'My favorite block': Differing perspectives on Seattle's infamous 3rd and Pike
SEATTLE -- Everyone who lives in Seattle can recount a tale about the 3rd Avenue corridor. Drunken brawls. Open air drug deals.
For a while now, many of the best -- and worst -- anecdotes of the infamous block are being collected on the Twitter page @3rdandPike, adding fuel to an ever-stoked fire of calls for change in the area.
It's hard to deny 3rd and Pike is colorful. But disgusting, much less dangerous? It's largely a matter of perspective. And ideas about the block range not just from the person to person, but within individuals themselves.
Conflicting thoughts and numbers
Long before @3rdandPike began tweeting, the corridor had a reputation. As the story goes, roughnecks, dealers, homeless and others began to congregate at the major bus hub 15 years ago, when an increased drive by the city to beautify Pike Place Market brought a crackdown on their favorite hangout. In an effort to appease police, dealers and hangers-on moved a few blocks northeast to 3rd Avenue between Pike and Pine.
There, the dealers set up shop, bringing with them customers and addicts. Soon the place became home to many, lauded as a seemingly perfect place to loiter under the guise of waiting for the next transit bus.
Within months, the blights of addiction and unaddressed mental health problems plagued the block, and to the disgust of many, stepping in a pile of vomit or being called bitch for simply climbing onto a bus became common place.
"I've seen it all," says a tall, nicely dressed man who only identifies himself as Oldschool.
Oldschool claims to have stood on the block every day for 16 years.
"I've seen people selling watches, flights, people passed out on the streets," Oldschool said. "You can see everything."
With disgust came unrest, and it didn't take long for Johnny Bus Rider and others to complain against the loitering and dealing; much less the vomit on their shoes. Calls rang out at city hall to reform of the block. Patrols were stepped up. Businesses tried to shoe away loiterers in front of their store. But the people remained, and some riders continue to call for a mop.
"I've talked with police and they don't do anything," bus rider Joel Goldsmith says. "The city needs to do something. It's gross and dangerous. It needs to change."
Is it Dangerous?
Despite Goldsmith's and others' assertions, whether the block is any more dangerous than any other area of the city is an interesting questions, and can often depend on who you ask.
A 2012 Seattle Transit Blog study found 3rd and Pike safer than many other areas in the city, especially given the amount of people downtown. Yet a 2011 Seattle Times article details a bevy of violent offenses. For each study or claim available online, an opposite can be found.
Even Seattle police seem somewhat torn on the question, leaning toward the proclamation that the corridor is no more dangerous than the rest of the city, saying danger of harm, theft or harassment is more perceived than real.
"There's just a higher perceived rate of crime because of the amount of people in the area," SPD Sgt. Patrick Michaud said.
Still, the language seems like public relations speech, and a quick glance at all the cops in the area at every time of day would question Michaud's assertion that the SPD pays no more attention to the corridor than other areas of downtown. So too would a Memorandum of Understanding between the County, the City and the Downtown Seattle Association signed two years ago to increase "patrolling and cleanliness" in the area.
Though crime statistics might not necessarily point to more crime, perception is different. There are plenty like Lindsey Grace, a skinny, affluent woman who works at a healthcare organization on the block.
Grace is, like many, adamant that she doesn't FEEL comfortable on the block. Whether or not she is actually safe is not the issue.
"Not a day goes by where I don't get yelled at when I get off the bus," Grace tells me passionately. "I've gotten used to it. And it sucks that I've gotten used to it."
Grace says she's never been stabbed or robbed, but the constant harassment and looks are enough to make her question heavily her safety, more than on any other block in the city.
And it's the "Not a day goes by" without an incident mentality that lead a British national who has worked above the block for four years to start the 3rd and Pike Twitter account.
"Marijuana, anyone need marijuana?" -12 y/o boy
For someone who has never been to the block, the 3rd and Pike Twitter account would seem hyperbole.
But as Twitter account founder Joe Britain -- who did not use his real name in fear that his employers or someone on the street would recognize him -- will attest to, the whacky, distasteful quotes often overheard at the intersection are real. Working in the area and stepping off the bus every day, "Where's the crack," and "I didn't sleep with your father," were just a few of the things he heard at the eclectic stop.
