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walkitoutHere's the post that has done me in:
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/07/07/beating-a-dead-horse-gas-prices/
This is the third time the author of this blog has hammered on some article that describes people who _are in fact_ moving from a long commute to a short commute.
Here's the article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008036634_housegas07.html
It's actually a pretty good article about a _working couple_ who lived together in _Kirkland_ but both worked in Seattle, and who decided to buy a townhome in the Roosevelt neighborhood. Again, many of my readers are in/from Seattle and thus familiar with it -- but others are not. Roosevelt, FWIW, is an _awesome_ neighborhood a little bit north of the U-District with good access to freeways, great bus service, mostly single-family homes switching over to multi-family (think Ballard a few years ago), with decent schools, a Whole Paycheck as well as more moderately priced groceries, a smattering of restaurants, etc.
What it is not is on Capitol Hill. I don't know _why_ the author of Seattle Bubble concludes the couple is buying on or around Capitol Hill (which would be prohibitively expensive even taking a huge hit to the lifestyle in terms of # bedrooms/square footage, etc.). The article clearly states Roosevelt, altho I suppose you actually have to skim down to the bottom to discover this.
A very, very superficial check at real estate prices confirmed what I suspected: Kirkland is _more_ expensive than Roosevelt, unless it's a wash. This would be because of historical perceptions of school quality (Seattle Public had a very, very nasty rep there for a while) that, if they were true, aren't any more.
So. A couple of people decide to move closer to their jobs, in a neighborhood with great services, which will probably be slightly cheaper than where they were commuting from. And the idiot who lives in Kenmore thinks that this won't "pencil out". [ETA: It was uncalled, petty, small-minded and mean of me to refer to The Tim from Seattle Bubble in this manner. I apologize. He responded quite handsomely in the first comment below.]
Yeah. I'll go waste my spare time reading the comments at Calculated Risk, instead. If I need Seattle real estate info, I can always read Rain City. I added my corrections in a comment; I'll check back one more time to see if this had _any_ impact on the author. Otherwise, I'm afraid he's just a wack job whose particular hangup is no longer all that unique (since everyone by now seems on board with the idea that real estate in and around Seattle has crested).
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/07/07/beating-a-dead-horse-gas-prices/
This is the third time the author of this blog has hammered on some article that describes people who _are in fact_ moving from a long commute to a short commute.
Here's the article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008036634_housegas07.html
It's actually a pretty good article about a _working couple_ who lived together in _Kirkland_ but both worked in Seattle, and who decided to buy a townhome in the Roosevelt neighborhood. Again, many of my readers are in/from Seattle and thus familiar with it -- but others are not. Roosevelt, FWIW, is an _awesome_ neighborhood a little bit north of the U-District with good access to freeways, great bus service, mostly single-family homes switching over to multi-family (think Ballard a few years ago), with decent schools, a Whole Paycheck as well as more moderately priced groceries, a smattering of restaurants, etc.
What it is not is on Capitol Hill. I don't know _why_ the author of Seattle Bubble concludes the couple is buying on or around Capitol Hill (which would be prohibitively expensive even taking a huge hit to the lifestyle in terms of # bedrooms/square footage, etc.). The article clearly states Roosevelt, altho I suppose you actually have to skim down to the bottom to discover this.
A very, very superficial check at real estate prices confirmed what I suspected: Kirkland is _more_ expensive than Roosevelt, unless it's a wash. This would be because of historical perceptions of school quality (Seattle Public had a very, very nasty rep there for a while) that, if they were true, aren't any more.
So. A couple of people decide to move closer to their jobs, in a neighborhood with great services, which will probably be slightly cheaper than where they were commuting from. And the idiot who lives in Kenmore thinks that this won't "pencil out". [ETA: It was uncalled, petty, small-minded and mean of me to refer to The Tim from Seattle Bubble in this manner. I apologize. He responded quite handsomely in the first comment below.]
Yeah. I'll go waste my spare time reading the comments at Calculated Risk, instead. If I need Seattle real estate info, I can always read Rain City. I added my corrections in a comment; I'll check back one more time to see if this had _any_ impact on the author. Otherwise, I'm afraid he's just a wack job whose particular hangup is no longer all that unique (since everyone by now seems on board with the idea that real estate in and around Seattle has crested).
Re: The Tim here
Date: 2008-07-08 04:31 am (UTC)And has it gotten any less weird crossing that busy street where they at least used to have the little red flags for you to carry as you crossed?
I remember the KCLS branch library being nice. IIRC, it had a parking garage, which at the time seemed weird, but has since become relatively common.
Re: The Tim here
Date: 2008-07-08 04:50 am (UTC)it's the borders between towns that are spotty re: bus service and walkability. kirkland/kenmore border is pretty much semi-rural, for example.
Re: The Tim here
Date: 2008-07-08 05:22 am (UTC)I wandered over to walkscore.com and entered some addresses for yucks.
45th and 15th (fairly close to ground zero U District): 98/100
(That's my college, so I know the ground pretty well; it's been a long time, but I have friends in the neighborhood, and I've stayed in a hotel there a couple times in the last few years. It is crazy walkable.)
70th and Roosevelt (which I would consider close to the heart of Roosevelt): 88/100
And then I let it pick for Kirkland, WA (which usually will land in the middle of a named town): 75/100
So, all really good for walkability.
My last Seattle apartment at 23rd and Jackson in the CD (where two drivers got by with one car and almost never drove it anyway): 85/100
My condo on 15th on Cap Hill, where I almost got rid of my car: 62/100 (I'm still completely puzzled by this).
Where I live right now: 14/100 (and it only does that well, because it doesn't realize that a coffee shop it knows about went out of business 7 or so years ago).
Where I'm thinking of moving to, so I'm walkable/bikeable to the commuter rail to Boston, and walkable/bikeable for my partner's job and hypothetical future jobs: 45/100 for one of the houses we lust after, and 23/100 for another. FWIW, the _second_ of those two houses would be better for everything we're interested in in the next decadeish than the first of those two, which says something interesting about walkscore and its hypothetical ambulator. Partly this has to do with which roads are a little too dangerous to bike on regularly.