Seattle's Pike Place Market Video

I think I've mentioned before how appalled and disgusted I was a few years back when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was doing their extreme version of civic boosting by repeating over and over again the bizarre propaganda that a lame little food court type thing in downtown Fort Worth, called the Santa Fe Rail Market, was modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market and public markets in Europe.

And that the Santa Fe Rail Market was the first public market in Texas.

This was to be the start of my realizing that the Star-Telegram was not a newspaper of the sort I'd been used to reading.

Not only is there a place very much like Pike Place Market nearby, called the Dallas Farmers Market, the failed Santa Fe Rail Market wasn't even the first public market in Fort Worth! An historical marker makes note of that fact at the building's location. The Star-Telegram has since mentioned this, but not their boo-boo, when that former public market was deemed a building of historical significance worth preserving.

I think the Star-Telegram thinks it can get away with some of its more ridiculous hyperbolizing because they figure most of their readers won't know any better. Which perplexed me regarding the Santa Fe Rail Market misrepresentations, because I figured at least a few Fort Worthers must have made it to Seattle and Pike Place at some point in time.

Those of you who were victims of the Santa Fe Rail Market false advertising and wasted gas going there to check it out. Like I did. And if you've not been to Pike Place, watch my video below and you'll get why I found comparing the thing in Fort Worth to an actual tourist attraction to be bad journalism at the very least. Someone should have been fired. I think her last name is Tinsley.

So, when I was up in the Seattle zone last month I wandered around with my video camera in Pike Place on a Thursday afternoon on August 7. When I was making the video I was making sarcastic remarks directed at Fort Worth, well, actually at those who falsely promoted the failed Santa Fe Rail Market. Saying things like "more people are here in Pike Place in 1 minute on one lazy summer day than were in the Santa Fe Rail Market during the entire time it was open." Likely the number was probably closer to half a minute.

I also said things like 'See why I was disgusted to read that that pathetic Fort Worth Rail Market was modeled after this?" And at one point I said something like "Fort Worth, see all these people? This is what a tourist attraction looks like." This was in reference to the Star-Telegram's once more breathless hyping that a sporting goods store, Cabela's, opening in Fort Worth, was going to be the Number One Tourist Attraction in Texas. A short time later another Cabela's opened down by Austin. And a short time after that Fort Worth's ruling junta figured out they'd been snookered again. But, they're back seeing clear once more, with their Trinity River Boondoggle, I mean, Vision.

Anyway, below is a YouTube video of a few minutes at Pike Place Market. I edited out my sarcastic remarks. Some of them were hard to hear due to the noise from so many people. I could have whispered remarks in the Santa Fe Rail Market and my video camera would have picked them up from 50 feet away. It was that dead.

Oh, one more thing, I wouldn't repeat these Star-Telegram embarrassments if they'd just once fess up to being a bit too exuberant with the hyping. They do drop some of the stupid stuff, sometimes, like the Star-Telegram no longer repeats that the Trinity River Boondoggle will make Fort Worth into the Vancouver of the South. Nope, not making that up. That paper can be that ridiculous.