It may have been after a particularly ridiculous snippet that he and his coworkers decided to begin emailing their favorite quotes back and forth with the hashtag, 3rdandPike. As a ridiculous amount of off-color remarks piled up, it became clear to Britain that he needed to compile everything in one place for the public to see.
In March 2013 he decided to compile his favorite ones on a Twitter. Before long, @3rdandPike garnered 100 followers. Then 1000. Some media outlets even noticed the handle.
"I just starting tweeting stuff that I heard that caught my eye and it just caught on" Britain said. "It suddenly caught on and people started making their own submissions."
Britain's brand of realism is indeed peppered with exaggerations. But his Twitter handle wouldn't have gained so much attention if it wasn't mostly true, he says. He freely admits he paints the block in a tragically humorous light, and sees how most will come to the Twitter account for a few chuckles at not-so-gentle mocking of those on the block.
"It's very literally deriving humor from other people's misfortunes," he says. "But it's deeper than that."
Britain claims that at least part of the Twitter -- besides the obvious chuckle -- is to point out the problems behind the tragic humor in a social observation.
"It's to remind you how screwed up things are," he said.
Behind the Tweets of feces on the sidewalk and obscenities flying are a bevy of social problems that need to be addressed before people like Grace and Goldsmith feel safe walking down the block, Britain said.
Many of the people who call the block their defacto home are "massively disadvantaged," he says.The issue -- which in by no means is confided to 3rd and Pike -- is one of mental health, addiction and homelessness; all serious problems in Seattle, he says. The Twitter -- however bizarrely -- is a way to drive popular attentions to the problem.
"There are two kinds of people that look at the Twitter," he said. "The people who laugh at it and at the people who are concerned by it. Maybe it can draw attention to help."
Britain is not naive. He knows that most of the followers are there for the laughs, and perhaps it's too grandiose and self-serving to image the Twitter is helping anyone. Yet he reminds those who do simply find it funny one thing:
"I think it is unwarranted to feel unsafe there," he says. "It's icky, and that's what the Twitter points to. But just because there's addiction and homeless problems, doesn't mean it's unsafe."
"My favorite block"
Oldschool, the man who claims he's stood on the block every day for 16 years, easily agrees with Britain. Sure, there may be slightly more assaults and petty crimes committed on the block, but it's always between the people "asking for trouble," as he puts it. Crime on crime.
"This block is as safe as can be," Oldschool says while casually puffing on a Swisher Sweet. "Things go down. But regular folk doing regular things don't get bothered"
Oldschool works at a law firm up the street. He says everyday for lunch he comes down to the block, nodding casually at the people he's met and got to know throughout the years. A self-proclaimed encyclopedia of the block, he easily recalls the time the McDonalds on the corner blasted country music in an attempt to quell the loitering, or the time he found a wallet with hundreds of dollars cash strewn about the streets.
Oldschool finds so much to love in the block -- the sites, the sounds -- he comes to the block on his day off.
"You can't beat the people watching," he says. "It's my favorite block."
Oldschool -- who claims he knows nothing of Twitter or the 3rd and Pike account -- admits that he sees open air drug deals all the time, and he understands that can make people unconformable. But maybe the passersbye with their eyes down to the concrete who often complain about the block should look inward, not away in distaste, he says.
"People don't like to see others who are socially different than them," Britain says. " A lot of people object to the block simply because they don't like to look at homelessness. Don't want to be reminded more bluntly."
Oldschool, in his long overcoat, untrimmed fingernails and Swisher Sweet puts it more personally.
"I see people I work with, nice people, walk by," he said. "They're afraid to say anything to me on this block. Then I see them at work and they say high."
It's futile to try to move the homeless and the dealers on the block, Oldschool says. They'd just move somewhere else, likely down to South Seattle or Rainier Beach, places Oldschool considers much more dangerous.
"I never head down there."
Finishing up my chat with Oldschool and others, I move towards the 7-11 and have the most poignant chat of my time at 3rd and Pike. There stands a cute, 21-year-old short blonde girl waiting for the bus. As her bus approaches, I ask Kat Curtis what she thinks of the block. She says -- like Grace -- it makes her uncomfortable. When I ask her why, she considers for a moment before stepping away.
"Maybe it doesn't," she says. "I'm from Cincinnati, and this is nothing."