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Rotse - the same invitation remains from me - if you end up in Denver one day, or you visit the desert SW - let's get together and have a beer. I appreciate your honesty on the difficulty in living in Seattle, I was born in Seattle and I love mostly the memory of what Seattle was. I still love many things about it, but the high prices of real estate and rentals, plus the traffic add up to a modern Seattle nightmare.
Good fortune to you, Rotse. I hope your next destination is a much better one for you!
Once again I'll say, it's all in the individual effort. A little harder here sometimes? Sure. Wallow in self pity and you will flounder. My family and I just just moved to a new neighborhood in Seattle last fall, knowing NO ONE. A month ago, we put out about 25 handwritten invitation to our neighbors inviting them to pop by with families on a Sunday afternoon/evening. Almost all of them came, brought wine, little gifts. They were interesting, lively, fun, from all parts of the country and some from other countries. There were kids here who were 5 years old and a couple nearing 80. Many people said "we've been meaning to get together, thanks for making the effort". Now we all seem to be smiling at each other more, there are new kid play dates going on, people have exchanged phone numbers, our 13 year old daughter has two new babysitting jobs. It is easy to stay to yourself, explain away your lack of connections. Or you can be the spark that starts the revolution. Arise!
Last edited by homesinseattle; 04-17-2018 at 09:40 AM..
There is definitely a lot of truth to what @homes says but I wouldn’t invalidate Rotse’s experiences. All cities are different, people are different, etc and some of these you definitely fit very poorly into. And Seattle is a city with pretty specific features so I can definitely see how one person would be in love with the city while the other one would be going insane. I experienced same thing in NYC and definitely see where he is coming from with all this.
After 6 years of living on and off in the Puget Sound (minus 1 year in between living in Idaho) I am finally packing up and saying goodbye to this region for good. I'm not going to go into politics (too deeply), the economy, jobs or any other type of issue, but rather just discuss my feelings of people in the entire region spanning from Bellingham to Olympia.
This is my take on the persona of people in the Puget Sound and I know this post will be unpopular.
Cold weather, cold people, overcast and endless rain.. The weather alone is not the only reason for the persona, but I think the weather, coupled with the culture and northern latitude does affect people's mental and physical health. It is no wonder why people here are so depressed and spend their lives drinking in a dark corner of a bar or coffeeshop and only have a few friends from their job or who they grew up with since kids. If you do not work with the person from your job, the people will feel much too uncomfortable to commit to any friendship with you. Most people don't even have any friends here, they just find some woman/man to hitch up with and strive for the sacred monogamous Disney relationship that always falls miserably short. If someone is like me and works long hours from home, you will have no friends living in the Puget Sound. SOcial activities are just meant to be activities and people attend them to get away from their spouses or workmates for entertainment, but, by no means, as a venue for finding long-lasting friendships (like you know, over 1 month).
I think I can say the Puget Sound is the most depressed and unfriendly region of the USA. In addition to people being very snobby, pretentious, insanely liberal with social justice warriors who hate everyone who doesn't think exactly as they do, there just isn't much friendliness or kindness among humans. The element of what many call the "Freeze" or lack of friendliness and kindness among people actually has nothing to do with political boundaries, religion, ethnicity or anything, but it just seems most people here in the Puget Sound care nothing about anyone but themselves. People are always depressed, anti-social and your life revolves either by working all day and watching TV all night or enjoying the outdoors for the few months of the year you can do it.
Another problem is that the weather is so bad and people are so anti-social and unfriendly, that most people try to find someone to get married to very young. People here get married in their teens or early 20s and then divorced later on. It seems like every person is in a rush to be married, hide in their house and never leave, yet people around here don't seem to do a great job of learning how to be kind to each other. Most marriages here end up in awful divorces and many of the older friends (over 30) I made here are usually paying hellish child support and alimony fees, while they quickly look for the next broken marriage they will get into. Everyone here is so anti-social, that marriage is like their ticket to not having to interact with people. It sucks when you are single and every 20 something girl has multiple kids already. The only exception to the young marriage epidemic is within the city of Seattle, itself and maybe a few inner suburbs, like Kirkland. However, being the Puget Sound has a huge surplus of males, because of the IT industry, military complex and huge blue collar industries that still exist, of course the gender ratios are horribly skewed. But, if you are a single guy living anywhere else in the Puget Sound than Seattle or Kirkland, be prepared to be alone, as the only women you can hit on are married soccer moms. Another issue you will have is having married, older and/or overweight women trying to pick up on you. Women think they are the only ones who have creepy people picking up on them, Haaa!
I'm looking forward to leaving this wretched place and never coming back again to live here. I've never been so depressed in my life as living in the Puget Sound. The South Puget Sound is very gritty especially. People here are about as anti-social as they come and the place is filled with alcoholics, drug addicts and mentally ill people.
I'm just counting down the days to be out of this place. However, I am sure I will come back one day to hike all the various mountains and nature in the Puget Sound. The best thing that can happen to the Puget Sound is that all the people just freaking disappear and let it return to its natural beautiful state. I miss the Puget Sound and even the state of Oregon that existed in the 90s, when there was more community, less people chasing after money, less beta males worshiping women, people didn't spend all day hiding behind their smartphone or laptop and were out and about socializing and being part of a unique and thriving culture that existed in the Pacific Northwest in the 90s. People use to smile back then, especially the women who seem to be as cold as ice these days. But, even most men I meet here are pretty cold, depressed and introverted. You can just see some light missing in the eyes of all the people. This place has a spiritual darkness unlike any other place I have ever been on this planet.
