Reading Seattle: Skid Road

We've been through the Underground Tour several times and read Sons of the Profits, but it occurred to not-originally-from-here Seattlest that we could stand to increase our knowledge of Seattle history. So, encouraged by Jonathan Raban's recommendation of it as "one of the very best informal, intimate histories anywhere," we picked up a library copy of Murray Morgan's Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle to read between films at SIFF.

It's informal, and not as detailed as an in-depth history, but Skid Road's a great crash course on Seattle lore. Murray breaks his book into 10 sections and a prologue. Five of the sections center around historical figures like Doc Maynard and Dave Beck--people more likely to have bars than streets named after them. Four other sections focus on key events: Asa Mercer's imported brides, the fire, the gold rush, and the general strike. The final section--written after the 1952 edition was completed--is the most scattered, suffering from the lack of hindsight. It's a grab-bag of recent (in 1982) events, mentioning the World's Fair, the Space Needle, the "turn out the lights" billboard, etc., but not adding much perspective.

But in the stronger sections of the book Murray offers crisp but breezy guides to memorable events without lapsing into civic boosting. Some connective tissue is missing--the book fast-forwards from the 1919 General Strike to the '60s with nary a sideways glance for context--but the book's an easy way for fellow Seattle transplants to learn enough to fake conversations with natives and start uncovering the city's real dirt.