Puget Sound Journalism and Local Issues : Ross Anderson : RossInk

    Now it has been written that, at the dawning of the Third Millennium, there was joy in the Land of Sasquatch. For, after years of famine and disappointment, the sports gods did smile upon the people.
   Behold, the Huskies won 11 games, and were victorious at the Bowl of Roses. And Ichiro the Quick and Edgar the Ancient led the lowly Mariners to a hundred victories and more, and they overthrew even the evil Yankees. And the Seahawks, led by Shawn the Sure-Footed, won many victories and were elevated to the Bowl of Bowls. And the lowly Sonics won, owing to the many heroic deeds of Gary the Glove.
     And the people of the Land of Sasquatch were most pleased, praising the shooters of basketballs and hitters of baseballs and carriers of footballs. And they built great Palaces iin honor of  their champions, and paid for them by levying hotel taxes upon innocent visitors.
    Now it came to pass, in the reign of Gregory the XL, that there arose a new master of the Sonics, and his name was Clay the Philistine. And the Philistine desired that the players of basketball should journey from the Land of Sasquatch unto the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey, which he believed to be somewhere in Oklahoma.
   But, yea verily, the Sonics had rendered a solemn oath to play many more years at the Basketball Palace, in the center of the Land of Sasquatch.
    So Clay said unto Gregory XL: “The Basketball Palace is no longer satisfactory, for the wealthy Pharisees demandeth to sit on high upon the skyboxes, but the Basketball Palace hath too few skyboxes. Therefore we beseech thee to construct a greater Basketball Palace.
    At this, Gregory the XL was confused. And he went before the people and asked of them: “Shall we build a greater Basketball Palace for Clay the Philistine?”
     And they people said with a loud voice: “Nay! A thousand times Nay! For verily we hath not yet paid for the old palace.”
   And so Gregory XL said unto the Philistine: There shall be no new palace.
   Now Clay the Philistine was greatly troubled. And he said unto Gregory XL: “Thou hast spurned by request. So therefore I shall take my players of basketball and travel through the wilderness to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.”
    But Gregory XL said: “Thou canst not violate thine oath.”
And the Philistine said: “I will make sacrifices and burnt offerings to the people, and thus satisfy my oath to play in the Basketball Palace.”
    But Gregory’s heart was hardened. And he said: “Send us not thy burnt offerings, but only thy players of basketball.”
    So the Philistine said unto him: “Therefore we shall journey to the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey. Let my players go!”
    But Gregory’s heart remained hardened, so that he spurned the Philistine’s entreaties.
    And so the Philistine became angrier so that he fell upon the ground and swooned. And he summoned his magicians for advice. And lo the Philistine held forth his staff, and waved it, and said onto the people of Sasquatch: “Woe upon thee, and especially upon thine sports palaces!”
   And it came to pass that a great cloud descended upon the Land of Sasquatch. And while the rest of the world became warmer, there were only dark clouds and cold rain across the land of Sasquatch, even unto the month of June.
   And Clay said: “Let my players go!” But Gregory’s heart remained hardened.
   So the Philistine waved his rod and caused a Plague of Jocks. And, lo, the Husky football coach bore false witness, so that he was banished into the wilderness. And the Husky players flunked beginning basketweaving, or were arrested for sundry crimes, and were disqualified so that the Huskies could not defeat the Beavers, much less the Trojans.
And the Philistine caused Shawn the Sure-footed to be injured, so that the Seahawks no longer journeyed to the Bowl of Bowls.
    And Jamie, He of the Slow Pitch, was banished to the Land of the Phillies. And Edgar the Ancient and Jay of the Bones retired to green pastures, so that only Ichiro the Quick remained. And the Mariners were victorious no more, but instead humiliated the people of the Land of Sasquatch.
   And the Players of Basketball were scattered asunder unto far-off lands, and were replaced by lesser players. And the people were humiliated further.
   Trouble and discontent spread across the Land of Sasquatch. And the people descended into the streets of the city and fell down to rend their T-shirts. And they erected a great burning altar among the sports palaces, and brought their Ms caps and Ichiro bobblehead dolls and Gary the Glove hooded sweatshirts, and cast them upon the fire, crying aloud: “Woe upon us, for these are indeed the darkest days ever in the Land of Sasquatch.”
    And they went unto the High Priest, and beseeched her to prevent the lesser players of basketball from journeying into the wilderness. And amongst the plaintiffs was one Sherman, the Poet, who said unto the High Priest: “We beseech thee to prevent our players of basketball from journeying to foreign lands. For unto us, the players of basketball are as Greek gods.”
    At this, the clouds parted, and a bright light shone from the Heavens. And the bright light produced a Very Deep Voice which said: “Greek Gods! What hath been wrought upon the Land of Sasquatch?”
   And the Very Deep Voice became deeper still, and said: “Verily I say unto you, people of Sasquatch: Get thee a life.”

