For Whom the Belltown Tolls
Since 1988, I've lived in South Pugetopia. Fairwood, Renton, Unincorporated King County, Kent and West Kent. I've seen quite a lot: Covington got both a Wal*Mart and a Costco, in addition to its expansion. Kent became gentrified and has their own outdoor mall thing. Seattle has changed too.
At an open-mike session where Mayor McGinn wanted to hear about how to improve the situation, a young woman from Belltown took the mike. She spoke for nearly three minutes, but her story was powerful. The punchline is that on the way to a local bakery, a woman encounters one of our local transients. This is normally a daily occurrence, but in this case our friend was...vigorously checking himself for testicular cancer. And really enjoying it. This was not at three in the morning after the bars have closed. Oh no, this was out in broad daylight on a Sunday morning.
That's bad enough but the big story is that the woman knocked down a veritable Gauntlet of Villains to reach our "guy out with Roseanna Palm." She encountered a drug mule, a gentleman and a prostitute and a guy in a GI-jacket who was delivering a sermon to both everyone and no one in particular. But she seemed to be most put off by the guy with his pants down.
Starter question: Who was his mother? I act as if my Mumsy is watching all the time, whether in public or private. That bum in the alley has a mom. He may be destitute and in ragged clothes, but he can still conduct himself as a gentleman.
And there's the bonus question: How did Belltown become a place where you can be out on a date with your wrist and nobody stops you? You don't have to call the cops or anything, you just kick him with your toe and say "Hey! stop that!" or throw a cup of water on him. Guys, if you see something like that, don't just let it go; you step in, be a man and say to knock it the hell off.
I am totally not surprised to find out that Belltown has become what it has, with the drugs and prostituting and fighting after bars close. The mayor began a "rapid response" team to pick up human waste on the sidewalk, but specifically said that they won't pick up pet waste, and he wouldn't just come out and say that it is the Bums who are the ones who require that Seattle have an Anti-Defecation League: a Mystery Machine van or Ghostbusters ambulance that drives around at the site of human waste and will collect it. And nobody tells the Mayor that this sounds strange on the face of it? That we don't need a response team for poo?
Why is that being allowed? Why are the people of Seattle OK with a guy dropping his pants in the middle of the street and voiding his bowels? Mayor McGinn isn't going to do anything affirmative because he's just the Community Organizer-in-Chief of the city. He'd rather placate people who don't even have an interest group representing them than to say something bad like "hey, smelly bum guy, don't take a big steamy dump on my sidewalk!" when a normal person thinks exactly that, even if they've been conditioned to step around the guy doing it.
If Seattle keeps letting this happen, people are going to keep moving away, and Seattle will shut down after people go home from their jobs. People aren't going to stick around and spend money in boutiques if they're overcome by the stench of human waste. The people who still live there have to take ownership of their city back or things won't change. You can't just change when Tipsy McStaggers closes and assume that the fighting won't happen just because the sun is coming up. Bad actors are going to act badly unless they are given sufficient impetus to knock it off, whether they're reminded of their mother, or a tumbler of cold water is upended on them, or he is carted away to the paddy wagon. Left to their own devices, they'll continue to ruin things for the rest of us.
At an open-mike session where Mayor McGinn wanted to hear about how to improve the situation, a young woman from Belltown took the mike. She spoke for nearly three minutes, but her story was powerful. The punchline is that on the way to a local bakery, a woman encounters one of our local transients. This is normally a daily occurrence, but in this case our friend was...vigorously checking himself for testicular cancer. And really enjoying it. This was not at three in the morning after the bars have closed. Oh no, this was out in broad daylight on a Sunday morning.
That's bad enough but the big story is that the woman knocked down a veritable Gauntlet of Villains to reach our "guy out with Roseanna Palm." She encountered a drug mule, a gentleman and a prostitute and a guy in a GI-jacket who was delivering a sermon to both everyone and no one in particular. But she seemed to be most put off by the guy with his pants down.
Starter question: Who was his mother? I act as if my Mumsy is watching all the time, whether in public or private. That bum in the alley has a mom. He may be destitute and in ragged clothes, but he can still conduct himself as a gentleman.
And there's the bonus question: How did Belltown become a place where you can be out on a date with your wrist and nobody stops you? You don't have to call the cops or anything, you just kick him with your toe and say "Hey! stop that!" or throw a cup of water on him. Guys, if you see something like that, don't just let it go; you step in, be a man and say to knock it the hell off.
I am totally not surprised to find out that Belltown has become what it has, with the drugs and prostituting and fighting after bars close. The mayor began a "rapid response" team to pick up human waste on the sidewalk, but specifically said that they won't pick up pet waste, and he wouldn't just come out and say that it is the Bums who are the ones who require that Seattle have an Anti-Defecation League: a Mystery Machine van or Ghostbusters ambulance that drives around at the site of human waste and will collect it. And nobody tells the Mayor that this sounds strange on the face of it? That we don't need a response team for poo?
Why is that being allowed? Why are the people of Seattle OK with a guy dropping his pants in the middle of the street and voiding his bowels? Mayor McGinn isn't going to do anything affirmative because he's just the Community Organizer-in-Chief of the city. He'd rather placate people who don't even have an interest group representing them than to say something bad like "hey, smelly bum guy, don't take a big steamy dump on my sidewalk!" when a normal person thinks exactly that, even if they've been conditioned to step around the guy doing it.
If Seattle keeps letting this happen, people are going to keep moving away, and Seattle will shut down after people go home from their jobs. People aren't going to stick around and spend money in boutiques if they're overcome by the stench of human waste. The people who still live there have to take ownership of their city back or things won't change. You can't just change when Tipsy McStaggers closes and assume that the fighting won't happen just because the sun is coming up. Bad actors are going to act badly unless they are given sufficient impetus to knock it off, whether they're reminded of their mother, or a tumbler of cold water is upended on them, or he is carted away to the paddy wagon. Left to their own devices, they'll continue to ruin things for the rest of us.