
who claims to be a local business owner named Joey Rodolfo, who apparently
operates a "luxury technical clothing” store, who told him
Tucker, I've lived in Seattle for 38 years, for 38 years. And [over]
the last three years, I've seen the crime rate surge. I've seen homeless, drugs
and gangs take over our downtown. Not to mention the destruction of property. It's
happening here in Seattle and with no consequences. We have a judicial system
here that is a revolving door. So if you're a store owner or a restaurant in Seattle,
these are very, very difficult times.
First of all, while technically
the location of this store (which plies moderately expensive “designer” clothing
for the yuppie type) is in the downtown area, it is well outside what one would
regard as a typical footpath area, so it is unlikely that the homeless, drugs and
gangs are a problem for his particular establishment. But more striking is that
his description of downtown Seattle conjures up visions of roving bands of
thugs busting things up, which is simply not true. Yeah, you hear people
talking about how they don’t want to walk around some of the streets like First
and Second Avenues, but that is mainly because there isn’t exactly a whole lot
going on along those streets anyways—especially since the city kicked out the
two or three strip joints that used to be located in that area, which some
would argue made downtown “safer.”
Are there homeless people? Sure,
but those that pitch camp are allowed to do so in long since rundown
areas south of downtown, especially near Pioneer Square, which isn’t exactly “hopping”
these days because the Mariners’ season has been suspended. You occasionally see
a vagrant sleeping in a vacant door well in the core area, but one thing one
should be aware of is that almost all of these people are white, and their presence
is typically tolerated, and if they are causing nuisances for business owners,
security guards who work in office buildings whose ground levels are where most
of the downtown businesses are located are expected to shoo them off as “humanely”
as possible. Drug dealing? If it is happening, it certainly isn’t being done in
the open; most of the “drug dealing” here are transactions between “dealers”
and white people in neighborhoods that police normally don’t roam in—and when
police do observe these transactions, they tend to focus their attention more
on the dealer than the buyer—unless, of course, the buyer is black or Hispanic.
Gangs? I suppose there is a “gang”
presence in Seattle, but it certainly isn’t “obvious” in downtown, day or night.
Where would they come from? The Central District? There may have been a time
when the district was a place many white residents feared to go, but that
changed as new white and Asian transplants came looking for a place to live in a
boxed-in city, and over the past few decades black residents there were simply “bought
out.” The most recent census shows that three-quarters of the population of the
Central District is now white/Asian, with only 18 percent black.
I lived within a five-minute walk
of downtown throughout the 1990s; if anything, the streets have grown “safer”
since then because there simply isn’t any reason for “normal” people to do
there anymore—let alone afford to live there. There used to be four movie
theaters downtown; now there is just one. The strip joints, as previously
mentioned, are gone. There used to be a music, video or book store seemingly on
every block, and now after the downtown Barnes and Nobles closed this past January,
there are no such stores at all in the “core” downtown area. It isn’t because of
“gangs” or drug dealers or the homeless, but because of competition from online
retailers like Amazon. There are still apparel stores and restaurants, but outside
a few holdovers like Target and McDonalds, they cater to an “upscale” clientele,
such as the people who work in all those high-rise office buildings and live in
those condos and expensive waterfront apartments.
Yes, there is the rare shooting
incident between people who are unwanted presences, like the two men involved
in the shooting incident on Third Avenue in January, but there hasn’t been
a shooting in downtown Seattle since then. Police are hardly seen day or night
because, frankly, downtown Seattle was pretty much devoid of life outside of “office”
hours even before the pandemic. We have seen a few minor skirmishes and one
auto repair shop “violated” that are related to the Capitol Hill “CHOP,” but as
one observer pointed out, it is more “block party” than a chaotic “takeover.”
Eventually the fad is going to end and people will go back to their day jobs.
Interestingly, one video that Fox News has been showing involves two white men grappling over a gun one of
them is carrying on a waste holster; the one who has the gun looks like some troublemaker
who just showed up to express his Second Amendment rights.
“Very, very difficult times”? If
you haven’t had any business for the past three months because the lockdown has
reduced normal traffic to practically nothing, sure it is. But don’t believe
the myths that Fox News and the self-serving blather of those looking to blame
the “others” for their problems are perpetrating.
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