Seattle Mostly Sucks (Bellingham, Renton, White Center: sublet, apartment, credit)

[pnwguy2]

Originally Posted by RotseCherut

Bundled up with a scarf today and thick rain jacket and took a nice walk in the chilly, cold summer rain.. Brrr..

This would have been nice if it was January and not June-uary (as we call it in the Northwest).

Seattle's weather is crap.. Yes, I would take it over Boise or probably anywhere in the Upper Midwest, but that's about it. Boise is 3 months of hellish dry cold and endless blizzards in winter and 3 months of roasting hot summers.. Although, to be honest I don't mind the hot and fierce summers with advanced central A/C systems and cheap cooling costs they had in Idaho. It just sucks when you go outside at 2AM and its 80F. However, cold, chilly summers also kind of suck. Actually I would take hot and humid summers over cold and chilly ones.

Lately, Seattle has had really only 2 months of summer. Just another strike.

The housing costs, insane communist government that has declared war on the huge IT companies here (oh boy this is fun Steve Ballmer vs Kshama Lenin-Sawant), homeless problem, traffic , and overburden city infrastructure is just some of the other reas

I love the beauitful, nature, mountains , water.. The Pacific Northwest is a great place to be a millionaire and buy a summer home. However, living here year round is just not that great. After living my whole life in the Pacific Northwest I know its time to move on.

The crappy weather was something I could tolerate, but the insane living costs, liberal insanity and cold and unfriendliness that now is prevalent, in addition to a soulless, cutthroat, backstabbing corporate culture where everyone is out to tear down the other guy is inspiring me to move on.

Very sad.. A Cascadian will always have a hole in his heart when he leaves the Cascades. Part of his heart will be left in those mystical mountains which everyone here seems to take for granted.

I am sure in 50 years the entire Cascades will be littered with condos and syringes just like the city of Seattle is now.

The only problem with your last sentence is they were saying this 50 years ago. There was a deep belief that the Cascades would be overtaken by suburbia. 1969 to be exact. I remember my parents buying up some property just over the Cascade Crest, and the developers saying this will be a part of the Seattle/Tacoma area in a couple of decades. Guess what, didn't happen. And there are regulations in place that will never allow this to happen, atleast in our lifetimes.

[RotseCherut]

Originally Posted by pnwguy2

The only problem with your last sentence is they were saying this 50 years ago. There was a deep belief that the Cascades would be overtaken by suburbia. 1969 to be exact. I remember my parents buying up some property just over the Cascade Crest, and the developers saying this will be a part of the Seattle/Tacoma area in a couple of decades. Guess what, didn't happen. And there are regulations in place that will never allow this to happen, atleast in our lifetimes.

I am praying what you say is the truth.. However, never take anything for granted. Many beautiful mountain sides in the Oregon Coast where I lived for years have turned into huge condominium complexes for wealthy retirees. They have bulldozed a lot of beautiful mountain sides and have sadly had to see it with my own eyes.

Also, I was living in Duvall for a year and that beautiful Snoqualmie Valley is turning into a huge development project. THere are housing tracts being built all over in what use to be wildlife preserves, farms and other natural settings.

If those ruthless developers can get those housing tracts over the foothills of the Snoqualmie Valley our beloved Central Cascades are toast. You will have condo complexes, resorts, etc dotting all the way from the Skykomish and Snoqualmie Valleys up to Wenatchee.

They were actually talking about building a huge luxury ski and mountain resort on Mount Adams. Thankfully, the Native American elders who had control of the area voted against the project.. It was suppose to be even larger than Mt Hood Meadows. Not sure if there has been any other attempts of turning Gifford-Pinchot and Mount Adams wilderness into the next luxury retirement/wealthy person playground.

[Sunaimer]

Seattle was nice up until the mid-80s. Then everybody started moving up here. Granted, Bill Gates is from this area, but Microsoft started the invasion of people from out of state. Nobody knew where Issaquah was. Now Costco is headquartered there. Amazon is here. And of course, many others, and start ups. I feel like the blue-collar workers in Seattle who have worked in the Boeing and other blue-collar industries, have been priced out of this Puget Sound area to live in. I've never liked the 10 months gray drizzle, but our family is from here and still lives here. I'm hoping to retire out of state within the next five years. Hoping my adult kids will follow me. Seattle was a great place but has been ruined over the last 25 years. Current family members have to live over an hour away just to be able to afford rent or buy a home. Very sad. And yes everybody stays to themselves because we are depressed. And don't get me started about the traffic. It used to take me 20 minutes from Renton to West Seattle to pick up my grandma back in the 70s. Of course the speed limit was 70 miles an hour as well. But there was nobody on the road. Seattle and Washington state have not invested enough in the roads. We need new leadership in the city of Seattle and mostly King County.

