This map is
a prescient reminder of where we are as a Nation, and our future
outlook in our municipalities and their corresponding industrial bases. I
couldn't help think of the variegated layers that constitutes such a
Regionalism, much like an onion would peel, or an orange unraveled. This
sort of doctrine while not entirely causal implies a certain
correlation to the Chinese model, belied by our Globalized economy and
logistics. Western-styled Democracy in our Metropolises seem to be in
their last throes - wrangled by its betters - while it can still exist,
it is rendered feckless through the maldistribution of resources: the
Ends justifying the Means of such theft, not beholden to the Common
Good, which is an oxymoron to makers of the world to be. My interest in
this topic is purely academic and to document for myself observations
I've made over the last 10 years living within Seattle and to give a
glimpse on where my scholarship has taken me, while holding true to my
belief in the suffrage and self-determination of We the People.
As Metropolitan regionalism trumps State sovereignty, or Corporate interests hold sway over Municipalities and Federal authorities (seemingly): we should be ponderous of a few things, even if from time to time States like Alaska are thrown a bone for the sake of maintaining a constituency. P.S —I should also bespeak my foresight herein so as not to write another op-ed disaster circa Q2 2017, that Amazon is opening a homeless shelter— wagging the dog I speak about in this post as if it were clockwork.
Namely, the concentration of tax revenue into industrial havens— this is why there is such a political divide from East and Western Washington: it creates an inequitable relationship for the purpose of iniquitous gains. It even extends to the quasi-corporate, federally subsidized nature of its primary educator: the University of Washington, which as a result, has its own microcosm and corresponding bureaucracy to direct the expansion of its enterprises similar to the Californian model, and all its blunders transposed into greener pastures. While the FAFSA economy is one way public Universities can shore losses, I wonder if this trend is truly beneficial in the long run, because the indebtedness and loss of productivity it can create for new entrants into the job market already burdened with accelerated housing costs with the need to be in localities with the highest prospects for return on their educational investments.
The corporate investiture and out-of-State money that uses our Direct democracy Initiatives, cultural and political values, which are the hallmarks of Washington State's institutional heritage, in an effort to divest resources from their democratic bases into a corporate-based hegemony, calls for the incremental usurpation of direct-democracy and civilian reform by using it as a means to lobby government according to its market needs. Much of this is done thru a Liberal guise, cloaked in the faux-reality of academia and the ideology of an illiberal Leftist bunch, but contains a noose that undoes its good intentions. Education has been used to wag the dog of voters who will automatically vote for anything which would improve it, even if at a later date, that money is used for something other than its reason for existence. Why the need for the deception? Lies while they work, also create nested inefficiencies and grey areas that increase public distrust of their institutions. People forget that injustice of a higher node tends to increase the incentive for administrators and bureaucrats further along the line, providing wiggle room they need in order to commit rather heinous financial decisions within their institutions in order to line their pockets, which I believe work against the grand vision of oligarchs, because they terrorize the public economically. Local, not out of State oligopolies, who are largely in charge of the politics within Seattle, should work alongside the public in a more monopolistic fashion in order to root out middlemen, and discourage corruption and collusion which have every intent to fleece the consumer and tax payer in rent seeking behavior. I want to believe this trend is merely a period of transition and not a slippery slope.
Classical Liberal values are always usurped by various illiberal detractors working in their own self-interest in a manner that spells the death of things such as common sense. Only at the end, when corporate socialism has utter governance do we see the outcry of public social initiatives from politicians seeking to create dependencies out of their ivory towers now subfusc light. The minimum wage is a distraction from the real problem: people moving here with a lack of affordable housing. There are always a bundle of nerves creating crisis points e.g., out of state investment real estate, out of state rental corporations, no caps, no rent controls. The city has had many opportunities to listen to advocates for microhousing, rent controls, and measure to prevent rent collusion from rental associations — or even put an end to homelessness! They blew up the King Dome which was owned by the City and replaced it with two corporate stadiums, and would rather in spend $100 million in renovating the Space Needle instead of getting people off the streets.
Citizen efforts have been thwarted for the most part from having any meaningful impact unless there's corporate backing, because they aren't supposed to have any, remaining feckless without momentum. Government officials have not protected the People. Weeding and scything economically vulnerable people in this way actually robs Seattle of the very people it needs to have a vibrant culture and tourism industry, unless it wishes to sell out entirely, which it seems contented to do, staying the course its on why do we further pretend there is any authenticity or vibrancy in the culture today. It's just a sick circus for the common man, a malady.
