A year later. Time to duplicate the experiment.

Results: rather boring convergence. A lot more of a happy-talk focus on tourists and their interests. A lot less of an emphasis on most everything else.

I started again with lesser-known Mahalo.com, whose slogan is “Learn Anything.” I’d say it’s the search engine that really needs some learnin’.  Besides grammatical mistakes, the first page of Seattle results had false political facts (Greg Nickels listed as the mayor instead of Mike McGinn, who has held the job for three years), out-of-date data (the 2006 population for Seattle, nearly 40,000 less than the current estimate of 621,000) and simply incorrect information. Four of the seven listed “notable companies” of Seattle, for example, are actually based outside the city (Boeing, Microsoft, T-Mobile and Eddie Bauer). It was the one search engine displaying results with the least orientation toward visitors. Not to mention toward accuracy.

Then I moved to Yippy.com. This one did a lot better than last year. The first page coughed up what I suppose is an obligatory link to the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” Relying heavily on Wikipedia, the Yippy page linked to entries about Seattle history and, perhaps less usefully, West Seattle and the Metro Bus Tunnel. There was also a reference to that U.S. Postal Service list I wrote about recently ranking Seattle No. 2 in dog bites sustained by letter-carriers.  Other links produced weather and information about the semi-hapless Seattle Mariners. Recent news stories on the page, which might reflect the interest of visitors, included the collapse of the Sacramento Kings grab and Seattle’ municipal effort to mandate paid sick leave. In my judgment, Yippy produced the broadest quick picture of Seattle of any search engine I used.

DuckDuckGo.com, the oddly named search engine that largely relies on other search engines, returned a page of information largely geared to tourists. This included links to the tourism promotion agency VisitSeattle.org, various travel guides and booking agencies. For some reason the home page of Seattle University also made the opening screen.

Moving toward better-known search engines, Yahoo.com also produced a page skewed to tourists, but with an illuminating twist. The third result, behind a Yahoo travel page and the City of Seattle website, was a link to University Village, the shopping center just north of the University of Washington campus. I suppose someone in the University Village management has mastered the dark arts of search engine optimization.

The Yahoo results were almost identical to those generated by Microsoft-owned Bing.com. This is not surprising since Bing now handles searches for Yahoo. I can’t say the local control of Bing yielded additional insight into Seattle. But stressing the visual a little more, Bing also served up images of the Emerald City. Of course, four of the five thumbnail photos featured the Space Needle.

Finally, there’s giant Google. It has gone touristy, too. VisitSeattle.org sat at the top of the page, and there were links to TripAdvisor.com (“442 Things To Do in Seattle”)  and Fodors. There was also a link to a USA Today travel story entitled, “Take the SLUT in Seattle,” which I learned was an acronym for the South Lake Union Trolley. Still, the query did dredge up one fresh story on the Seattle Times website putting Washington State spending on public education at below the national average.

Society’s same old evolution is being played out on the Internet, I think. Entrepreneurs start out creative and distinctive until they look at their rivals, become scared and risk-averse, and start copying each other. The result is more superficiality. But after all, Seattle is such a nice place to visit.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

A couple weeks ago, Bankrate.com, a well-known consumer financial services website,  produced a ranking of states as places to retire. By its calculations, Washington State was the third worst for golden-years living, trailing only Oregon and Alaska.

The teasing write-up–”Despite its stunning natural beauty,” it began–cited cost-of-living and crime rates above the national average and an average annual temperature of 48.7 degrees. “The Evergreen State is one of the colder states in the nation,” Bankrate.com declared. And as for taxes–usually a key factor in these listings–Bankrate.com cited Tax Foundation data putting Washington State’s average tax burden on its citizens in the middle of the 50-state pack despite the absence of a state income tax. As I have noted here before, those states lacking a state income tax have a funny way of making up the revenue loss with higher other taxes, most notably on real estate.

The absence of Washington State venues from such lists is the norm. Check out the current list at U.S. News & World Report. And this one at the Huffington Post.  And this one by MarketWatch.com. And this new one of best retirement places for baby boomers. Over the years, I have been the compiler of many retirement-place lists for Forbes.com. This year, three have been published: an overall list focusing on value, best places for a working retirement, and top places to retire rich.

No Washington State entries on any of them.

It’s not total goose-eggs-across-the-board for Evergreen State venues. A current CNN.com list includes Bellingham, much closer to the Canadian border than to Seattle, largely on the basis of senior citizen learning programs at Western Washington University. The 100-entry-long list at TopRetirements.com includes four Washington State cities, though none in the top quarter: Seattle, Spokane, Bellingham and, on the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula, Port Townsend (which also made an AARP list of “great quirky places to retire.”)

In 2010, a one-time Forbes.com list I put together of top inner-city neighborhoods for retirement included Seattle’s Magnolia section. I’m not retired, but at least I eat my own cooking; when I became New To Seattle the following year, that’s where I settled.

Most of these lists tend to be data-driven, which is why Seattle and other Washington State places tend to fare so poorly. The cost of living, especially housing costs, is high by national standards and the tax situation iffy at best. The winters are colder (although that hasn’t stopped places in North Dakota and Montana from making some of these lists). Crime rates are low but not that low.

Scenic beauty, of which Seattle has plenty, is somewhat harder to quantify and thus gets shorter shrift. So as a retirement lure, the whales and Mount Rainier just don’t cut it.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Labrador retriever (via Wikipedia)

Poor Seattle. The U.S. Postal Service today released what it calls its “dog attack city rankings.” Seattle came in tied for second with San Antonio, both cities a good ways behind leader Los Angeles.

According to the feds, for fiscal year 2012–I guess that’s the 12-month period that ended September 30, 2012–Seattle canines took a bite out of 42 local letter carriers. There must be something about the Puget Sound. Tacoma was tied (with Dallas) for 18th on the list, at 21 nips. No. 1 Los Angeles noted 69 bites.

The list of 20 included most of the nation’s largest cities. But there were some notable exclusions, including New York City as a whole (although Brooklyn, one of city’s five boroughs, was included), Phoenix, San Diego and San Jose, Calif. Besides Tacoma, some smaller cities found themselves among the giants, including Dayton, Ohio; St. Louis, Buffalo, Wichita and, yes, hated Sacramento.

