City Life

Motored and boated into the big city today. The picture shows the ferry about to enter the slip in Edmonds, just north of Seattle.

I'm undecided about moving to the city. It would be a lot more convenient and practical than where I am now, and I'd use the car a lot less. I'd be close to the yoga studio, groceries, etc. But I've gotten used to the tranquility and greenery of a more bucolic setting, and the peace and quiet grows on you. I may stay on "the other side," and just move to someplace a little closer in. I might even relocate to a suburb on the Seattle side, which is something I never before imagined doing, old suburb hater that I am. But times change, and so do we.

Seattle is a happening town. It's suffering from the recession like everywhere else, but not nearly as much as places like Phoenix, or Atlanta, or Sam Berdino. JP Morgan is still operating WAMU branches here, but they're shutting down nearly all their offices downtown, which hurts. Boeing will start laying off soon, and the end of the F-22, a Pentagon dinosaur, will cost a lot of jobs. But tech is strong here -- IT (information technology), dot-com related enterprise, and so forth, and that's not going anywhere. And the state's second-biggest employer (after Boeing), the University of Washington, will experience some cuts, but will remain the major player it is now.

It's a sophisticated, educated, liberal town, full of coffee-drinking Unitarians, politically-correct, non-fundie Christians, and various other elements of a semi-enlightened middle class. They wear Gore-Tex from LL Bean, suck up the cold and drizzle, aggressively recycle, buy organic vegetables and cage-free eggs, drive Priuses, and enjoy the short, spectacular summers with family outings and wholesome picnics. Altogether, not such a bad place. A guy could do worse.

Seattle's got the same urban problems, drugz'n'gangs, as any other large metro area in the U.S., but not as abundantly. It's noisy and the traffic is some of the worst in the country, but the air is clean, rents are bearable, and every coffee shop, and there are three or four for every business-zoned city block, has wireless high-speed internet. In fact, that's what I'm using right now.