kinda like Wag the Dog, only different...

Ooops never mind. This is the correct link:

http://community.livejournal.com/seattle/3835106.html

And see this:
http://www.thestranger.com/blog/files/2006/08/this_dog_has_a_fan.php

Sounds about right to me. Dogs, especially untrained uncontrollable dogs, preferably large and in sets of two or three, are THE hot accessory for your Seattle resident these days. These dogs need to be taken out frequently so that they may crap on my lawn and get into fights with other people's uncontrollable dogs.

And from a New York perspective, Seattleites barely walk at all, even in hep apartmentalized neighborhoods like Cap Hill and Downtown. Seriously, there's hardly anybody on the streets. Compared to New York of course; compared to, say, Houston, we're a teeming Calcutta.

And have you SEEN Green Lake lately?

I walked 6 blocks out of my way this morning just to buy today's NYT.

OK, but you guys are all hung up on the substance. This is a travel article--there is no substance. Please address the use of the verbs "to air" [transitive, w/r/t pets] and "to power (around)."

Annie, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at this:
http://www.monkeyair.com/images/photogallery/Monkey-Air-dog.jpg

For a travel article, I thought [mb] it got a lot of things fairly right. Compared to a city with an extensive subway system, I'm sure that Seattle does seem like there's a whole lot of driving going on.

Yabbut, Sara, you thought that was remarkable enough to post here. People in New York walk all over the place all the time, dozens of blocks all the time. Bragging about 6 blocks is comparatively like bragging about your times in the eigh-yard dash.

there ya go, with the Seattle/New York comparisons again... fuhgeddaboutit.

Maybe the friends of the writer don't walk three blocks, but everyone I know walks many blocks - people at the UW, everyone in Fremont (it's our religion), people who live near Green Lake.

Maybe they were comparing it to NYC, where a lot more people are used to walking like we do around the UW and Fremont?

Besides, NYC is so last millenium.

oh, and I agree about Agua Verde. that part of the review was spot on.

Yeah, for a New York audience, we drive a ridiculous amount. Seriously. People DRIVE to Greenlake to go for a walk. How ridiculous is that?

From one stickler to another: Are you sure you don't mean "bosh?" instead of "posh?"

If that's so, Will, why is it that the streets in Fremont are practically deserted? Even the main shopping square has just a few humans waiting for each light, even on Saturday.

And Green Lake -- c'mon, I live about three blocks from the lake and you can sit on my porch and see maybe a dozen people walk by all day. And none of them will be going anywhere on foot -- they're either jogging or going to or from the bus.

Seattle looks deserted compared to a real city.

"If that's so, Will, why is it that the streets in Fremont are practically deserted?"

could it be because the people who aren't driving are on their computers? the people who are driving probably are as well (if they're not on cell phones, of course...)

Ciscoe gardens at Seattle U?

Could certainly be bosh. But I was doing an abbreviation of pish-posh that was in some twisted way meant to rhyme with the tone of the yuppiesnotty NYT prose. You may object.

I am a dedicated pedestrian so that sentence caught me off gaurd too. I guess compared to NYC there isn't that much walkin goin on, but one factor i think is the hills. Going from the LQA to the top of Queen Anne, or from WestLake plaza to Cap Hill (or Freemont to 45th in Wallingford) are all routes that i suspect would be walked more frequently if you didn't need a sherpa and an oxygen mask. I don't have a car so friends that visit me get their legs walked off and they always comment on the hills, unless they're from San Fran.

It had a strange juxtaposition of things to do... but I can't argue with that statement about walking.

I walk everywhere in this city (I hate taking the bus - for any trip under 2 miles it is slower than walking) and it usually feels like I am the only one who walks more than three blocks to go anywhere. There are very specific groups of people you will see walking anywhere:

1) Tourists, walking slowly 5-8 across and blocking the whole goddamn sidewalk

2) Suburban commuters, walking from their bus/parking space to work, only 1 across but still going slowly enough to piss me off

3) Green Lake joggers, who drove to the lake

4) Dog owners, "airing out the dog" - i.e. getting it some exercise and getting it to piss on a bush somewhere

5) Poor people, walking from the bus stop to wherever (lucky for them it stops every two blocks!)

etc.

Fnarf,

There's a good reason Seattle feels "deserted compared to a real city". If you look at population density, we're way less dense than NYC or even just Manhattan for that matter. We have one third the population living on roughly four times the land mass.

Manhattan encompasses about 59 square km, as compared to Seattle's 218 square km, and has a population of about 1.6 mm people, compared to Seattle's 570,000. The population density for Manhattan works out to a little over 26,000 per square km, while Seattle's density is a paltry 2,590 per square km.

This of course doesn't take into account the numbers of people who commute into each respective area on a daily basis, who don't live within the defined geographic limits, but I would expect the overall 10:1 density ratio to remain roughly the same.

So, yeah when you look at it like that, it is pretty deserted here. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, IMO.

If everyone walks everywhere in NYC, why was there such a brouhaha when the subways prices went up 50 cents a couple years ago?

Most people I know who live in NYC refuse to leave their neighborhoods. (not that much different than here, huh?) Unless they have a Brooklyn to Manhattan commute (and usually this commute consists of: walking outside, down the block, into the subway, waiting for the F or the L train, getting on the F/L, perhaps doing a transfer or two, getting out, and then walking a block to work) they don't GO more than three blocks. They don't have to, because everything they could ever want is available on a 24-hour basis within 3 (flat) blocks of their teeny, tiny apartments. NYC and Seattle are totally different cities, and attempting to compare them based on things like walking seems stupid.

Anyway, the claim is a sweeping generalization. I have a car but try not to use it: almost everyone I know walks more often than driving or busing.

The density in Seattle will increase, traffic will get worse, gas costs will continue to rise and there will be plenty of people walking and biking all over. Then people won't need to go to Green Lake to get excersize and we will live in a better city.

The population of Manhattan is a good deal higher than 1.6 mil during the day. It's probably five times that. Hell, I've seen 1.6 million people come out of a single subway station all at once.

I do agree that a large segment of Seattle's population doea not walk, other than to and from their cars, and possibly around Green Lake or some other 'walking destination' - after they've driven there, of course. Walking is just not considered a transporation option to most people here. I have friends who live on 15th who won't even walk to Broadway - they'd rather drive and then spend 20 minutes looking for parking (which usually ends up being 4-5 blocks away from where they're going)!

Fnarf, have you ever been to Fremont on any given night, especially a Friday or Saturday night? Deserted? You're blind, fool.

Those are nightclubbers, not people.

could it be the metric is wrong?

three blocks in seattle = 0.1778 mile

three blocks (between avenues) in nyc = 0.5092 mile.