Seattle is a Vortex
by Matt Briggs
I often stumble into a new part of Seattle. The smell of freshly poured concrete and sprayed paint creates a sensation like vertigo, like standing on top of the Aurora Bridge, staring down into the ship canal and realizing I’m standing on a shell of asphalt and concrete and steel wrapping the wind and current and muck. I might stand on a Seattle street with crowds milling around me next to a ten-story structure. Only three months ago that high-rise didn’t exist. Only twenty-years ago, the previous building didn’t even exist as a blueprint. A hundred and fifty years ago (a catnap in the life of most cities) Seattle didn’t exist at all. The shock of Seattle’s instant architecture makes me keenly aware that all of this asphalt, concrete, steel is just a by-product of something else. I’ve run into this sensation enough now since the building spree started when I was fifteen (and maybe it was like this before?) that the sensation no longer really causes a shock but merely a sense of movement, like stepping onto a bus. On a Seattle street, I expect to hear the keen of seagulls, smell Elliott Bay brine, and have this sense of architectural vertigo. I’ve stumbled into new skyscrapers. I’ve walked along the waterfront and realized I had somehow entered into a new convention center. I’ve spilled out of a movie theater crowd onto an oddly familiar street corner and realized I came out of a mall that stands where something else stood that I thought still existed even though I couldn’t quite recall what was there before.