- [Briggs] What is going on, everyone?
Welcome back to World According to Briggs
and a look at the Emerald City, Seattle, Washington.
Seattle carries a couple of other nicknames
like the Jet City and the Rain City.
Rain City is obvious because it rains here a whole bunch,
and Jet City is because of Boeing
and the influence of the aviation industry
over the years in Seattle.
Seattle residents are known as Seattleites.
Seattle is located in the Northwest part
of the United States
and is the largest city
in both the State of Washington and the Pacific Northwest.
It's been known as one of the fastest growing big cities
in the United States.
Seattle, like so many other overpriced big cities,
has a large homeless population.
Now, this is what's weird.
I've been to Seattle five different times
since the pandemic started,
and I haven't seen it as bad as situation
as Los Angeles, Portland, and San Francisco.
I've been to all of those cities and Seattle is bad.
Don't get me wrong.
It's just it's not in your face
like you get in San Francisco, Portland, and Los Angeles
So it's appearance.
I don't know what it is.
I go there and I see the homeless
but they don't have 20 tents on a sidewalk
every other block.
You know, it's just not that bad.
But appearances can be deceiving
because the stats say it is.
The numbers show that Seattle
is in the top five per capita with homeless.
Seattle, with all its problems, is still a great city
with Elliott Bay, Space Needle,
Pike Place Market, and Seattle Center.
Definitely worth a visit,
and maybe even move there if you could afford it.
All right, let's see what's up with Seattle, Washington.
Seattle was inhabited by Native Americans
for at least 4,000 years
before the first European settlers showed up.
That first European settler was George Vancouver.
And he showed up in May of 1792
during his 1791 to 1795 expedition for the Royal Navy.
He was out to chart the Pacific Northwest.
In 1851, a large party of American pioneers
led by Luther Collins,
made it to the mouth of Duwamish River,
and they formally claimed the area on September 14th, 1851.
Now, the Duwamish River starts near Tukwila
where the Black River and the Green River meet,
and it empties out into Elliot Bay.
But George Vancouver and Luther Collins and his group,
they're not credited with the founding of Seattle.
Arthur A. Denny and his group of travelers
are credited with the founding.
They settled at Alki Point on November 13th, 1851.
They eventually moved on to the eastern shore
and named it Seattle in 1852
after the local Duwamish chief,
Chief Si'ahl also known as Chief Seattle.
Seattle went on to be incorporated into a town
on January 14th, 1865,
and it was incorporated into a city on December 2nd, 1869.
They weren't a town very long.
On June 6th, 1889, the Great Seattle Fire happened,
destroying the entire central business district.
This was started accidentally
by an overturned glue pot in carpentry shop.
The fire made its way to a nearby liquor store
and it exploded.
Wooden boardwalks also carried the flames across the street
and ignited other blocks.
Seattle's water supply wasn't sufficient
to actually put the fire out.
They didn't have many hydrants and this became a problem.
Water pressure was too weak, things like that.
Seattle at the time only had volunteer firemen,
so this created another problem.
Most people say they were competent,
but they just didn't have what they needed
to put the fire out.
By the morning of June 7th, fire had burned 25 city blocks.
Seattle went on to play a major role
in shipping and transportation for the Yukon Gold Rush.
Seattle had been a major city for a very long time,
but, you know, it wasn't as popular
and it wasn't as known as places
like New York, Los Angeles,
San Francisco, Dallas, things like that,
but it really got put on the map,
at least on a global level.
People finally knew what Seattle was and where it was
because of a music scene, grunge.
In the mid-80s, Washington,
particularly in Seattle and nearby towns
blew up with this new music
which is kind of a punk, alternative thing going on
and they called it grunge.
Great music has always come out of Seattle.
But when bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice in Chains,
Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone,
when those bands got on the scene,
everybody knew about Seattle.
Back in the day, it seemed like if you were a musician,
you had to make your way in New York, Los Angeles
or in United Kingdom, someplace like that.
But Seattle, it's like these kids came out of there,
start playing their music and they were like,
"We don't need LA, we don't need New York.
We got our own thing going on here."
And it was huge.
Seattle is no stranger to corruption and major crimes,
or at least very interesting crimes.
On September 24th in 1969,
20 cops conducted a really odd bingo raid.
That's right, there were underground bingo parlors
in Seattle at one point.