Lux Sit — that is the obscenity of our primary educator. Prolapsed from a bloated administrative and bureaucratic federal University system— a failure in California— usurping the passions of youth with bankrupt and hollowed ideologies, divorced from reality in order to line the pockets of an upper crust, have robbed the Public. Who thru land acquisitions, bookstores, student housing, stadium building, branding, and a monopolisation of affordable clinics, have demonstrated their lack of integrity through the utilization of federal funds from student loans to create an entire generation of highly 'miseducated' youth, with comfortable tenured professorships and meager pickings for adjuncts— hiding their disfigurement and shame — denying any wrong doing as they commit abuses for the sake of career by creating new departments and infrastructure which require more administrators and bureaucrats to run, deflecting responsibility onto young adults after partaking in none, having created an institution that starts to resemble a elite Mill rather than an elite Ivy. A dystopia of the mind, not subject to those who teach, but of those who preach and leach.
The People knew what should have been done, but their betters only aided and abetted those that captured the keys to the City, but the truth of the matter is their hearts were corrupted— at the end of the day all people have price tags. 'Pricing out the People' almost takes on a metaphorical and dystopian edge.
From a citizen's perspective, you could say we live in a sordid state of economic and social control — two signs of the same symbol — one authoritative principle: corporatism of which communism and fascism combine, vie for a stake in the almighty economic engine blooming in the fullness of its supremacy, which it deems benign, but is seen as asinine by those being priced out economically.
It is a system where a Public Ivy school (marketing is wonderful) can take public dollars and invest them into the stock market without handing in their resignation: it's obvious this behavior is motivated not in an effort to make tuition affordable and improve education, but to increase infrastructure spending and pay raises for unnecessary niceties.
It is a system where adjunct professors live on paltry sums in an area that is so eager to educate, with professors who want to do their work, but who can do little to emotionall connect and engage with students. Institutions that are unable to support its own faculty, shouldn't be educating students. Juggling multiple part-time jobs, earning little-to-no benefits, depending on public assistance: This is the financial reality for many adjunct professors across the nation. Where administrators easily are left to their own devices and bloat their salaries accordingly.
To Zizek, at least, "unknown knowns" as a critique of the popularization of Rumsfeld's Unknown Unknown (which led us into Iraq), are "the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values." Greed is good would be dying out if not for the titan grip the old guard has upon its horde of public treasure. And it is those things unknown which control us, we don't control them. Many administrators, superintendents, and so forth aren't even educators themselves. This is largely overlooked, because their loyalties have little to do with faculty and student relationships, and in fact in extremes, is antagonistic towards such a thing occuring.
This causes limitations on the self-determination of local Peoples, too: metropolitan elementary and secondary public educational budgets have been spent on increasing the market value of corporations, and Paul Allen, thru increasing land values (two Stadiums). The People voted against these new projects.
Other examples of corporate enrichment at the public's expense is the South Lake Union Trolley (ironically called the S.L.U.T by locals but might just be the troll in the room), especially when Civilian-led infrastructure projects were rejected in favor of corporate ones, namely, the historic conceptualization of a green core where the new Denny development took place instead: the corresponding economic and infrastructure allocation to private entities for their employees and long-term real estate development plans, and the subsequent relocation of local demographics due to the gentrification of the polity - as skilled-workers transplant and replace local workforce lacking in the necessary skills or proper access to transportation.
Some buildings have met a compromise and buildings with thoroughfares, as demonstrated by the Amazon boom, but rarely does this occur, because that is a private benefit made public and while it makes for better city planning isn't itself cost effective. Why did Public funds need to be used to increase infrastructure for workers and tourists that would push locals and natives out of the city? If we speak in large, overarching and decade long plans, then why isn't the Commons spoken about and emphasized — simply coddled? You can't have a vibrant, inclusive city with just white collar workers. It's got to have a soul too.
