George Washington, by Gilbert Stuart, 1797 (via Wikipedia)
This being late December, lists of predictions for the new year are all the rage. For the first time, I’m joining in. But being New To Seattle, I am confining my prognostications to the area. And the calls I make generally shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Herewith, my Seattle predictions for 2016:
- A new liberal protest movement at the University of Washington demands a name change because George Washington owned slaves.
- Seattle opens more off-leash dog parks than new schools.
- Amazon.com start a service by which a new home can be ordered online.
- Although constitutionally barred from running for reelection, President Obama comes to Seattle for another fundraiser without scheduling any free appearances open to the public.
- Visit Seattle, which used to be Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, starts a new marketing campaign emphasizing Seattle gets less rain than Bangladesh.
- A new police scandal erupts, this one over allegations departmental officials use civil asset forfeiture proceeds to pay for parties.
- Seattle fails to get an NBA franchise, but is offered one in pro lacrosse.
- Marshawn Lynch teaches a public relations and speaking class at Seattle Community College.
- New research reveals that Chief Seattle, in his famous 1854 speech before negotiating a treaty yielding tribal lands for gringo settlement, uttered the phrase “Seattle Freeze,” its earliest known use.
- A Ballard man is arrested on charges of attacking a garbage inspector pawing through the man’s trash bins to see if the rubbish was sorted correctly.
- Jim McDermott loses his bid for reelection to a 15th term as a Seattle Congressman to a candidate whose pitch is that McDemott, who will be 79, “is too old to be a good liberal.”
- Prosecutors charge two Capitol Hill men with staging a phony campaign for local elected office to collect and cash in the four $25 city-funded vouchers that each voter can give away under a new campaign finance reform plan.
- Efforts by Seattle activists to repeal a state-law ban on local rent control is blocked in Olympia by Republican lawmakers who are landlords.
- The Seattle bubble starts to burst on many levels, with sky-high housing prices topping out due to oversupply and because newcomers look to live in cheaper places like White Center and Burien.
- With the support of Mayor Ed Murray, a developer files plans to build a house six feet wide.
- All the traffic signs around town saying “Alcohol .08% limit” are replaced with signs that say “Active THC 5ng/ml limit.”
- A riot erupts in the Central District over continued gentrification.
- A group of historians petitions the City Council asking that the Leif Erikson statue facing Puget Sound in Ballard be turned around because, whatever the explorer accomplished, he never saw that body of water then and shouldn’t see it now.
- The Seattle Times changes the wording on its front-page masthead from “locally owned” to “locally run” after it is pointed out on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” that 49.5% of the parent company’s voting stock and 70.6% of the nonvoting stock is owned by a publicly traded corporation based in California.
- Pete Carroll runs the ball this time.
Some of these were pretty Darn Funny….