The raid went off without a hitch.
Some housewives and employees of the bingo parlor
were arrested for playing bingo,
and running bingo games, I guess.
Soon after the raid, all charges were dropped
as a web of police corruption unfolded.
What happened was some of the cops
took cardboard boxes jammed with financial records and names
that provided a really detailed look
into a web of crooked cops and corrupt local officials.
The raid was the idea of an assistant chief
named Tony Gustin.
He planned the raid at Pike Place Market
to help bring down a corrupt regime
that had rained over Seattle since the 1920s.
In 1983, you had the Wah Mee massacre.
The Wah Mee was a gambling club.
On February 18th, 1983, two gunman broke in there,
hogtied the 14 people in the building,
shooting them and leaving them for dead.
The only survivor
was 62-year-old ex-Navy cook and car dealer, Wai Chin.
He managed to struggle out of his bonds
and stumble into the street for help.
That location has never been opened again.
About a decade later,
you had the Mia Zapata murder in 1993.
I remember this when this one happened.
It was kind of upsetting.
Mia Zapata was the lead singer
of a Seattle punk band called The Gits.
Around 2:00 AM on July 7th, 1993,
Zapata left the Comet Tavern
in the capital hill area of Seattle.
After leaving the Tavern,
she went a couple blocks away and visited a friend.
She stayed briefly and then left to walk home.
This was the last time she was ever seen alive.
Zapata's body was discovered near the intersection
of 24th avenue South and South Washington Street
around 3:30 AM.
This is in the central district.
She'd been beaten, attacked, and strangled.
It is believed she encountered her attacker
shortly after 2:15 AM,
and her body was not initially identified
as she had no identification on her
and they didn't know who she was.
The medical examiner was the person that identified her.
They were a fan of the band
and knew exactly who she was.
In the show, Forensic Files,
they revealed that she was strangled to death,
but she'd been beaten so badly.
She probably would have died from internal injuries.
This case went unsolved for a very long time.
And then, DNA caught up with Jesus Mezquia.
He was a Florida fisherman when he was arrested.
At the time of her death,
he was living not too far from where her body was found.
He had a history of violence towards women
and all kinds of other horrible things
but the DNA obviously sunk his boat.
No pun intended.
Mezquia was eventually sentenced to 37 years.
Of course, he appealed, and they gave him 36 years,
so he went to the Big House in January of 2003.
He died in Washington on January 21st, 2021
at the age of 66 years old.
Mia Zapata is in the 27 Club.
The 27 Club is a list
of popular musicians, artists and actors
who died at the age of 27.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison,
Amy Winehouse, and D. Boon,
there's a bunch others.
In 2010, Moxie Media was involved in a political scandal.
During that year's state senate primary election,
Moxie Media engaged in what's called astroturfing.
This is when you spread a bunch of money around
to little organizations that maybe you created
to make it look like there's grassroots efforts
behind a candidate or something like this.
They did this for Nick Harper who became a state senator.
In an out of court settlement,
the state fined Moxie Media $290,000.
Nick Harper stated that he knew nothing about the scheme,
but eventually resigned in 2013
due to rumors of an extra marital affair.
In other well-documented crimes,
which we won't get into because they've been over done,
the Green River Killer is from Seattle.
He worked in the SeaTac area when he was killing people.
And of course, Mary Kay LeTourneau in 1997
hooked up with one of her students
while he was in the eighth grade.
They've eventually had a kid together.
She did some time in prison.
She just died recently.
I think of ovarian cancer.
In case you don't know, she went on to marry that student
when she got out of prison and he was 18
and they had some other kids together.
In 2000, the City of Seattle, not the metro area,
had 563,000 residents.
In the 2020 census, they had 769,000,
putting them at number one in growth in 2020.
The entire metro area of Seattle
has just under 4 million residents,
putting them as the 15th largest metro area
in the United States.
When you look at the demographics of Seattle,
you have about 69% White,
about 8% are Black or African American,
and Hispanic or Latino is 6.6%.
The Asian community is the second largest at almost 14%.
Few research reports
that the largest religious groupings in Seattle
are Christians, 52%,
followed by no religion is 37%,
Hindu is 2%, Buddhist, 2%,
Jewish community is 1% of the population,
as is the Muslim population.
Seattle has a history of a boom and bust type thing
like so many other cities.