There certainly are a lot of dogs in Seattle. Trying to calculate letter carrier dog bites per dog capita strikes me as an illuminating exercise in canine civility–and maybe one that might make Seattle look better. But I can’t find quickly a reliable national list of dog ownership numbers by city.

So I did a little back-of-the-envelope figuring using humans (on the theory people are supposed to control their dogs), for which there is reliable data. By my reckoning, there was a letter carrier dog bite in Seattle for every 14,786 residents.  On this list, that worked out to be the sixth worst (the lower the number, the more frequent bites per human capita).  That, at least, was better than being tied for second worst.

In case you wondered, the five worst by this metric were Dayton (one dog bite for every 5,461 residents), Tacoma (9,524), St. Louis (9,938), Buffalo (10,875) and Minneapolis (14,370). With its large population, Los Angeles dropped from first to 16th. Of course, it’s possible that using a per-capita basis, some cities below the top 20 might move up a lot, making Seattle and other cities look, well, less vicious.

Meanwhile, my neighborhood post office branch in Seattle just ran out of stamps I needed. This was not the first nor even second time for me here, even though I never had experienced this in my pre-New To Seattle days (which is to say, my entire life). The Seattle-area post office operation is clearly not the brightest bulb on the front porch when it comes to managing or allocating its resources. Nor, it seems, to protecting its letter carriers on their appointed rounds.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

On its website, the charity claimed its charitable commitment ratio–the percentage of all expenses spent in furtherance of the stated mission, as opposed to fundraising and certain overhead expenses–was 81%, above the 65% mark considered the bottom line for respectability. After looking closely at its financial documents, I begged to differ rather considerably. By my reckoning, the charity was using gift-in-kind–donated goods, also called GIK, with questionable values that cost almost nothing to solicit–to pad its numbers and that the true charitable commitment rate was just 15%. Also, Seattle Children’s was unlikely to get more than a few pennies of any donation by me.

I quoted Dashiel Hammet’s memorable line in The Maltese Falcon: “The gaudier the patter, the cheaper the crook.”

By happenchance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy two days later published (behind a paywall) a long article about Children’s Cancer raising all kinds of issues and also coming up with that 15% number.

This morning, another shoe dropped.

The Chronicle posted an online story reporting that Children’s Cancer will restate its financials to remove $4.1 medicine of medicine the charity said it had received from another charity, World Help, and gave to a charity in Ghana.That $4.1 million is more that one-third all the contributions–cash and GIK–that Children’s Cancer claimed to have received. The charity’s brief announcement is on its website at the very bottom of this page.

World Help, which is based in Virginia and was once considered one of the country’s largest charities, is enmeshed in a epic controversy of its own over GIK valuation. In recent months it has been forced–largely as the result of other Chronicle reporting–to lower the amount of GIF received by a whopping 93%, from $239 million to $17 million. This was after other charities denied giving World Help the GIK that World Help had claimed.

That Children’s Cancer reduction included medicine the charity said it got from World Help. My suspicion is that Children’s Cancer never physically touched that medicine at all, but merely shuffled paper in an effort to claim credit for the big gift. Since I all along considered Children’s Cancer’s GIK accounting to be dubious, my 15% estimate still stands.

World Help and Children’s Cancer are hardly alone. In January I wrote a long article for Forbes.com about questionable GIK accounting by Operation Compassion, another large charity. For some earlier accounts by me of other fun and games with GIK accounting, click here and here. For its call to me, Children’s Cancer used the same paid fundraiser, Associated Community Services, whose fees were so high that one Seattle-area charity, Vietnam Veterans of Washington State,  spent absolutely nothing raised–not even one dime–on its stated charitable mission.

World Help blamed its reduction on a rogue consultant. According to The Chronicle today, Children’s Cancer’s founder, Greg Anderson, blamed his charity’s reduction on World Help’s “lack of management oversight, internal controls and transparency.”

I’d say it takes one to know one.

A task force of state attorneys general is closely scrutinizing the way charities depict their financial efficiencies to the public. To me, certain charities are going out of their way to make it very easy for the AG’s to make a case.

As always, I invite anyone in this story or interested in the issues to comment below. But hurry. By the time this is all over, the nonprofit scene may look more like the closet floor of Imelda Marcos.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Now I have to admire the spunk of the on-air talent and their producers, Erren Gottlieb and James McKenna. It cannot be easy making an artistic go of it in the humor business around Seattle. After all, this is a town known for the Seattle Freeze and where published references to tough audiences hereabouts go back more than 70 years. As I wrote in 2011 shortly after becoming New To Seattle, “My initial judgment is that a collective sense of humor here is m.i.a.”

Unfortunately, nearly two years later, I see little reason to revisit my earlier assessment–even after viewing “The 206.”

“The 206″ show I watched did have its funny moments. But a disproportionate number of them came in quirky-but-real commercials for Seattle-based PEMCO Insurance, one of the main sponsors and whose actual slogan is, “We’re a lot like you. A little different.” One spot, for instance, spoofed the windy, rainy, sunless weather of Seattle.

One of the funniest bits of produced humor was a father (Pat Cashman) getting increasingly upset watching his grown son (Chris Cashman, and his son in real life) working on his laptop to put together a memorial video to be played at the father’s funeral sometime in the future.  But the sketch had absolutely nothing to do with Seattle. Nor did a faux commercial touting an anti-virus product called ImPrettySureOneOfThosePornoWebSitesInfectedMyComputer.com

Throughout the show, there were some throw-away lines about the area. That the rich folks on Mercer Island put a lid on Interstate 90 so they wouldn’t have to see the riff-raff driving through. Fears that the giant tunnel machine digging the replacement to the Alaskan Way Viaduct might get out of control and take out homes. How, in light of recreational marijuana use legalization, Costco might sell four-pack bongs.

But in my judgment the pokes weren’t funny or barbed enough. And as for that promised political humor: totally absent. I would have enjoyed a decent impersonation or fake interview of Mayor Mike McGinn, Governor Jay Inslee or some bike-lobby zealot wearing a goofy helmet like that atop the Leif Erikson statue in Ballard.

What wasn’t absent, though, were real commercials. I know you gotta pay the bills, but in a 30-minute show I counted more than a dozen of them. I think their volume got in the way.

