In the heart of downtown Seattle, at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Pine Street, a McDonald’s outlet has become a stark emblem of urban decay. Locals dub it ‘McStabby’s’ for good reason: the restaurant no longer has functional doors, serving customers solely through a narrow hatch carved into plywood barriers. This setup stems from years of violence, including murders and stabbings, forcing the closure of its dining room. A recent Daily Mail investigation captured the scene, where addicts slump over amid trash-strewn sidewalks just blocks from the tourist haven of Pike Place Market.
The double doors, once standard for the fast-food chain, now stand propped open and shielded by plywood to fend off vandalism. Customers must navigate clusters of vagrants and fentanyl users to place orders via the Plexiglas-covered hatch, with only a small bottom slot for transactions. Nick, a 45-year-old formerly homeless man who got clean 18 months ago, told the Daily Mail, ‘They do drugs and attack each other. When it’s dark, it’s way worse—way more people getting assaulted and robbed.’
Nick recounted witnessing a woman shot dead near a lamppost outside the restaurant in January 2020, an incident that injured seven others, including a nine-year-old boy. That event accelerated the dining room’s permanent shutdown, initially masked as a Covid precaution…