A Seattle square with lots of spirit(s)
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In the span of 12 hours, Pioneer Square was cursed with a street riot and a major earthquake.
In a district that rose from the charred remains of its humbler self, where sin is a constant and the clash of the classes often spills out into the streets, Pioneer Square's inhabitants and habitués can't help wonder if they are players in an updated version of Sodom and Gomorrah.
"My 50-year-old dishwasher, Johnnie, thinks it's the work of the devil," Michael Bjerkhoel, kitchen manager of the Elliott Bay Cafe, says between puffs of a Camel filter.
It is grim when thugs roam through a crowd of Mardi Gras revelers and one of the assaulted dies of his injuries. And fear is authentic when merchants and residents discover within seconds that brick masonry can provide more danger than shelter.
In determining cause, people point to the obvious. Bricks fell because the old buildings weren't seismically retrofitted. The riot happened because hooligans took advantage of a police tactic not to wade into the crowd.
"I think the earthquake was God's response to that moron mayor we have," longtime Pioneer Square artist Mark James Perry says while looking at life through a glass of red wine in a dim underground hovel doubling as his office.
But what does it all mean, this spate of badness? And why is it centered in Pioneer Square?
Joel Radcliffe operates Ars Obscura, a bookbinding and restoration shop in the basement of the Grand Central Arcade. Pencil-thin, he dons a black beret as he shuffles a pack of tarot cards on a work table cloaked in velvet. The skin of a cobra, waiting to be dyed and turned into a bookbinding, hangs on a wall.
In the cards, Radcliffe reads strife among people who work, live and frequent the district. There are those motivated by avarice and those of purer purpose, he says. The cards raise the question, "Are we being punished for our neglect and greed?"
But they don't answer it.
"I can't ascribe anything cosmic to what I am seeing," says Radcliffe as he homes in on the "final outcome" card. It is the card of abundance, which suggests a state of happiness and oblivion.
"I think it all boils down to a young couple in another part of town where one says, 'What do you want to do tonight?' and the other responds, 'Let's go to Pioneer Square. It's a fun place.' "
The tarot implies a happy ending for Pioneer Square. For Perry, that would be for history to repeat. After the Seattle earthquake of 1949, he says, people fled Pioneer Square in fear that the old buildings were unstable.
"With any luck, the same thing will happen now," says Perry, his euphoric visions now fueled by smoke from a marijuana pipe. "All the yuppies will run off like their tail feathers are on fire and artists can go back to getting cheap rent. And everyone has fun again."
Pioneer Square is where Seattle grew up -- and where it nearly died.
It is built atop the ruins of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 that incinerated nearly the entire business district. It wasn't brimstone raining from the heavens that caused it but rather a pot of glue catching on fire in the basement of a cabinet shop.
"The next morning," writes historian Paul Dorpat in "Seattle: Now & Then," "the exhausted citizens woke to a smoldering landscape which, depending upon their disposition, inspired some to meditate on human folly and others to set up tents for business over warm ashes."
In the days after last week's riot and quake, the people of Pioneer Square meditate on human folly once again, some carrying signs warning that the end is near.
"You have your overzealous Christian alarmists who go wild with their end-time philosophies," says Bob Dickey, a pastor and programs manager for the Bread of Life Mission, a homeless shelter at First Avenue South and South Main Street.
"I don't buy into that. I think what happened is we had shifts of geological faults and we had young kids with nothing better to do than to look for someone to beat up."
The Bible, Dickey says, states the end will come like a thief in the night, sudden and unexpected.
Like an earthquake coming less than 12 hours after a street riot? No, Dickey says.
"If you wanted to, you could turn this into a parlor game," he says.
Pioneer Square's heart beats at First Avenue and Yesler Way. On that corner, the pergola, a vintage iron-and-glass canopy, stood for 91 years until a tractor-trailer clipped one of its legs before dawn Jan. 15, buckling the structure and sending it crashing to the ground. A harbinger.
First and Yesler also was where the worst of the Mardi Gras melees occurred Tuesday night. Two days later, a street person combed a puddle there for rubber bullets fired by police during the disturbance that, mixed with tear gas, formed a last-call Mardi Gras cocktail.
In the middle of it all but safely down a flight of stairs within the fabled underground of the district, George Higby peddles history in the Pioneer Square Antique Mall. He suggests recent events may be the work of restless spirits of Seattle's founding fathers.
Spirits such as the unscrupulous Henry Yesler, whom author William Spiedel dubbed "The Bastard" in his book chronicling the city's birth, "Sons of the Profits." Or "Doc" Maynard, a shrewd operator but also Seattle's first bona fide drunk, according to Spiedel.
"Doc Maynard was a drunken brawler," Higby says. "He would have felt right at home in the middle of Tuesday night. Yesler would have officially sounded concerned about what was going on, but he also would've been right there with it."
Pioneer Square has always been a place where the city comes to party - from the days of the Golden Potlatch festival, which was marred by rioting soldiers and sailors in 1913, to Fat Tuesday, which likely will be discontinued because the revelry turned lethal.
Merchant boosterism aside, Pioneer Square is synonomous with decadence. It is where people sleep off perpetual hangovers in Occidental Park, a square where crack cocaine is sold like trinkets.
Perhaps Pioneer Square is getting payback for its legacy of sin.
Arthur Denny, considered the real father of Seattle, preached high morals in a new city known for having more places to fornicate than to pray. Higby suggests Denny's spirit may be the most upset.
Or, Higby adds, maybe the spirits of Seattle past are making a desperate grab for attention. Maybe they are angry at Pioneer Square having to play second fiddle to, say, Belltown as the spot where the city's pulse beats the fastest.
"Hello, look at us, we're still here," says Higby, speaking for all of Pioneer Square. "And we survived. We always do."
Stuart Eskenazi can be reached at 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com.