YESTERDAY, we discussed some of the economic and other problems facing Seattle’s artistic community.

Among the biggest problems: Real-estate hyperinflation and gentrification, pushing more and more artists, actors, musicians, etc. out of their current living and/or working spaces, with few affordable alternatives.

When there’s nothing left in Belltown or Pioneer Square, some artsy-types have moved to the Ballard Avenue district, the Central Area, Georgetown, or West Seattle’s Lost Valley of Delridge.

But even those currently moderately-priced spots are rapidly becoming unaffordable for anybody who doesn’t have a hi-payin’ cyber-career.

So a generation of bohemian-wannabes, raised on the strict ideology that Suburbs Are Bad, finds itself eyeing the sprawl zones, those everywhere/nowhere places of strip malls and megachurches.

Of course, most of these ladies-‘n’-gents would still prefer to live in a real city or town, or in the real countryside. And as the Sound Transit program builds its mass-transit network, they might get that chance.

Tacoma and Everett will get Sound Transit commuter-rail links to Seattle within the next three years or so. Those towns have lotsa gorgeous, rundown warehouses, apartments, downtown storefronts, and cheap houses, all waiting to be rescued and transformed into studios, galleries, performance spaces, and crash pads.

But there’s an even quainter, still-cheap place right nearby. And with new high-speed ferries expected to go into service later this year, Bremerton will be an even quicker one-step commute.

What you’ll see if you go there now: A quaint, compact downtown that was fiscally destroyed by malls, where the biggest remaining businesses are bars and used-book stores. Many beautiful storefronts and loft-esque spaces just waiting to be art-colonized.

And beyond downtown, houses some of you might even afford.

One Seattle artist who went west is Sally Banfill, a painter who specializes in some of my favorite Seattle roadside architecture (motel signs, the Elephant Car Wash, the Hat and Boots). Here’s what she has to say:

“I would tell you to forget renting, you can BUY a house here. My husband and I bought a house within walking distance to the ferry with a view for $100,000. That was about a year ago and there are still lots of bargains.

“Downtown Bremerton has a deserted feeling to it but more businesses are starting to open up, there is the Amy Burnett Gallery and a couple of co-op galleries and very good espresso at the Fraiche Cup.

“I have lived in the Seattle area most of my life. Bremerton reminds me of Belltown in the 1970’s — eclectic and a little seedy. If you like to go out a lot at night there really isn’t much to do, so there are compromises. You should take the ferry over and just walk around.”

Comic-book creator Donna Barr, who’s lived in Bremerton for about a decade now, agrees its art-capability’s there:

“We’ve a couple of very nice galleries downtown, and there are a lot of people who are involved. There is a first-Friday artwalk that receives a lot of attention, as well as various sidewalk art-days throughout the year.

“A downtown business, ‘Just Your Cup Of Tea,’ sponsors a first-Friday reading for local writers and poets. I have been asked to be one of the featured readers for August.”

Washington has no real “art colony” towns at this point, except for the Olympia music scene and the now-totally-touristified LaConner. Could Bremerton, a waterfront community whose economy ebbs and flows with the fluctuating scale of projects at the Naval Shipyard, become such a place? Or will the Upscale simply ruin that place as well?

TOMORROW: The Blank Generation or the new Silent Generation

UPDATE: If you were intrigued by Monday’s Safeco Field item, you might be interested in a book all about subsidized stadia, Field of Schemes. (Its author claims Montreal’s Olympic Stadium actually cost more than Safeco; but that structure was built, as the name implies, not specifically for baseball but for the ’76 Olympics of Nadia Comaneci fame, so Safeco might still be the costliest baseball-only park ever built.)