Outside The Boundary Of The Civilized World

At The Locker Room in White Center. Photo by Kerri Harrop

If you want to visit a place just outside the boundary of the civilized world, walk south from our house on 13th Ave., take a right on Cambridge, turn left onto 16th, and cross Roxbury Street. If it's a Friday or Saturday night, the King County Police will likely be parked there, almost like gatekeepers while the ne-er-do-wells walk in and out of the bars to smoke. In the opinion of most Seattle residents, the neighborhood of White Center is an unsightly place, where the chief businesses are pawn shops, adult video rental, and working class dives that open in the early a.m., giving the drunks a place to get in out of the rain. This was also my opinion before M and I bought our house, which, while not technically in White Center, is only a few blocks away. 

My description of White Center is meant in jest. While it's certainly not an upper-class strip of trendy bars and boutiques, it's not a third world country either. White Center is probably the most maligned neighborhood in all of Seattle. But it's also the neighborhood with the most soul. 

The poet Richard Hugo was born and raised in White Center. In his autobiography The Real West Marginal Way, Hugo wrote: "When people from White Center applied for work in the 20s and 30s, they seldom mentioned White Center, either in the interview or on the application form. The smart ones said West Seattle. White Center had the reputation of being just outside the boundary of the civilized world." 

Today, a similar reasoning is often employed in real estate. The name "White Center" is a bit of a handicap if you're trying to sell. Better to say "West Seattle" and debate the formalities. Talk to any of the locals, however, and they'll tell you that the neighborhood has changed considerably, especially over the last few years. And though they are fiercely proud of where they live...quoth Hugo: "(White Center's) reputation was not without reason." 

Here's the deal: Roxbury Street marks the city limits and is considered by most to be dividing line (physically, culturally, socially, psychologically, legally) between White Center and the rest of Seattle. Everything south of Roxbury is considered unincorporated King County. There, everything is just a little bit rougher, grittier..where Seattle pushes its riff-raff so it doesn't have to deal with them. It's been the center of an annexation debate for over two decades. Each mayor that gets elected ignites an argument in favor of making White Center part of Seattle proper, which is ultimately shot down by city council who claim it would suck up more city resources (police, ambulance, etc.) than its worth. Still, the neighborhood has its champions in the council who feel, as most of us down here do, that White Center is Seattle's last great undiscovered neighborhood. An up-and-comer, in other words. I strongly feel the same and would wager that in about five years, we'll be looking at a radically different part of town. For proof, we have the two signifiers of every up-and-coming neighborhood. The first being the success of White Center's lone coffeehouse (and cultural core) Cafe Rozella, the opening of punk rock ice cream parlor and all-ages venue Full Tilt, and the spiffing up of W.C. mainstay the Triangle Pub, the latter of which was described to us by the new owner as "scary" before he bought it. None of these business are out to gentrify the neighborhood. Rather, when we've talked to the owners of each about their reasons for opening businesses, they say "Well, we've lived here for years and know the people around here wanted a safe place to go and hang out." It's true. And those places to hang out help draw people to White Center who would never even consider it. Some of them, like M and I, like it so much they think it might be a good place to live. Heck, houses are actually nice...and cheap! This is what helps draw that other big signifier of the up-and-coming 'hood: The creative class. The White Center vicinity is now home to Dave Hernandez of The Shins, singer-songwriter Damien Jurado, Dutchess & the Duke frontman Jesse Lortz, and actress and musician Sarah Rudinoff, to name a few.

Since moving to the White Center area, M and I have felt something we never felt living in other parts of Seattle...a sense of community.  And all great communities consist of people who look out for one another and take pride in their area. The majority of people do not want to live in a bad neighborhood, regardless of race, color, or class. Property is affordable in White Center, which is why it's been long desirable to immigrants and working people. Seattle boasts a lot about diversity, but the truth is the cost of living has (inadvertently?) rendered it one of the more racially segregated cities in the country. I've come to the conclusion, though, that White Center is the only truly diverse part of town simply because it doesn't go out of its way to make a statement about it. Reason being, people do not move to White Center for the ethnic diversity. They move to White Center because its affordable, and affordability means the same thing to everyone no matter what color you are. Here, the average two-bedroom home costs $$250,000-$275,000. Numbers like that are very leveling--you can assume everyone living down here makes about as much as you. Otherwise they would have bought elsewhere. Class is a bigger divider than race, and nearly everyone in White Center--black, white, Mexican, Samoan, Vietnamese, whatever--has an understanding and respect for each other because we all belong to the same tribe: The Working Class. We own our homes because we worked and saved enough to make the down payment. We go to work each morning so we can pay the mortgage. If one of us buys a new car, it's because we ran the old one until it wouldn't go no more. This isn't to say the neighborhood doesn't have its problems. There are break-ins, car-theft, gang activity, and drugs being sold on the sidewalks. But when one of us is affected by these crimes, we all feel it and take equal blame for allowing it to happen. 

I want White Center to change. Most everyone here would like to see it change. But none of us would like to see White Center lose its character in the process. So far, it hasn't. What change has occurred has largely been because members of the community wanted something better for their community.