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After having lived in several parts of the country, I do find it interesting that people could call it boring here. I have lived back east, and all there really is to do are things like go to movies, go shopping, etc. We of course have those things, too, maybe not on the same scale as some bigger areas back east, but we have them. But the biggest thing is that we have this massive, gorgeous playground all around the city that is more stunning than anywhere else in the country- on the weekends there are countless options such as going up to Mount Rainier, down to Mount Saint Helens, across the Sound to the Peninsula and out to the coast, up to Mount Baker, or any number countless areas up in the mountains for hiking, sight seeing, etc.
This area is amazing, it has everything to see and do that I could ever dream of, both within the metro area and in the surrounding "back yard", so to speak. It's been over 4 years and I still feel so lucky to live here!
This area is amazing, it has everything to see and do that I could ever dream of, both within the metro area and in the surrounding "back yard", so to speak. It's been over 4 years and I still feel so lucky to live here!
When you titled this thread "so boring here", you pretty much invited negative remarks from all those who disagree.
You would surely have had more positive feedback if you had worded it more personally: "why am I so bored? ", "I feel so bored", etc...
This would have signaled that you recognized the boredom you feel as being yours, not that the city itself is, intrinsically, boring.
Do you see the difference?
True, good point. I was just in Seattle. Loved it. But the "California bogeyman" thing is played out, and can be downright insufferable. People on C-D all too often draw their weapons at the first opportunity, people from all areas, and it's a drag. (Not saying this about you, PG.) I saw Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores and tanning salons. As if us Californians are the sole practitioners of fakery, synthetic environments and snobbery.
California has some of the best, most stunning flora around. It's just too bad the all-wise horticulturists from other places long ago had to bring in all their cherished crap.
75-85 and sunny all year is banal. Can't the same be said about Seattle's 50s-60s, drizzle and gray much of the year? Again, we all love to score points against the other side. How dare they!
And the poster who said it's cold in SoCal in the winter but too hot in the summer? Where is that? In San Diego, a cold rainy day is upper 50s for the high. Is it not 40s and wet in Seattle quite a bit in wintertime?
I do hate temps hotter than about 85, so I think I could adjust to PNW weather, for at least a decent spell. Be nice if the snow was drier. Not that we can talk down here. At least it falls in the PNW.
Funny, we moved here from SoCal when my youngest daughter was three and I was thrilled how I was suddenly able to take her outside all the time, something I couldn't do in SoCal because it was too hot most of the times. When we went to a playground it had to be before 9:30 a.m or after 5 p.m. And we didn't live much inland, either, just 4 miles inland in San Diego.
That is funny. I enjoy hiking much, much less if it's past 72, and I certainly do not get excited about visiting an uncovered playground in the 90s. I've always claimed to love the rain -- vacationed in Portland in January once, with a 1-year-old, for chrissakes -- but that love affair faded some with kids. I guess I tend to feel lazier when it's pouring outside. Had we moved to PNW, I fear we might have become homebody-ish after hitting the museums, animal life places and such hard the first few years. I know my kids and I tired of the SD Zoo and Wild Animal Park after having passes for years. Part of me was happy it didn't snow in the local mtns this season, because I never felt like taking them sledding (or buying new snow gear to do it).
It is true that San Diego's rep as a temperate wonderland can be overstated. A friends' place in the Normal Heights 'hood (west of I-15, for those in the know) could really cook in summer.
go in the mountains smell the fresh air. go to the pike place market. apparently you don't know WA very well we have just as much things here as california. And the weather is pretty good. i mean come on, new york is in a artic blast and more city's are dealing with the same thing. seattle is very nice in the winter 40's- 50's.
I was responding to the very first response on this thread.
Last edited by Count David; 03-19-2014 at 09:46 PM..
This isn't why shopping centers and amusement parks are being built. You can't blame it on transplants from CA or the East Coast. You're not from the area, yourself, as I recall. Maybe we should blame those developments on you. Name two wetlands, a forest and one other natural wonder that has been bulldozed in Western Washington to build a mall or housing tract.
I'm from Oregon.. Therefore I am from here.. Where are you from??? Oregon, Washington, Idaho = Pacific Northwest.. Check your facts before making dubious statements.
Yeah, well I am not saying there isn't locals responsible for the mass destruction that is occurring, but the outsiders from their big, sterile cities that are falling apart now decide to come here to try to replicate the model they had from back home.. They want cookie cutter housing tracts everywhere, giant shopping centers and large amusement parks to entertain them, because trees and nature are too boring and need to be removed to create their sterile, soulless, plastic and fake forms of amusement which they had back home. They need their manufactured paradise.. Ever hear the Joanie Mitchell song Take Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot? Yeah, that song is nothing less than the truth and has already sent shivers down my spine seeing how it is happening here real-time.
Name a wetlands that has been bulldozed to build housing tracts in Western Washington??? Have you ever been to Lake Stevens?? The whole area is built around and even on top of wetlands.. So many beautiful swaths of forest are bulldozed to build more and more sterile housing tracts...
Where I am from in Oregon it is even worse, at least in Washington they try to preserve the environment a little, rather than just clearcut away everything, but its not good here either. Sorry a natural environment and urban/suburban concrete metropolis will not be able to coincide hand in hand. The Seattle area is already way too sprawled and spread out.. We don't need any more amusement parks..
I'm from Oregon.. Therefore I am from here.. Where are you from??? Oregon, Washington, Idaho = Pacific Northwest.. Check your facts before making dubious statements.