In Seattle, people cannot just have a friendly conversation, but, if you challenge someone's thoughts they will want you to be killed and suffer. Everything is life and death and people freak out on you over the most mundane issues. It is not that Portland doesn't have these issues as well now, but not to the degree of Seattle, where everyone thinks they are the next savior of the universe with what ever cause they support. Many Seattlites will hate your guts if you support capitalism, yet cry like babies when many of the amenities that capitalism has given them are compromised. The golden hypocrisy of the city of Seattle is another stomach turning element that keeps me from spending too much time in this city. But, that is Seattle's curse, yet other places in the Sound may not be so pretentious and radically liberal, but still have that element of depression and the anti-social mindset.
I will be moving to Portland for one year for business reasons. Portland is definitely a friendlier and more upbeat city. Seattle is way too serious, rigid, pretentious and cutthroat. Portland is way more laid back, easy going and even if it is liberal progressive, there is not the same degree of hatred you feel in Seattle for having opposing views.
However, I think in the next couple years I will be leaving the Northwest for good and let all the transplants devour the place, the locals all jump off their bridges as they get so depressed and hold in all their emotions they go insane. And, yes, the entire Puget Sound will eventually implode as the mismanagement of its government and poorly implemented infrastructure collapses. Maybe, it will return to its more humble, modest and enchanting persona I remember back in the 90s.
Oh yes, I actually do want to apologize to those I offended with this post. It has been quite a lonely and stressful 6 years in this place. The entire Northwest seems to have been populated with the most anti-social elements. Perhaps, being so far away from the rest of the country, that is the element of people who wish to live here. I find my soul is more communal, outgoing, social, open-minded. I want to meet different kinds of people, have fun, be social, not have the thought-police control my mind and attack me with passive aggressiveness anytime I go against the status quo. I guess I grew up as a hippie, but feel more like a hippie country boy who grew up (or older) in this small city named Portland and developed a unique culture and mindset of my own that feels so broken and out of place living in this area. I'm somewhat hippie, a wannabe cowboy and have some hillbilly mixed in me (still have all my teeth though ) . I know I would probably fit in well in many other places in the country and world, but definitely not here. I also was granted the honor to become African chief of the Ewe people, as I was to be enstooled in a village in Ghana when I stayed there. Even Africa, felt like home to me compared to the Puget Sound. I've been around the world, but never have I felt more alone, depressed and out of place than in the Puget Sound.
People can keep saying how open-minded and accepting it is here, but I disagree. Oh yes, disagreeing with people here is a daunting feat. You will be chastised, hated, beguiled and humiliated for challenging people's thoughts. The land of open-mindedness and progressiveness is, in my opinion, anything but that. More like judgemental, callous, self-serving and polarizing. The entire Northwest is like this to a degree, but the Puget Sound is the worst case of it.
I wish I could explain it.. But, this is not a friendly or happy place.
Anyway, this is somewhat like my goodbye to the Puget Sound and this forum, as I won't be posting on the Seattle forum here much after I leave in next couple months.
Wow, I have lived here 8 years (moved from the Midwest) and haven't really noticed much of what you speak of. I work in downtown Seattle, have worked at other companies on the east side previously- everyone is very social, very friendly- I honestly have seen no difference with work colleagues OR neighbors from what I experienced back home.
Good post RotseCherut with many great points. I will miss you on the board representing a refreshing libertarian point of view. Come back on the Seattle CD board when you land somewhere and let us know where you end up. I'll be leaving this area soon as well.
Somehow, it's hard to experience an angry, broken record as "refreshing". ..... but maybe that's just me?
I think creating stereotypes and then filtering out data that don't support the narrative is becoming an increasingly common practice. It's hard to grasp the scale of a country with 300 million people in it, most of them equipped with the means to communicate instantly, and most of them trying very hard to find some identity bigger than themselves.
We start to rely on hyperbole to make points - this is all the rage at the moment - and to exclude people from our stereotyped data base if they don't exhibit the characteristics we find upsetting. Residents of the Puget Sound area who are "not friendly" - does that include Southeast Asian residents in the Rainier Valley? Or Korean families in Shoreline? Ukrainians in Marysville? GIs at JBLM? I've found a lot of those people quite friendly, but YMMV.
There was a bumper sticker prevalent in Alaska during the pipeline boom, when I moved there. It said, "Happiness is an Okie headed south with a Texan under each arm." (Texas and Oklahoma provided many workers with oil and gas pipeline expertise.) Fear or worries about "the other" taking something from us, or forcing us to confront the diversity - ethnic, racial, age, political - of a society of 300 million people, are understandable but ultimately not going to help. You can run but you really can't hide.
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) . I know I would probably fit in well in many other places in the country and world, but definitely not here. I also was granted the honor to become African chief of the Ewe people, as I was to be enstooled in a village in Ghana when I stayed there. Even Africa, felt like home to me compared to the Puget Sound. I've been around the world, but never have I felt more alone, depressed and out of place than in the Puget Sound.
