YESTERDAY, we began a discussion of how much different the world, and Seattle, was back in those halcyon days of September 1998 (when I last had a major role at a certain tabloid).
But I’d only begun to touch on the flip side of the tech boom–whose repercussions persist to this day.
The money was a-flowin’ from the venture capital funds and the day-traders, into the tech companies, and from there into hyper-energized markets in real estate and luxury goods.
But the non-techie workforce (and the less privileged classes within the tech firms) shared little in that largesse and suffered from the responding upheavals.
You know the drill: Evictions, obscene rent hikes, stagnant real wages, Microsoft’s “perma-temp” fiasco, funky old buildings replaced by pretentious/expensive new ones, monster SUVs clogging the streets, cell phones blaring in movie theaters, and “market price” foodie restaurants popping up everywhere.
The meta-result: A highly visible socioeconomic caste system, in a town that used to pretend not to have one.
Those supposedly halcyon days may have passed (or at least peaked), but the divisions remain, and so do the stereotypes popular then.
To many of today’s Demographically Correct, the Demographically Incorrect were lazy good-for-nothings who can’t get with the program.
To many of today’s Demographically Incorrect, the Demographically Correct were snotty bullies who’ve sacrified their souls on the altar of unrestrained greed.
Now, thousands of onetime dot-com hot-shots face layoffs, foreclosures, bankruptcy, and underwater stock options. Maybe they, and we, can start learning to see one another as just folks trying to get by.
NEXT:The movie Shrek and the Seattle mayoral election.
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