Posted by GHK at 11/10/07 5:01 p.m.

I remember the Seattle John Keister is talking about quite well: yes, the wilderness was closer but the food wasn't as good, the shops closed even earlier, everyone worked at Boeing and Fremont was just as contrived as it is now (which doesn't irritate me except when people claim that it once was genuinely Bohemian). I sympathize with John's point of view -- in every city, the old identities of neighborhoods are replaced with new ones -- but he can't really believe that Seattle was more diverse thirty years ago. Nostalgia can be such a trap...

Posted by unregistered user at 11/10/07 5:36 p.m.

It does not matter how good things are now. People will always yearn for the good old days

Posted by unregistered user at 11/11/07 1:09 a.m.

Believe it. Our soul is dying and we can't afford to live here. Who are these condos for? If we don't speak up the city will decide the shape of the future. Even with the tech boom of the 90's we still had some kind of dissenting voice.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/11/07 5:29 p.m.

I have quite a few problems with the following comment:

"Believe it. Our soul is dying and we can't afford to live here. Who are these condos for? If we don't speak up the city will decide the shape of the future. Even with the tech boom of the 90's we still had some kind of dissenting voice."

Our soul is NOT dying. I'd love to see some evidence or an argument to support this assertion. We can't afford to live here? Speak for yourself. These condos are for people who, as measured by their paycheck, contribute enough to society as to afford modest housing. I'd suggest that, instead of complaining that you're being priced out of the market, you might find a way to effectively contribute to society so that you could afford decent housing. This might save us all from hearing your pathetic, immature cries.

"If we don't speak up the city will decide the shape of the future." The city (and its inhabitants) always have and always will decide the shape of the future. The future is being created now, and if you're unhappy, more to a hippie commune. Housing prices there are probably more accessible to you.

"Even with the tech boom of the 90's we still had some kind of dissenting voice." Dissenting voices are only necessary when something horrible is going on. We're all proud to have relatively free speech (though that's slowly being eroded, oddly enough), and the best way to exercise the frustration that is your free speech would be to move somewhere where you won't be incessantly complaining. If something bothers you, do something about it. That's real dissent, getting something done. Gandhi did it, as did Martin Luther King.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/11/07 5:42 p.m.

#65673's comments are mean. People who write mean things on message boards would never be so mean in person. Think on that.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/11/07 8:15 p.m.

Bravo to #65673. Sometimes people need to get hit with the cluestick to point out their fallacies. Comments like #65290 are made with the idea that they'll not be countered. Well they are.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/11/07 11:25 p.m.

John Keister and his crew was hired to entertain at the Microsoft company meeting one year in the 1990's.

At that meeting, I happened to be sitting near the stage where I could hear him plainly compare the people gathered to a herd of cows.

Let' make some substitutions to look the form of John Keister's argument.

1) A lot of Microsoft employees are from India. Let's see how that reads.

"Today, you can make a joke about Ballard but it's a bunch of Indians. You make a joke about Wallingford and it's a bunch of Indians. Fremont? That would be a bunch of Indians. And Belltown is a bunch of Indians who live in luxury condos ... who work in the information industry."

2) Some Microsoft employees are gay.

"Today, you can make a joke about Ballard but it's a bunch of gays. You make a joke about Wallingford and it's a bunch of gays. Fremont? That would be a bunch of gays. And Belltown is a bunch of gays who live in luxury condos ... who work in the information industry."

John Keister is just a bigot who's found a group of people to hate where that hate isn't prohibited by legislation.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/12/07 8:32 a.m.

Low-income housing is nearly no existence in the cite. Homeless are are suffering on the streets because the shelters have no longer have space, and yet the expensive condos are growing on the Seattle skyline and the expensive boutiques and cafe's. We are all responsible.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/12/07 10:11 a.m.

RTFA

"Neither Guppy, 47, nor Keister, 51, is bitter about Seattle's change."

Take it as a joke and read the article. Keister was right. You techies have no sense of humor.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/14/07 12:14 p.m.

LOL!

First off, anyone who is homeless is that way because they chose it- and I say this having been "homeless" (literally, without a home or a job or any money) and being married to someoen who was also in that situation in the past. Getting out of it is not that hard.

Secondly, I hate to see all the condos infesting my neighborhood-- but I recognize that when mean people say "we should stop this" they are talking about using the violence of the state (eg: passing laws) to force others to act the way they want to.

And people like that are evil-- you want to "stop" people from building condos, you are no better than any other person who uses violence to get what they want.

Finally, I think Seattle lost its soul when Almost Live went off the air... that was a great show and wish it had continued.

Yes, Seattle is very different from the way it was in the early 1990s... much more homogenous and much more urban... and in some ways that's too bad. Certainly its part of th reason I'll be leaving...

but things change, and they always will.

And those who would try to stop it, invariably, call for the use of violence to stop it-- and that makes them evil. You don't get to kill or injure people or threaten to do so, to make them act the way you want... not and think of yourself as anything but a low life.

Posted by unregistered user at 11/14/07 4:23 p.m.

Tell me about it. Google is now literally in the center of the universe. services.google.com/events/seattle_welco
mefremont
http://services.google.com/events/seattle_welcomefremont