Dehumanizing conditions and policy towards the homeless: no concentrated rehabilitation efforts (why would they even exist when there's no affordable housing), yet they are encouraged to come here in droves it seems on tickets from New York: an obvious lack of shelters (which created tent cities, which now are dissipated and atomized across public spaces). It demoralizes local inhabitants and makes everyone more vulnerable— it's not what people want. The homeless are furthering the concept that loitering is a public offense, when it is merely poor city planning and regard for citizens.The problem inherent in the City's lack of attention to homelessness is pushed onto neighborhoods without hostile, exclusive business park architecture.
The International District, a cultural gem, faces a huge wave of homelessness. This would invariably increase the rate of gentrification for corporate neighborhoods and their architectural-style which is inherently inhospitable to the homeless. You begin to see that neighborhoods who don't adopt this architecture, inevitably feel the malaise upon their neighborhoods, imposed by the threat of homelessness without concentrated efforts from the Council, pushed into small confines; under freeways, on treed slopes, into the streets - creating a huge public and private crisis: the City isn't making sense of its inherent inconsistencies and contradictions - that's what homelessness is all about. How the homeless are integrated into a city can show how inherently exploitative a lack of authentic, passionate attention can be. It is socially threatening — both to the homeless and to the housed — because the city is failing in its duties to both, the epitome of disingenuous decrees. We know the money to help the People who pay taxes and live in Seattle exist. We have to call out corporate welfare and subsidy in the extremes it manifests, but would Seattle be Seattle without it, or was that battle lost long ago?
As land-values plummet relative to the surrounding neighborhood, shocks of vagrancy sprout about it as a new economy forms: one of delinquency, criminality, exploitation, and vulnerability. And as people move out of the city due to the chaos, they will be replaced with more transplanted subsidiary workers of large-stock corporations, or affluent local White-collar workers in gated high-rise communities, lacking in rent control or microunits, isolated from their low-density. As culture centers move further away from Downtown, as rent forces local independent artists out, new neighborhood communities are then reared culturally only to be gentrified, whereas the process could work in an entirely different way if only those in charge of development could pay attention to it.
An inherent lack of due diligence, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, and in all appearances, intelligence, regarding how the Seattle educational budget is spent, even though we are one of the most educated cities with a high tax base. This is the elephant in the room, and the ostrich with its head in the sand. Bread and circuses for a select and subsidized, Commons neglect. This isn't a durable model and tourism could be more profitable if everyone could participate in their city's culture regardless of their social class.
The lack of money spent educating children in poor urban areas with the skills they need to compete in the domestic economy: lack of ability to partake in the local economy: lack of rent controls: lack of micro-units in new land developments: invariable displacement and subsequently uprooted peoples relocate via the economic principles of corporate subsidies and by the passive increase of the bureaucracy, which funnels more public money into corporate-led > citizen-led endeavors. Micro-housing continuously curtailed in favor of high-rise condominiums in the downtown core, isolating the People from their City, and the City from its Citizens - who are now, it would seem, unwelcome guests to our large-stock corporate Overlords. It doesn't have to be that way.
Large cities are being turned into large white-collar factories and playgrounds for those who can pay to play, collaborate, share, and otherwise care to participate in the Velvet Revolution that is underway. The City of Seattle is anything but in my view, it is a complex conglomerate of oligarchy, and it should be considered at what cost to the future of Seattle.
Private wanton speculation, be that as it may, this is a cursory glance from a Seattlite being led away. Should we expect more Vancouver skylines and foreign direct investment in real estate? People have less say than they realize, but there's value in keeping all income brackets within the city, not sectioning them off into ghettos or suburban landscapes which increases traffic and overburdens the tax base in those areas. The controllers of Seattle need to take more responsibility for how its tax base, zoning, lack of rent controls, and federal resources are utilized so that they don't threaten the free market and instead work for the betterment of King County, such that all can partake in its wealth and entrepreneurial spirit and innovation.
TL;DR section and post-scripted — The laundering of public money for private gain is so widespread and prevalent, as is the the lobbying of public institutions for private, iniquitous gain at the cost of the Commons and the Common Good. We've been in an economic and cultural warzone since the implosion of the King Dome (which was still unpaid for in 2000) to make way for two corporate stadiums, funded by the Washington State Lottery of which the Public Education Fund was to be the recipient, which they now portend this fund "doesn't work" to finance education, while being ostriches with their heads in the sand disregarding the embezzlement that has occurred in pursuit of Public Education under false-flag Superintendents and contracts! This is just an example of one grandstand after another, and there are many others. The dream of the 90's is alive in Tacoma or Boise, not Portland. Seattle is a trap, don't move there if you have a care, many from Seattle don't live there any where. Please add to this conversation, even if my thoughts are borrowed and proper citations found. All these thoughts are from my personal experiences living, schooling, and working in Seattle while participating in its local culture having lived in King county my whole life.
