Here’s What Else Could Devastate Seattle

…Other than a slow death by dad jokes about coffee and recycling

By now, you’ve probably read the doomsday New Yorker piece about how all of Seattle is going to die in a horrible natural disaster. If you live in Seattle, you’d also probably seen the Reddit AMA with the seismologists (or read a local news outlet’s digestion of it), purchased several gallons of distilled water, stored several extra bags of dog food, begun hoarding dried meats and fruits, and possibly even plotted how you’ll get out of your building in the event of a tsunami or earthquake or citizen uprising.

And if you’re reading this, you probably also read Dave Pell’s Medium article about some of the other things that might be the death of us.

Of course, Pell is from San Francisco, which has zero threat of earthquake and very affordable rents and no cultural clash between old-timers and tech newcomers, so he’s in a perfect position to poke fun at a city that’s growing faster than almost any other in the country.

He also seems to have gleaned all of his Seattle knowledge from watching old episodes of Frasier. Maybe he visited one time for a conference or something. He probably called it Pike’s Place. There’s really no way to know based on his post.

Anyway, as a Seattleites, we’re extremely used to this kind of article, which takes one of our rare national news stories and turns it into a 700-word joke about coffee and recycling.

But really, Seattle is kind of a hot city right now, and now’s probably as good a time as any to let the rest of the world know what’s actually going on here — and what’s actually threatening to sink us.

1. The billion-dollar tunnel boring machine stuck under the city has been delayed for two years and is costing about the price of a (very) small house per day. Who’s going to pay for all that? We literally don’t know. But it sure makes for fun graphics.
2. The unrelenting rise in rent is not doing us any favors. The cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment has increased by 63% in the last six years, while the minimum wage has only gone up a few dollars.
3. Climate change.
4. Starbucks is raising their prices nationwide, but it’s going to be worse in Seattle, which is weird considering Starbucks lives here. Come on, Howard. I thought we were friends. (Oh wait. Nope.)
5. Canadians not coming to buy enough weed could be a problem for us, considering all that legal weed is filling lining our coffers with some much-needed green right now. Come on down, Canada. We’ve been getting our weed from you for years. Return the favor, eh?
6. Dave Pell is concerned about a “mass exodus” if Subaru stopped selling cars, but the real threat to Seattle is if they keep selling all those cars, considering Seattle has some of the nation’s worst gridlock. Plus, hasn’t Pell heard about the War on Cars?

7. It doesn’t actually rain very much in Seattle or the surrounding areas, which is a real problem. You’re not the only one in a drought, California.

8. It could be a problem if more people don’t get on board with our rules about recycling and, more importantly, food waste. A lawsuit filed against a new mandatory composting ordiance could threaten to water down what’s otherwise a really cool, progressive rule. The City of Seattle is trying to get people to compost more, in order to keep hundreds of thousands of tons of composte out of landfills, which is basically like, as John Oliver called it, “throwing a trash blanket over a flatulent food man and dutch-ovening the entire planet.”

9. We may be a literate city, but our horrific racial education gap is something to read up on.

10. The Space Needle may be our most recognizable piece of architecture, but it’s also the site of a whole lot of labor violations, the likes of which are undermining our working class at every possible turn.

11. Again, excessive heat. Climate change. Drought.

12. Ultimately, though, the death of Seattle won’t be any of these extremely un-fun subjects. It’ll be dad jokes and the perpetuation of extremely lazy and boring stereotypes about a city that’s rapidly creeping up as a tech hub and a political powerhouse. But sure, Rest of the Country. It’s all rain, coffee, Nirvana, and fish out here.