On top of all this, this latest episode of “The 206″ (the third of the year) wasn’t even shot in that area code. Judging from the closing credits, it was recorded before a live audience in a studio across Lake Washington in suburban Bellevue. This is in area code 425.

Now how funny is that?

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Tulips (via Wikipedia)

Spring in Seattle brings out a lot of stuff. Tulips of all hues blossoming on streets of all kinds. More frequent sun breaks, allowing clear view of gorgeous mountains. Hopeful expectations about the Seattle Mariners, ultimately unfulfilled.

And fresh warnings about what in Seattle is called “solicitor activity,” or more ominously, “aggressive solicitors.”

Now, I’m not talking about lawyers. The sounded alarm is a fear that door-to-door solicitors are really looking for empty homes they can burglarize and make off with loot. It’s not at all clear to me this is a significant problem in Seattle, which overall is a pretty safe place. But in my nearly two years here since becoming New To Seattle, it sure gets the generally liberal population riled up. And for some reason, it’s when the weather starts to warm up (even though my door gets knocked on year-round).

In March, a subscriber-only email list in the Magnolia neighborhood, where I live, carried a flurry of reports about “suspicious solicitors,” as one entry was headed.

On the other side of Elliott Bay, “warnings have been issued about aggressive door-to-door ‘sales people’ in West Seattle, where there have reports of fights with homeowners and possible break-ins,” began a breathless report last month on KCPQ-TV, the local Fox affiliate that hardly anyone seems to watch. “Police said the so-called solicitors come to your doorstep with any number of reasons for being there, selling magazines for charity, or for their school, or a trip or an athletic team, even for a church. Maybe they really are selling magazines; maybe they’re not.”

West Seattle Blog, covering the part of town where Amanda Knox grew up, seems to be Internet Central when it comes to expressing outrage about solicitors. A recent post about an arrest in the Admiral area of someone going door to door professing to be raising money for a sports team quickly generated 56 comments. “Hang him,” advised one commenter. “Sounds like a very flaky and dangerous individual,” said another. Many recounted their own experiences with and offered advise, generally along the lines of keep the door shut and call the cops.

I saw one voice of reasoned understanding:

Look, people, we can’t lose our humanity or automatically assume the worst when confronted with strangers. Especially in a down economy, there will be legitimate people going door to door or in need of assistance. Haven’t any of you ever been in a situation where a kind stranger saved the day for you? I know I have, many times. Of course we need to be wary of aggressive people whose stories don’t add up, using our common sense and reporting to police if necessary, but please don’t assume anyone asking you anything in public is automatically up to no good.

Last year, I wrote here that I have never been in a town with more homes sporting “no solicitation” signs than Seattle. While I suppose there’s some kind of linkage with the aforementioned fear of solicitor-based crime, I still see the stay-away notices mainly as a manifestation of that oft-talked-about phenomenon called the Seattle Freeze.

Ah, spring in Seattle. The sounds of chirping birds and knocks at the front door.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Time to lighten up a bit, you say? Okay. My model here will be the TV hit “Seinfeld,” famously described as a “show about nothing.” I’m going to present stuff around town I’ve seen since becoming New To Seattle that might means nothing–or something. You be the judge.

Seattle Tulip, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

Let’s start with the Seattle Tulip.

That’s an painted three-ton steel sculpture downtown at the local Wells Fargo headquarters, Third Avenue and Madison Street. Installed in 1988, it was the work of Tom Wesselmann (1931-2004). He was a worldwide leader in the Pop Art movement, which drew inspiration from popular culture but which some said was a little light on art. Art critic John T. Young, whose website is called “You Call That Art?!“, doesn’t think much of the Seattle Tulip. He described it as “an example of corporate decoration” that “does not provoke or stimulate intellectual thinking…it is merely visual eye candy.”  Of course, tulips are a very popular flower in Seattle. Wesselmann, who worked in several media, probably was better known in art circles for drawing faceless nude women, so he might have seemed like an unlikely choice for the commission. But as it turns out, many of his paintings had tulips in the background, so at least he had some botany creds.

Giant Red Popsicle, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

Speaking of pop, a few blocks away, at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Blanchard Street, sits the Giant Red Popsicle. And I mean giant: 17 feet tall. The creator is veteran Seattle artist Catherine Mayer. One reason she got the commission, it seems, is because she’s married to real estate developer Martin Selig, who owned the property. He’s responsible for many notable protects–including the 76-story-high Columbia Tower, Seattle’s tallest building. Made of steel, the popsicle is only two years old. But it’s already become a popular backdrop for camera-wielding tourists, some of whom pretend to take a lick. Despite a lack of obvious symbolism, the Pop (if I may be so informal) occasions outbursts of enthusiasm. “Seriously, whoever created this should be given the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness,” one Seattle blogger wrote. “This is simply one of the greatest things ever made by human hands. Go check it out and pay homage to its brilliance.”

She sculpture, Seattle (both via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

He sculpture, Seattle

Selig is behind more than his share of public art in Seattle. Near the Pop are facing parking benches with life-sized bronze statues of a sitting man (officially called “He”) and a woman (officially called “She”), both of an older age. The man is stretching, with his hat on the bench besides him. The woman has a bag of groceries next to her. It’s unclear if either is aware of the other’s presence or if this could be the start of some later-in-life romance a la the Jack Nicholson-Diane Keaton movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” The sculptures were raised in 1979 by Howard Garnitz, an Illinois-trained artist who specializes in figurative art. The park benches are extra long so real humans can sit next to the fake humans and have their photos taken.

The Itinerant, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

Is hanging around and not doing much part of the Seattle DNA? Up on Capitol Hill at Broadway Avenue E. and E. Harrison Street is The Itinerant, an aluminum sculpture of a man sleeping on a park bench with a newspaper covering his face. The artist is Richard Beyer (1925-2012), who was responsible for a lot of public art around Seattle, most famously People Waiting For The Interurban, in the Fremont neighborhood. The Itinerant was put up in 1981 as part of what one website says was a “major facelift” of the area by local merchants. It may or may not be a coincidence that Seattle has a significant homeless problem.

Okay.

