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News & ArtsMonday, December 22, 2008
City Whose Streets?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I've been thinking the same thing as Dan's friend. Watching scenes like this over the weekend...
...and wandering on foot in the streets of the city—literally in the streets, because why not when most cars are stuck somewhere?—it's hard not to notice the attitudinal shift.
The cars are humbled. The people are emboldened. The snow is deep enough that it blurs the point at which the curb ends and the car-space begins. Street life—by which we usually mean sidewalk life—is finally, actually, street life.
Maybe I've missed something in previous years living in this city, but it does seem to me as if Seattle—which has a rich, familiar culture of street protest—is now developing a new addition: a culture of street joy.
Many people I know here have drawn connections between the spontaneous celebrations surrounding the arrival of the current city-stopping snow and the spontaneous celebrations in November after the arrival of the world-stopping election result:
In both instances the the streets have been immediately appropriated for the purpose of joy—not commerce or commuting—and the Seattle police, who normally exist to protect commerce and commuting, have gotten it exactly right. They've ceded the streets to the celebrants and made it their duty to protect them and their temporary takeover of space that isn't theirs. On election night, I saw police keeping cars away from the street party in the above video. On Saturday night—or, really, at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning—I saw a lone police car parked so that it blocked traffic from descending the hill favored by the East Denny Way sledders, some of whom are pictured above.
It's messy, of course, this business of joy-ing in the street. The police aren't everywhere. And not everyone agrees on the new rules, or at what depth of snow they begin to be enforced, or how long after a snowfall the new rules should end. What we have is perhaps a kernel of a new Seattle tradition with a lot of chaos around the edges. And so, walking around, I saw a few scenes like the one in this video (a video sent, coincidentally, by the same YouTuber who captured the election night dance party).
Similarly, on Union Street, around 17th Avenue or so, I saw over the weekend something that seemed like a checkpoint one would find in a country with a heavy-handed military. Except that it was manned by snow-caked people in their 20s and 30s, some of them on a couch that had been dragged into the intersection, others standing near trash can lids and cardboard and other sledding materials. If a driver charmed the people manning the checkpoint, he or she could go through. If a driver didn't, or failed to stop and turn away as instructed, there was a somewhat good-natured retribution. A hail of snowballs. Shouts about how awful the driver was for messing up a good thing. People hanging on to the driver's back bumper and sort of water-skiing behind the car, heels gliding down the snowy hill.
A driver could disobey the new law of the snow-stopped city, but its enforcers wouldn't make it easy.
There is a lot one could connect to the street celebrations that Seattle has seen this November and December: The World Trade Organization protests of 1999. The rise of Seattle's Critical Mass specifically, and of local bike consciousness in general. The huge Prop 8 protest of mid-November. The anti-war rallying that's been done in various moments over the last eight years. The decline in esteem that the automobile, and its demands, are experiencing. The increasing density of the city, the support for this density from the political class, and the demands that people living in small, densely-packed neighborhoods feel compelled and empowered to make. All of this informs the current thoughts about who should control Seattle's streets—and when.
But making too many connections may be getting ahead of things. If this is indeed a new thing, a new way of clebrating in Seattle, we'll have to see what it becomes before we know exactly what it is. I, for one, hope it becomes something—something greater than two notable moments in the life of a city in late 2008. Because whatever's going on in this town lately, it's fantastic.
You hear that, Sims? We're going all Mad Max now that you decided we don't deserve transit.
Word. And don't forget that Seattle was the location of the first-ever antiwar freeway blockade in US history, on May 5, 1970, the day after the Kent State Massacre. Oh, what a day that was.
so yeah seattle, its awesome that everyone is celebrating in the streets, but next time please remember to clean up your fucking mess afterward.
Leaving those macho jerks aside, I think you've got a point. What we need is rapid transit -- real rapid transit, and then we wouldn't need all those cars to make a living.
But when the street uspers departed, they left their sledding implements and trash, in "epic proportions" behind. An ugly reminder of mob rule litters the intersection at Bellevue in four directions. Not pretty and not fair to the nearby residents who regularly put up with passerby trash on the 362 non-snow days a year. Who does one have to blow so we get some litter bins on Capitol Hill?
Dan, do you know?
Never mind; they'd just end up as sleds too.
