JoB
What an interesting thread…
when we moved here.. i found several places to rent that were affordable and met all of my criteria.. which is not easy when you have two dogs who have to have a secure backyard… in or near White Center.
My husband’s new co-workers and even my son counseled us against even considering them.. so since hubby was doing the looking, i never got the opportunity to even see them for myself.
upside.. i moved to West Seattle and discovered the West Seattle Blog.. without which my life would be infinitely smaller.
downside.. we pay more rent than the house we live in deserves… or than we can easily afford.
As i began to explore, i drove through White Center and vowed never to go anyplace near it again. I found all of the back routes around White Center and used them religiously.
Then, one day i got lost.. and found there was more to White Center than a couple of blocks of pawn and sex shops.
I am as not racist as it is possible to be in our culture, but i am very security conscious.. and on my first drive through White Center, i saw the derelict buildings and kids in gang colors. That was enough to tell me this was not someplace a middle aged woman who couldn’t move quickly out of trouble.. never mind defend herself.. ought to be. I made a snap judgement and it took getting lost and a couple of interesting stores to alter my perceptions.
I think our prejudice is often more about how something looks than how it actually is… for some reason we have been taught to equate affluence with safety. and that makes us all less safe.
I have been exploring neighborhoods lately.. we are likely to be moving at the end of summer and i hope to be able to make that move a fairly permanent one… White Center is one of the neighborhoods where i plan to look.
Partly that is about money… our money will go further there.. and if we buy.. stands to increase faster there… but it is about neighborhood too.
Someone said that they felt more comfortable in
White Center than in Bellevue. I can’t comment on that as i haven’t been in Bellevue since we moved here:) … but i suspect that is true of us as well.
I learned to cook in Minnesota because the small ethnic restaurants that surround us here weren’t available there… yet i find i will have to become a much better cook to take full advantage of what the groceries in white Center have to offer… and i think we will be a long time exploring the small restaurants…
it would be good to live where they were in walking distance… whether that is on the White Center or the West Seattle side of the line.
And i like the idea of patronizing businesses who choose to invest locally a lot…
who knows where we will end up:) For all i know i will find a place in the Admrinal junction area… it meets most of my criteria… or high point..or westwood… or… and we will stay firmly on this side of the divide…
but i won’t let a little thing like appearances keep me from looking across that invisible line any longer.
Classism is an ugly thing. i think how we want to be seen often affects our choices more than how we want to live.