Three Dogs Chasing A Rat, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

If something connoting a little more action floats your boat, in Regrade Park at Third Avenue and Bell Street stands Three Dogs Chasing A Rat. The carved sandstone sculptures depict a trio of canines looking for a rodent, which is hiding nervously under a ledge. This work, too, was fashioned by Beyer. The sculpture went up in 1978. I don’t know any of the back story behind its commissioning. But Regrade Park now includes an off-leash dog section, which seems appropriate. No word about off-leash rats.

Vertebrae, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

Now Seattle is a major medical center, so why not some public art of individual body parts? Located at 1001 Fourth Avenue is Vertebrae, a three-piece bronze sculpture in a reflective pool. It certainly looks like the way my back feels after a day of refereeing youth soccer in Seattle. The work was erected in 1968. The artist is Henry Moore (1898-1986), an English sculptor known for abstractions of the human body. “Each of the forms, although different, has the same basic shape,” a 1988 book quoted Moore as saying. “Just as in a backbone which may be made up of twenty segments where each one is roughly like the others but not exactly the same…This is why I call these sculptures Vertebrae. The two or three forms are basically alike but are arranged to go with each other in different positions.”

Angie’s Umbrella, Seattle (via SeattleOutdoorArt.com)

Finally, as I wrote earlier this month, Seattle residents for some reason have quite an antipathy to umbrellas or other forms of rain garb. Maybe one reason can be found in Angie’s Umbrella. It’s a 30-foot-high painted metal depiction of an inside-out umbrella–you know, the unpleasant result of a heavy wind, which can flail about and hit nearby pedestrians. The structure is located in a traffic island where Western Avenue and Elliott Avenue come together at Lenora Street just north of Pike Place Market.  Raised in 2003, it was fashioned by Seattle artists Jim Pridgeon and Benson Shaw, and named for Pridgeon’s mother. But there also are some practical functions. It’s a giant weather vane that indicates the direction of the wind  And it pinwheels in the wind, giving a sense of the velocity.

What would Seinfeld think of all this?

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Following four years in an Italian prison, Knox returned to her native Seattle upon winning her first appeal in 2011 just a few months after I became New To Seattle. Since then, however, I hardly ever have heard her name mentioned during casual conversations in Seattle, where the 25-year-old has resumed her studies at the University of Washington. I know from old media accounts that her cause crucially received a lot of important Seattle support. But although still functioning, the Friends of Amanda Knox website hasn’t been updated since her release. Locals now are more likely to return to chattering about coffee, salmon, the weather or the possible return of an NBA franchise.

I think the feeling in Seattle is she’s been through enough, so leave her alone. In a city known for the Seattle Freeze, that’s sort of the norm, anyway.

From time to time, I get asked about Knox by my friends and acquaintances–living thousands of miles from Seattle. As I see it, interest in Knox grows the farther one gets from Seattle–Barbara Walters listed her as one of the 10 most fascinating people of 2011–but Walters works out of New York City. The inverse relationship between distance and interest is especially demonstrated in England, where the narrative in the jingoistic press there seems to be she got away with killing British college student Meredith Kircher, who also was studying in Perugia, Italy.

I personally have no idea whatsoever whether Knox is guilty or innocent. I haven’t read any of the many previous books about the case, nor seen any of the movies or documentaries. Early reviews of her first-person account, Waiting to be Heard: A Memoir, suggest Knox, now 25, ably argues her side, which seemed to turn on a lot of obscure circumstantial evidence. She reportedly got a hefty $4 million advance from HarperCollins, money that I imagine helped pay off what had to be huge accumulated bills for her defense.

The HarperCollins press release announcing the book deal promised “a full and unflinching account of the events.” Maybe. This is sheer speculation by me, but I have to think that her legal team carefully vetted her original manuscript to remove anything that prosecutors in Italy might be able to use against her in a retrial or other future proceedings.  I might suspect that was one reason the publication date was pushed back two months to April 30. (In the United Kingdom–home of the murdered student–publication was delayed indefinitely, due to what was described as problems with England’s strict libel laws.)

To me, comparing the original manuscript to see what was changed or deleted from the published version could be very illuminating. But I rather doubt anyone on the outside will get that opportunity.  My guess is that the papers are in some lawyer’s safe marked as non-releasable attorney-client material, or shredded and sent, in the grand tradition of Seattle’s green persona, to a trash recycling center. Either way, part of the big yawn.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Confederate Veteran’s Memorial, Seattle (via United Daughters of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee Chapter 885, Seattle)

Surprisingly, Seattle, the liberal seat of King County–renamed for Martin Luther King Jr., who visited once–actually has a Confederate War Veteran’s Memorial. But given the city’s outrageously segregationist past (and the fact that a white church snubbed King during his 1961 visit), maybe it’s not that surprising. The monument is located in venerable Lake View Cemetery, whose clearly embarrassed managers conspicuously have left it off the walking-tour map given to visitors while including all sorts of now-terribly-obscure personages. The memorial was erected in 1926 at the behest of Confederate veterans, or more likely, their widows. A 10-ton slab of granite was cut out of Georgia’s Stone Mountain–where the Ku Klux Klan famously reinvented itself just 11 years earlier–and shipped to Seattle via the Panama Canal.

According to an account on the website of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee Chapter 885 in Seattle, which still exists, local tombstone maker Edward G. Messett and well-known Seattle sculptor James Wehn (1882-1973), who fashioned the 100-year-old Chief Seattle statue along Denny Way, combined to design and build the memorial. Its unveiling and dedication was a big deal at the time.

Hiker Memorial Statue, Seattle (via seattleoutdoorart.com)

Thanks to the specter of death, wars are always evocative. Three miles to the northeast at the Woodland Park Zoo, Greenwood Avenue N. and N. 50th Street, sits the Hiker Memorial Statue. The tall bronze statue commemorates the soldiers who had to tramp through hostile terrains during the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Spanish-American War, centered in Cuba,  and the far-lesser-known Philippine-American War. The Hiker was erected in 1926–the same year as the Confederate War Veteran’s Memorial. The sculptor was Allen G. Newman (1875-1940), who worked out of New York City.

The statue on a monument is considered a masterpiece. But to be brutally frank about it, the statue was a knock-off. There are about 20 of Newman’s Hikers around the country, most of them put up before Seattle’s. But it’s still the only one on the West Coast.

