International District (Seattle, Bellevue, Mercer Island: apartments, hotel, houses)

[mrman78]

Is this a safe area? Just curious since apartments, etc. appear to be cheaper here for central Seattle. I'm presuming this is like the 'China Town' area?

[Vinylly]

There isn't much in the way of apartments in Chinatown. Most of the buildings are quite old and about four to six floors high brick buildings. The first floors are storefronts and the upper floors are dingy rooms, -maybe some apartments. That's the reason they are probably cheaper then elsewhere in town. At night there is a lot of resturant activity and there are a lot of bums and vagrants, but probably no more dangerous then anywhere else in town because everywhere else is full of bums and vagrants as well.
Most of the real Chinese now live in Mercer Island or Bellevue. Chinatown now has a lot of Vetnamiese and SE Asians. Infact, the Eastern side of Chinatown is now referred to as 'Little Nam'.

[eskercurve]

There's lots of apartments in the ID. I don't know where Vinylly is going, but the buildings I'm thinking of are on the east side of ID and on the north end there's some apartment buildings about 10-15 stories tall.

Safety though is a concern. Just a couple weeks ago there were some youths fighting and one got stabbed. There's also an Amtrak station nearby which always attracts a "special" crowd, and there's also a few bars or corner stores which attract another type of crowd. For the most part though, don't go looking for trouble and you won't find any. To me the ID is safe.

Though ... I grew up on the South side of Chicago, where gun battles between kids who can't shoot straight happen daily. I didn't live in such areas but every day you hear something like that happening there. Not here in Seattle.

[Woof]

I used to live in one of the perennial flophouses, the Alps Hotel. I think that was back in the 90s. I've heard they've renovated it nicely to studios, they used to be all single rooms. They had an ancient elevator that had to be operated by an even more ancient, troll-like elevator man who would try heroically to manually get the elevator floor to level with the hallway floor, but who would end up having to warn us to watch our steps anyway.

I remember once the cops came in on my floor and one of them said, "Smells like something died in here". I pointed out to him that it was probably the literally rotting industrial carpeting, but then again it might have been one of the many rodents that had met its demise behind the walls. Most of us living there were just waiting patiently for death. Sometimes management would put out those horrible glue traps ..... sometimes the rats or mice would scream a little before dying ..... then I would flip them outside down into the alley.

See, that is one more reason why you should not walk in alleyways late at night. Yes, the International District back then had thugs wandering through it at night. I don't think they mostly lived there, I think they were just thugs from other places who liked to hang out there, perhaps because of a taste for Asian food or Asian women. I didn't see the night time people there very often during the day.

I liked living there, but I'm not one to have to fear getting mugged or beaten up, since I look like a sort of huge, mutant toad. I can agree though with Esker, it's not anywhere near as dangerous as Chicago or parts of LA.

[Hemlock140]

Think old, grungy apartments over stinky restaurants, and plenty of scum around at night. I go there for lunch some times, some places have great $5 specials, but I'd not suggest living there. Sometimes I take the bus and transfer there, at 6:30am there's still some unpleasant characters around.

[mrman78]

Thanks for the details!