“Country/city mashup, but not big enough for a suburb” is an accurate description of the neighborhood I just moved back to. It’s undeniably cute, but something’s off about it. Compromise, aspiration, or a kind of bonsai tree-like forcing all spring to mind. There are chicken coops. This is legal. There are parking strip vegetable gardens. This is legal too. There are trees planted at frequent intervals on mini-roundabouts between blocks. There are “Healthy Streets” left over from the pandemic, proscriptively limited to walkers, bikers, or drivers who live on the block. These last two were masterminded by the city.
In this neighborhood, there are many restaurants, as well as peekaboo views of two different mountain ranges. Another word that springs to mind is “complacent,” like the coziness of a kind of model train town. People traipse the sidewalks with their dogs and peruse the little free libraries. There are a lot of Tibetan prayer flags and “Love is Love” signs. Don’t get me wrong – it’s perfectly safe, nice, and livable, and there are many other popular Seattle neighborhoods just like it. It just smacks a little too much of virtue signaling, whereas at its natural boundaries of water and forest, I find myself breathing a welcome sign of relief.
I grew up in Seattle, and have lived in many of its neighborhoods, as well as the Federal Way suburbs. I have lived alone, with roommates or partners, and in artists’ housing. But as I’ve been attempting to “find myself,” Seattle has been attempting to find itself too. So while I’ve had many chances to explore, I’ve never quite been able to latch, and have more or less ended up just settling for reasonably comfortable housing for my inner life. It’s as if the whole city is an art gallery with constantly rotating shows – the viaduct comes down, the fountains move or change, the arts scene gets reshuffled, the independent theaters slowly fade away, the character-filled brick or craftsman houses are replaced by bland, narrow Lego-like boxes, and all the while, more new people come flooding in, in a kind of new gold rush of hope and innovation…