My People, Our Electricity...

Dear Gentle Readers, I have been tres remiss, but I have also been busier than a beaver, for I now have a district!

Officially speaking, and all manners otherwise, I now the electrical servant - the Reddy Kilowatt, if you will - of that area of Seattle bounded by Meridian Avenue to Puget Sound, 45th Avenue to 85th Avenue.

In a word, I am a cog in the machine that is destroying Ballard.

Ballard used to be a charming neighborhood, populated mostly by elderly Norwegians in quaint little seafairing-esque cottages. As those Norwegians have died off, however, their children have been busy selling the property. What is done with that property is usually one of three things:

1.) The house is torn down and replaced by an ugly apartment or condo building.

2.) The house is preseved, and a big ugly house is built behind it where the backyard was.

3.) The house is town down (are you seeing the theme here?) and replaced by a garish monstrosity that pushes all the lot lines.

4.) The house is torn down and two ugly houses that are basically modern versions of the old shotgun house are built there.

So I spend my days, driving hither and yon, inspecting houses to make sure that no one still lives there before we pull the power, which is - in my over-dramatic imagination, at least - equivalent to stopping the life support. It is the one thing that really bugs me about this work.

(yes, I know that I've whined to you about this before, but it really does bother me, so you've got to get bear with me for a few months.)

I've said it before, and here I am saying it again: I liked this town a lot better when there weren't so many people, and there wasn't so much money. At the very least, if people have money, and are going to build something in Seattle, they should get an architect. I would guess that 80% of the new construction is pulled from some developer's ass.