IKE Smart City’s rendering of what a kiosk would look like on E Pike (Image: IKE/DSA)
Pike/Pine, for now, won’t be part of the deployment of 80 digital wayfinding kiosks across Seattle.
Tuesday, the Seattle City Council approved a program to add the kiosks with news and information, wi-fi access, directions, and advertisements to the city’s streets. A first phase will focus on 30 new kiosks downtown. A possible second phase would add 50 more in areas including West Seattle, Ballard, the University District, and SoDo.
CHS reported here in February as planners from IKE Smart City and the Downtown Seattle Association presented on the kiosks and tried to drum up support for their eventual addition to E Pike.
For now, until there is a Pike/Pine Business Improvement District formed, the kiosks will stay off Capitol Hill.
In approving the program, the council also introduced limits including no camera technology allowed as part of the service and a 10-year limit on the contract. District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth also introduced an amendment calling on the DSA to use revenue from the program to promote business interests in neighborhoods across the city.
The proposal backed by Mayor Bruce Harrell moved forward despite concerns over clutter and turning over the city’s right of way to the advertising platform behind the technology. IKE Smart City says there will be no cost to the city for the installation and maintenance of the kiosks which backers say would generate around $1 million a year in advertising for the DSA, the city, and the neighborhood Business Improvement Areas.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
Hope it goes terribly and they’re all busted.
So you are pro vandalism, nice.
no…anti kiosks
There’s a difference.
Godzilla is “pro vandalism”
Duh, I sticker every day.
Who doesn’t? We are addicted to vandalism.
OMG…lol…Even I said that. Always on the pulse you are Gyro. A true leader.
Seems reasonable to assume they will be similar to the electronic bus stop signage visible around town right now. Most of these sideways big-screens have been vandalized in one way or another.
Ummm…They are at a bus stop where they BELONG!
Random kiosks are not that. They are an eyesore.
Probably exactly why they’re not putting any on Capitol Hill.
agreed.
I wonder if advertising on these things will be affordable for smaller businesses or non-profits. If it’s managed by the same company that manages ads for the light rail or ferries, it will be unaffordable for all but the biggest organizations.
This is a boondoggle for peoples businesses. Nothing more.
it’s a way to mission creep cameras on every block.
OMG! In the arts district we have a barrage of kiosks???
Hmmmmm…Wonder where that money changed hands and votes acquired.
The fucking cameras are quickly behind…WHY?
It’s simply a plan the chamber has. Turn Seattle into a Gangstalking paradises. In the name of “security”. The only reason people surrender their rights. You are in a public place. AI can tell who you are. What stores you entered into a database to see if kiosk drives businesses because bonus $ for the grift. Capitol Hill is a police state. Make no mistake. It’s a matter of time if the Mayor has his way. Reelection is right around the corner and so is the soccer tourney. Another must reason to kiosk everything according to them low key below SFTEY! at the top of their lying lungs.
We are in 2025 Boomers. We have phones. The greatest information device devised by man for information.
But MOST travelers? They plan before getting here their schedules. Public transit adverts are FARRRRRRR better advertising. Light rail has kiosks that are under utilised. Simple wall adverts that have to adverts in them. We do not need the fucking kiosks NOBODY ON THE FUCKING PLANET NEEDS THEM!!! Holy shit this is the biggest boondoggle Seattle has ever seen. It’s business taking ove rthe entire downtown areas forever. Allowing cops to stalk people day and night vs. a database from QFC for example. A bank and so forth. ESPECIALL kiosks every block.
This is terrifying. People better wake up or we are done. Our privacy goes to 0% In ever aspect of your life. Not on cell phones where the law prohibits Gangstalking w/o a warrant. Thus? They need kiosks. Security for whom and why? Adverts for whom exactly and why?
This is a hill to die on. It threatens all your expectation of being able to pursue happiness. Deportains are first of course. Do NOT believe them. They do not support anything they will lose votes and donors especially. Thus “nothing has happened as of yet” because they are testing opinions. Just like the ethics bullshit on the council. OOPS! Attack minimum wage? OOPS! Close the gay beach? OOPS! Take renter rights away? OOPS! and an “I quit” because it’s a job that is hard and pays shit. She’s a rich property owner. A pack of wolves disguised as wolves. They bully others opposed out of office. For greed and ego. Nothing more.
