Is Old Seattle dead?
The first live taping of the day featured Brothers, whose media project, Vanishing Seattle, documents and celebrates the legacy of disappearing local businesses. Brothers started the project in 2016 after she moved back to Seattle from New York and noticed small local businesses seemed to be disappearing at an alarming rate.
“When these places go away, you can really feel a need to grieve and to mourn,” Brothers told Northwest Reports.
Brothers said giving people hope — and pushing back on narratives about the old Seattle dying — is also an important part of the project.
“I want people to still feel like they have hope and they can effect the change that they want to see in the city,” Brothers said.
Brothers said her favorite part of the project is documenting “unvanishings” — when a beloved community business slated to close manages to bounce back and survive.
Brothers said she also wants to push back on the “old vs. new” Seattle narrative, noting that a lot of new establishments still carry the spirit of old Seattle.
“I think there’s new things that are still very much something to be supported and celebrated,” Brothers said. “I definitely don’t think it’s over.”
Is Seattle progressive?
Vaughn is the founder of The Needling, a satirical Seattle news site launched in 2018.
Vaughn, a former Seattle Times reporter, told Northwest Reports that Seattle lends itself well to satire. “Anything that takes itself a little too seriously is ripe for comedy,” she said.
Vaughn said Seattle’s national reputation as a “super-liberal” city is also a reliable source of comedy. Elected leaders are quick to label themselves as Democrats, Vaughn said, but their actions don’t always align with their stated progressive values.
“I think sometimes Seattle can get a little too comfortable [saying] ‘Democrat, no further questions,’” Vaughn said. “But it’s like, look at what laws they’re proposing, what they’re supporting.”
Needling headlines often touch on controversial issues that generate strong reactions. Vaughn said the headline that lost her account the most followers was a 2023 headline that read “Seattle Homeless Disguise Themselves as Trees in Effort to Get Protection from City.”
“That really struck a chord, the hypocrisy of acting like you care about the environment but not your fellow human beings,” Vaughn said. “There’s a lot of people like that in Seattle talking about how progressive they are.”
Is Seattle diverse?
Free is a speaker, comedian and founder of Hey, Black Seattle!, an online resource to connect Black people in Seattle and grow the community. The project grew out of frustration she felt over the false impression that there “aren’t any Black people in Seattle.”
“I exist,” Free told Northwest Reports. “I’m Black, I’m here.”
There are actually hundreds of thousands of Black people in the Seattle metro area, Free said, but the city can still feel isolating. From gentrification to city planning, “disconnection is baked into our society,” Free said.
Free founded Hey, Black Seattle! in 2021. She hopes the online directory and resource can act as almost “a little bit of a Black bat signal” to make it easier for people to find each other.
Free echoed other speakers’ comments when asked about the idea that Seattle is a progressive place.
“A lot of people are cosplaying as progressive or radical or whatever it might be because they think it sounds cool,” Free said. “It’s sucking up revolutionary energy … when you take up that space, you present yourself as if you’re going to do that work, you siphon off strength from a movement.”
Is Seattle accessible?
Lind is a local writer, musician and director who is also working on an animated film about being a person born without legs.
Lind and the Northwest Reports hosts discussed Lind’s criticism of Seattle’s new Overlook Walk, which opened to the public last year and is dominated by stairs. There’s an elevator, but it’s located in the back of the structure, away from the waterfront views the park is supposed to highlight.
“I don’t have any choices, I’m ostracized, I’m not using the space as it was intended,” Lind said.
Lind said the inaccessible design undercuts the narrative of Seattle as a progressive city.
“These little things come up where you’re like, ‘I’m not sure if we can pat ourselves on the back quite yet,’” Lind said.
As a musician, Lind also discussed accessibility challenges in the city’s music venues. It’s not the venues themselves that feel unwelcoming, she said, but the broader “economic structures and what we decided to value” that makes things feel unwelcoming.
Artists can’t afford to live in Seattle, Lind said, and there remains a need for the arts community in Seattle to “industrialize.” She said the city will need to step up and take a more active role in making sure the community thrives.
“Until we start taking that pressure and those responsibilities off the individual and off the artist, then the culture is going to die,” she said. “We need to support it.”
You can listen to Northwest Reports’ full conversations with Lind, Free, Vaughn and Brothers starting June 25.