World Flight Monument, Seattle (via City of Seattle)

If you want a little more site-specific history, at the entrance to sprawling Magnuson Park, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, sits the World Flight Monument, also known as the Round-The-World Flight Monument. Long before the construction of Sea-Tac Airport south of Seattle, the Sand Point Airfield sat just north of the University of Washington campus along Lake Washington. And it was from there that the first circumnavigation of the globe by air started and ended. Four two-seat Army planes (back then there was no Air Force), each with two pilots, took off, heading west. After crashes and other harrowing adventures, two finally made it back.  The trip took awhile–175 days. But it was huge world news at the time.

The achievement, though, was totally overshadowed three years later in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh flew by himself in barely a day from New York to Paris.  Still, the monument–a granite monument topped with bronze wings–was fashioned by Seattle transplant Alonzo Victor Lewis (1888-1946) and raised the same year as the historic round-the-world flight.

George Washington statue, University of Washington, Seattle (via waymarking.com)

Now, you might expect the largest city in a state named after George Washington to be full of formal man-made homages to the great man. But the only physical monument I know of is the lofty bronze statue gracing the University of Washington campus at 15th Avenue NE and NE Campus Parkway. It was raised in 1909 for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a sort of regional world’s fair. The grounds with their breathtaking views of water and Mount Rainier became UW.

The sculptor was Lorado Taft (1860-1936), who worked out of Chicago and was no fan of modern art. It was only when a 24-foot-high stone monument base was added in 1939 that the statue achieved its current commanding presence.  But George has been known to suffer the indignities of pigeon poop and, college students being what they are, assorted pranks, including being adorned with a Bart Simpson mask. 

James J. Hill bust (via University of Washington)

The UW campus sports another interesting historical depiction. There is a giant bronze bust atop a marble pedestal of James J. Hill. Name doesn’t ring a bell? He was the mogul dubbed the Empire Builder who in 1893 brought the transcontinental Great Northern Railway into Seattle, and did it without a government handout. That positioned the city for the start of its economic greatness when the Alaska Gold Rush of 1896 lured tens of thousands of gold seekers–mostly going through Seattle. Hill (1838-1916) himself lived in Minnesota.

The Hill bust, by Norway native Finn Frolich (1868-1947), is one of the few in Seattle that actually was unveiled in the presence of its inspiration. That was in 1909 when Hill made his only visit ever to Seattle, journeying west to attend the opening of the AYP. The bust, which depicts Hill sensibly wearing an overcoat, moved around the UW campus several times before assuming its present position along Stevens Way.

New Archetypes sculpture, Seattle (via seattleoutdoorart.com)

In the downtown area at Second Avenue and University Street sits a piece of public art called New Archetypes. It was made in 1990 by the French sculptors Anne and Patrick Poirier, who are still alive. Made out of stainless steel, the installation includes four columns that look like they have collapsed or are about to.

Here, art clearly predicted life. For New Archetypes sits at the entrance to what was once known as Washington Mutual Tower. You know, the headquarters for many years of Washington Mutual Bank, which spectacularly collapsed in 2008 from years of reckless mortgage lending in history’s largest bank failure.  The structure, which WaMu had left two years before its epic end, is now called the 1201 Third Avenue Building and is reportedly for sale along with, I guess, New Archetypes. Superstitious buyers need not apply.

Family Watching TV sculpture, Seattle (via seattleoutdoorart.com)

But for a dated reminder of the changing nature of modern-day life, it’s top to beat “Family Watching TV,” an cast aluminum sculpture outside the offices of King Broadcasting (which operates KING-TV, the NBC affiliate on Channel 5) at 333 Dexter Avenue N. It depicts a man, a woman and two children, plus two pets, squished around an overstuffed chair and looking straight ahead at an unseen TV set where you are standing.

An installation by Richard Beyer (1925-2012), who lived in Seattle for years, the sculpture was put up in 1989 when Tom Brokaw anchored the NBC Nightly News and families routine gathered around the boob tube. These days, broadcast market share has fallen sharply, thanks to cable TV and increasing numbers of people getting their video fix over Internet feeds on laptop computers and hand-held devices or ignoring the medium altogether. As a percent of population, Seattle now has fewer children than any large city except San Francisco (although the dog presence in Beyer’s work seems about right). And did anyone mention same-sex marriages?

One of these days, I’ll get around to Part 4 in this continuing series. As they say in what’s left of TV Land, stay tuned.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Pedestrian crosswalk sign and button in Seattle’s          Eastlake neighborhood

Take a look at the photo to the right. It depicts a sign and a button at an intersection on Eastlake Avenue in Seattle–one of hundreds of similar set-ups across the city. To me, the message is pretty clear and simple. To cross the street safely as a pedestrian, push the button to which the sign is affixed and wait for the “walk” sign to light up on the other side of the street. Then cross.

Well, maybe not so clear and simple to everyone in Seattle. Over the past few months, I’ve become increasingly aware of many pedestrians who don’t push the button. They become puzzled and then frustrated when the traffic lights cycle without flashing the “walk” sign in their favor. Since it’s often raining, they’re standing outside and generally wearing no weather garb, the stranded pedestrians are getting wetter, which doesn’t help their demeanor at all.

As usual, I have no data on my proposition other than my own eyes, although a serious academic study published in December on the topic of–amazingly enough–Seattle pedestrian interactions with call buttons seemed to find plenty of problems. But to me, button ignorance certainly is curious, especially given the recent anointing of Seattle as the third most nerdiest city in the country. I always thought nerds had above-average intelligence.

A few days ago, I was operating a car stopped in the left lane at a red light on a one-way street along a distant edge of downtown Seattle. A well-dressed young woman on foot waited to cross in front of me–standing next to a call-button sign and a button. The light cycled back to green for me without giving her a crossing signal. She clearly had ignored the instructions right beside her.  A confused expression crossed the woman’s face, followed, for some reason, by a dirty look in my direction.

Since I was in a car and she was not, I was not intimidated. “Next time, push the button!” I shouted as I sportingly roared off.

Fifth Avenue N. along the eastern edge of Seattle Center is among the strips where more than once I have seen pedestrians waiting and waiting at button-controlled intersections. I have also encountered this in South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, Ballard, University District and Beacon Hill.