I propose closing pike/pine to traffic on friday night and all day saturday, except for police vehicles. This is supposing busses could be rerouted without causing too much disruption
Great minds like a think...I offer my diatribe on the disenfranchisement of the pedestrian:
http://you-read-it-here-first.com/viewto…
"I am amazed at the denigration of the human body in the unenclosed form of a walker or bicycle. The number of times I have been hit or near hit by cars must approach 10 in the last few years.
[...]
"
The people who aren't driving anywhere are just staying home from work. People on the bus would take the bus anyways. There's no change going on here.
Hopefully we can keep it up in 2009.
But yeah, clean up your sleds and shit. That's just stupid.
I said, "Wow, ever since Obamanight 08 it's like Seattle is just looking for excuses for street parties."
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I have to hand it to the Seattle police, too. On Obama night I was drinking a bottle of champagne at Pike and Broadway. A cop came up and said, "hand me that please." I thought I was busted. But he took a pull of it, smiled, and handed it back, saying, "Just don't be driving, alright?"
That was awesome. And more or less the same thing happened a couple nights ago at Bellevue and Denny. I love it.
That said, people in the snow are more cheerful and friendly - including most drivers (and I've seen a lot of peds go out of their way to get stuck cars moving - so can't we all just get along? Sob).
street celebrations are cyclical. there was street joy during the WTO (before the police went nuts). there has been critical mass street joy in seattle for over a dozen years. there have been massive neighborhood sledding block parties during past snow storms. there may be *faster* celebrations nowadays due to txting, etc. but it doesn't feel like a unique wave of street joy.
People hanging on to the driver's back bumper and sort of water-skiing behind the car . . . .Otherwise known (in Montana, at least) as "hooky-bobbing" or (in Alaska, at least) as "ski-jogging." Eli, meet snow. Snow, Eli. Now go have a good time together.
The sledding families tend to take over the whole hill and are visibly uneasy about, say, a group of teenagers they don't know joining in. And if you're a 30-something kid like me showing up with his own sled, they look at you like you're a child molester.
Then there are the young folks looking to use parking lots--or whatever--for brodies. I saw some very stupid older teenagers in a Chevy doing brodies right in the middle of the intersection of Ravenna Ave and 80th NE, surrounded by sledders of all ages. Very dangerous and douchebaggy.
But really, why not use the street for that? Who says the sledders get to use it? And who says the sledders have to be sober, happy families with young kids and not older, rowdier folks with a few beers in them?
It's anarchy, but I think I like it.
In the last couple of months I've really gotten into livable streets blogs:
http://hembrow.blogspot.com/
http://www.streetsblog.org/
http://www.copenhagenize.com/
http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/
http://www.streetfilms.org/?popular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMgEsUbMH…
After reading them for a while it really opens your eyes. A lot of what you take for granted as city living is more or less a historical accident. We didn't have to turn 1/3 of our city over for cars. If you take a top-down look at Seattle and a lot of American cities, it comes down to:
- cars. driving and parking
- buildings
- people walking
- people biking
If you care about climate change, if you care about quality of life, if you care about reducing stress, our priorities are exactly backwards.
The funny thing is that pretty much anywhere that's walkable and livable is overrun by tourists. People travel thousands of miles to experience what they ought to have just outside their front door. We just need to make more nice spaces. There are plenty of good examples to copy from. We just need to do it.
For all the good press Greg Nickels gets, Seattle is nowhere near the cutting edge in creating more nice spaces. And all the recent townhouse development is just making things worse: ugly, anti-pedestrian, and still car-centric. Sharrows don't count either. The time for hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit is over.
If I were still in my twenties I would be out their with them, but now that I am in my forties I would be pretty upset if those noisy kids kept me up all night (which is why I moved off Capitol Hill in my thirties).
Also, after I watched a few more of the videos, my empathy of their harmless fun, which included a snowball fight, started pelting a cross country skier with snowballs for daring to use their street for his bourgeois brand of fun.
Instead of being an ignorant whiner why don't you actually join a Critical Mass? First of all, you'd learn just how wrong you are, and in the rare case that you did see someone acting out of line you can make them stop.
"Wow, just a couple of weeks ago I was walking down the middle of that road to Westlake, and here life is upended again."
