Seattle Is About to Be Bored

[from 7/21/10]

So, we’re about to have a tunnel project!

A boring tunnel machine is going to nuzzle his way two miles through our city’s underparts and I couldn’t be more excited! I will pay whatever it takes in taxes to see that try to happen.

This is much better than wasting my money on beer, or strippers, or ending homelessness. None of those things can ever satisfy me like the slow-motion creation of a vast sideways pit to pour cars through, under, past Seattle, and out of sight.

Some people are still saying it’s a bad idea to build the tunnel to replace the viaduct, but those are sad ignorant people who don’t understand how bad the alternatives are. To help them I will run through the alternatives now, so they can begin to grasp the fact that the tunnel is the best of all possible solutions to the viaduct replacement problem as well as I do.

Alternative 1. Fill in Elliott Bay, pave it, and make it a giant “all ways, all times” intersection. This solution would shut up those folks always squawking about the “decaying sea wall”. It also would provide a great place for teens to practice their driving, and it would be a hell of a tourist destination, akin to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Great, except for one thing: Potholes. We couldn’t afford the maintenance.

Alternative 2. The whole point of the viaduct is connect what’s south of downtown to what’s north of downtown, right? So what if we just got rid of one of those, quietly, in the middle of the night? I tried to work the details out on this one but got stuck on some seriously fatal legal issues. Also: There’s no such thing as “quietly” when it comes to West Seattleites or to Magnolian hordes.

Alternative 3. We make downtown Seattle so attractive no one will want to pass through. Mayor McGinn is getting on track toward this goal with his vision of Seattle as a 24-hour bar-hopping Mecca. But let’s face it, years of making downtown Seattle inhospitable to homeless people have had the side effect that it’s also that much less welcoming to anybody who can’t shell out hundreds a day to amuse themselves. You’d need to install benches and public rest rooms, etc. It’ll never happen.

Alternative 4. Ferry cars across the bay. Ha! Stupid, stupid idea! Putting cars on boats and floating them from place to place? Get real. Besides, ferries cost money, unlike magically free state-built tunnels.

Alternative 5. We take Seattle apart and put it back together someplace where it won’t be in our way anymore. Paul Allen could figure out how to get us to pay for that with our own money while somehow making himself richer, and then ingratiate himself to us by giving back half of the profits our money netted him. The only drawback to this one is Seattle would find out what it’s like when nobody wants you in their backyard.

Alternative 6. This is the very attractive idea to accept the tunnel idea whole, except for the tunnel part. In other words, you don’t build the tunnel, but you charge people the same amount in tolls to drive through the city as you were going to charge them to use the tunnel. This will so reduce the traffic through the city that no viaduct replacement will be necessary.

I have to admit that it was really hard to find the downside to Alternative 6. But here goes: Seattle, see, has this undeserved reputation for being one of the friendliest cities in the country. Those of us who live here know that’s nonsense. We’re the passive aggressive capital of the world. We love to give visitors directions, to the airport. We’re courteous to a fault, and that fault is ready to slip at a moments provocation.

We can’t afford to blow our cover. If the world finds out how unfriendly we really are, who will buy our condos?

Insolence Abroad

Let’s talk about unmitigated effrontery or impudence!

Whether you call it gall, balls, chutzpah, or just plain bad manners, you have to admit unmitigated effrontery or impudence is continually entertaining. That’s why people watch sitcoms and the Today Show.

But we don’t have to leave Seattle to be entertained; we amuse ourselves!

A beautiful set of cojones was exhibited by convicted local lawyer A. Mark Vanderveen who cut off his court-ordered ankle bracelet 6 hours ahead of schedule “to go on a bike ride.” In admiration of his “flagrant, notorious, in-your-face attitude” toward the court the judge gave Vanderveen another 30 days of home confinement. Question: Why was I was not surprised to read that this tool was once an Assistant Seattle City Attorney? Answer: He had to learn it somewhere.

The other day a bunch of Seattle strip clubs revealed a survey they had commissioned that purported to show that strip clubs are not the magnets for crime that the city claims they are. The city then turned right around and showed they know what T-bagging is all about by saying 1) they had not studied the survey and 2) the survey is biased.

"It kind of reminds me of the tobacco industry hiring consultants to say tobacco was good for you," said Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. “It would remind me of that too, Deputy Mayor, if I thought you had ever done any research of your own on the subject, and weren’t just repeating the prejudices of the least informed of the electorate in order to store up political points,” said me, just now.

For the record, I do not have any personal interest in seeing strip clubs overcome the four-foot rule in November. I’m a do-it-yourselfer: I do all my own stripping and lap dancing, at home. I also don’t really know what T-bagging is, I just heard John Waters say it on TV and I liked the way it sounded. Also, I don’t want strange nubile women to undulate their naked bodies in front of me and aim their private parts at my face.

How was that for ironic?

My next example is Ken Bounds. Ken Bounds is the chief of the Seattle Parks Department. That’s Seattle, as in City of. That means he works for the City of Seattle. But he doesn’t think his continued employment should be subject to review by the Seattle City Council. You might think that’s why I am going to cite him for unmitigated effrontery or impudence but it’s not. I don’t care whether the City Council can fire him or not, if they’re just going to keep on endorsing his policies regardless.

No, it’s this quote from Bounds that caught my attention: “I grew up in the segregated South, and the parks-and-recreation system was my avenue to befriending people of other races."

There you have it, folks. We can’t ever fire Mr. Emancipation!

Now I understand why Ken Bounds thinks it would be great to put fences around the City Hall Park to keep the homeless from sleeping there. Homeless people don’t belong to races, don’t you know?

The biggest and smoothest example of big-city cojones belongs to the Seattle City Council itself, in connection with its decision a few weeks ago to do without a public referendum and endorse the tunnel option to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct.

What makes this decision such a monumental case of effrontery is the fact that all involved justified it by the fact that the estimates for the cost of the tunnel option were rising precipitously.

The view was encapsulated by City Council Member Richard Conlin who said the issue would present "a moving target" to voters because the replacement design isn't complete.

To rephrase and expand upon those few words: “Dear fool voters! We on the City Council don’t know what the final costs will be, or what the tunnel plan really entails! You can’t hit a moving target and we ourselves can’t hit the side of a stationary barn! So we’ll decide for the tunnel for you!”