As Metropolitan regionalism trumps State sovereignty, or Corporate interests hold sway over Municipalities and Federal authorities (seemingly): we should be ponderous of a few things, even if from time to time States like Alaska are thrown a bone for the sake of maintaining a constituency. P.S —I should also bespeak my foresight herein so as not to write another op-ed disaster circa Q2 2017, that Amazon is opening a homeless shelter— wagging the dog I speak about in this post as if it were clockwork.
Namely, the concentration of tax revenue into industrial havens— this is why there is such a political divide from East and Western Washington: it creates an inequitable relationship for the purpose of iniquitous gains. It even extends to the quasi-corporate, federally subsidized nature of its primary educator: the University of Washington, which as a result, has its own microcosm and corresponding bureaucracy to direct the expansion of its enterprises similar to the Californian model, and all its blunders transposed into greener pastures. While the FAFSA economy is one way public Universities can shore losses, I wonder if this trend is truly beneficial in the long run, because the indebtedness and loss of productivity it can create for new entrants into the job market already burdened with accelerated housing costs with the need to be in localities with the highest prospects for return on their educational investments.
The corporate investiture and out-of-State money that uses our Direct democracy Initiatives, cultural and political values, which are the hallmarks of Washington State's institutional heritage, in an effort to divest resources from their democratic bases into a corporate-based hegemony, calls for the incremental usurpation of direct-democracy and civilian reform by using it as a means to lobby government according to its market needs. Much of this is done thru a Liberal guise, cloaked in the faux-reality of academia and the ideology of an illiberal Leftist bunch, but contains a noose that undoes its good intentions. Education has been used to wag the dog of voters who will automatically vote for anything which would improve it, even if at a later date, that money is used for something other than its reason for existence. Why the need for the deception? Lies while they work, also create nested inefficiencies and grey areas that increase public distrust of their institutions. People forget that injustice of a higher node tends to increase the incentive for administrators and bureaucrats further along the line, providing wiggle room they need in order to commit rather heinous financial decisions within their institutions in order to line their pockets, which I believe work against the grand vision of oligarchs, because they terrorize the public economically. Local, not out of State oligopolies, who are largely in charge of the politics within Seattle, should work alongside the public in a more monopolistic fashion in order to root out middlemen, and discourage corruption and collusion which have every intent to fleece the consumer and tax payer in rent seeking behavior. I want to believe this trend is merely a period of transition and not a slippery slope.
Classical Liberal values are always usurped by various illiberal detractors working in their own self-interest in a manner that spells the death of things such as common sense. Only at the end, when corporate socialism has utter governance do we see the outcry of public social initiatives from politicians seeking to create dependencies out of their ivory towers now subfusc light. The minimum wage is a distraction from the real problem: people moving here with a lack of affordable housing. There are always a bundle of nerves creating crisis points e.g., out of state investment real estate, out of state rental corporations, no caps, no rent controls. The city has had many opportunities to listen to advocates for microhousing, rent controls, and measure to prevent rent collusion from rental associations — or even put an end to homelessness! They blew up the King Dome which was owned by the City and replaced it with two corporate stadiums, and would rather in spend $100 million in renovating the Space Needle instead of getting people off the streets.
Citizen efforts have been thwarted for the most part from having any meaningful impact unless there's corporate backing, because they aren't supposed to have any, remaining feckless without momentum. Government officials have not protected the People. Weeding and scything economically vulnerable people in this way actually robs Seattle of the very people it needs to have a vibrant culture and tourism industry, unless it wishes to sell out entirely, which it seems contented to do, staying the course its on why do we further pretend there is any authenticity or vibrancy in the culture today. It's just a sick circus for the common man, a malady.
