Seattle mad houses

Construction and destruction take place in the foreground as the Mercer Street exit gets re-routed. Vulcan Construction is everywhere. From this height, South Lake Union appears to be sliding further into Westlake, assimilated by the Borg that is downtown corporate expansion. But in the midst of a neighborhood unrecognizable even 15 years ago, there stands a monument forever remembering the spirit of a young Seattle: the Space Needle. For all its space-ageyness, the Space Needle authentically preserves a Seattle of old, smack in the middle of a very new Seattle.

While she admits some neighborhoods weather gentrification well—Williamsburg in Brooklyn, for instance, changes from a working-class ethnic neighborhood to a haven for hip young professionals and artists, at least retaining a sense of particular local culture—she is concerned that unique local cultures are being sacrificed for the more profitable corporate homogony of the upper and middle-class.

Mad Homes is an exhibition spanning four houses on a Capital Hill block that are due for demolition and development into condos. Once the occupants were mostly gone, the Mad Art team transformed the block into a series of art installations. Massive holes were cut in floors, walls and ceilings.

Latex was applied. Houses were wrapped in saran wrap. The pieces act as the last hurrah for these houses before they are turned to firewood and replaced by condos that mirror the complex next door. A piece like Ties That Bind from trio SuttonBeresCuller, which weaves thick red ratchet straps through two houses, reminds the viewer of the closeness of a community leaving.

In this sense, considering the coming redevelopment, the piece attempts to remember a community that is now gone. Skin is quite literally the skin of the house, much like the shed skin of a snake. The latex is surprisingly detailed, too, as even the chips in exterior paint are visible in her reconstruction. The result is surprisingly powerful.

My mother who I brought along cried in this room. There are shirts commemorating favorite teams, summer camps, and family activities. There are baby clothes and clothes for the morbidly obese—clothes that all mark the events of a life. We are privileged to see the way a family lived. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account.

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Late s Nellie Curtis, another madam of legendary business acumen, launches her first brothel in the Camp Hotel on First Avenue. She runs a string of houses and amasses a small fortune.

Stairs down to Western Avenue for sailors streaming up from the harbor. Many brace themselves with a drink at the adjacent Lotus Inn. Curtis somehow escapes a military-instigated brothel shutdown and operates the LaSalle until And it records a now largely vanished First Avenue of dive bars, pool halls, and peep shows.

March Using unpaid volunteers posing as prostitutes, the Seattle Police Department arrests a Spokane school principal, a year-old boy, and 21 other alleged patrons. May SPD begins deploying female officers as prostitution decoys and says it will phase out the use of volunteers.

July 29, King County Superior Court Judge Donald Horowitz overturns the prostitution convictions of two Seattle women on discrimination grounds, because police failed to arrest male customers as well. Police have since begun snaring using volunteer female decoys to snare customers. August Police and outreach workers report an unprecedented number of young male street prostitutes in Seattle. Police make their first arrest for pimping underage boys. May 5, In an apparently unprecedented application of a public nuisance law, a King County judge shuts down Skandia massage parlors in downtown Seattle, Federal Way, and Mercer Island.

July Police report that prostitution is at its highest level in nearly a decade, and that streetwalkers have fanned out from their longtime hub at Sixth and Pike to the International District and Pike Place Market. Some officials and civic boosters worry about pimps, prostitutes, and muggers preying on tourists coming to see the Treasures of King Tut exhibit. July The city attorney proposes new regulations for tease operations like Exotica, requiring notification that no nudity or sexual activity is offered inside.