Street People

EFFin’ Unsound » Blog Archive » Panhandling Law: "There is an irony in your comments.

Carl Ballard at Effin Unsound talks about his opposition to the City Council's efforts to pass a new pan handling law.

I responded:

Once upon a time, long ago, there was quite a different influx of young folk into Seattle.

Before condos filled Denny Regrade with singles, there was a “gallery” movement toward Pioneer Square. The movement was also comprised of young people .. artists, crafts people, photographers and wannabees along with the moderately wealthy art buying community focussed on the gallery scene.

The gallery scene, however, was added on to an existing scene of street people, pan handlers, alcoholics, vagrants. The odd thing is that “we” got along. The gallery owners, even Foster-White, valued the ambiance and even sponsored community activities with the indigent indigenes. The pick up basket ball games between gallery folk and street folk were something to remember.

Some of the more outre art community even began moving into lofts in Pioneer Square. I had one friend whose elegant bathroom was even featured in Sunset!

One small story may show how far we have come in modern Seattle.

I was an active part of a gallery called Infinity, owned and managed by Letcher Ross. Infinity was a photography gallery with about a dozen or so youngish photographers grateful to and supportive of Letcher’s efforts.

Street people would often attend shows and inside the gallery certainly did not panhandle, pee on the cleaned brick walls, or even (that I noticed) smell bad.

One fellow, however, was nuisance. This guy would pee on the front windows of Infinity. This was distracting. Mostly it meant Letcher shoo-ing the guy away. Unfortunately the peeing was aggressive. The guy was marking territory like a male dog. He began coming to openings, even threatening customers. Letcher had to throw the guy out.

Oh well, eventually the guy went away, victim of booze and someone else’s knife. That was the worst of it. The gallery scene prospered and relations between the street folk and the galleries were pretty good. Rents rose. Soon modest groups like ours were outpriced. Developers began talking about condo-izing some of the old buildings.

What killed the gallery scene? Infinity and its successors (some of whom are still there) did not leave because of the street people. Then came the KingDome."

A memoire of the time on another blog.