Every day I walk home from work along 5th Avenue heading north from downtown Seattle towards the Space Needle. Every day I shoot a glance up at our white inselberg towering above me and I think back to the Seattle World's Fair of 1962 and wonder what it must have been like to have attended, or to have lived in Seattle prior to the Fair and then observed the changes which occurred as a result of the Fair construction.
I think back to how, in 1957, the Soviets jumpstarted the space race and how Sputnik catalyzed and exacerbated three more decades of Cold War paranoia. This paranoia certainly contributed to the Seattle Fair organizing committee's ability to obtain funding for their "Better Living Through Modern Science" themed expo, and paved the way for Boeing's "Spacearium" exhibit.
But it is Steinbrueck's futuristic Space Needle which remains vividly as our monument to space, to a future which has already come and gone. And what about The Needle's partner, the futuristic train we call The Monorail? My 5th Avenue view of The Needle is frequently interrupted by The Monorail's vestigial concrete support beams and that useless dual track leading 1.3 miles from Seattle Center to Westlake Mall. The Monorail has not operated since Thanksgiving when there was a collision between two coaches. (For those of you not familiar with The Monorail, you might be asking yourself: "How can a MONOrail have dual tracks and two coaches? Doesn't 'mono' mean 'one'"? Good question.)
Why is The Monorail still there? Why is 5th Avenue still blighted by more than a mile of useless concrete monstrosities? My parents' generation should be satisfied to have one remaining momument to their era, and that is The Needle. That's enough.
And what is my generation's lasting legacy? What will we build? We have built and destroyed a Kingdome; we have destroyed a Coliseum and rebuilt a virtual look-alike which is now about to be vacated; we have built condos and townhouses with too much crappy LP siding; we have razed the Issaquah Plateau and deposited an army of cookie cutter homes; we have built a really cool library which nobody will use because everyone does research on the internet now...
I have lived through Seattle's transformation from Flannel to Fleece, and I see only one real legacy for which the next generation will give us credit:
AMAZON DOT COM
Although the mall experience will never go away as long as there are teenage girls with g-strings sticking out of their pants and teenage boys with skateboards following them, it is quite possible that no new malls will ever be built in Seattle due to the evolution of online shopping. My generation has killed the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. This is our legacy.
And I'm proud of it. Future generations will thank us for killing parking garages, food courts, and the Sunglass Hut.
I think back to how, in 1957, the Soviets jumpstarted the space race and how Sputnik catalyzed and exacerbated three more decades of Cold War paranoia. This paranoia certainly contributed to the Seattle Fair organizing committee's ability to obtain funding for their "Better Living Through Modern Science" themed expo, and paved the way for Boeing's "Spacearium" exhibit.
But it is Steinbrueck's futuristic Space Needle which remains vividly as our monument to space, to a future which has already come and gone. And what about The Needle's partner, the futuristic train we call The Monorail? My 5th Avenue view of The Needle is frequently interrupted by The Monorail's vestigial concrete support beams and that useless dual track leading 1.3 miles from Seattle Center to Westlake Mall. The Monorail has not operated since Thanksgiving when there was a collision between two coaches. (For those of you not familiar with The Monorail, you might be asking yourself: "How can a MONOrail have dual tracks and two coaches? Doesn't 'mono' mean 'one'"? Good question.)
Why is The Monorail still there? Why is 5th Avenue still blighted by more than a mile of useless concrete monstrosities? My parents' generation should be satisfied to have one remaining momument to their era, and that is The Needle. That's enough.
And what is my generation's lasting legacy? What will we build? We have built and destroyed a Kingdome; we have destroyed a Coliseum and rebuilt a virtual look-alike which is now about to be vacated; we have built condos and townhouses with too much crappy LP siding; we have razed the Issaquah Plateau and deposited an army of cookie cutter homes; we have built a really cool library which nobody will use because everyone does research on the internet now...
I have lived through Seattle's transformation from Flannel to Fleece, and I see only one real legacy for which the next generation will give us credit:
AMAZON DOT COM
Although the mall experience will never go away as long as there are teenage girls with g-strings sticking out of their pants and teenage boys with skateboards following them, it is quite possible that no new malls will ever be built in Seattle due to the evolution of online shopping. My generation has killed the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. This is our legacy.
And I'm proud of it. Future generations will thank us for killing parking garages, food courts, and the Sunglass Hut.
posted by Max at 10:21 AM
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