Pioneer Square and Waterfront Neighborhoods Blog

I discovered new respect for Pioneer Square when I was 3,000-miles away researching a couple of stories about Lower Manhattan, where a little added grit forms part of the cherished environment. Just like no one wishes the Lower Eastside or SoHo to go the way of Times Square, I wouldn’t want our city’s earthiest neighborhood to become too hygienic either.

Walking around shooting photos today in the (surprise!) winter sunshine, I was impressed with how much Pioneer Square reminded me of old New York, even more so than of Vancouver’s Gastown, an easy comparison given their shared brick architecture and tawdry history.

Sure, like Gastown, there are emblematic establishments that feel as if they could only reside here: Armandino’s Salumi on 3rd, Marcela’s Creole Cookery on James, The Globe Book Store on 1st, and the newest addition, “Record Store.” Record Store, a pop-up collaborative project between the Seattle Art Museum and Olson Kundig Architects, offers a meeting place (until July) that is not so much an homage to vinyl, but an attempt to infuse cultural energy into the neighborhood. This is the kind of downtown expression we witness all the time in downtown Manhattan, so why not here?

I just cracked open James Wolcott’s “Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York” this weekend, his memoir about living and working in New York during one of the grittiest periods in the city’s modern history. Reading his memoir, it’s clear both Wolcott the Village Voice writer and Wolcott the nascent resident preferred a city with some soul.

Pioneer Square provides Seattle with our soul. Like Vancouver and New York, we have so many perfectly quaint neighborhoods from which to choose yet no other locale offers the urban aesthetic, the juxtaposition of grand trees collared in brick, the architectural details of so many façades, the squares featuring benches, café tables and places to loll for awhile.

I’m struck by this beauty every time I wander down this way to walk around, grab a Zaina falafel and see if any new galleries are taking a chance. And occasionally there are days like today, when the sun silhouettes those trees along First Avenue, when it doesn’t matter what shop is where, because that tandem of brick, tree and light come together just right, and the Seattle urban landscape is a match against any city in the world.

Journalist Crai Bower reflects on Pioneer Square’s authenticity. Crai S Bower has written, spoken and broadcasted about urban neighborhoods from Quito, Ecuador to Whitehorse, Yukon. His “A Walk in New York” Journey Magazine feature received a 2011 Society of Professional Journalist’s “Excellence in Journalism” Award. Crai co-wrote Fodor’s “Vancouver-Victoria” and is featured in “Seattle 100: Portrait of a City – Voices that Matter."

Bower and other local journalists will be contributing writers for Your Spot Is Here, sharing their experiences in the Pioneer Square and Central Waterfront Neighborhoods on our blog.