I guess this is the flip side of something I wrote about here a few months ago, pedestrians at marked crosswalks without lights (and thus without buttons) who act like Superman and blithely cross without looking both ways. Even if they’re in the right, that can get them killed from an inattentive driver. Not crossing out of button ignorance is a lot safer, although both scenarios might be cited in support of Charles Darwin’s famous “survival of the fittest” proposition.

Like the academic study cited above, most of the published material I find on call buttons deals more with pedestrians who are aware of them than pedestrians who are not. In some other places like New York City, where I lived long before becoming New To Seattle, authorities disabled buttons years ago thanks to computerized traffic signals and those remaining are essentially placebos. Seattle city officials have admitted in the past that pushing buttons at certain high-foot-traffic intersections downtown really isn’t needed. But suspicion of government being what it is, a Seattle PI blog post three years ago actually assured a reader that, yes, the buttons really do work and were not a mere social experiment. Seattle also has experimented with foot-activated crosswalk signals.

Now, I’m not discussing directly the issue of how buttons should be programmed–to work 24/7 or only during daylight hours, or peak hours or whatever. Such considerations have occasioned talk in Seattle. I’m just commenting on what strikes me as the inability of some folks to look around and use what’s available. You might say I just want to push their button.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

(via Wikipedia)

See update at end of story

Living in Seattle, I don’t come across a lot of radio ads that make me giggle. But for the past few days I’ve been hearing one that has. And wouldn’t you know: It focuses on one of my favorite topics, Seattle weather.

The Yakima Valley Visitors and Convention Bureau is running its cheeky annual spring radio campaign trying to lure sun-starved Seattleites away from the Puget Sound. The pitch is hardly New To Seattle. But I think the Yakimanians, or Yakimaites, or whatever residents there call themselves, have a lot of material to work with.

A geography lesson for those not familiar with the region: Yakima sits on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains about 140 miles southeast from Seattle, which is on the west side. With peaks topping 14,000 feet–Lewis and Clark had trouble threading them–the Cascades keep away from the interior of Washington State much of the notorious cloudiness that cloaks Seattle and environs. So Yakima gets small amounts of rain and huge amounts of sun. That’s the exact opposite of Seattle, where vitamin D pills for the sun-deprived are fixtures of media advertising.

The Yakima ad spot is called “Lost and Found Spring.” After the jump, a transcript of the ad–and even better, a link to the actual audio.

RADIO SPOT (click here for audio, then follow along)

YAKIMA VALLEY VISITORS AND CONVENTION BUREAU

“LOST-AND-FOUND SPRING”

Transcript

(Background of soft mischievous music)

(Phone rings)

FEMALE OPERATOR (in an extremely nasal New York voice): Hello. Lost and Found.

MALE CALLER (somewhat befuddled): Yeah, I’m hoping you can help me out.

OPERATOR: Sure.

CALLER: I lost … Spring.

OPERATOR: Spring. Like the season?

CALLER: Yeah.

OPERATOR: Well, do you remember when you last saw it?

CALLER: (sighing sound) Ah, it’s been so long.

OPERATOR: Ahhhh, you must be calling from Seattle.

CALLER (in tone of amazement): How did you know?

OPERATOR: Well, we get that a lot. Let me see if I can track it down.

(Sound of typing on a computer keyboard)

OPERATOR: Spring, spring … Ah, there it is.

CALLER: You’re kidding. Where?

OPERATOR: The Yakima Valley.

CALLER: The Yakima Valley?

OPERATOR: When you lose spring in Seattle, it’s a good bet you’ll find it in the Yakima Valley.

(Background music changes to soft jazz)

VOICE-OVER MALE ANNOUNCER: Take all the things you love to do, add sunshine and a relaxed pace, and you’ve got the Yakima Valley. Just two quick hours east is the best wine country in the state. Which means wine tastings and gorgeous vineyards. Mountains, rivers,  art, entertainment, shopping and more. All Fido friendly …

(Single dog bark)

ANNOUNCER: … and all of it sprinkled with beautiful sunshine.

CALLER: Ah, one more thing. I, I lost my sunglasses, too.

OPERATOR: Visit the Yakima Valley, hon.  You won’t need them in Seattle.

ANNOUNCER: Find your lost spring, in the Yakima Valley. Go to Visit Yakima Valley dot org.

TRUTH-IN-ADVERTISING UPDATE ON APRIL 5: According to a story today on the Web site of the Yakima Herald-Republic, which mentions this post, it’s raining in the Yakima Valley and supposed to do so for awhile. The paper’s optimistic spin: “While visitors might be dismayed by wet weather forecast for the rest of this week, the sunshine is sure to return.” Of course, the same could be written about Seattle; it’s just a matter of timing. In any event, don’t look for the Yakimaniacs to pull the ad.

In this city of persistent light rain, people simply don’t dress for it. They generally don’t wear raincoats or hats, or anything that repels water or directs it away from the body. Umbrellas are more commonly seen in commercials for Travelers Insurance than on the streets of the Emerald City.

I have no hard data for this proposition other than my own highly unscientific observations. But on the last few days where we had rain, I made a weather preparedness tally of people out and about (as I drove in my car, of course). By my count, maybe one out of every dozen people wore what I would call rain garb. The others got by with light jackets that did not look to me especially water resistant, or no obvious outerwear at all. A fair number of pedestrians sort of looked drenched to me. I’m not sure I spotted more than two umbrellas. I actually saw a far higher percentage of rain garb on dogs being walked.

Now, I grew up on the soggy East Coast, where I once came down with pneumonia after getting caught unprepared in a cold New Jersey rain. But I became New To Seattle in 2011 after living 19 years in the desert climates of New Mexico and Southern California. So this is a pretty wet climate for me. I don’t venture out in rain without wearing at least a rain jacket and a white, broad-brimmed hat made in Guatemala from water-repelling palm leaves.

I am not the first to ponder this soaking issue. “Why are Seattleities anti-umbrella?” asked the headline over a story in 2011 on the website of KPLU, the NPR affiliate down the Sound in Tacoma. This highly entertaining account traced this antipathy all the way back to 1851, when the Denny party of gringos from Illinois arrived sans umbrellas and got soaked while trying to put a roof over their heads so they could get rid of the Indians. Current answer: Umbrellas aren’t cool.

