MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive NO (CULTURE) WAR

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NO (CULTURE) WAR

July 23rd, 2010 by Clark Humphrey

Jordan Royer at Crosscut thinks there’s aÂ “quiet culture war” dividing Seattle.

Royer sees the drive for completing the Burke-Gilman Trail in Ballard, and the drive against a deep-bore tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, as marks of an artsy PC tree-hugging elite sneering at what’s left of Seattle’s industrial heritage.

Look: The working-family manufacturing economy has been in decline all over the country. If anything, Seattle’s damn lucky to have other things to replace it with.

We can do what we can to maintain the making-real-stuff businesses we’ve still got, AND service the more rarified citizenry as well.

2 Responses

Ries writes:
July 25th, 20103:01 pmat

I read that, and thought it was silly.
As an artist who lived and worked in Industrial areas of Seattle for many years, I think artists and industry are VERY compatible.
Its software companies, coffee companies, and wealthy downtown loft living that drives industry out.

Artists coexist with industry just fine.
Artists, it is well known, have no money. They do NOT buy half million dollar loft conversions on 1st Avenue South, or turn Ballard into boutiques and trendy tea parlors.

As an artist, I always took my lead from the Jefferson Airplane- “everything we do either makes noise or stinks” and nice young yuppie condo dwellers find me just as offensive as real industry.
Ed Whitson writes:
July 26th, 201010:59 amat

Artists are the stormtroopers of development and gentrification. They clear a neighborhood so the ‘nice young yuppie condo dwellers’ can move in. Don’t fool yourself, Ries — yuppies and artists are two sides of the same card. Artists are nothing special.