Lux Sit — that is the obscenity of our primary educator. Prolapsed from a bloated administrative and bureaucratic federal University system— a failure in California— usurping the passions of youth with bankrupt and hollowed ideologies, divorced from reality in order to line the pockets of an upper crust, have robbed the Public. Who thru land acquisitions, bookstores, student housing, stadium building, branding, and a monopolisation of affordable clinics, have demonstrated their lack of integrity through the utilization of federal funds from student loans to create an entire generation of highly 'miseducated' youth, with comfortable tenured professorships and meager pickings for adjuncts— hiding their disfigurement and shame — denying any wrong doing as they commit abuses for the sake of career by creating new departments and infrastructure which require more administrators and bureaucrats to run, deflecting responsibility onto young adults after partaking in none, having created an institution that starts to resemble a elite Mill rather than an elite Ivy. A dystopia of the mind, not subject to those who teach, but of those who preach and leach.
The People knew what should have been done, but their betters only aided and abetted those that captured the keys to the City, but the truth of the matter is their hearts were corrupted— at the end of the day all people have price tags. 'Pricing out the People' almost takes on a metaphorical and dystopian edge.
From a citizen's perspective, you could say we live in a sordid state of economic and social control — two signs of the same symbol — one authoritative principle: corporatism of which communism and fascism combine, vie for a stake in the almighty economic engine blooming in the fullness of its supremacy, which it deems benign, but is seen as asinine by those being priced out economically.
It is a system where a Public Ivy school (marketing is wonderful) can take public dollars and invest them into the stock market without handing in their resignation: it's obvious this behavior is motivated not in an effort to make tuition affordable and improve education, but to increase infrastructure spending and pay raises for unnecessary niceties.
It is a system where adjunct professors live on paltry sums in an area that is so eager to educate, with professors who want to do their work, but who can do little to emotionall connect and engage with students. Institutions that are unable to support its own faculty, shouldn't be educating students. Juggling multiple part-time jobs, earning little-to-no benefits, depending on public assistance: This is the financial reality for many adjunct professors across the nation. Where administrators easily are left to their own devices and bloat their salaries accordingly.
To Zizek, at least, "unknown knowns" as a critique of the popularization of Rumsfeld's Unknown Unknown (which led us into Iraq), are "the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values." Greed is good would be dying out if not for the titan grip the old guard has upon its horde of public treasure. And it is those things unknown which control us, we don't control them. Many administrators, superintendents, and so forth aren't even educators themselves. This is largely overlooked, because their loyalties have little to do with faculty and student relationships, and in fact in extremes, is antagonistic towards such a thing occuring.
This causes limitations on the self-determination of local Peoples, too: metropolitan elementary and secondary public educational budgets have been spent on increasing the market value of corporations, and Paul Allen, thru increasing land values (two Stadiums). The People voted against these new projects.
Other examples of corporate enrichment at the public's expense is the South Lake Union Trolley (ironically called the S.L.U.T by locals but might just be the troll in the room), especially when Civilian-led infrastructure projects were rejected in favor of corporate ones, namely, the historic conceptualization of a green core where the new Denny development took place instead: the corresponding economic and infrastructure allocation to private entities for their employees and long-term real estate development plans, and the subsequent relocation of local demographics due to the gentrification of the polity - as skilled-workers transplant and replace local workforce lacking in the necessary skills or proper access to transportation.
Some buildings have met a compromise and buildings with thoroughfares, as demonstrated by the Amazon boom, but rarely does this occur, because that is a private benefit made public and while it makes for better city planning isn't itself cost effective. Why did Public funds need to be used to increase infrastructure for workers and tourists that would push locals and natives out of the city? If we speak in large, overarching and decade long plans, then why isn't the Commons spoken about and emphasized — simply coddled? You can't have a vibrant, inclusive city with just white collar workers. It's got to have a soul too.
Dehumanizing conditions and policy towards the homeless: no concentrated rehabilitation efforts (why would they even exist when there's no affordable housing), yet they are encouraged to come here in droves it seems on tickets from New York: an obvious lack of shelters (which created tent cities, which now are dissipated and atomized across public spaces). It demoralizes local inhabitants and makes everyone more vulnerable— it's not what people want. The homeless are furthering the concept that loitering is a public offense, when it is merely poor city planning and regard for citizens.The problem inherent in the City's lack of attention to homelessness is pushed onto neighborhoods without hostile, exclusive business park architecture.