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    This is the year to quit. This is the season to kick the habit. No patches, no pills, no support groups. Just say no.
   To baseball, that is. It’s time to kick it, and the hometown team – God bless their mediocre souls -- is making it easy.
    Face it, being a fan has always been an utter waste of time and energy. Even if you rarely made it to Safeco Field (and I was a twice-a-year guy), you were planting yourself in front of the tube, poring over box scores, resenting A-Rod’s defection. All this for a roster of guys who are not very interesting people who live somewhere else, who played for another team last year and will probably play for yet another next year, and who make more money in a year than I’ll make in my career – all because they theoretically can hit or toss a baseball better than the next guy.
   I’ve always understood this made no sense, but I got sucked in. For a long time, it was a bonding experience with my son. Now he’s been on his own for a decade, and I realize I turned him into an addict as well. Then came those few good years, with Edgar and Buhner and Moyer – guys who actually lived here and had personalities as well as being good ballplayers. It was fun.
    So much for history. The thrill of the grass has long since been displaced by steroids, seven-digit salaries, dwi arrests and transient ballplayers. These days, I look at the box scores and, regardless of the score, I barely recognize the names. Only one of their starting pitchers came up through their organization. It’s a team of free agents. And, whatever their stats say, they’re a miserable, forgettable bunch of ballplayers, probably the worst in the Mariners’ grim history, certainly the worst when measured against what they’re being paid.
   So this is the year to switch. Baseball Anonymous. Do not take me out to the ballpark. Buy me some carrot and celery sticks. This is the summer to read novels, take up gardening, or sailing or kayaking. Go volunteer for a political candidate. Adopt a homeless family. …
   Anything but baseball. Yup, my name is Ross, and I’m a recovering baseball fan. And I’m over it. 
                                                               {Published on Crosscut.com, May 2008)

