Twenty Years Here

On May 23, 2006, I flew from Pittsburgh to Seattle, rented a Pontiac Grand Prix, moved into temporary housing in Chinatown, and started living on the West Coast. Twenty years later, I’m still here, and I like it here. I’ve lived in Washington for longer than I lived in New York, both in my hometown of Syosset (about 12 years) and in the state overall (about 18). More than two thirds of my adult life has been spent in Seattle, and while I’ll never be universally accepted as a “local”, I can’t imagine myself living anyplace else.

My integration into my new city started with a realization that I’d have to change my speech patterns a bit. Shortly after moving to Seattle, I was having lunch at work with my teammates, and I referred to The Oregon Trail, pronouncing “Oregon” in my New York accent, rhyming it with “octagon”. The conversation ground to a halt, and the rest of the table fixated on my bizarre pronunciation. If I was going to make Seattle my home, I realized that I’d have to learn to speak like a Pacific Northwesterner. For example, I now usually rhyme the first syllable of “orange” with “boar,” not “car.” I can pronounce “coffee” more like a dictionary’s pronunciation guide, and less like Linda Richman, the stereotypical New York housewife who hosted “Coffee Talk” sketches on Saturday Night Live. (In practice, Seattleites don’t often use that word, anyway; drip-brewed coffee is called “drip”, and straight espresso is either a “doppio” or “spro.”) The Yiddish-derived slang words common in New York speech, like “schmutz” or “schlep”, mostly effect bemused smiles in Seattle. When visiting New York, I try to code-switch back into the accent I grew up speaking, not always easily; at dinner in Manhattan last winter, I forgot whether I should pronounce “Mario” with its first two syllables like “marry,” in the style of New Yorkers like Mario Perillo, “Mr. Italy”, or in the modern Italian way, as most Nintendo fans in the U.S. and Japan say. Although my family insists that my accent has been neutralized, I’ve been recognized as a New Yorker within a minute of having met someone raised here, whether because of my aggressiveness, my sarcasm, or my revealing and grating pronunciations of words like “class” and “last.” I have a sixth sense for “New York energy” myself, identifying a few ex-residents of the tri-state area by their behavior.

I like my adopted home, and I’m also an advocate for improving it. I became interested in “urbanist” activism, in favor of dense housing, mass transit, and pedestrian and bike accessibility, when I started going to public information sessions about Capitol Hill station, which began construction in 2008 and opened in 2016. After a decade of ignoring signature gatherers for ballot initiatives, I volunteered as one, being part of two successful campaigns to get Seattle’s social housing developer created and funded, with a payroll tax on companies that have very well-paid employees in the city. During my career break, I’m showing up at events where I can advocate for housing and transit during the typical business week. Seattle continues to grow in population and prosperity, and the city needs more housing and transit to keep the cost of living from rising even more than it has in the past 20 years.

Having split my life across multiple cities of residence, I sometimes feel like I’m caught between cultures. People I’ve just met recognize me as a New Yorker from my behavior and mild accent, but I have lived almost none of my adult life in the Empire State, and I rarely visit the city. I’ve spent more of my life in Seattle than in any other city or town, and I’m well-read on the city’s history, yet I’ll never have the swagger of self-styled “natives”, by which I mean local residents, descended from immigrants, who were born and raised here, and who claim superiority over transplants like me. I’ve avoided conflict by avoiding forums where city tenure conveys status, such as local social media groups; besides, many of our elected leaders are transplants, too. Seattle’s current mayor, Katie Wilson, was raised in New York state, the second Seattle mayor from New York in my 20 years here. As one friend from Philadelphia told me when I moved to Seattle in 2006, “nobody here is from here.”

Seattle has been a good place to work, a good place for friends (both preexisting and newfound) and family to gather, and a great jumping-off point for trips by car, train, ship, and airplane. The city has its flaws, but it also has a great community of activists and organizations fixated on solving its most stubborn problems. I’m glad I came here, and while I’m not sure what I’ll do next, what I do next will probably involve continuing to be based here. Here’s to the next 20 years.