I hope someone takes baseball bats to these things. I gave two alternate advertising suggestions. PROPER ones. Maybe some billboards or temporary screens doing the same thing for FIFA and haul them away after? 100% doable. 100% it can happen with ZERO PUSH BACK!!! Out cameras on them for extra security during the crunch w/o mission creep. A clean contract.
GET THEM WHEN THEY PLAN THE TRIP IN BRAZIL!!!!!.IN BRASIL LIKE EVERONE ELSE!!!
The excuses are like working at McDonalds frying the 1st day and forgetting the ingredients to french fries.
IT’S TATERS AND SALT! You are either shitty business people or deviously greedy. I’ll tace C: Both. Always needing a bailout by forcing work from home into Seattle for no real reason. Except the chambers desperate need for money and power.
We need people who treat the leadership positions like a job. Not a grift. Not a quid pro quo factory. And when they find that out and have no influences that meet the bar? They quit.
Ted Kennedy fought for universal healthcare for decades. He died trying.
All we got is greedy losers who run for office. Makes me sick.
Holy shit!
Now I KNOW I can’t spell or have a clue about grammar. I know my weaknesses. I also can not type. I also know I can not do 2 things at once. Like think and type.
So putting this together I didn’t proofread it. I honestly was extremely impressed. I failed ever English class I ever had. An F. I was dyslexic and severally traumatised, paralyzed in a turtle shell 24/7. I was a mute. They’d say let’s do an assignment in class. Then at the end you pass it forward. My pages? Had nothing. Blank. I just sat there. Corporal punishment was en vogue for all the OG Seattle residents. So I got it at home AND at school. I dropped out the first month of my Jr. year with less than a freshman semester of credits. PE and History, plus wood shop and metal shop, then drivers ed. That was it. F’s in all others.
I had no friends and nothing but a few bullies. I never spent two consecutive years at the same school. Ever. one year it was 3 different schools and 4 years were 2 different schools. The rest I started and finished the year at the same school.
That’s how I grew up. I have had pretty much everyone I know tell me I need to write a book. It’s a bit of a Forrest Gump meets Silver Linings Playbook meets Fast Times at Ridgemont HS. I have a lot of really great stories. Maybe someday. Writing and thinking at the same time is still a struggle. There’s no cure for my ailments. I do enjoy it though. But the fact my back is destroyed, rheumatoid head to toe. Bone spurs as well. I just went to the dentist and he was like “You got (some medical term)” I said “What’s that”? Bone spurs he said. So they are in my mouth even. Good times ahead! 90 will be a lot of fun I am sure.
So I can’t sit, stand or walk for very long before I need to lay down. I get up often at the PC etc. It’s exhausting mentally and physically to be broken to the point of 24/7 pain. It’s a lot. So I stay as active as my skeleton let’s me. That’s my excuse for not writing the damn book. I am shitty at it and it’s too much.
I need to proofread my stuff. I always screw it up when I do not.
here it is in living color. The future with cameras and data bases. 1984 is here folks. Seattle is turning into a militarised zone. Shop at QFC and see it for yourself. Morons armed with guns and a ballpoint pen. They “stop shoplifters” by taking your receipt and marking it with a ballpoint pen. So you don’t bring the receipt back in and steal something? THAT is the only reason. They do not know what I have in my pockets or any bag I have on me. How do they know I didn’t steal something? It’s impossible. So DO NOT ACCUSE PEOPLE OF STEALING WHEN YOU STOP THEM!!! Do not put first day princess food blister at the public interface/pay point. Put new guy off to the side for backup. Have someone with a brain do that job. The food blister is there filling a hole he’ll never fill. Having a little authority and a gun don’t mean shit. And idiot with that authority scares the fuck outta me. The exact opposite of what they are trying to accomplish.
A little bird told me business is down at QFC. People are finding other places to go. Trader Joe’s is a packed house. Safeway on Madison seems to be busy.
Kroger employees are authorising a strike. It’ll be about a week before it goes down. But in a week the store’s on strike. Kroger has become a crap company. The fact Albertsons wants to merge is terrifying. It’ll be $10 a dozen eggs forever.
It’s happening folks. Been sayin’ for 15 years after Citizens United. The Republic is dead. We are in the era of the oligarch’s. Cops beating the crap outta protesters and picket lines to bust unions. Time to claw back the gains labor has made before it spreads like Covid and Measles. We got Trump talking about Joy Divisions. For real folks. Trumps wet dream.
