Unlike route #4, which keeps communities apart, Metro’s #8 bus is about connections. It runs from the near north of lower Queen Anne and the Seattle Center to the near south of Rainier Avenue and Mount Baker, with easy transfers to two dozen other routes. And it avoids the city’s dystopian downtown entirely, which can be pleasant on days you’d like to see fewer than 10,000 homeless folks.
The #8 starts its southbound run from Queen Anne Avenue @ Mercer Street. Just another bus stop, but it’s a better-than-average location by my standards, in a busy and interesting neighborhood. Sure, you’re standing in front of a sucky chain drug store, and my apologies for that, but at least the walls have been colorfully graffitied, and there’s cool stuff nearby.
On one side of the street there’s Dos Chamucos Taqueria, and Athina Grill, and also an Indian place that looks a little too expensive. On the other side, there’s Golden Olive Mediterranean, and Cashew Thai. These all seem wallet-friendly, though I haven’t yet tried any, so can’t say whether they’re belly-friendly.
There’s Mecca Cafe, a longtime Seattle restaurant now owned by a rapist, which — call me persnickety but — removes the Mecca from further consideration.
There’s what looks like a theater marquee, but so far as I can recall, there was never a theater there. Probably just some out-of-business business tried to look cinematic.
The real theater is across the street — the Uptown. It’s 99 years old, and it’s been 35 years since I last bought a ticket there, but it’s a grand old place. When it was triplexed in the 1980s, they left the original auditorium intact, and instead added onto the building. It’s now run by the Seattle International Film Festival, and screens about half art flicks and half commercial.
There’s Dick’s, the fabulous local burger chain, and ordinarily I’d eat a bag of Dick’s. On today’s ride, though, a restaurant was the destination, so just this once, no Dick’s for me.
The #8 bus came, and off we went, down the last few blocks of Queen Anne Ave. The bus goes close to the arena where the Kraken hockey team plays, so go, sportpucks!
There are smallish businesses in low-rise buildings on both sides of the street, but the bus doesn’t dawdle and most of what I could see was not for me — real estate and dentists and lawyers and such.
Then we turned east onto Denny Way, which is named not for the Grand Slam Breakfast™ but for local pioneer David Denny. Seattle Center is on the left, and the Pacific Science Center — someplace I need to see again. Haven’t been there since the 1980s.
Then there’s Denny Park, and a lot of old and new buildings, some demolition and some construction, but nothing much that called my name.
Then the bus enters a strange land called South Lake Union, where nothing calls my name and everything yells “Get Outta here!” This is an area hostile to anyone older than 30 or poorer than $150,000 per year. Amazon’s “corporate campus” and its famous “spheres” are nearby, though I don’t (and hope to never) know exactly where.
What I do know is, when I left Seattle in 1991, South Lake Union was an interesting and affordable neighborhood, lovably slimy and kinda quirky. When I came back 30 years later, it had become Amazon turf, thoroughly bleached and unwelcoming unless you wear silk.
There’s a modern (synonym for ugly) building that stretches for about a block, branded with this hieroglyphics logo ➔, and a huge banner that said, “Join the hustle!” There’s no further clue what it is, but if Pinkerton’s and the CIA had conducted a joint investigation of me, with the sole intent of constructing a building that Doug Holland would never, ever even consider entering, this was that building. Everything about it is slick, commercial, repulsive.
Googling it at home, it’s Barry’s, yet another gym plus a “fuel bar” for the spandex set, with the ‘A’ of Barry’s stylized to look military. Pinkerton’s & the CIA did a fine job on this one.
There’s a high-rise apartments with old newspaper headlines on the building’s exterior. It’s not classy, words etched in granite, just billboards along balcony walls. It was so bizarre I could not comprehend what I’d seen as the bus rolled past, but within a mile I descrambled it with the realization that the Seattle Times used to have its offices there, at Fairview Avenue @ John Street.
So… the newspaper sold the land, and developers built apartments or condos and added old headlines… as a tribute, or a gimmick?
It’s an idea, and it’s ‘different’, but this guy who used to read newspapers on paper is not impressed. Once, there was a newspaper there; now there’s soulless housing for rich, soulless people, with hundred-year-old headlines splayed all over the building.
