Alicia Keys and Seattle Underground

I was lucky enough to see Alicia Keys in concert for the second time this past weekend. She has an amazing voice and even her backup singers sounded great. She is definitely one of my favorite artists - her range, vocals, and songwriting are all superb. Unfortunately, she didn't sing one of my favorites from her new album, but I did enjoy singing along to "I am superwoman, yes I am, yes she is, still when I'm a mess, I still put on a vest with an S on my chest, oh yes, I'm a superwoman." Empowering!

I also played tourist last Friday and went on the Seattle Underground Tour for the very first time in my long affair with Seattle. The underground itself was not very spectacular, but the history of early Seattle was fascinating. Arthur Denny arrived in November of 1850 at the tide flats of Elliott Bay, where he stayed with 29 family members through the Seattle winter without solid shelter. He must have been a pretty tough guy to have stuck around through the rain and cold and wet in the mud along Elliott Bay without a proper roof and no REI to stock up on rain gear.

Early Seattle sounded like a pretty miserable, soggy, and stinky place. For a long time, the city had no sewer system, and at high tide, not only would raw sewage stream through the downtown streets, but if you flushed your new "crapper" toilet, sewage would spew five to eight feet out of the bowl. Our tour guide told us that the newspaper published the tide schedule on the front page every day so people could plan when to flush their toilets. Yuck!

Another interesting part of early Seattle history is Henry Yesler. Most Seattleites will know about Yesler Way and Yesler Terrace (and how they are both good places to use your car alarm, or avoid entirely) and how Henry Yesler ran a saw mill and used "skid road" to skid the logged old growth trees from downtown Seattle to the shores of Elliot Bay. I also learned on Friday that Yesler was a seriously unpleasant man, but Seattle still elected him mayor three times. In his first term as mayor, Yesler instated the first state lottery. He also won that first state lottery. He sued the city of Seattle for a formidable sum, and then the lawsuit, requiring only the mayor's signature to either accept or deny it, came across Yesler's desk - you can imagine he quickly became a wealthier man.

On June 6, 1889, 25 blocks of downtown Seattle were destroyed in less than a day by a fire started from an overturned glue pot. At this point, city planners recognized the need to raise the level of the city to avoid the problem with the tides. However, business owners were quickly losing profit, and began rebuilding immediately at the original street level. But city planners built the street up 8 to 32 feet over the old roads, with the sidewalks and the ground floor of businesses below at the original street level. Eighteen people died falling from the street in the few years before the city filled the sidewalks and finally businesses raised their storefronts to the second story. So what you see on the Underground Tour are the post-fire ground level storefronts from pre-1900 Seattle. The city also decided after a 1949 earthquake they would dispose of debris and trash in Underground Seattle - so it's pretty messy down there.

Learning about the rather unpleasant beginning to my favorite city was very interesting, and made me appreciate living in current Seattle. If you are in the area - the $15 and 90 minutes are definitely worth it for the tour.