Seattle’s Gloomiest Summer Ever – Slog

On Friday the 13th, I had some free time to visit parts of Seattle that I had neglected. Georgetown was one of those places. Although not far from where I live (Columbia City), the neighborhood hasn’t been on my radar for over a year. What you won’t find in the days leading up to the pandemic is this type of negligence. In 2019, for example, I was a regular in some bars and restaurants there. At the end of 2018, I even shot a scene for my film Thin Skin in Georgetown.

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The scene was inspired by a June 2017 visit to Sisters and Brothers, a Nashville-style eatery that was relocated to the southwest side of Queen Anne before the pandemic. What I saw from the windows of the Georgetown restaurant, and later from its unstable roof, was a stream of small and medium-sized planes landing at Boeing Field, officially called King County International Airport. Many of the planes were elegant private jets. The richest of the rich came home while I was eating spicy fried chicken and thick vegetables.

Here is the description of the King County airport:

[It] serves small commercial passenger airlines, freight carriers, private aircraft owners, helicopters, corporate jets, as well as military and other aircraft. It is also home to various Boeing Company operations as well as the Museum of Flight. We’re frequent thanks to our location just four miles south of downtown Seattle and close to other business centers Hosts celebrities, dignitaries and sports teams.

In short, the Seattle rich have their own airport. And if you don’t have the money to own a private jet, you can rent one with a few other mid-range passengers at one of the airport’s private terminals.

In 2019, the Seattle Times used these words to describe this lesser but significant luxury (especially when compared to the public terminals at Sea-Tac International Airport): “[Two] hours [can be saved] by departing from private jet terminals, where passengers can bypass security lines and arrive just 20 minutes before their scheduled departure times. ”This is called“ the freedom of private travel ”.

These luxury planes not only fly over the small shops and houses of Georgetown, but also over a floating slum of RVs. I filmed this slum on wheels at the end of 2019. The campers were parked by the airport chain link fence. It was an appearance (or essence) one would expect from a third world country with a strong Gini coefficient. Above the jets of the rich, below the homeless in mobile homes. This appearance only intensified in the two years that the autumn shoot and my summer visit on Friday, the 13th airport fence, campers near the railroad tracks. And above all, private aircraft after private aircraft, private jet after private jet.

And to make the moment even more impressive, the sky in British Columbia was filled with smoke from forest fires.

Canadian #real estate in a hot market that nobody likes … “Climate risks could reshape Canadian real estate markets, say some experts,” as posted by @emmapaling via @CBCNews #vanre #vanpoli https://t.co/uAdcugjDwR. told
– Andy Yan (@ Ayan604) August 16, 2021

And so the sun began to set on this scene of extreme inequality, on an alien planet that cannot be endured without an apparatus that cleans or directly supplies life-giving air. And before I saw this bad sky with its smoke and its luxury jets and those crumbling RVs, in one of the bars I went to, I saw a clerk dealing with a man denied entry because he didn’t have a vaccination card .

The man’s anger threatened to explode. The restaurant clerk (a young blue-haired woman) was determined but prepared for the worst. The cardless man eventually stormed out of the bar. (Would he come back with a gun?) This scene, which took place in the middle of another heat wave (it was over 90 degrees thanks to the Capitalocene), became common during the fifth wave of the pandemic. (I saw a similar scene in a bar on Beacon Hill, a bar owner in Capitol Hill told me a similar story, and so on.)

Thanks to Mayor Jenny Durkan, the city is sleepwalking through a state that requires attention and speed. Small businesses are really on their own right now. You have to do what the city officially has not done, which is to protect workers from the new and exceptionally dangerous breed of anti-Vaxxers.

We have entered the zombie phase of the pandemic. The zombies are the unvaccinated. You are everywhere in this apocalypse of wildfire smoke, exceptionally high temperatures, and homelessness that flourishes among billionaires. All I tried was to hit a couple of bars in Georgetown and all I saw was the world around me was ending. This is the darkest summer ever.

Let’s end this post with a doom jazz tune by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, “Come Back To Me”.

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