Seattle has been on the upswing several times
and then going into a little decline.
The first boom was covering their early years
and they got into the lumber industry
and they rode that like a wild horse.
Back during the lumber times,
the road that is now known as Yesler Way
won the nickname Skid Road,
supposedly after the timber skidding down the hill
to Henry Yesler's sawmill.
Many believe this is the origin
of the American phrase or name Skid Row.
Logging was the first major industry
but by the late 19th century,
the city had become a commercial and shipbuilding center
as kind of like I'd said earlier,
a gateway to Alaska for the Klondike Gold Rush.
Seattle eventually became a technology city
in the 1980s, and even today.
Companies like Microsoft and Amazon
were founded and established in Seattle.
Washington Mutual was founded
right after the Great Seattle Fire, as well.
These days, it's just software biotechnology
and internet companies
that basically rule the economics of Seattle.
Now, like I said in the last video,
this one gets a little tricky
because people from Seattle will disagree with it.
That's how it normally goes.
The locals have their own idea
what is the best, worst neighborhoods.
It always happens.
That's why I go by the stats and their livability score.
Probably the best neighborhood to live in Seattle
is Hawthorne Hills.
Hawthorne Hills has a livability score of 87
which is the highest in Seattle.
Now, there's more expensive neighborhoods
but that doesn't mean they're the best neighborhood.
The crime rate here is 77% lower than Seattle's average,
and the rental prices are 39% lower than Seattle's average.
When it comes to middle of the road neighborhoods,
there's a lot to choose from.
One of the ones I like is Crown Hill.
They have a livability score of 68.
Their crime rate is 14% lower than the Seattle average.
Their cost of living is only 2% higher
than Seattle's average.
And the real estate prices are about 4% higher
than Seattle's average.
They say the median home value in Crown Hill
is about 503,000.
But realistically,
if you find anything at 600,000, you're lucky.
Probably the worst neighborhood is Rainier Beach.
Now, I say worst,
I mean the people are actually living in it.
If you go to some of the industrial areas, things like that,
yeah, there's some even worse there.
But the livability score in Rainier Beach is 49.
That sucks.
The total crime here is 102% higher than the US average.
Compared to other places like Los Angeles, Detroit,
I don't know Chicago,
that's not terrible but it's not good.
And what really sucks about this place
is you're still hard pressed to find a home here
that is under $600,000.
It's like the home prices aren't paying attention
to the really crappy crime stats.
Now, here are some numbers that a lot of people care about,
but they're just the average stats you'd find in Seattle.
Their crime rate is 104% higher than the national average.
Their violent crime rate is 54% higher
than the national average.
And in Seattle, the whole city,
you have a 1 in 20 chance of being the victim of a crime.
Their cost of living is 56% higher
than the national average.
Housing is 124% higher than the national average.
And goods and service are about 30% higher.
The typical home price here is about 800,000
and that's for a two or three bedroom house.
Seattle's overall livability score is 65.
The food.
Obviously, Seattle's gonna have some great seafood.
I've had a lot of it, they do.
They have a lot of really great seafood places to eat.
And if I started with one of them,
I'd probably have to list 50 of them.
They also have a lot of really good noodle places
that you should probably check out.
But there's two places I'm gonna tell you about
that you have to visit in Seattle.
The first is Frelard Tamales.
This place is great.
I found it by accident.
I was actually in a tattoo place
and I was looking at tattoos, gonna get one,
and I asked if there's any place good to eat around there.
One of the girls in the place said, "Follow me."
She walked me around the corner
and there was Frelard Tamales.
It's not even a restaurant.
It's like a little window you go up to.
You ask for some tamales.
They give them to you and you eat them.
And they are great.
You need to visit that one.
It's on like Latona Avenue and Northeast 65th Street.
It's in the Green Lake neighborhood.
The second one is Dick's Drive-in.
Dick's Drive-in is like
one of those iconic places in Seattle.
People have mentioned it in music
and it's Bill Gates' favorite place to eat.
I watched this really cool YouTube video about Dick's,
and they had all this information
on how it's been around since God knows how long
and all these other things,
their menu hardly ever changes,
but what stuck out to me was how he treated his employees.
Their pay is great for a fast food place.
Their benefits are outstanding.
And one thing they did have, and I hope they still have it,
is after six months of employment,
college students get 22,000 towards their tuition
which is outstanding.