Saturday night didn't find me at the sledding party, but rather reflecting on how great it was to go to Cal Anderson Park at midnight on Saturday and be surrounded by other revelers, the walk both ways going down, by, or through snow covered roadways with temerity.
As the circle begins to close, I admit to being one of the few who decided to brave the roads in a single occupancy vehicle today. To be honest, I was actually disappointed to get to 15th and see the car swarm begining again.
Obama's win, like nothing I'd see. Now this, same again.
And ohh, the lack of car sound; that sure was nice.
dp
And start creating neighborhood squares with closed off abutting streets on the weekends - places where people can stroll through local outdoor markets. I have always thought why should I have to drive to an open air market down on Pike when I prefer to walk to one near my apt!
I do sort of wish that the trash and stuff hadn't marred the scene. That was one of the great things about Obama Night, was that people picked up after themselves. That needed to stay an unspoken rule, rather than a unique thing. (Also, if you stole the Dumpster lids from businesses up the hill, you might consider bringing them back.)
I was here and shot this video, and on my youtube page for this video (of the motorist confrontation) I lay out what happened, and the sledders were very very clearly in the right. But many people here hate it when others celebrate in or hang out in the streets, even if the police are OK with it.
This hill, Denny all the way down to across I-5 overpass bridge, was CLOSED. For the hour-plus I was here, no car tried to drive down the road. Because it was CLOSED. and DANGEROUS. 1 block away from where the 2 busses almost flew onto I-5 because the road was so a)slick, b)steep, c) aimed closely enough toward I-5 below a high retaining wall.
This driver was taking a man to the airport for hire. He tried to go down this road anyway. There were many sledders below. There was a crowd of people where you see them in the vid, but he was literally driving into what was a larger crowd directly in front when people began screaming and yelling and all of us in the crowd became very worried, instantly. He did not care that the road was closed and was very, very pissed off at all of us on Denny (CLOSED to CARS). Note: Bellevue traffic was not blocked. This guy's passenger was so disgusted that he got out and turned down his ride to the airport, and then called this driver's company to complain (putting it lightly).
This man seriously endangered the lives of people in this crowd and sledders below, I only wish I got more of this on tape, and the plate number, and this guy's name, and the name of his company. But, of course, when people are hanging out in the street, even a closed street dangerous for drivers, the uptight of this otherwise amazing city will assume 4 wheels in the street good, 2 legs in the street, bad (slight twisting of animal farm there).
His SUV almost sustained some broken windows, only because sledders almost sustained serious injury or death, as was obvious to anyone at the scene.
This sort of thing does look bad for the festive, but .. at least not so bad or obvious when it's getting covered in snow as people are sledding. To me at the time it was hard to tell there was much trash around. Should've been taken care of though!!
That really bites if Seattle has few to no neighborhood parks and open spaces where people can play. Washington D.C., which I spent most of my life either in or near, and which I would not willingly drive in unless I had no other choice (which thankfully I mostly do) has tons of open park space. And not just on the Mall, but also, and more importantly, in the neighborhoods. You can't walk more then a few blocks without coming across a small park or open space.
Here in Baltimore, once upon a time, the rowhouse developers used to build their tightly packed neighborhoods to a plan that began around a small park. The rows surrounding the park would be the most nicely equipped and pricey. Further back the rows got plainer and plainer, and the lots smaller and smaller, but more affordable (there were usually street car lines involved in the plan too). The net result is that Baltimore has tons of these little neighborhood parks scattered all over the place. Alas, crime makes many of them dangerous. But they're there and when it snows out here they become busy playgrounds. But then, where the crime isn't bad, those parks are busy playgrounds all year long. I can walk to two really nice ones from where I live, one of which is on my way to work.
I'm surprised that Seattle doesn't have much open space, other then the roads. What happened that it developed like that? I'm guessing the Seattle doesn't have very much experience with snow either. Yes, it's kinda fun when everything grinds to a halt. For a while.
Check out the street life where I'm from. You won't need a parka, but you'll definitely need your kevlar.
You think I'm going to go babysit Critical Mass? Are you fucking kidding? If your mother didn't raise you right, I sure as hell can't fix you now.
We should encourage further destabilization of our habitual modes of moving through urban spaces. I love the idea of closing Pike and Pine on Friday nights. The fact that the celebration occured there naturally, as opposed to elsewhere, on Obama Night should be taken as indication of the corridor's inherent potential.
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