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      We have seen the future of Seattle mass transit, and it looks suspiciously like the past. It is shiny and red and goes clackity-clack between South Lake Union and Westlake. It travels at a maximum speed of 20 mph and costs about $40 million per mile to build.
      Seattle, it seems, has gone downright gah-gah over choo-choos. Whatever the price in dollars and aggravation, the city is determined to take the A-Train. We haven’t yet completed that $2.7 billion-dollar rail line to Sea-Tac, but Sound Transit is desperately seeking more billions to extend that line to Northgate. We have the new South Lake Union Streetcar. And this week, planners unveiled their sketchy visions for streetcar lines in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and the University District.  If the rail buffs have their way, we’ll soon be looking at and living in a cityscape reminiscent of another century -- the 19th.
    The operative map for Seattle’s transit vision is about a century old. You can go back to 1910, when Gramma and Grampa got around town just fine on a system of about 70 miles of streetcar tracks, including the legendary Interurban trolley that rumbled all the way to Everett and Tacoma. It was a fine system, and we probably should have kept it.
     But we didn’t. The tide turned in about 1911, when the city hired a smart fellow (read “consultant”) named Virgil Bogue to come out and draw up a bold new plan for Seattle. Bogue looked around, hired a crew of draftsmen, and produced an inch-thick document calling for an elaborate, New York-style transit system, with subways and elevated trains and a tunnel under Lake Washington.
     Put to a popular vote, the Bogue Plan lost by nearly 2-1. That was the beginning of the end. By the 1930s, the city was ripping up tracks and replacing streetcars with buses. The Interurban made its last run in 1939, just as engineers were completing the first floating bridge across the lake. By the beginning of the War, the transition was complete; Seattle had banked its future on the automobile.
    Rail buffs blame a nationwide conspiracy by General Motors to sell more buses. But rail transit was always geographically challenged in Seattle. All those picturesque hills and lakes serve as significant obstacles to streetcars that don’t climb hills, and don’t float.
    In any event, things haven’t worked out well. In the late 60s and early 70s, voters rejected plans for new freeways and for a proposed rapid transit system. So the city had to grow and prosper without any major expansion of its transportation system. For some time, the preferred strategy was buses, or more precisely “bus rapid transit,” which uses express buses in exclusive transit-only lanes, including the downtown bus tunnel.
      By the 1990s, the city was gridlocked. Drivers rolled down their car windows, shook their collective fists and bellowed something like “Do something. Do anything. But fix this mess!”
      And that’s more or less what’s happening. Government is doing something and anything -- digging holes, pouring concrete, laying rails, buying railcars – in a desperate attempt to rebuild what it dismantled 70 years ago. It’s system development by committee, or by many committees. Sound Transit builds light rail and operates those commuter trains to Tacoma and Everett. King County Metro builds and runs the new streetcar, along with the existing bus system. The state is adding HOV and transit lanes to the freeways. For a while, we had yet another agency building a monorail, until it collapsed on itself.
       Which is what skeptics expect to happen with some or all of those other railroad-builders. Critics of rail trail transit scored a huge victory last fall when voters rejected Sound Transit’s bid for billions more tax dollars. Yet the streetcar fad suggests that somebody out there is still determined to ride those rails.
      Rail critics point to a different conspiracy.. Randal O’Toole is an Oregon economist and self-styled libertarian who argues that Seattle is about to join dozens of cities that have got little or no benefits from the billions spent on light rail. Trolleys and streetcars are 19th century technology that is too slow, too dangerous and too expensive, he says. “Light rail is simply one more way to take money from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers and put it in the pockets of wealthy businesses.”
     Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives, a citizen group opposed to light rail, argues that Seattle had built one of the world’s best bus systems, and could adapt HOV lanes and traffic lights to move express buses more efficiently than light rail.
     But for every O’Toole there is a Todd Litman, a Victoria, BC, consultant who travels the world advising cities from Dubai to Valparaiso to San Jose how to build rail transit systems. And Litman is pro-streetcar. “Seattle originally developed around streetcars and railways,” Litman says. “It doesn’t make sense to argue that it can’t work again.”
     Litman learned his way around transportation issues as a volunteer bicycle advocate in Olympia, and eventually studied transit issues at Evergreen State College. He frequently finds himself at odds with the likes of O’Toole.
     Ultimately, the choice between rail transit and bus transit is made by passengers, he says. “There is a bias out there. People will pay more for a Mercedes than for a Chevy. There is nothing wrong with people wanting something more prestigious, and they view light rail and streetcars as more comfortable and more prestigious.”
    But is a little prestige really worth $40 million per mile?
     John Niles, a transportation consultant and critic of light rail, is a little kinder toward streetcars. They're not cost effective, he says, “but the scale of the error is so much smaller than with light rail.”
    Streetcars have a few things going for them, he says. South Lake Union businesses are picking up part of the costs of the new line, and hopefully that would be the case with other lines, he says. They may attract some tourists.    “As transportation, they don’t make much sense,” he says. “But they’re nice. They’re an amenity. They’re street candy.”

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 Bill Cumming: Seattle in the '30s
By Ross Anderson