This segment is all anyone needs to see. It’s happening now, right this second as you read this. They are going into public places with mercenaries and rounding up people en mass to sort out later. It’s the visuals effect they are really going for. Same with the idiot at QFC. He doesn’t want to say “We can’t discriminate so we check everyone” THAT is the reason dummy!!! You are there to be seen and pretending to do something while waiting to do something else on the spur of the moment.
Saw them arrest a dude who made it out the door. 115 lbs soaking wet with a paraphernalia arsenal in his pockets. Cops were there and the entire QFC fake cop brigade was standing around him for about 20 minutes savoring that high together with a real cop. QFC was w/o security pretty much. Some dude with the pen was at his post. That’s it. I am sorry I need to get my money order for rent there. It’s the cheapest easiest place.
It’s starting to actually get terrifying around here. Yes security. No police state.
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-menacing-hayes-sounds-alarm-on-rise-of-secret-police-under-trump-241015365905?cid=eml_mda_20250607&user_email=fc66f1f7269b229e2460170946fa6f41e6153bc57ef9c5d002f9aa613fcb2eea
OMG. Capitol Hill, the most densely populated neighborhood in the city gets screwed once again. West Seattle?
It’s a Trump/wealthy thing. It’s political.
People do not care for Capitol Hill. It’s easy for outsiders to vote against us as a minority politically. But do it to a wealthy invisible gated community? You lose political support/money. So it is a choice. Win “minority votes” or appease the wealthy, of one you generally are as a politician. You will choose the money, power and fame over everything. Selling out your voters wholesale.
For me personally? Everyone who said they’d support the ethics being watered down should be out of office. That one thing should terrify everyone. They want to manipulate govt. for their donors. Not the 70% that are regular folks. Under Trump we will lose money and it is transferred to the wealthy to a 700K a person. On top of all the wage rollbacks and union busting etc. etc. etc.
Also? Just because Joy is sacrificing herself to pass the gentrified laws. Does not mean we can’t do like Trump and take a Sharpie to a hurricane map. They are worried about parking? Parking garage! Boom. Problem solved right? *snickers*..
I’ve been a Bernie supporter forever. Turns out he was right all along. AOC carries the torch now. We got Kshama and Pram etc. around here. We need more. More at every level. School boards to state senate and beyond. A complete internal firing squad of ambulatory fossils who can’t even run their own social media accounts. Totally corrupt and ineffective need to go to pasture.. We have a packed bench waiting to take the bull by the horns effectively in 2025.
The city seems to be suckers for anything shiny, whether it’s worked elsewhere or not as long as they can point to it as though they’re doing something.
What a waste of money. Has anybody ever been to a city with these and actually used them? It’s an eyesore and just another way of sticking ads in our faces 24/7. Ridiculous. What are even the priorities of the city?
They say there is no cost for installation or maintenance, what about cost to remove once they have been destroyed?
it’s a one time cost toi business. Lifetime advertising and surveillance.
yes just what we need more ads
These are so stupid. No one wants this crap. Can do it all on my phone.
I genuinely can’t think of anyone in this city, or even any visitor, who wants these.
“news and information, wi-fi access, directions, and advertisements” – let’s be clear, they are obviously advertising first, making the provider money (that’s why it’s “no cost to the city”) and the other junk is just there to justify them. Was anyone asking for wifi in the middle of the street? Directions… from where, to where? Just put a big legible map like every other city! news, for who? the same people who need directions?
I hope this pilot crashes and burns.
These are so disgusting. So invasive. Only would happen in a harrell/nelson admin. Corporate butt sniffers and sycophants.
It’s so comical. You all sound like the cranky old guys from the balcony on The Muppet Show.
Waldorf and Statler were easily two of the best muppets though, like they had salient critiques laced with some light venom.
Someone should keep a running tally of how fast these all get messed up.
you won’t have to wait long
In Capitol Hill, you can count it in minutes until its vandalized or destroyed outright.
IKE’s privacy policy:
https://www.ikesmartcity.com/documents/en/privacy-policy.html
CameraEach Kiosk may be equipped with one or more cameras. The cameras capture images of the area surrounding the Kiosk, and those images may include you. We will not keep any footage captured by any camera for longer than 15 days, unless the footage is necessary to investigate an incident. Furthermore, we will not use or disclose data collected by our cameras except to improve the functionality and ensure the security of the Kiosks, as necessary to address illegal activity on, associated with or perpetrated against the Kiosks or in the surrounding area, or if we believe the disclosure is required by law or in the interest of public safety. We will not use facial recognition technology.