One thing seems certain: It'll never be the same
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Before the latte revolution fomented, back when Windows were looked through, not at, and Nirvana was a New Age concept, Seattle always had Boeing.
"Seattle and Boeing historically are like mom and apple pie," said Seattle Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, who like many native Seattleites either worked at Boeing, had a relative or neighbor who worked there or knew someone who did. Steinbrueck's grandfather was a Boeing clerk.
And now the company that has helped keep Seattle's head above the clouds is moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago, Denver or Dallas/Fort Worth.
Analysts predict the initial economic impact will be slight. But the symbolic and psychological effects are huge.
Roberta Pauer, regional economist for the state Department of Employment Security, said that if the company's extensive commercial airplane manufacturing, engineering, design and administrative operations here are untouched, then the 500 to 1,000 lost headquarters jobs amount to a minor economic event.
"The job loss is negligible," Pauer said. "But the prestige factor is going to be what smarts."
For most of the past 85 years, Seattle defined Boeing and Boeing defined Seattle. Renton and Everett, too.
The Jet City
Seattle unofficially adopted the moniker Jet City in Boeing's honor. (Officially, the city followed the Emerald City road.) Seattle named its professional-basketball team the SuperSonics after the Concorde-style aircraft Boeing proposed in the late 1960s. (Congress pulled the plug on the supersonic transport, or SST, in 1971, but the team name endures.)
Boeing was to Seattle what General Motors and Ford are to Detroit.
"When Boeing sneezed, Seattle caught the sniffles," said Emmett Watson, a veteran Seattle newspaper columnist.
Regional economist Dick Conway said the region has lost 25,000 Boeing jobs in the past three years, a far more significant impact than the loss of headquarters jobs. There are about 1.7 million jobs in the Seattle area, meaning Boeing headquarters jobs account for about 0.06 percent of the regional work force.
"Not being able to call Seattle the home of Boeing has a strange feel to it," Conway said.
T.M. Sell, a journalism and political-science professor at Highline Community College in Des Moines and author of the book "Wings of Power, Boeing and the Politics of Growth in the Northwest," said yesterday's announcement cuts a deep wound in the region's psyche.
"Boeing is the thing that always was," he said.
The `Lazy B'
Boeing spawned slang unique to Seattle. The term "Lazy B" may mean something else in, say, Dallas, but in these parts it is a playful jab at Boeing's workplace environment.
"Boeing used to be known as the biggest slack job you could get," said John Keister, a Seattle entertainer and host of local TV comedy shows including "Almost Live." "We had a fake mini-series on the show called `Boeing.' Everyone would be standing around talking, not doing anything. Somehow the planes got made but no one could figure out why."
Boeing spawned schtick.
"If you asked your dad what he did at Boeing, his answer never made sense," Keister said.
Seattle's economic recession of the early 1970s was directly tied to Boeing, which laid off about 70,000 workers after the SST program got grounded.
At the time, Jim Youngren was a real-estate broker who, with a co-worker, paid for a billboard near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that read "Will the last person leaving SEATTLE - Turn out the lights."
"The billboard was sort of tongue-in-cheek," recalled Youngren, now a Seattle real-estate developer. "It was an attempt to find some humor in the midst of a lot of doom and gloom. It was taken that way by most people. But some of the people who lost their jobs didn't find the humor in it."
Youngren, the son of a retired 40-year Boeing employee, said he doesn't plan to put up another billboard.
"I think we need to turn off the lights for other reasons now," he said. "We have an energy crisis."
State economist Chang Mook Sohn said Boeing's headquarters shift could create another kind of crisis in the business world - fears about Washington as a place to do business and a lack of consumer confidence in the state.
Like a family
"We are all very attached to the company," Sohn said. "It's like a couple that's been married for 85 years deciding to divorce."
Boeing is as much a part of Seattle lore as J.P. Patches, the beloved clown who hosted a children's show for 23 years on KIRO-TV.
"Some of the old-timers say `Boeing's instead of `Boeing' - I don't know why," said Chris Wedes, who is J.P. when in makeup and costume. "One way you can tell if someone is a native Washingtonian is if they say they work for `Boeing's.' "
Seattle's devotion to Boeing was similar to the Tri-Cities' loyalty to the nuclear industry.
The late U.S. Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, D-Wash., was known as the "Senator from Boeing" for his myopia as far as the company was concerned. As Wisconsin Sen. William Proxmire led the charge to sink the SST, drivers around Seattle put bumper stickers on their cars that read: "Boycott Wisconsin cheese."
Another sticker that may still be affixed to the bumpers of older-model sedans around town read: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going." It was a way for loyalists to express their desire to fly Boeing jets as opposed to those manufactured by its rivals.
Remembering the SST
Walt Crowley, a local historian who operates the Web site www.historylink.org, said even though there were strong environmental arguments against the SST, environmentally conscious Seattleites had a hard time rooting for the cancellation of the program.
"Too many of us were kids of Boeing engineers," he said.
The Seattle metro business white pages list Jet City Pizza, Jet City Road Service and the inevitable Jet City Espresso and Jet City Online. Renton once likened itself the "Jet City," just like Seattle. The official slogan for Renton for the past three years, however, has been "Renton: Ahead of the Curve." If recent rumors about the Renton manufacturing-plant closing come true, the slogan better be accurate.
Since 1976, the shoulder patch on the uniform worn by every Seattle police officer is a coat-of-arms depicting salmon, the Space Needle, an evergreen tree and an airplane. Michael Brotman, owner of Simply Seattle stores that specialize in city souvenirs, said he once made a shirt with a logo of a Boeing 747. It bombed.
"The airplane doesn't mean squat to tourists," he said. "They associate Seattle with famous landmarks - the Space Needle, Mount Rainier, Pike Place Market, a ferryboat, salmon, trees. People don't identify with a particular business or industry. Tourists don't give a rip about our economic foundation."
But Sohn, the state economist, said when in New York or overseas, "you say Seattle, they say Boeing."
Mayor Paul Schell isn't sure that still is the case. He said when people think Seattle, they think Pearl Jam, "Sleepless in Seattle" and Microsoft as much as they think Boeing.
"The image of the city is defined more by its people and by the environment that we've created," he said. "We'll be fine."
Seattle Times staff reporters Alwyn Scott, Steve Dunphy, Eric Pryne and Jim Brunner contributed to this report.