Ground Zero -- What Does Downtown Mean To You - Drugs, Porn, Street People? Ripoff Parking? Or Where You Can Find The Heart Of The City?

I was talking to a heroin junkie who had just dropped off a used syringe at the health department's needle exchange at Second and Pike.

Feeling complacent in your middle-class existence? Stop by the needle exchange for virtual reality as you've never experienced.

It's mind-boggling how many needles I watched being exchanged. Some people dropped off 50 needles at a time. Last year, at this downtown corner, the health department collected 321,420 used syringes, not exactly a statistic touted by the Downtown Seattle Association.

I spent a lot of time these past couple of weeks around the blocks of First and Pike. This is the funnel from the rest of downtown to the city's most popular attraction, the Pike Place Market.

From the safety of our car

This is ground zero, the place that shapes our perceptions of the inner city. We might know it only from the safety of our cars. We look out, maybe see something that makes us uncomfortable or that scares us, and we drive on.

When was the last time you went downtown? When was the last time you went to the Pike Place Market, other than to take some out-of-town friends? What's been keeping you away?

Not long ago, the Market commissioned a survey. It said that one out of four heads of households in King County has visited the Market this past month.

I found that hard to believe.

Has one out of four of your neighbors gone to the Market last month?

I know people who haven't been downtown in years. How many of you in Redmond, in Maple Valley, in Federal Way, in the suburbs where most of us live these days ever make the trip into the city?

I like downtown. On summer days, one of my great joys is to walk around the Market, the one place in Seattle where this town comes alive.

So I don't want this to be another downtown-bashing story, which is how some business people here think the media view the inner city.

Jim Todd, manager of the legendary Shorey's Bookstore in the Market, with its collection of 1.1 million books and periodicals, said in a letter to this paper:

"I am writing to protest the articles . . . on the dangers of our downtown area. . . . There is no real danger. . . . There is a genuine difference between the actual state . . . and the general public's perception. . . ."

That's how I ended up in ground zero.

At one extreme, you have the junkies and drug dealers, the drunks. Last year, if you stood at First and Pike and went a block each way, you'd add up 495 arrests. No other few blocks in the city have that distinction.

Most of the arrests, 300, were alcohol citations. Ninety arrests were drug related and 27 were for serious assaults in which the medics had to be called. There were also 84 outstanding warrant arrests for everything from misdemeanors to murder. Not exactly Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

`I'm scaring them?'

Martin the junkie had just pocketed his brand new replacement syringe when we started talking.

He is 28, and some years back he made his way from Mexico City, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, and to downtown Seattle.

You may have seen him hanging around First and Pike, Second and Pike, or a block over on Pine Street. There are a lot of Hispanic men hanging around, this area happening to be the turf they've selected, police say, as other groups have staked out other areas of the city. Some are homeless who aren't into drugs, some are there just because their friends are there, some deal, some buy.

Martin said he shoots up only once a day, buying $15 or $20 of heroin that some dealer usually carries inside a balloon. Sometimes the balloon is inside the dealer's mouth for easy access. Martin said he gets his money from doing odd jobs he gets through the Millionair Club.

"Martin," I told him. "I don't know exactly how many people you're scaring away from coming here, but I think it's a sizable number."

"I'm scaring them?" Martin asked.

I said, "Yeah, you're scaring them. You've got this camouflage jacket, you're here exchanging a needle, you're hanging around this bunch of other guys, the cops are always here. Out there in thesuburbs, you're a scary sight."

Martin laughed. "Know why I'm in Seattle? Here everything is nice and peaceful. You can't believe what it's like in San Francisco. I got beaten up there all the time. I like it here. Nobody bothers me, I don't bother anybody."

So, you see, it's all a matter of perception.

Some of us are scared of the Martins hanging around on this street. He came here because he was running scared, too.

I think back to the '60s when I was in junior high. I used to take the bus from Wallingford to watch three movies for 50 cents at the Colonial Theatre, now long gone.

This isn't the Pike Street I remember.

My parents actually shopped at the Market for groceries. It was my dad who liked coming here best. He knew by name the families who had the fresh fruit and vegetable stalls. Back then, the Safeways didn't carry the black breads and other great baked goods he could buy at the Market.

We used to shop at the JC Penney's on Pike Street. We stopped at the International House of Donuts that was on the corner of First and Pike when its business was selling actually quite tasty doughnuts and not being a repository for stolen goods.

