To paraphrase a politician’s once-famous statement, “I know Seattle. I’ve lived in Seattle and played in Seattle and right now, you’re no Seattle.”

The place that branded itself “The Emerald City” years ago is a far cry from that right now. Unless there’s an Oz book out there where the Cowardly Lion is passed out from smoking some of the Scarercrow’s stash while Dorothy is free-basing something with the Tin Woodsman’s left arm.

That sounds insane, but apparently that’s the new normal in Seattle.

You know how people would come up to you and say, “My, how your kids have grown!” and you know they have, but you hadn’t really noticed because you see them every day. I realized yesterday just how crazy Seattle has gotten when a guy with obvious mental issues and 22 arrests to his credit decided to start stabbing people out in front of the downtown Nordstrom.

Hey, Nordstrom, you can’t buy publicity like that!

But not to worry. Our mayor says that Seattle is safe. She insists on it. Well, she didn’t say it after this incident, but she did last year after another unbalanced person decided to just start shooting at passing vehicles, people, whatever, killing two.

Yesterday was the equivalent of someone saying “My, how your kids have grown!”  But instead of those words, I found myself getting text messages from people and talking on the phone with my mom in California, who were all shocked at what had happened at Nordstrom. My immediate response was, “What happened?”

You see, I had a busy day, with lots of work followed by meeting a friend for happy hour, then dashing home to catch baseball’s All-Star game. I had missed the evening news on television, really hadn’t checked Facebook, so all was well in the World of Tim. Meanwhile, the rest of the country had its eyes on the terrible tragedy that had occurred in Seattle.

Living here, it’s just not surprising. Nor are car break-ins, needles on the ground, and camping tents put up on any vacant spot in the city. The other day, I parked my car in downtown Seattle and while walking my usual route, passed two new tents that had been set up next to the sidewalk. The irony was that the spot they had set up was marked as a “No Parking” zone, so that if you had parked a car there, you would have gotten a ticket or have been towed away. But put up a tent, urinate or defecate on the street, or shoot up drugs–in Seattle, that’s fine! Oh, none of that is legal, but doing whatever you want as a homeless person is perfectly fine here in Crazy Town.

I should point out, that allowing your city to be taken over like this isn’t cheap. The Seattle area somehow spends over a billion dollars EVERY YEAR on homelessness with highly publicized, minimal results.

At the afore-mentioned happy hour, my friend told me about another guy who cashed out here in the Northwest and headed back to his native Vermont, where he bought a 4,000 square foot home on 20 acres with a barn and territorial view for around $700,000. The guy and his wife are enjoying life, have honeybees, and make their own maple syrup and sell it to neighbors. Hearing him describe the place where the guy now lives and the lifestyle he enjoys made me take a deep breath and realize that the possibility of living that way still exists.

That’s going to be a few more years down the road for me. In the meantime, we have some elections coming up next year where the city should be able to clean house and replace the crazies in office who have allowed this gem of a city to deteriorate to a free-range mental institution and drug den. Ideally, I’d like to get Seattle back to some normalcy, helping those who accept help and locking the rest up. I know at least three people from yesterday’s incident that would probably agree with me.

I pretty much consider next year’s elections a referendum on the future of Seattle. I fell in love with this place over 40 years ago and it still has so much going for it, but frankly, Seattle is having its own mental breakdown. My hope is that we’ve hit bottom and eventually will begin climbing back up. Or maybe we’re not there yet.

Just how insane does Seattle have to get?

Tim Hunter