Has Seattle lost its distinctive flavor?

[baba_yaga]

Originally Posted by mkarch

Seattle is still a place where people move to get cheap housing, if they work in the information industry.

You mean "if they're coming from one of the worst housing markets in the US." There's tech industry out of the Bay Area, you know.

[415_s2k]

Sorry it took me a few to respond; I was up in San Francisco and Seattle the last week

Originally Posted by Rcsligar

You talk about a lack of authenticity, that's Beverly Hills to a T.

Eh, Beverly Hills is authentically wealthy, snotty, and exclusive - not for any special reason other than it's just expensive to live here, though I assume that by authenticity you mean it's not "real" in that "street" sort of way, and I won't argue that at all. I don't like Beverly Hills much all told, and can wax on about what I perceive its social pitfalls all the same that I can about Seattle. I live here not because I love it here, but because I work here, and commuting in LA is horrible. I spend most of my free time with friends in other parts of LA.

Funny how you would complain about Seattle loosing its luster when in reality it is undergoing changes that will lead it to become a more world class cosmopolitan city rather than a "big little town" in the northwest with not much industry.

And if you'd digested the substance of my post, that's precisely what I'm lamenting. Many of those places that made Seattle "authentic" to me are gone.

You're chiding me for living in a place that you perceive to be "inauthentic," but then speak enthusiastically about Seattle shifting away from its past and becoming an expensive, commerce-centric place that would increase its quotient of yuppies to the point that in this sense, it's largely indistinguishable from any other urban center? You'll have to forgive me, I don't follow.

I may be biased but I find seattle to be 10x more inviting and vibrant than Portland but I suppose that's because I like places that are a bit more well developed metro areas with a more vibrant dynamic.

That's cool. I didn't say anything about Portland, though I like it enough as a place. I can see where Seattle would be more inviting by these metrics as it's a much more major metropolis and center of commerce than Portland.

I'm sorry, but each neighborhood in Seattle definitely has its own flavor and you'd have to be nearly comatose to deny that. Sure there has been an influx in hipsters, yuppies, working worms, suburbanites, etc, but that is the case EVERYWHERE. Personally, I think it's less dominant in Seattle and at least some of these transplants have contributed to its development.

See my statement above.

Beverly Hills and the LA area in general remind me of a cultural wasteland while I believe Seattle still has true character and authenticity.

Ha! Whenever I read something like this, I can only laugh and assume that the person writing it is jumping on the pro-Manhattanization, anti-LA bandwagon as a reaction to what they perceive LA to be. Maybe you've lived here before, and were sucked into an unpleasant cycle of life in which you never got outside of your bubble and experienced the city. Maybe you visited family in LA and only got to the multiplex to see the latest Michael Bay film and ate at the Olive Garden - oh wait, there isn't an Olive Garden here, as is the case with Seattle! Regardless, to say that one of the most diverse and populous metropolitan centers in the US is a "cultural wasteland" is nonsensical.

Street after street in LA looks the same,

Not especially. You could make the argument that one street to the next in West LA look the same, but that's really no different than driving up Roosevelt and seeing street after street of similar-looking houses. Just because you like the aesthetic more doesn't make it untrue.

there are many areas deviod of eclectic mom and pop places, local shops, etc,

Please name one neighborhood that's devoid of local mom and pop places.

and on top of that you have to deal with pretentiousness and decadence as a result of the nouveau rich and fame hungry transplants.

... and in Seattle, you have to deal with the pretentiousness of transplants that move there to work for tech companies and do their damndest to fall into what they think a Seattlite is like. If an upper-class snot in LA drives a BMW and frets about her handbag, an upper-class snot in Seattle drives a hybrid and frets about her polar fleece. Both of them will go back home to a $75,000 gourmet kitchen and a fridge stocked with stuff from Whole Foods, watch a Pilates DVD over a 50-inch plasma TV as a warmup before going to yoga, and then pick up their kids from a private school and fret over whether or not they were exposed to peanuts over the course of their day.

Again, just because you like one aesthetic more than the substance any different.

Sure, there are creative enclaves in LA (Abbot Kinney for example), but you have to hack through layers and layers of crap to get there.

So, are Maple Leaf, Northgate, First Hill, Magnolia, etc etc etc "creative enclaves?" There's really no city that has a "creative" core that runs all the way through it.

To top things off, downtown seattle is clean and fairly vibrant, downtown LA is a total wash. You can talk about renovation all you want, but give me a break.

DTLA has come up leaps and bounds in even the last five years, and is actually a pretty decent place to go out at night now. Moreover, LA really has multiple "downtown" areas; when I lived in Venice, the closest "downtown" was up in Santa Monica. It has grocery stores, retail and mom-and-pop shopping, hotels, commerce, movie theaters, dining up the wazoo, etc.

I am biased in my love for seattle but I think for you to make these claims from your decadent enclave in Beverly Hills is kind of lame.

And you're welcome to think just that, at the same time that I think that your statements about the second largest city in America being "a cultural wasteland" of decadence while giving a free pass to the same undercurrents for an ever-changing Seattle is just plain dumb.

[Seacove]

Staying out of this one but this is a funny perspective:

If an upper-class snot in LA drives a BMW and frets about her handbag, an upper-class snot in Seattle drives a hybrid and frets about her polar fleece. Both of them will go back home to a $75,000 gourmet kitchen and a fridge stocked with stuff from Whole Foods, watch a Pilates DVD over a 50-inch plasma TV as a warmup before going to yoga, and then pick up their kids from a private school and fret over whether or not they were exposed to peanuts over the course of their day.

[GatsbyGatz]

415_S2k made quite the response! Both Seattle and LA are great. LA had a lot of potential to be a much greater city aesthetically or transit wise, but it's still a massive and economically important place!