A few years ago, someone moving to Seattle queried a Yahoo answer site about how to deal with the rain. “Most people just wear hoodies or wool coats,” responded someone going by the handle of Chelsea79. “People here are so used to getting rained on that they don’t care anymore. If you wear water resistant clothing, you look like a tourist.” I have to think that’s sheer heresy to the people running VisitSeattle.org, the marketing organization gearing up for an onslaught of pot-seeking visitors.

In January, a question on Reddit–”Can someone explain why so many Seattle people shun/abhor umbrellas?”–drew an amazing 41 responses. A large number explained that umbrellas take up too much room on a sidewalk and are anti-social. This was a complaint that I found rather amusing, given my stated belief here in the existence of the anti-social phenomenon known as the Seattle Freeze.

“How is it that Seattle doesn’t have a raincoat store?” whined another newcomer on the website of Seattle radio station KNDD in a post that included a cute shot of a poncho-wearing bulldog. “Seattle without a raincoat shop is like LA without a bikini shop. It just doesn’t make sense!”

But as I reflect on this, maybe it does. There’s far more of an outdoor orientation in Seattle than in many of the other places I have lived. The tough-it-out mentality fits into the local narrative of humankind’s harmony with nature. Also, despite the northern climate, the winters aren’t really all that cold, and the rains rarely that soaking. I think Seattleites just layer up, figuring that whatever moisture comes down won’t wick through to their skins until they’ve made it into yet another warm coffee shop to dry out a bit and use the Wi-Fi.

With my weather gear, I stick out like a sore thumb. My hat and beard, I have been told, make me look like I’m Amish, an especially rare sight in famously unchurched Seattle. I don’t ride a horse and buggy, but at least I stay dry.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

Bill Gates (via Wikipedia)

For comedians and headline writers everywhere, Seattle is the gift that keeps on giving.

First there were jibes pointed at impolitic remarks about the locals by the newly crowed Miss Seattle. Then there were smirking comments about the legalization of recreational marijuana and even strange University of Washington research about whether we’re all really living in a matrix.

Now there’s the latest proposal from billionaire Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO (National Broadcasting Co.)

Monday, March 25, 2013

Transcript

Opening monologue

…

JAY LENO (host): Well, Bill Gates is offering $100,000 to the person who successfully reinvents the condom.

(Audience laughter as Leno arches eyebrows)

LENO: Bill Gates? Is that going to work? Guys, would you buy a condom that has the word “micro” and “soft” in it?

(Loud audience laughter)

LENO: Is that really going to work? No, I don’t …

(Drowned out by sustained audience laughter)

LENO: Let’s just hope it offers better protection against viruses than Windows, okay?

(Audience laughter, cut to commercial)

…

Leno, who is hardly New To Seattle when it comes to fodder for his monologue, is not alone in connecting Gates’ challenge with the source of his fortune. Cracked a post on the ABC News website, “Bill Gates’ latest project gives a whole new meaning to the old Microsoft slogan, ‘Your Potential. Our Passion.’ “

Meanwhile, on the headline front: “Gates wants geeks to build a better condom,” said the website of KCTV in Kansas City. A story on Zimbio was headed, “You’ll Never Guess What Bill Gates Will Pay You $100,000 To Do.”

Seattle can take some solace from the fact that such happenings taking place in, say, Minot, N.D., probably wouldn’t get this attention. Clearly, another reason for tourists to come visit.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

The opinion in Klem v Washington Mutual Bank, which you can read here, will make your blood boil. But for me there’s an added interest: the involvement of yet another crooked notary. You see, for three decades before becoming New To Seattle, I have been writing as a journalist about notaries who ply the wrong side of the law. Now, most notaries–generally, clerks and secretaries in law firms, financial services outfits and courthouses–correctly perform their limited government-granted duties of using seals and stamps to certify signatures and documents, or putting people under oath. But despite these modest powers, for which in Washington State they can charge modest fees up to $10 per signature or act, notaries keep getting into trouble.

Over the years thousands nationally have been stripped of their commissions, and some have gone to jail. Maybe it’s a function of their sheer numbers–4.4 million nationwide, a full 2% of the country’s entire adult population. Notaries acting in bad faith are at the core of an ongoing nationwide scandal involving improprieties in foreclosures in the wake of the mortgage meltdown. Most of the time, though, errant notaries are not evil, just dumb, stupid or ignorant.

Now, I’d say the notary in Klem was a bad actor acting in bad faith. Curiosity getting the better of me, I made inquiries about what happened to this particularly noxious notary, and to others working around Seattle who got into trouble on different matters.

The court opinion, written by Justice Tom Chambers, identified the notary as one R. Tassle, but put the name in quotation marks. To me that suggested the jurat, or notary certificate, couldn’t be read, the notary signed and dated the document long before it was signed by the foreclosure officer, or that the court didn’t believe such a notary existed. Any or all could be true.

The folks in the Notary Public Program of the State Department of Licensing, in Olympia, told me they have no record–ever–of a notary by that name in Washington State.  But even though the mortgage foreclosure took place in Washington State, it’s possible the document in question was notarized in a California office of WaMu’s loan trustee, Quality Loan Service Corp., which was also a party to the lawsuit and which according to the opinion countenanced a lot of notarial shenanigans. So I called the folks in Sacramento who regulate California notaries and asked for a check of their decades-long database. No record there, either, of an R. Tassle.

So I can’t hassle Tassle.

But according to a list on the website of Notary Public Program, some 92 notaries across Washington were disciplined over the past year. Not surprisingly, given the state’s population distribution, more than half were in the Seattle area. Using Washington’s Public Records Act, I requested and received paperwork for a sampling of the punishments.

By and large, the violations were minor and so were the sanctions, generally nothing more than a small fine and/or mandatory completion of a notary education course. The reason this is even a penalty is that Washington is one of those states that does not require notaries to either (1) take a course, (2) pass a test, or (3) know the first thing about being a notary. It’s actually a lot harder to get a driver’s license. Besides possessing a beating adult heart, the main requirements for obtaining a four-year appointment as a notary are posting a $10,000 bond, getting unnotarized references from three non-relative residents and paying a $30 fee.

