I really love my neighborhood. Capitol Hill has its problems--there are a lot of street kids and homeless Native Americans, it's dirty (especially by Seattle standards), and parking is tough unless you have your own spot. But it has a lot going on, good people watching, and everything I need to survive is available for purchase within a five minute walk of my front door. Also, like any good neighborhood, it's kind of its own small town. I know the people--the fresh flower guy, the bartender at the Pagoda, the video clerks (okay, they scorn me, but still), the baristas, the grocery cashiers.
Actually, it was my favorite grocery cashier who first gave me the bad news. He told me that the Broadway Market a couple of blocks from me, which serves many of my consumer needs, is selling out to become a giant Fred Meyer/QFC MEGASTORE. Right now the Market is kind of an urban "mall" (but not really)--it has a small Fred Meyer but the other stores are mostly local, non-chains, like boutiques and a shoe repair shop and a vegetarian juice bar thingy. But all of that has to go, my grocery guy tells me, in order to make way for the MEGASTORE.
I do not wish to shop at the MEGASTORE. I don't even want to walk down the street and look at the MEGASTORE. If I did, I would live out in the plasticene suburbs and my rent would be a lot cheaper.
It's not just the Market either. I've been noticing over the last few weeks that a lot of shops on Broadway have been losing their leases. I mentioned this to my friend S., who works in construction, and he said that the owners of all the buildings on Broadway are pulling the leases out from under all the locally owned business, in hopes of luring Target and the Pottery Barn to move in.
So I think I'm going to try to move. I'm really, really bummed because I love my neighborhood and my grocery store guy, but I don't want to hang around for the construction of the ten block long MEGASTORE. It's too depressing.
I'm not even sure where to move, though. Ballard? Eastlake? Does anyone know of an opening in a good building that takes cats?
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