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Comment by wyclif | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain a little more about this? It sounds so cryptic. What were/are the cultural touchstones?

It's a good question. It's a little hard to explain, it's more of a feeling. Some of the touchstones are Rainier Beer (long gone), the hydro races (kinda loved to death), the I90 "bulge" (gone), the Pike Place Market, the Bite of Seattle (loved to death), Bumbershoot (loved to death), Ivar's Restaurant's silly TV ads (Ivar died and is much missed), the freeway ramps to nowhere getting torn down, Bellevue turning into a glass towerscape, Ballard losing its norwegian flavor, Capitol Hill losing its counter culture due to escalating real estate prices, moldy waterfront cabins replaced by $5m mansions, the 1940s bungalows all disappearing, etc.

The Space Needle and the creaky squeaky Monorail and of course Sylvester are thankfully still there and going strong.

How does "loved to death" work in the case of an event such as the ones you mentioned? Are they still there but lost their culture due to volume, or did they somehow fail despite that volume?

Both of the events you mentioned still seem to exist, in some form.

By loved to death, I mean crushed by too many people attending. Some things don't scale well.

It's like when the NHRA top fuel drag racing comes to down. It lasts 3 days, with the finals on Sunday. I go on the preceding Friday. Far, far fewer people attend, and it's much more informal. You can park within a reasonable distance. You're not swimming constantly in a crowd. You can watch the mechanics at work, and even talk to them. There's no big crush in the grandstands. It's much more informal, unstructured, and with little need for crowd control. And yet there's still all the action.

On Sunday, though, I stay away.

As a Seattle Norwegian I think it's too bad what's happened to Ballard! At least we still have our parade, although it's not as nice as it used to be (a lot more drinking and non-norwegian stuff) and my family isn't sure if we'll still go.

Maybe Bellevue becoming a glass towerscape will lead to new cultural growth there. That Seattle feeling you described is beginning to plant itself in these new cities cropping up on the eastside.

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