Zoo Animals Show Sounders Spirit
Cranberry Saw Us
Seattlest Pix 09Nov06
Can't Miss It, Weekend Edition: Nov 6-8
Fall Flashback
We understand you're upset, Belltown. What, with all these drug deals going on right outside your high-rise condos. You've video-taped and photographed the deals going down, you've created a YouTube channel and taken your complaints to local blogs and newspapers...and still it doesn't stop. Maybe that's because the drug dealers and users in Belltown were there long, long before the condos and well before the neighborhood was given its trendy name.
What you all now use as a dog park for your tiny dogs used to be called "crack rock park." Our bus driver told us that in 5th grade, when we used to drive through what is now the bustling and hip neighborhood for city dwellers. Then it was graffiti-covered brick buildings with broken windows patched up by plywood. The name and description of the neighborhood stuck. Even though we had no idea what crack rock was, by the looks of what was going down in that corner-park we weren't curious to try. (Yes, driving through Belltown in the early 90's was much more effective than D.A.R.E. ever was.)
Well, a Belltown resident tried a new tactic to get rid of drug dealing in his neighborhood—he dropped a 12-inch butcher knife from his fourth story apartment. According to King 5's blog, "The knife landed on top of a Metro bus stopped near 3rd Ave and Pine St. and bounced onto the street just after 3 p.m. Saturday." Luckily no one was hurt. Apparently, you now don't have to just be worried about being stabbed by drugged-out strangers in Belltown, you also have to worry about being stabbed by something falling from the sky.
Photo courtesy of Seattlest Flickr contributor prima seadiva
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
This is probably not a scalable solution to the problem, which I agree is very bad.
Hold on!
First, holy crum. I just spoke with some friends in the "hood" about:
1) No neighborhood in Seattle is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be (e.g., East Coast cities).
2) There were cops on all corners of the 2200 block of 2nd Ave.
3) 3rd and Pine is dangerous, yes, but what about the crime plaguing Capitol Hill and other neighborhoods.
Yes, this area has always been bad. Yes it got "gentrified." But so have several neighborhoods in this fine city.
Hurray Belltown!
i have read it three times, and i still can't understand abbey's point(less). i guess that when you start without a thesis, you wind up making no point.
1. describe the problem.
2. document the problem (the more sources, the better. anecdotal evidence only goes so far, duh.)
3. propose a solution.
4. prove that your solution works.
you started work on #2. now finish the rest of it (including a lot more work on #2).
Were you reading a different article than I was mbg?
Abbey's points were:
1. Problem: There is crime in Belltown, and yuppies. Yuppies don't like crime (other than maybe political graffiti).
2. Sources: She provided two links to sources.
3. Solution: The solution was to drop a knife on the problem.
4. Prove it works: She proved it doesn't work, which was why the article was sarcastic.
Um, Crack Park is definitely Belltown, but 3rd & Pine is Downtown. Comon, we uptight hipster types would never try to solve crime by actually arming the perpetrators.
Third & Pine? The bus stop across the street from Macy's? That's DOWNTOWN. Six, seven blocks away from the doggie park.
I suggest we take up a collection to buy "local editors" (at Seattlest, at the Pee-Eye, at the Timez, at the tee-vee stations) a color-coded map.
It's too easy to pin labels. Drugs in Belltown, gays on Capitol Hill, smug suburbanites in Bellevue. That's just fingerpointing, and it's not helpful.
lets come up with more labels. labels are funny.
Heres how to clean up 3rd and Pine: no more bus service from the South End. Done and Done!
Throwing your sage admonition against fingerpointing right back at you, Ronald, re: your rather grouchy 'color-coded maps for "local editors"' remark.
So long as anybody can simply walk into any store in Seattle and buy a knife without having to demonstrate their need and purpose, such needless, senseless crimes will continue to occur.
Perhaps it's time to look to more enlightened nations that understand "it is time to remove sharp knives from kitchens altogether. There is no need for the pointed tips that make knives fatal."
3rd and Pike is two short blocks outside of Belltown.
To divide the city like that has validity, but it's about as qualified as saying there was nothing "80's" in the year 1991.
And to that I say, "Watch Saved by the Bell and tell me there's nothing 80's in 1991."
Also, pretty sure it's not meant to be an expose on Belltown crime control. I think it's more of a "Holy crap, a knife fell from a window and here's an observation of yuppiness."
Have a little bit of fun. This isn't a newspaper or television news. It's a Seattle Area blog.
Relax folks. Breathe.