[pnwguy2]

Rotse, you bring up a good point. But, Snoqualmie Valley is really not the Cascades. Foothills, yes, but not the actual mountain range. Neither is Duvall. I believe there is still plenty of valley land that could be developed and we can still protect the Cascade wilderness. I am not an expert on land use regulations, but I believe there are still many foothill areas that are extremely restricted, and I am in favor of those restrictions.

[jrt1979]

Originally Posted by fillmore241

Second car break-in since living here, in my driveway, so they could take a hat I got for free and a $20 pair of sunglasses.

Had to scare a junkie away from camping behind my house.

Almost attacked by a dog for the first time in my life, on my lawn.

Bosses are so Type B they skip performance reviews. I continue to be in the bottom salary quartile.

Living in a garage at the moment. Homeless in 2weeks because I can not find anything I can reasonably afford.

Local companies ask "what my college GPA was" (2.7, interview process killer) even though it was 7yrs ago.

Junkies everywhere, needles littered in grass. People shooting up on couches abandoned on Capitol Hill sidewalks in plain view.

Schizophrenic people screaming at me at the bus stop.

Parents screaming at kids.

Smell of pot everywhere but work.

People smoking pot while driving (puffs of marijuana scented smoke coming out of windows).

Elitism about silly things (e.g. Vanagon ownership, designer Patagucci outdoor gear, the huge company they work for).

Well at least it's sunny all the time in Seattle!

[bloom]

Do you mostly suck, filmore241, or not ?

[RotseCherut]

Originally Posted by pnwguy2

Rotse, you bring up a good point. But, Snoqualmie Valley is really not the Cascades. Foothills, yes, but not the actual mountain range. Neither is Duvall. I believe there is still plenty of valley land that could be developed and we can still protect the Cascade wilderness. I am not an expert on land use regulations, but I believe there are still many foothill areas that are extremely restricted, and I am in favor of those restrictions.

I am conservative and right-wing on every issue except the environment. Not that there isn't a few other green minded conservatives out there. We need to seriously protect and regulate where development is allowed. If the developers had their way, every square inch would be residential/commercial zoned land. That is, they would develop every sq inch they can make a buck no matter how much of the natural environment is wasted and destroyed. $$$ Talks. We have to protect the environment. Snoqualmie Valley rests against the base of the Central Cascades.. My point being is that development is moving East, slowly, but surely. Let Issaquah be a fine example of this dilemma as well. They are building the heck of those ridges and the development is moving all the way up into the Snoqualmie range.

Originally Posted by jrt1979

Well at least it's sunny all the time in Seattle!

We need to learn how to genetically modify clouds so that the rain can be infused with Vitamin D.. It would seriously help cheer everyone up around here, during the usually rainy month of June It's not the winter rain that makes people depressed here its the Autumn and Spring rain.. You just cannot help feeling that it is sunnier most everywhere else in the country.

[Minntoaz]

Yep. Though I don't live in Seattle (I'm in the burbs) just visiting gives me those exact feelings. Had a biker flip me off near green lake the other day because I was behind him on a street that is meant for cars! Logical eh?

I can't handle the atttitude of entitlement so prevalent.

OP, I'd say get the heck out of dodge before it's too late.

There is plenty of more affordable, cities with jobs.

[fillmore241]

Originally Posted by bloom

Do you mostly suck, filmore241, or not ?

Yeah, I have no friends; no family; I worked through Christmas, New Years, MLK Jr day, and my two free holidays with no additional pay; and I moved 2,600 miles across the country for my program to get cancelled. I'm a real sucker.

I don't leave dirty needles on the ground, though

[Minntoaz]

And the mental health system here... atrocity. I could tell you stories about how jacked the Washington "mental health-judicial system relationship" is but in essence you can thank your lovely public defenders fighting for the rights of the mentally ill, for these loose cannon balls floating around Seattle. It's not the 49th worst mental health system in the states for an unjustified reason.