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Rainbows in Pike/Pine, RBG in the CD, Seattle’s ‘community crosswalk’ roll-out continues

20th and Yesler (Images: CHS)

20th and Yesler (Images: CHS)

In the same way Pike/Pine’s rainbow crosswalks let you know you’re walking someplace special, the Central District’s new Pan-African Red, Black, Green crosswalks tell a story about the area’s history and culture.

CHS toured a few of the intersections where the new “community crosswalks” have been installed Thursday to see what the new and improved design looks like on the street.

Intersections planned to be part of the Central District’s community crosswalks project

(Images: SDOT)

We reported earlier this month on the eleven crosswalks set to be painted in the colors of the Pan-African flag. Born last summer in a rogue effort around the Central District that echoed the $73,000 Pike/Pine rainbow paint job, City Hall formalized the RBG the CD design as part of a citywide program to encourage “experimenting with crosswalks to help identify neighborhoods.” One of the locations lined up for an enhanced crosswalk, by the way, is Melrose and Pike.

“The crosswalks symbolize the history of the Central District,” said Angel Mitchell, a community activist who helped drive the project in the Central District, at the project’s initial unveiling this winter. “Unfortunately right now, there is a losing battle against gentrification, at this point. So, I feel like people should know the history of the Central District, and that’s what these crosswalks are aiming to do.”

After the first attempt by the city resulted in a paint job many felt was lacking, SDOT agreed on a redo of the first design as part of a wider campaign across the neighborhood. “We met with the community who agreed they’d prefer a more impactful design and one that is consistent with the Broadway rainbow crosswalks and future community crosswalk designs,” an SDOT representative told CHS. Nine of the eleven crosswalks are expected to be in place by July, and the remaining two will be installed as part of the 23rd Ave Corridor Project.

You can learn more about community crosswalks at seattle.gov.

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18 Comments
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CaptainChaos
CaptainChaos
7 years ago

These are great, and a huge improvement over the first one! I’d love to see additional neighborhoods with a distinctive make up do something similar. Ballard certainly comes to mind.

See
See
7 years ago
Reply to  CaptainChaos

Ballard already has them, they’re all white.

ha
ha
7 years ago

dadum, tshhhh!

Herring
Herring
7 years ago
Reply to  ha

#NorwegianLivesMatter

Dirk Matter
Dirk Matter
7 years ago

It’s time we put our feet down on these lame expressions of identity politics.

sempervirens206
7 years ago

City let’s gentrification run rampant, and many (not all, many) of the folks who called that area home for years moved south. But here come the colored crosswalks in “African” colors. Reminds me how we paved over our watersheds and killed the salmon, but put up inanimate salmon “art” on overpasses.

yup
yup
7 years ago

How should the city have stopped gentrification? Not allow new business to come to Seattle? Fight against the land management legislation that attempted to preserve farm and forest land by discouraging sprawl? Built large-scale housing projects like Cabrini Green?

Everyone likes to throw simple-minded statements around, but gentrification is a side effect of economic development. The opposite of economic development is Detroit.

RWK
RWK
7 years ago

Well said, yup! Gentrification is not a dirty word.

Weak Sauce
Weak Sauce
7 years ago

Great that we’re dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on cross walk paint but can’t afford to pay all of our teachers in Seattle schools. Sweet priorities.

Mike
Mike
7 years ago

73K for painting crosswalks.. wtf?

jane
jane
7 years ago

“Central District’s new Pan-African Red, Black, Green crosswalks tell a story about the area’s history and culture.”

No it doesn’t. The neighborhood has a longer history as a Italian, Jewish, and Japanese one. Where is the acknowledgement of that?

Jesse Kennemer
Jesse Kennemer
7 years ago
Reply to  jane

So because it doesn’t tell the ENTIRE history of the CD, you declare that it doesn’t tell a story at all?

Seems like you are more interested in the CD’s black history not being acknowledged than you are really interested in getting more attention for its Jewish/Italian/Japanese past.

One reason why they don’t get much CD-specific attention? There are other parts of the city that are arguably even more central to the history of those groups in Seattle. A lot of celebrations of Japanese history focus on the International District, for example.

Other neighborhoods are certainly relevant to black history, but CD is probably the best, most long-running area to focus on.

Privelege
Privelege
7 years ago
Reply to  jane

I know, right? White people just can’t catch a break in Seattle!

matterdays
matterdays
7 years ago
Reply to  jane

But since Capitol Hill has ALWAYS been NOTHING but a gay neighborhood, rainbow crosswalks are the way to go, eh?

james venable
james venable
7 years ago

I hear the complaint about “gentrification”.My question is this ,where is the property coming from,Residents who sold and moved.Heirs of residents who died.Do not blame the developer,it’s their property now.

Old Person
Old Person
7 years ago

The never-ending arguement about the CD has two camps: the “It was nothing but black people” camp, and the “Oh, it was never all that black” camp. Both sides ignore (or don’t know) the history, which is more nuanced than all that.

The CD was originally just a part of town, and it was fairly well integrated. In part, because there just weren’t that many black people in town, and people had other things to worry about. The only folks they didn’t let in the neighborhood were Asians.

After a while more black people started to arrive, particularly during World War II. That’s when the racism, which had been growing, really started to kick in, and the covenants started to really take hold, so black people settled in the CD, with pretty much little fuss.

After the war, as the suburbs sprung up, the idea of keeping “the blacks” contained really started to take hold, and the neighborhood started to lose its white population. It was reverse gentrification, with unscrupulous realtors engaging in “block busting” – using scare tactics and racism (the crime! the sinking property values! Get out while you can!) to get white people to sell short, and then selling it to black people for an inflated price, or converting it to low-end rentals.

It stayed that way pretty much through the 60’s and 70’s, and the CD was a peaceful place that was majority black. There were problem areas (23rd and Jackson was entirely burned out at one point, and the whole Judkin’s-Reject fiasco was a sad story) but then crack started to appear, and crime shot up.

About that time, a new generation of white people – mostly gay and lesbian, but some straight people also – started to take interest in this neighborhood that was so close to town and had such great old houses for such low prices. And that’s how gentrification started. There was a sweet spot there for a few years, but now the scales have totally tipped.

So I don’t mind the African crosswalks. I think they’re a tad ironic, just like the rainbow crosswalks, in that they commemorate a time that was somewhat short-lived and now is essentially gone in both neighborhoods. But remembering is important. As is understanding the difference between commemorating and pandering.

p-patch
p-patch
7 years ago
Reply to  Old Person

Thanks OP. History is about layers. It’s always shifting and changing. To say anyplace “is” this, or “was” that is ultimately a fool’s errand, as our story is never completely written. I get the ideological differences. I know some are important, but a lot are selfish and petty. Your perspective is refreshing for sure. A lot of different people have lived in the CD for a lot of different reasons. More still will live here and look back at our era and wonder what’s worth preserving, remembering. I like the crosswalks. I like the old Jewish schools and temples that have been adopted by others. I like the stories of the Japanese family who owned my house, were interned during WWII, but still managed to keep their home. Not all of the history is nice, but it’s all important to someone. Basically, I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful and respectful comments about the neighborhood.

dizzygothica
7 years ago

For those complaining that these areas weren’t all just black or gay, and that the crosswalks aren’t representative of the other ethnicities involved, why just gripe ? Get out there and paint some crosswalks in Japanese or Jewish or whatever colours!