Porn In The Wave Of Gentrification

As I walked into work, way too goddamn early this morning, two young men walked out of the porn store on First. They stood outside the door and one of them lit up a cigarette. I'm assuming they worked there, but why an all night adult video and paraphernalia store would need two clerks was a bit of a mystery; security maybe. The smoker saw me passing and gave me a hearty "good morning" which I really wasn't expecting.

Friendly, early morning porn clerks are heartening in a way.

I had been thinking to myself on the walk home last night, passing another adult store and strip bar further up on First, closer to Pike Place Market, that these places could be facing trouble soon.

See, Seattle is like an adolescent as far as cities go. Seattle had spent a number of years as a smaller, sort of homier city, but it is now sprouting quickly; it's growing too big for its clothes just after they've been purchased, eating all the peanut butter, drinking all the milk, sprouting hair in places it didn't exist before. The problem I'm having is that the force pushing this growth seems to be greedy, suck-face property developers who have no qualms with dashing away those small things that characterize the city and are replacing them with the acne of ugly, generic and tacky condominiums. They're showing up here faster than a carton of Ben and Jerry's disappears in a room full of stoners.

Adult bookstores and strip clubs tend to be relegated to the "shabbier" parts of town, parts of town that don't necessarily attract the "respectable" folk. But, so much of the city is being "renovated" (I'm using a lot of quotation marks today), that the adult themed places are now in ritzier digs. The video store with the joyfully awake clerk is steps away from a new hotel and fancy restaurant. The old and charmingly raunchy peepshow booth palace, "The Lusty Lady", now sits next to a gaping, open lot which will soon be the home of a luxury high rise. I wonder how much pressure these places find to pack up their wares and peddle them where the buildings aren't so shiny, where there are more poorly lit corner markets specializing in selling cigarettes and Mad Dog 20/20.

Seattle's a funky city in a lot of ways though, perhaps these seemingly disparate elements can exist side by side; like Velveeta next to Brie, like Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector next to La Boheme, like sex toys next to Pan Asian fusion cuisine.


Zeptember song of the day: To close it out, to end it on a pounding drum beat and almost harrowing harmonica workout, the final Zeptember selection will be When The Levee Breaks. Love it.