The International District, a cultural gem, faces a huge wave of homelessness. This would invariably increase the rate of gentrification for corporate neighborhoods and their architectural-style which is inherently inhospitable to the homeless. You begin to see that neighborhoods who don't adopt this architecture, inevitably feel the malaise upon their neighborhoods, imposed by the threat of homelessness without concentrated efforts from the Council, pushed into small confines; under freeways, on treed slopes, into the streets - creating a huge public and private crisis: the City isn't making sense of its inherent inconsistencies and contradictions - that's what homelessness is all about. How the homeless are integrated into a city can show how inherently exploitative a lack of authentic, passionate attention can be. It is socially threatening — both to the homeless and to the housed — because the city is failing in its duties to both, the epitome of disingenuous decrees. We know the money to help the People who pay taxes and live in Seattle exist. We have to call out corporate welfare and subsidy in the extremes it manifests, but would Seattle be Seattle without it, or was that battle lost long ago?
As land-values plummet relative to the surrounding neighborhood, shocks of vagrancy sprout about it as a new economy forms: one of delinquency, criminality, exploitation, and vulnerability. And as people move out of the city due to the chaos, they will be replaced with more transplanted subsidiary workers of large-stock corporations, or affluent local White-collar workers in gated high-rise communities, lacking in rent control or microunits, isolated from their low-density. As culture centers move further away from Downtown, as rent forces local independent artists out, new neighborhood communities are then reared culturally only to be gentrified, whereas the process could work in an entirely different way if only those in charge of development could pay attention to it.
An inherent lack of due diligence, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, and in all appearances, intelligence, regarding how the Seattle educational budget is spent, even though we are one of the most educated cities with a high tax base. This is the elephant in the room, and the ostrich with its head in the sand. Bread and circuses for a select and subsidized, Commons neglect. This isn't a durable model and tourism could be more profitable if everyone could participate in their city's culture regardless of their social class.
The lack of money spent educating children in poor urban areas with the skills they need to compete in the domestic economy: lack of ability to partake in the local economy: lack of rent controls: lack of micro-units in new land developments: invariable displacement and subsequently uprooted peoples relocate via the economic principles of corporate subsidies and by the passive increase of the bureaucracy, which funnels more public money into corporate-led > citizen-led endeavors. Micro-housing continuously curtailed in favor of high-rise condominiums in the downtown core, isolating the People from their City, and the City from its Citizens - who are now, it would seem, unwelcome guests to our large-stock corporate Overlords. It doesn't have to be that way.
Large cities are being turned into large white-collar factories and playgrounds for those who can pay to play, collaborate, share, and otherwise care to participate in the Velvet Revolution that is underway. The City of Seattle is anything but in my view, it is a complex conglomerate of oligarchy, and it should be considered at what cost to the future of Seattle.
Private wanton speculation, be that as it may, this is a cursory glance from a Seattlite being led away. Should we expect more Vancouver skylines and foreign direct investment in real estate? People have less say than they realize, but there's value in keeping all income brackets within the city, not sectioning them off into ghettos or suburban landscapes which increases traffic and overburdens the tax base in those areas. The controllers of Seattle need to take more responsibility for how its tax base, zoning, lack of rent controls, and federal resources are utilized so that they don't threaten the free market and instead work for the betterment of King County, such that all can partake in its wealth and entrepreneurial spirit and innovation.
TL;DR section and post-scripted — The laundering of public money for private gain is so widespread and prevalent, as is the the lobbying of public institutions for private, iniquitous gain at the cost of the Commons and the Common Good. We've been in an economic and cultural warzone since the implosion of the King Dome (which was still unpaid for in 2000) to make way for two corporate stadiums, funded by the Washington State Lottery of which the Public Education Fund was to be the recipient, which they now portend this fund "doesn't work" to finance education, while being ostriches with their heads in the sand disregarding the embezzlement that has occurred in pursuit of Public Education under false-flag Superintendents and contracts! This is just an example of one grandstand after another, and there are many others. The dream of the 90's is alive in Tacoma or Boise, not Portland. Seattle is a trap, don't move there if you have a care, many from Seattle don't live there any where. Please add to this conversation, even if my thoughts are borrowed and proper citations found. All these thoughts are from my personal experiences living, schooling, and working in Seattle while participating in its local culture having lived in King county my whole life.