Yeah, well I am not saying there isn't locals responsible for the mass destruction that is occurring, but the outsiders from their big, sterile cities that are falling apart now decide to come here to try to replicate the model they had from back home.. They want cookie cutter housing tracts everywhere, giant shopping centers and large amusement parks to entertain them, because trees and nature are too boring and need to be removed to create their sterile, soulless, plastic and fake forms of amusement which they had back home. They need their manufactured paradise.. Ever hear the Joanie Mitchell song Take Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot? Yeah, that song is nothing less than the truth and has already sent shivers down my spine seeing how it is happening here real-time.
Name a wetlands that has been bulldozed to build housing tracts in Western Washington??? Have you ever been to Lake Stevens?? The whole area is built around and even on top of wetlands.. So many beautiful swaths of forest are bulldozed to build more and more sterile housing tracts...
Where I am from in Oregon it is even worse, at least in Washington they try to preserve the environment a little, rather than just clearcut away everything, but its not good here either. Sorry a natural environment and urban/suburban concrete metropolis will not be able to coincide hand in hand. The Seattle area is already way too sprawled and spread out.. We don't need any more amusement parks..
They've bulldozed plenty around here, getting rid of forests and farmland. Wasn't all that long ago the area where the golf course at Newcastle was just a beautiful forested hillside. Now they've built hundreds of homes. People are moving here. There's jobs. I know that the Pacific Northwest is special, magical, and a lot of people around here share that appreciation for nature. But people have to live somewhere. The city's become very expensive, a lot of working folks don't have any choice but contributing to the sprawl.
I'm from Oregon.. Therefore I am from here.. Where are you from??? Oregon, Washington, Idaho = Pacific Northwest.. Check your facts before making dubious statements.
Yeah, well I am not saying there isn't locals responsible for the mass destruction that is occurring, but the outsiders from their big, sterile cities that are falling apart now decide to come here to try to replicate the model they had from back home.. They want cookie cutter housing tracts everywhere, giant shopping centers and large amusement parks to entertain them, because trees and nature are too boring and need to be removed to create their sterile, soulless, plastic and fake forms of amusement which they had back home. They need their manufactured paradise.. Ever hear the Joanie Mitchell song Take Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot? Yeah, that song is nothing less than the truth and has already sent shivers down my spine seeing how it is happening here real-time.
Name a wetlands that has been bulldozed to build housing tracts in Western Washington??? Have you ever been to Lake Stevens?? The whole area is built around and even on top of wetlands.. So many beautiful swaths of forest are bulldozed to build more and more sterile housing tracts...
Where I am from in Oregon it is even worse, at least in Washington they try to preserve the environment a little, rather than just clearcut away everything, but its not good here either. Sorry a natural environment and urban/suburban concrete metropolis will not be able to coincide hand in hand. The Seattle area is already way too sprawled and spread out.. We don't need any more amusement parks..
What amusement parks are there in the greater Seattle area, that we don't need more of? Why this focus on amusement parks? I'm not following this at all.
TONS of assumptions being made here! "They want" cookie-cutter housing tracts everywhere? I have news: that's what real estate developers want. That's not what any segment of the public is demanding.
"...their big, sterile cities that are falling apart"? "...to create their sterile soulless plastic and fake forms of amusement which they had back home"?? AFAIK, Detroit didn't have any amusement parks. The Rust Belt cities weren't known for that. This sounds like a string of cliches, liberally peppered with the word "sterile", blaming the East Coast and CA for growth in the Seattle area. (Btw, those sterile (etc.) cities that are falling apart are in the midwest, not the E Coast, mainly.)
Some of the growth is in local population. Some of it is due to migration from NorCal, which doesn't have any amusement parks, btw. Where other migration is from, I don't know. I wonder if there's any demographic info that shows that, it would be interesting.
I lived in a beautiful part of Seattle that was so full of cedar trees, it supported wildlife. This was within walking distance of Northgate. A real estate agent in the neighborhood started buying up the larger lots (there were quite a few double lots there), dividing them in two, and sometimes 3 (!), cutting down the trees, and building huge houses that pushed the limits of each lot. (This left nothing for yard space, just a narrow corridor around each house.) The public did not demand huge houses on treeless lots without functional yards. To the contrary, people need affordable housing, and the little cottages that were common in the neighborhood attracted many first-time homebuyers.
I don't think consumer demand is the culprit. Greed is part of the problem. The info on Lake Stevens, below, says that "changing commuter patterns" is another. In other words: Seattle got too expensive for a lot of people, so they were forced to live farther out (not by choice), and commute to the city (or Microsoft) for work. The causes of sprawl are complex. Migrants from elsewhere are an easy scapegoat.
From the 1920s to the 1950s Lake Stevens was primarily a resort community, with many public and private resort beaches scattered around the shore. In 1960 Lake Stevens incorporated as a City with a population of 900. Soon, its popularity and natural beauty, combined with changing commuter habits, attracted more and more residents, changing its character to that of a suburban community.
By 2008 the City had grown to a population of 14,554 and an urban growth area of approximately 17,000 people
Hi David, I actually grew up close to that area too, lived maybe like 2-3 miles away in the 1990's. I remember the apartments I lived at had this area behind them that was just a giant grass field full of grasshoppers and foraging animals. I even found a pet cat back there. There were all sorts of trees and such we'd climb up as kids and watch caterpillar nests hatching, it was great. Around the year 2000 I noticed a lot of those new housing constructions going up all around the neighborhood destroying the trees and the fields. Recently I went back there a couple years ago and basically all the trees were gone, the fields were gone. No more nature and the only animals you see are small dogs on leashes leaving behind copious amounts of crap their owners don't want to clean up. It's ugly.
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Name two wetlands, a forest and one other natural wonder that has been bulldozed in Western Washington to build a mall or housing tract.