Next, a block-long shatter of glass that looks like a Picasso pie, and screams WTF? Short of stepping off and looking more closely, there’s no knowing what it is or what it means, but I wasn’t stepping off. This is not a Class M planet, Captain. Very inhospitable to human life.
At last, thank Cripes, the bus climbed an overpass above the freeway, and touched sweet earth again on Capitol Hill. For a mile, maybe further, there are apartment buildings parallel to the freeway, all with identical horror views of Interstate-5, but once past that extended moat, you’re on the hill. It’s expensive, sure, but it’s a neighborhood, home to people who aren’t pod-people.
At Olive Street, there’s 릴포차, a Korean restaurant that translates to Lil Pocja, but doesn’t bother with an English-language sign. Or if they do, it’s tiny enough to miss as the bus went by. Looks reasonably priced, a possible lunch some other day.
Just across Broadway, there’s what used to be Queen Sheba, an affordable Ethiopian meal. A few months back they were landlorded out by the building’s gazillionaire owner, who wants higher rents, of course. Now unoccupied, it would be a fine location for America’s first deep-fried eat-the-rich restaurant.
A few blocks further, there’s an old building with a small sign that says “Violin maker.”
Eventually, the bus loops through and around the Kaiser Permanente campus. Several bus routes make that loop, and it annoys me every time I ride, and remember that Kaiser Permanente exists.
See, once upon a time, a bunch of Seattle doctors and activists rebelled against Big Medicine by establishing the world’s first health maintenance organization (HMO) — a non-profit, long before HMO came to mean evil. They called it Group Health Co-operative, and it became the only doctoring place I’ve ever liked. I even worked there for several years, and left still liking GHC.
And then, while I was living away from Seattle, GHC sold themselves to California-based Kaiser Permanente, an outfit that never impressed me when they were my coverage in San Francisco.
In Madison Valley, the #8 makes a sharp southward turn onto Martin Luther King, but despite the name the houses still seem swanky and expensive, and the vibe is still upper-class and white.
Soon there’s a Grocery Outlet, and the houses start seeming older, warmer, a little less frequently painted. Perfectly livable, but without the butlers.
Pretty soon there came Fat’s Chicken & Waffles, which was the reason I’d denied myself Dick’s at the start of this journey. I hopped off and ate lunch there, and you’re wondering: Was Fat’s good enough to not regret missing Dick’s? Sorry, that question must be answered on a page of its own (but the answer is, yes).
Past Fat’s, the bus takes a loop along Yesler, 23rd, and Jackson, before returning to MLK. The view out the window varies between swank and slum, upscale restaurants and apartments commingled with panhandlers and parked RVs lacking wheels. It’s a part of the city where real people could feel at home.
There’s Blue Dog Pond and Jimi Hendrix Park, then MLK Park a few blocks after that, and finally the bus comes down the hill past the monstrous Lowe’s where the ball park used to be. I curse Lowe’s every time I see it, and think back on the joy of baseball at Emil Sick’s Stadium, before it was replaced by a concrete wall of commerce that doesn’t even say hello to the city.
The building’s design announces that it doesn’t want to be there, in this relatively low-income neighborhood — it has no doors onto any of the three busy streets, Rainier Ave, McLellan Street, or MLK. If you want to be a customer, the only entrance to Lowe’s is via the walled-off parking lot.
The #8 comes to its end at a block later, at the Mount Baker Transit Center. Along the route, smooth transfers are available to the RapidRide #D and #E, the #2, #4, #5, #7, #10, #11, #13, #14, #24, #27, #28, #32, #40, #48, #49, #60, #62, #70, and #106 buses, the Capitol Hill and South Lake Union streetcars, and the light rail at Capitol Hill and Mount Baker stations.
Mount Baker, if you’re wondering, is not there. The neighborhood is named for its alleged view of Mount Baker, which is three counties and 150 miles north. Gotta say ‘alleged’, because you can’t see the mountain on a cloudy day, and Seattle has about 300 cloudy days per year.
So that was my ride on the #8, and it gets a thumbs-up from me. There’s plenty to see and do along the way, although I do recommend a blindfold while passing South Lake Union.
12/7/2024
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