The Ave

sinceredawg

sinceredawg

Member
Went there last month - I like to visit when I'm in town but it had been a while. WTFH happened? It's grafitti, busted windows, crazy homeless fucks camped on the sidewalk screaming with all their shit spread out... it's embarrassing honestly. If I came on a campus visit I wouldn't choose that for my college setting. UW has never had a strong campus community, but it's gotten repugnant. What the fuck is the University doing? We are so bad at optics.
 
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I only remember pretty busy places and no empty storefronts with broken windows. Other than that it pretty much sounds like the Ave of the early 90s.
 
I was in the U-District 2013-2018. It varied on and off with how dirty and how overrun with the homeless/Ave Rats it got, but it wasn't noticeably worse than any other busy neighborhood in Seattle. Generally though, more empty storefronts = more dirty because of more spots for the homeless to spot up and loiter/camp.

Amazon killing the small retail store market already took out so many businesses on the Ave in the last decade that it created a situation of more storefront supply than demand could fill. There's a limit to how many restaurants can actually be successful and turn a profit on the Ave, so there's insanely high turnover in that genre. I'd say over 50% of the places that were open my freshman year don't exist anymore. Some storefronts changed to different restaurants 3-4 times over the course of my time as a student. It's a brutally competitive scene.

I went back to the Ave a few months ago, and it was pretty evident that COVID plus a whole year of no students on campus completely fucked over the businesses on there. So naturally, with so many dead and empty storefronts, it creates an environment where it's dirtier and more overrun by the riff raff now than ever before.
 
I only remember pretty busy places and no empty storefronts with broken windows. Other than that it pretty much sounds like the Ave of the early 90s.
Click to expand...

I spent a lot of time on The Ave in the 1990s, and it was always sketchy, but it has become a dangerous embarrassment.
 
Robberies and assaults on the Ave and Burke Gilman are pretty typical and have been for at least 15 years. Usually once or twice a quarter I’d get a notification. I fondly remember the report about a guy beating a student with a tree branch. Actually sums up my UW fan experience pretty well.
 
20 years ago I was a drunk college kid and there was always the sketchy shit around the U District. My friends at UW were all Greek so we usually just stayed on the row or went up to Dutchess after games at HS. As for the ave, you kind of expected to see some shit but you were 20 years old and didn’t give a fuck because you were just trying to party and get laid, but the thieves, beggars and drug dealers(utility!) were there in 2000 just like there are now.

Except there’s just twice as much of that shit and half as many police dealing with it. I stopped heading up to grab lunch at Saigon Deli. It’s just too much of a shit show. Someone’s car is always getting broken into and there’s always a bunch of homeless lunatics falling around on the sidewalks and in the streets. Aqua Verde will do just fine for when I’m down at UWMC.
 
Couple of years ago a guy on a Roid Rage knocked out his buddy right there across the street from Bartell Drugs. Dude was out before hitting the pavement

He kept yelling at his knocked out friend….”WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THAT?”

 
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