South Lake Union: Then + Now

Welcome to Amazonia

This article on Amazon’s Seattle development published yesterday in the New York Times, well, it sucked (pardon my French). Of course, it includes plenty of one-liners from corporate and city talkingheads but no real substance or what used to be called ‘journalism’. Honestly, it seems like it was written from a desk in Manhattan. I guess I shouldn’t expect much more these days from newspapers starving for revenue, but with a headline “Seattle’s Downtown is Reshaped” (not to mention two authors!), can’t I at least expect to get a sense of how Seattle is getting reshaped? Some greater historical context, some ideological balance, and maybe even the selection of ‘experts’ worth listening to: this doesn’t seem like too much to ask, even if it means a slightly longer article that took more than a day to write.

In order to get on with my day, I’m compelled to dust off some of Sherman Alexie’s pithy South Lake Union posts from The Stranger, like this one. No more substantive, but at least it’s cathartic.