Our visits to Pike Place Market, and downtown, didn't become less frequent overnight. The roughness of the new kind of street people certainly had something to do with it.

When I was in junior high, my parents thought it perfectly safe for me to take a bus downtown, go to the Market and make my way through the Pike Street corridor, sometimes returning home not until nightfall if the movies ran late. How many parents would let their kids do that these days?

Myths and realities

When I stopped by the offices of Barbara Oakrock, a landscape architect whose second-floor office directly overlooks First and Pike, we talked about the myth and reality of the street below us.

Besides working in the Market, she rents an apartment here. "I love it here. I'm an urban person," Oakrock said. "I know the merchants. I know my neighbors."

The city says 9 million people will visit the Market this year. That's not Oakrock's experience. Friends used to drop by two or three times a day to chat, look at the view, hang out at the Market. Not anymore.

"For my first 10 years here, from 1979 to 1989, the streets around the Market had some kind of invisible wall around them. The street element just stayed out. Even the winos generally stayed on that side of the street," she said, pointing to the east side of First Avenue.

"Everybody minded their own business. They brushed shoulders but never got in each other's way. Then two things happened. One, we started hearing about crack cocaine being everywhere; and, two, we had this influx of street kids that ran around in packs. They violated the unwritten law of the Market."

Oakrock remembered an incident that happened to her one evening in the Market. A group of these youths surrounded her, followed her, said things like, "Should we jump her? Should we mug her? Should we take her out?" She kept walking and the kids eventually went away.

She has learned to ignore the drug dealing she sees on the stairway to her office. Then she avoids being a target herself.

Why does she put up with it?

"This is an authentic place," she said.

I said that maybe it's a little too authentic for Seattleites.

"I know," Oakrock said. "In Seattle we want things to be nice. When we don't get it, we feel gypped."

Crowd cheered the cops

That's why you see so many cops downtown these days, in addition to the private security guards in their paramilitary all-black uniforms. Their visual presence sends out a mixed signal; you half expect them to be marching in a goose step.

The real cops are a lot less forbidding, even though they're the only ones carrying weapons. Maybe it's seeing officers in shorts riding bicycles. After one arrest the bike cops made in the Market, the crowd cheered and had them pose for photos.

In recent months, the cops have started "emphasis patrols" and "suppression patrols," which mean that a bunch of them suddenly descend on a particular location in a van and cars.

Capt. Clark Kimmerer, commander of the west precinct, remembered what this area was like three years ago in the late night hours: Beirut.

"There were literally hundreds of people engaged in open acts of drug dealing, throwing rocks at police," he said. Those days or, rather, those nights are gone.

These days, the cops arrive on one of their suppression patrols and, presto, the street guys clear.

But it's hard to dispel old perceptions, especially when you stand across the southeast corner of First and Pike and watch the scene. It's a giant billboard for one way to look at this area: street toughs and porno.

Where you can ogle women

The street toughs don't much frequent places like the Champs Arcade, where you can watch porno videos and ogle nude women 365 days a year, 24 hours a day; or Fantasy Unlimited, a store where signs admonish customers, "Do not play with whips!!" and "Please ask for assistance with leather masks and garments"; or the Deja Vu, where for a $5 cover charge and $3 pop drinks (no booze) you can watch naked young women spread their legs.

Funny how you kind of forget about First Amendment rights for porno joints when a 10-year-old girl, say, your daughter, asks, "What happens in places like that, Dad?"

So you do what Seattleites often do when faced with the uncomfortable. You avoid it.

Bob Bond is the chief executive officer of the company whose properties include Fantasy Unlimited and eight Deja Vu clubs. Bond works for a man named Roger Forbes.

Roger Forbes. I remembered that name. Back in the mid-'70s, Forbes was the Porno King of Seattle. He ran the dirty-movie theaters in downtown Seattle, becoming a very wealthy man.

Bob Bond seems an unlikely CEO for the clubs. For 30 years he was director of theater operations for the Sterling Recreation Organization, then the Northwest's classiest theater chain. He lives in Bellevue. He has three daughters, ages 12, 17 and 21.

A year ago, Bond started working for Forbes.

"I sat down with my family, my 12-year-old included, and I explained everything," Bond said. "I told them, it could mean people picketing the house, or we could lose some friends. My daughters and wife said to go where I was happiest working."

I asked Bond how he explained the Deja Vus to his daughters.