What other companies are gonna do that?
Big or little?
You know, it's a hamburger place.
Good hamburger place.
I think the burgers are great.
There are a lot of things to do in Seattle.
And it can be a little overwhelming
if you're only there for a weekend
and you're trying to see it all.
You got the important ones like Pike Place Market.
This is a popular spot, but it gets really busy.
You'll find anything from vegetables, fruit, fish,
all sorts of things.
Most importantly, the original Starbucks is there.
You gotta go there, stand in line, get some coffee,
take a picture, whatever you gotta do.
That's what everyone does
when they go to Pike Place Market the first time.
You also have the Museum of Flight.
This one is very interesting
not just for airplane enthusiasts.
You could spend a whole day in here and not get bored.
And of course, the king of all of them,
you have the Space Needle at the Seattle Center.
You go up 605 feet.
Well, you don't go 605 feet,
that's how tall the whole thing is.
But you get to the top
and it's like a 360 degree view of Elliott Bay and Seattle,
and it's great.
You gotta do that at least one time when you visit Seattle.
One thing I did the last time I was there
was the Pop Culture Museum.
That's totally worth visiting.
And the Woodland Park Zoo.
This is 92 acres
and is home to many threatened and endangered species
from around the globe, not just the United States.
Woodland kinda makes me feel like it's just maybe things
from Washington and Pacific Northwest.
No, it's from everywhere.
They got African elephants, Asian elephants,
jaguar, snow leopards, grizzly bears, lemurs,
a solar operated carousel.
But if you go there,
definitely book an animal experience tour.
It's a lot of fun.
When it comes to sports,
Seattle is another great city for sports.
You've got the Seattle Seahawks
which is an outstanding NFL team.
In baseball, you have the Seattle Mariners.
In soccer, you have the Seattle Sounders.
And then in the women's basketball, the WNBA,
you have the Seattle Storm.
And most exciting out of all of this is this year,
this coming year, this next season,
the Seattle Kraken start playing,
which is a new NHL hockey team.
They used to have the Seattle Supersonics in the NBA,
but they eventually moved to Oklahoma
and changed their name to Thunder.
I think they should have kept the Sonics at least,
and just call themselves the Oklahoma Sonics
because that's actually the home
of Sonic Drive-thru, the restaurant.
It would have been a nice little crossover there, you know?
You also have the Seattle Mist.
Okay, so do you remember the Lingerie Football League?
Well, they've changed their name.
Now, the league is called Legends Football League,
that 'til now it's still women,
which is great,
and they're scantily clad.
But I don't know how you go
from the Lingerie Football League to Legends Football.
Legends tells me it's like a retired NFL players
are starting their own little over 50 league
or something like that,
not a bunch of girls playing football.
I mean, these girls play hard football
and some of them are really good.
I'd say a lot of them are good.
I've watched a few games,
but, yeah, how do you get from the Lingerie Football League
to Legends Football League?
I don't understand it.
There's a lot of famous people that come from Seattle
so I'm just gonna give you some of the more famous ones.
You got Bill Gates and Paul Allen,
both are from Seattle
and both were founding members of Microsoft.
Jimi Hendrix, the greatest guitarist of all time.
Rainn Wilson from The Office.
Back in 2015, he had this other show called Backstrom.
It was such a great show and it lasted one season.
13 episodes, that was it.
It broke my heart.
I was really getting into it when they killed that show.
Speaking of killing it, Amanda Knox is from Seattle.
She's the one, she was the exchange student in Italy
that killed her roommate and she went to jail.
Then, she got out.
And now, she's mad at Matt Damon for some reason.
Yeah, it's weird.
So there you have Seattle.
Seattle's a beautiful city.
It has some problems like every city.
You know, we had the George Floyd protest
and that CHAZ area.
And there always seems to be a protest going on.
They have out of control homelessness.
Costs of living is up there.
But it is a beautiful, successful American city
that has given us a lot of great music,
incredible inventions and companies.
If you ever get a chance to visit Seattle,
not just that one day thing
before you get on your cruise ship and go to Alaska,
go to Seattle, spend some time there,
make sure you stay away from areas you shouldn't be in
just like any city in any country, in any state,
and enjoy Seattle.
All right, everyone.
I hope you enjoyed the video.
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Everybody have a great day.
Be nice to each other.