   Bill Cumming steps gingerly across the cobblestones of Occidental Park, pauses to steady himself beside a lamppost, and examines the streetscape at First Avenue and South Washington Street. Behind thick, horn-rimmed glasses and the floppy brim of his cap, 84-year-old eyes study images of brick and iron that trigger memories of a turbulent decade.
   "Up there was the Trotskyite headquarters," he says, pointing to the top of the Maynard Building. "Up at the other end of the block was the Washington Pension Union, headed up by Bill Pennoch, and I suppose he was the best-known Communist in town."
    A bit tottery without his cane, the venerable painter and teacher — last of the famous "Northwest School" of artists that included friends Mark Tobey and Morris Graves — takes a few more steps down South Washington.
     He points to where a charismatic preacher evangelized by day and reputedly "ran a string of girls" by night. He points to where he heard Charles Lindbergh speak to a huge crowd on his cross-country barnstorming tour in the "Spirit of St. Louis." He recalls the Skid Road flophouses and greasy-spoon cafes "where you could get a decent meal for 35 cents, unless you wanted pie." 
      Seattle in the 1930s occupied a damp, remote corner of a young, broad-shouldered nation. It was an adolescent city with 350,000 people and a colonial economy based on harvesting its trees and fish and Eastern Washington wheat and shipping them off to distant places. It had been just 80 years, one healthy lifetime, since the Denny Party landed at Alki Beach, and there were still Seattle residents who had known those pioneers.
   "This was mostly a city of lumpy, dusty people — the people I paint," Cumming recalls. "It was a city of working stiffs trying to make a living. There was a wonderful small townness. Tree-lined streets and family homes. People sitting in the cabbage patch above Sicks' Stadium, watching minor-league baseball."
   To most of us, the years of the Great Depression seem almost as distant as the Denny Party. But we all have neighbors who lived through and perhaps came of age during that troubled decade. Their experiences were vastly different, but they share one observation: The 1930s was the last hurrah of "Old Seattle."
   "The day after Pearl Harbor, there were sentries on station at Boeing," Cumming recalls. "The city would never be the same again."
    Seattle would be changed profoundly by thousands of servicemen, plus welders and steelworkers and engineers from around the nation who came to build bombers and warships — and stayed here. It would be changed by megawatts of surplus hydropower from the new Grand Coulee Dam, by automobiles and Interstate highways, by television and a World's Fair. It would be changed by the Lake Washington floating bridge, which opened the Eastside to a suburban boom.

   Seattle's seniors recall this transformation with some nostalgia, but little regret. For most, life in the '30s was hard. Like most cities, Seattle was clobbered by the stock-market crash in 1929. By late 1931, wages had fallen 35 percent, and as many as 20,000 were out of work. Retail sales were off by 17 percent, construction down by 70 percent. The official unemployment rate was 7 percent, but the reality was far worse. Shipping and shipbuilding ground to a halt. Forty Northwest lumber mills closed. Hundreds of men lived in a shantytown known as "Hooverville," a few blocks south of Pioneer Square, where the unemployed picked their own mayor, enforced their own rules and tweaked the establishment.
   The climate was ripe for radical politics. Seattle already was known across the country as a haven for left-wing politics — the Pacific Northwest "soviet" where, in 1919, the revolutionary Wobblies had led a citywide general strike.
   "It was terrible," Cumming explains. "Good men felt guilty because they couldn't support their families. The system had failed. We all believed: There must be something better than this."
   In his 84 years, Cumming has seen the best and the worst of his times. He was born in Montana and raised in Tukwila, where his father owned a share of a Chrysler dealership. "The crash blew it all away," he says. "My father lost his business, and his partner took off with what was left. It took years for him to pay off the debts."
   Cumming graduated in 1934 and headed for Seattle. Eventually, he landed a job with the Federal Art Project, where he met Morris Graves and Kenneth Callahan — already established Northwest artists. At age 21, Cumming was hooked by the world of art and artists, of social ideals and revolution. For a time, he roamed the city, sketching. His favored subjects were at the State Burlesque on Skid Road, dockworkers and ditch diggers, dancers and prostitutes.

    "I made $66 a month. Carpenters made $96, which gives you an idea where art sat on the federal totem pole."
   Seattle was highly class- conscious, quietly racist, a city "ruled by a bunch of real-estate people," he says. "Eventually, I became a Red. ... We were naïve. We talked about things we knew nothing about, and we believed it. So, when the Revolution turned into an outburst of murder, I went through the usual disillusionment."
   Today, Cumming lives with his wife in a modest home with beamed ceilings and Persian carpets on oak floors, tucked into the woods in Lake Forest Park. He teaches painting three days a week at the Art Institute of Seattle and has staged a remarkable comeback as one of Seattle's best-known painters.
    And he still paints several hours a day in a small studio, surrounded by his work — canvas rectangles painted in wandering lines and deep oranges and yellows, warm silhouettes of the lumpy people who populated a time and place that have long since faded away.

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