For instance, in separate cases, Sandra Parker Palileo, Andrick A. Schall and Bangmi Yu Sul, all of Seattle, each was fined $100 and ordered to take a notary course. Their offense:  notarizing documents without filling out certificates, the small print next to the notary seal on a document identifying the signer, stating the notary knows the signer (often by looking at a driver’s license or other ID) and including the date and place of signing. Richard E. Woodrow, also of Seattle, was fined $100 for notarizing a documents without first verifying the identity of the signer.

But there also were some more significant mistakes.

Michele Jo Ann Rogers of suburban Burien was  fined $200 for unprofessional conduct and ordered to take a notary course. The state found that she had notarized her own signature–a big no-no. Sherry L. Van Laak of Des Moines, another suburb, was barred from being a notary for five years for not dating her notary certificate on four occasions and for twice certifying the wrong name as the document’s signer.

Kathleen Soine of Olympia was fined $200 and ordered to take a notary course for notarizing two documents making “demand for performance,” which is not a legal notarial function. “Ms. Soine’s actions in lending her notarial seal to these unauthorized acts assisted in attempts to perpetrate an apparent fraud on one or more third parties,” a written order said.

In separate cases, Jeffry E. Salvaggio of Tacoma and Hope E. Glump, both of Tacoma, each was fined $200 and ordered to take a notary course for calling themselves a “Notary Presenter/Shipper.” Sniffed the state, “There is no such title in the notary law.”

Nicholas D. Harvey of suburban Kirkland was stripped of his notary license for being convicted of attempted theft and then, three months later, saying on his notary public application he had never been convicted of a crime. One cannot be a notary with convictions.

In other states, there are examples of more serious notarial misconduct. A quarter century ago for Forbes, I wrote about how a thief stole a van from Mary Hernandez, a Houston housewife, then got clean title by forging her husband’s signature on the papers and getting a notary to attest to his identity, a core notarial duty. How do you know your spouse didn’t sign in front of the notary, I asked. “My husband had been dead for some months,” Hernandez wailed. In 1996 I wrote a long story for a New Mexico newspaper in which I got a notary to admit she falsely notarized an affidavit submitted as proof a spaceship full of alien beings crashed in 1947 in what the world later would come to know as the Roswell Incident. (In case you wonder, my story, as well as another written a few years later, totally debunked the extraterrestrial element of the Roswell Incident.)

Sometimes the stakes are a lot higher. In 1969, U.S. President Richard Nixon donated his pre-presidental papers to the Federal Government and took a $480,000 tax deduction that wiped out his tax liability for several years. But to duck a new law that had eliminated this juicy tax break, documentation of the gift was illegally backdated, with a notary–Frank DeMarco Jr., Nixon’s personal California-based tax lawyer–certifying the bogus date. News accounts that exposed the ploy in 1973–amid the ongoing Watergate coverup and scandal–provoked considerable public resentment. The backdating became one of the proposed articles of impeachment against Nixon, who resigned just ahead of impeachment in August 1974. That was two months after DeMarco resigned his own notarial commission amid pressure from California authorities led by then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown.

In his opinion, Justice Chambers went on at some length about what he called the “importance of the notary’s acknowledgment under the law.” He wrote:

A signed notarization is the ultimate assurance upon which the whole world is entitled to rely that the proper person signed a document on the stated day and place. Local, interstate, and international transactions involving individuals, banks, and corporations proceed smoothly because all may rely upon the sanctity of the notary’s seal. This court does not take lightly the importance of a notary’s obligation to verify the signor’s identity and the date of signing by having the signature performed in the notary’s presence.

Chambers noted that it is a gross misdemeanor crime–official misconduct–for a notary to sign a certificate knowing its contents are false. I say, good luck collaring “R. Tassle.”

As always, I invite anyone mentioned or interested in this post to add their comments below. No notarization required.

Follow William P. Barrett’s work on Twitter by clicking here.

I’m wondering if that’s because it’s thought a good chunk of that expected increase will be due to tourists hoping to take advantage of Washington State’s legalization of recreational marijuana use. I could see why Seattle’s image makers–officially, anyway–would not want to say their success will be based in significant part on the selling of drugs. So maybe better to give no reasons than to list a few and leave out the New To Seattle elephant in the loom.

You think I’m making up the pot tourism potential? Consider Arthur Frommer, maybe the best-known brand name in travel writing. “They all claim they don’t want this type of tourism,” he told a Los Angeles audience last month. “Yet the hotels are licking their chops over the hundreds of thousands of people who will go to Colorado and Washington to enjoy this.” (Yes, I, too, was surprised to learn Frommer himself is still alive.)

Or this:  “The opportunity for a tourist segment around casual smokers visiting the State is unparallelled,” gushes a Seattle website called washingtonweedsales.com, which seems to be a non-consumer website aimed at the trade.

Complained a letter-writer to a paper in the British Columbia (Canada) border town of Langley, “Washington State is becoming a tourist destination for cannabis connoisseurs. Border communities like Langley can only watch as tourists (and dollars) head south.”

The out-of-state media are having a lot of fun with this, few outlets more so than CNN. The network just aired a segment about the problems Washington State is having in hiring a consultant to help write the rules, which won’t go into effect until later this year. This morning, one of the CNN anchors, noting the state is delaying its selection, implied that might be due to a weed-induced haze.

The New York Daily News last month ran a staff-written story on a bill in the Washington State legislature–I didn’t know the paper covered Olympia–specifying how stores should handle marijuana baggies accidentally dropped by customers. The headline : “Dude, where’s the weed?“

The TV comics are also having a field day (or night), often commenting upon both Washington State and Colorado, which also legalized pleasure pot use. A recent David Letterman list of “Top 10 Things House Plants Have To Say” had this as No. 4: “I’d like to thank the people of Colorado and Washington for legalizing me.” Jay Leno jumped up on the issue early and often.

To me, it’s all future money in the bank for Seattle, even if the tourism folks behind the strange and now-abandoned marketing campaign Metronatural Seattle don’t want to admit it. (This reminds me for some reason of how the business plan of Amazon.com, at least in its earlier years, was based almost completely on encouraging massive illegal tax evasion in other states). Sometime in early 2014, the VisitSeattle poo-bahs likely will be crowing about a record 2013, and maybe lighting up something in celebration. Just don’t ask them what it is.

Follow William P. Barrett work on Twitter by clicking here