Word: downtowner
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Smack dab in the middle of downtown Seattle the early stages of construction on the city's new opera house make the entire block across from the Post Office between Second and Third Streets look like a war zone. Where the sidewalks were, plywood planks support the braver pedestrians and piles of dirt and rubble spill out into the edges of the street. Seattle's fleet of mountain biking bicycle couriers have a heyday of dodging the construction runoff, but for most downtown traffic, the construction makes getting around that block an arduous task...
...clock, local teenagers and anyone else who feels like listening (regardless of their predominately atheistic beliefs) crowd a Catholic church on Broadway, right in the middle of the gay district, to watch a choir of monks sing their nightly praises. Jacked up four by fours scuttle among skyscrapers downtown, and many a business executive can be found packing a briefcase into a VW van every day after work. Normalcy just isn't an issue in Seattle...
...have to bear. At times I wonder, "What did we do to deserve this?" and then I remember, as after a bad dream, that our mayor actually wanted the convention rights. Wanted the city to spend more than $13 million improving the convention center and filling in potholes. Wanted downtown commuters to endure weeks-long detours and street closures. Wanted San Diego on the map. And all for a lousy four-day infomercial...
...hotel manager said in reference to RNC preparations, "We're still being surprised. on a daily basis." About 80 percent of hotel rooms blocked off for the convention have been booked, but many hotels still harbor large vacancies or have not yet received deposits. And many restaurants downtown are frantically campaigning to convince locals that it's safe to go downtown from 5 to 8 p.m. each night, before the convention proceedings close and the delegates descend upon the Gaslamp Quarter...
...newspapers (one of which I'm writing for) are filled with coverage of every tiny action, from who's catering the media parties to what the podium looks like. The Republican National Committee and the San Diego Host Committee have overtaken two floors of a downtown office building, spending about $3,000 alone to rent plants and purchase floral arrangements for the space. And, in not necessarily detrimental but certainly unusual occurrences, streets connecting the airport to downtown are being repaved, billboards welcoming the GOP fleet are popping up and the homeless are being readied to disappear from downtown...