Hank Frank & Spencer Jack's Dad's Want Me To Know Seattle Is Skinny & Dying

Friday night my phone made its incoming text message noise. When I found where the noise was coming from I saw the text message was from Hank Frank's dad, also known as my Favorite Nephew Joey.

I tapped the message link to quickly see Joey had texted me a link to a YouTube video.

Clicking on the link to the video I assumed I was about to see a video of baby Hank Frank being cute.

I was erroneous.

The YouTube video was one I had already had myself pointed to, multiple times. But had yet to watch. The video is a KOMO TV production where "KOMO's Eric Johnson explores the impact the drug and homelessness problem is having on our city and possible solutions in Seattle is Dying."

And then Saturday night Hank Frank's uncle, who is also Spencer Jack's dad, and my Favorite Nephew Jason, emailed me another Seattle related link.

This one to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article titled Seattle is one of the skinniest metro areas in the fattest country in the world.

I have no idea why my Washington based nephews are suddenly flooding me with Seattle input.

The homeless problem in Seattle is a shocker. I remember way back in August of 2008 being in downtown Seattle, at an event in Pioneer Square, when I found myself looking for parking and came upon the homeless encampment under the I-5 freeway.

I believe that homeless encampment under the freeway in downtown Seattle is no longer there. I may be wrong.

In August of 2017 I found myself back in Seattle, being slowly driven north on I-5, as there was no option other than go slow. This allowed a long look at the huge homeless encampment along I-5 as it passes through downtown Seattle.

I was shocked.

It was a Dystopian scene. Something you might have seen in a movie made in 1999 showing a bleak Seattle, twenty years in the future.

All the west coast boom towns have a bad homeless problem to various degrees. A result of the boomtowns attracting a lot of people hoping to find their futures there, and then discovering it not easy to find a place to live.

I may be over simplifying.

You can watch the Seattle is Dying YouTube video at the end of this blog post.

As for that Seattle P-I article about Seattle being skinny.

Well.

When I moved to Texas one of the elements of culture shock was suddenly being where way more people were way bigger than I was used to seeing. And I do not mean being bigger in the being taller sense of the bigger word.

I remember driving back to Washington summer of 2001 for mom and dad's 50th. It was in Colorado I first noticed it seeming like the people were smaller. And then in Oregon I went in a Walmart in Ontario and was struck by how much smaller the people looked.

And then in February of 2004 I flew to Seattle, was picked up at Sea-Tac and before my final destination was brought to downtown Seattle to a gallery in Pioneer Square where I uttered the memorable utterance "The people here look like they've had the air let out of them".

So conditioned was I, by then, to the plus sized Texas norm which I had become accustomed to seeing, that skinny people looked alien to me, seeing so many of them.

Now when I am in Tacoma I do see more plus-sized sorts of the type I see in Texas. Maybe that is because so many people from all over America are stationed in nearby Fort Lewis. Or some other explanation.

Anyway, below is that afore promised Seattle is Dying YouTube video...