The previous decade obviously gave Seattle a spectacular construction boom, which transformed its skyline dramatically. This decade, on the other hand, might give us a completely different kind of boom: the transportation, by public means, of millions of people around the city. In April, the month after Cross Connection opened, Link experienced an astonishing 46 percent ridership increase. The total for our light rail system: 4.6 million riders (when this Link figure is combined with the Seattle Streetcar, which I feel is woefully underrated, it’s 5 million riders). In the last decade, we were the fastest growing city; in this decade, we have, according to Urban Institute’s Yonah Freemark, “the most-ridden [light rail and streetcar lines] in the nation.” Seattle, this is a good time to pat yourself on the back.
Let’s go back to 2016. The peak of Amazon. Seattle phantom swimming in tons of cash. Our town boasts more cranes than any other US city. Seattle Times at that time: “[The 206] tops the nation in tower cranes for third straight year as construction reaches new peak.” Those were the days. Now they are receding, at a faster and faster rate, into the past. Seattle today: “[The] reduction in crane count in Seattle [continues] since August 2025 last year, particularly in the mixed-use sector.” The crane craze might never return—unless, perhaps, we take social housing (rather than luxury apartments) as a new direction for urban development.
What was that, Spencer Pratt? You’re going to send LA’s unhoused to Seattle, to our mayor Katie Wilson, if elected mayor of Tinseltown? Here’s what you said, bro:
Reporter: What are your plans for the over 40,000 homeless in Los Angeles?
Pratt: ‘Well, they’re not homeless, they’re drug addicts… These people have been bused in by scam rehabs, scam NGOs, scam homeless nonprofits.
Well, all’s well that ends well. No diggity. You did not make it to the runoff for the race. Worst still, you were beaten by a woman-of-color. Worst still, she’s socialist. And now LA has a rational choice between a centrist Dem, Karen Bass, and a Mamdani/Wilson socialist, Nithya Raman.
This is what our socialist Wilson had to say to Pratt: “What is driving homelessness is housing costs… There is a very, very clear correlation between housing costs and homelessness, and that does not mean that drugs are not a factor. They absolutely are a factor.” Well said.
Yesterday, Seattle City Council unanimously approved a bill that will put the brakes on new data centers for a year. Developers had planned to build 5 massive data centers within the city. These information factories would have done a number on Seattle’s “electrical grid capacity” and environment. Councilmember Eddie Lin and Council President Joy Hollingsworth co-sponsored the successful bill.
The connection between Mamdani and the Knick’s first appearance in the NBA Finals in 25 years is purely accidental. The former has nothing to do with the latter. Nevertheless, the Knick’s success is contributing mightily to Mamdani’s growing popularity. “Knicks provide boon to Mamdani political brand,” Politico wrote. A similar connection might be made between our mayor, Katie Wilson, and the return of the Sonics. However, this connection will have, if realized, a little meat to it because Wilson, along with Councilmember Rob Saka, sponsored a resolution for 2027 bond measure that would fund the redevelopment of Seattle Center. The resolution, which was “unanimously approved” yesterday by the Seattle City Council, is seen, with good reason, as “a push for [the] potential Sonics return.”
Socialists? They’ve been with capitalism from the very beginning. What do they demand at the end of the day? The reduction of the social costs generated by a system, capitalism, that only rewards those who seek, indifferently and endlessly, one thing: the private accumulation of wealth.
The founder of political economy, Thomas Hobbes, famously described life in a “state of nature” as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” This statement is not as simple as it looks. In it, we see, among other things, a striking description of capitalistist competition. Indeed, the word “competition,” according to the historian David Wooton, first appeared in 1600 (a year that might mark the birth of capitalism). But I do not want to spend your whole morning going on about ancient and dusty Hobbes. I just want to say that his book Leviathan is not only the first important work of economics but also of socialism, a political program that counters the distressing effects of competition: being alone, being poor, being nasty, being brutish, and being sick. Leviathan is much closer to Mamdani than Trump.
Back to our times: Seattle is dying yet again, according to a story in the Financial Times. Last year, this temperate city by the sea was rated as the second-best place in the US for foreign investments. This year, it dropped to the 11th position. Geekwire reports that the city’s challenging “business climate” caused its Icarus-like fall. One tech leader went so far as to say that the city’s once glorious culture of innovation got “kneecaped” by local politics. Two things: Boston—whose mayor, Michelle Wu, is every bit as progressive as Seattle’s—is at the top of the list. Two, a recent survey found that Seattle has one of the “stickiest” downtowns in the US. Meaning, our central business district “is not suffering from a visitation problem.” In fact, Gensler Research Institute, the organization that conducted the survey, says people are not only “showing up” there but also hanging around. Enough said.
By the way, the weather in June has so far been the stuff of my vampirish dreams. Some rain, some clouds, never hot. Today, we will experience a lovely low of 50 and a more than tolerable high of 66. But all of this wonderfulness might end on Monday, the first World Cup game in Seattle. Those in the business of predicting weather expect temperatures to reach a hellish, devilish, cruel, recordbreaking 91. Goodbye my friends, it’s easy to die when the sun is all in the sky.
Well, we are now stuck with the controversial Graham Platner. Yesterday, he won, despite all of the bad press and accusations, Maine’s Democratic Senate primary. If he beats the awful Sen. Susan Collins, which is still a possibility, then we must hope and pray that he doesn’t become another bloody Fetterman.
Because time is on my mind, I want to end Slog AM with Max Roach/Abbey Lincoln “Driva’ Man.” What is important here is the drum solo that concludes the video. It is at once what Gregory Isaacs called “a whip, a whip” with what a drummer must keep, time. And this is the genius of Max Roach’s solo. He presents the temporality of modernity (or what the Danish political philosopher Søren Mau calls “mute compulsion”) as an abstraction of the master’s whip.
