So Seattle (and by proxy, the Pacific Northwest) is wimpy, according to one isolated, and obviously sun-deprived blogger holed up on Bainbridge Island and writing for the Los Angeles Times (why doesn’t she live there – if she thinks the Northwest is so wimpy?)
Her argument? Seattle was not “adequately prepared” for the winter storm. Huh.
Is it really wise for a large metropolitan city to spend millions on snow plows, de-icers and related equipment to move snow and ice that strikes the region maybe once or twice a year and sometimes skips a year? Or are we just being wimpy?
She cited — as her examples of our wimpiness in her Jan. 18 blog — Seattle is full of clueless, politically correct Prius drivers, baggy-pants teens sliding down “formidable hills” her words – not mine – on a trash bag and buses that get stuck on snowy streets.
That’s classifies as wimpy? Really? Cause if that’s all she’s got, then I’ll take Pacific Northwest Wimpy any and every day over what passes for California Chic.
Let’s see, by comparison, Seattle has produced The Kingsmen, The Ventures, Jimi Hendrix, Heart and Kenny G. “Lost” Angeles has produced O.J. Simpson, Charles Manson, Lindsay Lohan and the Kardashians.
We have the Seattle Seahawks – LA has – oh wait, that’s right, they can’t keep a professional football team in town.
We have the Seattle Mariners – sure they may be struggling to put a winning team together on the field, but off field they are nicely bankrolled by Nintendo. The Dodgers, they are on the auction block after a messy custody battle (another California specialty, it appears) and for all the free money floating about LA, they aren’t any closer to winning than the Mariners.
Seattle has a cultural heritage with an International District while LA has cultural gang wars and an international reputation for road rage.
We have the majestic Cascades to the east, the glorious Olympics to the west and a beautiful Puget Sound waterway with thousands of island gems. LA boasts the Santa Ana Mountains (hills, really) that annually feature Santa Ana winds that fuel the flames of wildfires that often consume whole neighborhoods in a single day. When it does rain in LA, it just as often produces flooding that finds the City of Angels always marching in unarmed and unprepared to do battle.
But really, the comparison can be summed up in a few words:
Seattle has rain, LA – acid rain.
Gary Locke – Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Four season of weather – four seasons of hot.
Seasonal fog – seasonal smog.
Mount Rainier – Mount Baldy.
Lake Washington – Los Angeles River.
Greenwood – Watts.
Coffee capital — cocaine capital.
Ferry commutes – gridlock with guns.
Floating bridges – floating bodies.
All things considered, I’m quite content with the wimpy Northwest and our quirky way of dealing with snow. We just need to ship Californicators like Kim Murphy south where she longs to be so she can blog about her favorite city’s acumen in dealing with earthquakes, floods, heatwaves, gang violence and vapid hedonism.
So when the San Andreas fault finally snaps LA free of the mainland and lets the Pacific make its claim for overpriced, overhyped and overmedicated Los Angeles, the rest of us won’t weep too much.
Oh, sure, we’ll have to do without American Idol, Conan and Kobe – but we’ll make do. After all, we have a much more efficient and productive model of Hollywood to provide the world its entertainment – and it resides just two hours north of Seattle.
editorsaurus 