Bond laughed. Maybe a year ago, before he started his new job, he said, the two of us would have agreed more. Now, he said, running these adult businesses has made him "a far more humane and tolerant person. . . . Your daughter or mine, we certainly don't want them to be degraded. I understand your concerns. I'm more concerned with people killing one another, and other forms of violence."

I wonder why men who frequent adult shops don't take families to that block for a stroll.

Of course, as some merchants I talked to pointed out, the adult shops have always been in that area. It's just the way it is, and always has been.

That dirty P word

The merchants were much more concerned about something else. Even if the streets were cleared of crime, all those people driving in from the suburbs still had to deal with downtown's . . .

Parking.

As I spent my days downtown, I noticed my sports jacket's right pocket starting to get distended from the 20 or 30 or 40 quarters I was carrying.

The city's parking meter decision was an excellent example of why the public thinks their government officials just don't get it.

A report to the city council said there might be "possible negative public reaction" at raising meter rates to $1.50 an hour, quarters only.

Possible?

Radio talk show lines exploded. Mike Siegel of KVI explained his listeners' outrage: "We pay for the sidewalks, we pay for the meters, we pay for the streets, we pay for the meter maids, and on top of that they're charging us usurious rates to park at that meter."

But it's not just the parking meters that are keeping the public away from downtown. It's also the parking tickets.

I spent some time with Anne Peters, the city's parking enforcer for that area. I managed to pump in more coins into my parking meter before she saw me.

Each day, Peters writes out 50 to 80 parking tickets. She's friendly and tries to give some people breaks, including the beer truck driver in front of us who couldn't find anyplace to unload his delivery.

She even found a taxi for a kid who just flew in from Kansas City on his way to a fishing job in Alaska. He had been standing in front of the porno shops with his suitcases looking quite lost.

People say `never again'

"I hear it from tourists, I hear it from everybody," she said. "The locals tell me, `I'm never coming downtown again.' "

Last year, 142,547 overtime parking tickets were handed out downtown. Add 42,000 of other sorts of parking tickets, and downtown accounts for more than a third of all city parking tickets.

As you're aware, parking overtime costs a $20 fine, plus another $20 if you don't pay within 15 days.

Because we're laggards, the city has a contract with Continental Credit Services of Kirkland to collect the money owed, with a 45 percent commission tacked on. That makes the parking ticket $58.

Last year, Continental collected $2.5 million for the city. For that, the agency earned an additional $1.2 million in fees.

Is a collection agency really needed?

If you don't pay the fine, you ultimately could be denied your auto license renewal tabs. That's something enforced by the state, not Continental. Why doesn't the city simply use that weapon itself?

How many people, how many potential customers, have downtown stores lost because of the parking meters and the parking fines? How many of these customers have decided it's easier to go to a suburban shopping mall?

Anne Peters talked about how much she liked working in this part of town. She remembered coming downtown as a kid, and how much she enjoyed it.

She now lives in the suburbs, in Mill Creek. And how do her friends perceive downtown?, I asked.

She had a girlfriend, Peters said, who liked visiting the Market. But the friend clinged to her on those visits because she was so afraid, Peters said.

It was time for Peters to write some more parking tickets and have more people tell her they would never return downtown. The mayor's office is putting together another report about downtown parking. Of course, nobody's talked to the Anne Peterses, the ones who deal directly with the public.

`You can be more of an actor'

I went to one of my favorite places at First and Pike. Louie DeLaurenti was behind the cheese and cold cuts counter at the family food store started by his parents. You walk in DeLaurenti's and you're enveloped by wonderful aromas - the place carries 300 kinds of cheeses alone. This is one of the shops that make the Market, and downtown, unique.

Oh, DeLaurenti's has a branch in Bellevue. But even Louie admits he prefers the downtown store. There's a vitality here you can't find anyplace else.

"You can be more of an actor here," he said. "In Bellevue it's a softer sell. You can have fun with people here. You tell `em, `Better buy today, the price is going up tomorrow,' and they laugh, you know? In Bellevue, they believe you."

The store is doing OK, Louie said, but he did mention that the customer count was down. "We're here, we're waiting for customers," he said.

If you haven't made the trip to town in recent years, what would it take? If you are a regular visitor, what would you tell those who're staying away?

Here in the blocks around First and Pike, at ground zero, you can perceive the city as too much trouble - too many street people, drugs, porno shops, plus ripoff parking. Or you can perceive it as the one place in Puget Sound where an astounding mix of stores and people give heart to the city.

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