Seattle

Sigh.

We were in DT Seattle today, picking Linnea up from the train station and dropping her off at the Convention Center for Sakura Con, the big animé con.

I've seen the deterioration of the city at the edges, the neighborhoods that I go to, the parks we used to visit but while jarring, it wasn't terrible. I mean, yeah, the small park that I used to sit in when I got to my hair appointments early was turned into a homeless encampment, but it was still... the margins. Yes, the side of the freeway, yes here, and there, but it had seemed to me, even though I knew the problem was bad, my visual was still problem at the margins, not pervasive. It was the edges of Fremont, of Ballard, of South Lake Union.

DT Seattle... NSM. It's changed. A lot.

A lot more homeless, a lot more trash and broken bottles in the street. A lot more graffiti. They used to get the graffiti quickly and now, it doesn't look like they are bother anymore. (*) The city in many locations has a grungy -not in a music way!- air that was not there before. It looks dirty and unkempt, and across the street from the sites of utter poverty, construction sites, growing skyscrapers in glass and steel. (*)I'm not talking about street art graffiti. I'm talking about boring black tags.

God, we need to do something. I don't know what, but Seattle's DT had never reminded me of rougher areas in other cities. Now it does.

Which, btw, is why we drove down to pick up Linnea from the con. The bus stop near the convention center was closed because of construction and the next closest one was the area that has had so many murders and assaults these past few months that amazon relocated their offices in that area, and just a block away from the bus stop Metro shut down because they deemed it too dangerous. WTF?

Anyhow. I don't like seeing what I saw today.