Category: Cascadia exists (Page 1 of 5)

I see you, Virginia.

We’re just too nice out here. We won’t ask you to coffee, we’ll be nice to your face, but we won’t invite you to the barbeque.

And, we are too nice when we’re driving. *Too* nice. And, this means we’re unsafe, ironically.

But that isn’t actually true. We are actually safe drivers around here. Way safer than Virginians at least.


If you look beyond the data provided by All State Insurance in the linked article above, it’s hard to find anything that points to Washington or specifically Seattle area drivers being unsafe. In fact, we consistently rank as one of the most safe.

CDC stats are here for the metros (and I ranked them here) and an interesting study by the University of Michigan are here on statewide stats.

So, this Washingtonians-as-nice-but-jerk-drivers things strikes me as a bit of anecdote becoming truth sort of thing. And, it’s interesting that this and a lot of other similar stories are framed from the point of view from someone who came here from somewhere else.

It seems to be a different angle on the Seattle Freeze vs. Cascadian Calm story.

Again, from the linked story:

“I grew up on the East Coast,” Tim Godfrey of North Beach said. “The driving there was significantly more aggressive than here, and in particular, if you were going slow or even the speed limit in the left lane, people were on your bumper, flashing lights, honking if you still didn’t move.”

This is just about the nut of it. This story (and most stories about how we are as a regional personality) are told from the frame from people who are just arriving here. This is the same thing I noted when I wrote about the Cascadia Calm, which is in fact our regional personality.

Something I noted back then was that searches and mentions of “the Seattle Freeze” correlates when there is a large influx of new residents to Washington. We don’t talk about the way we are here when new people aren’t coming to town. It only happens when new residents notice that people here have a different way of being.

So, if you ask me, we’re fine out here. We’re not like other regions and we don’t have to be. I’m not an aggressive driver and I don’t have to be. I leave in plenty of time to get where I need to be.

I had been incredibly interested in reading Ryan Moothart’s Towards Cascadia. The book had been advertized on one of my favorite soccer podcasts. And, being not eager to read the entire thing on my phone, I spend a little money on a cheap tablet that I could use as an ereader since the book at that point was only available in ebook form.

In the end though, Moothart does not impress.

Overall, he seems to skip over the part where any writer who takes on the topic of Cascadia should describe and backup what they actually mean about Cascadia. I’m familiar with the Cascadia that Moothart writes about, it is the one that comes almost directly from David McCloskey and r/Cascadia. While I’m not a particular fan of this version of Cascadia, I understand where it comes from. And, unfortunately, Moothart does a poor job presenting it.

We do not have to choose between our local differences east and west of the Cascade Mountain Range in an attempt to gain a dominant influence throughout the entire region; we’re in this together as Cascadians, regardless of our differences, whatever they may be.

Here Moothart seems to gloss on what really are fundamental differences on politics and society between people from urban Seattle and rural Franklin County.

He also seems to misunderstand the nature of society here:

In Cascadia, our understanding of freedom and status quo extends to the environment that surrounds us. The living communities that exist in nature are part of us; we take into account their right to exist, free from overconsumption or exploitation.

What now? Really?

Even the most pollyannish assessment of how we are doing in terms of protecting the environment around here would state that most of us act like “nature is part of us.” This is simply not true. While commendable as a goal (I really do think we should act more like this), it isn’t the way things are. And, if this book is supposed to be a reflection of reality, it simply isn’t a good one.

The main jabs of the book are two longish and detailed detours into what I could only describe as political science descriptions of how Moothart sees the political nature of Cascadia. But, these detours lack specifics I’d find useful.

Where Moothart does a great job is describing how exactly a regional secession would work. This is a well detailed chapter and breaks down in both American and Canadian terms how the states and provinces that make up Cascadia (even on a sub-state level) would actually leave. Moothart does a great job of even showing how this process would be peaceful. I’ve often been curious about these processes if they existed, and he does an admirable job of walking the reader through them.

I should probably buckle down and read Dixie Rising, which seems to be a pretty interesting book. If only because it struck me as a political artifact of the pre-9/11 political writing in America. That stuff that wanted to drag the new Republicanism against the New Leftism, Clinton vs. Gingrich, that kind of stuff that crescendoed with Bush v. Gore, but seems so out of place today.

Anyway, the book (from what I can tell from skimming it a half dozen times) picks apart Southernism and looks at how it was infecting the U.S. back in the mid-90s. To get what I’m getting at, this survey of the book seems like a decent enough look.

Of course, in Dixie Rising, the author uses locations to illustrate his larger regional and national points, so I’ll try to do the same thing here.

1. South Lake Union and the Big Sort

This is the cutting edge of the technological wave that has crested and crashed along the west coast for years. New cancer research, new tech centers deep in urban Seattle bring yet again another wave of tech immigrants to Cascadia. This isn’t just a new decade, new well-educated immigrant rush to our region, this is the next wave of the Big Sort. The Big Sort has been the defining political and demographic trend in the last 50 years and its razors edge right now is South Lake Union in Seattle.

2. Crescent City and the Nones

Crescent City isn’t the least religious community in the United States. That award goes to Seneca Falls, NY (According to the 2010 US Religion Census. But, this small city on the far southern edge of Cascadia, isolated against the Pacific is the least religious community in the least religious part of the country. The Cascadians have never had much need for religion, and this trend is starting to creep across America.

3. Grants Pass and Scientific Denialism


Ugh. This is literally a dumb trend that I wish would go away. But, anti-vaccination activists are at a high tide in Grants Pass. But, it is more than anti-vaccine. It is an anti-science thing, anti-authority is more like it. From this one place, we can look at how science, government and authority is challenged in Cascadia.

4. Portland and the Sport of the Internet

As a passionate Sounders fan, I hate to highlight the Portscum Timbers in any way. But, for this narrative, I’ll have you know I am nothing but fair. But, the Sport of the Internet must be highlighted. From what is literally the third level of hell, we can see how American soccer fans found each other before old style media even took the sport seriously. That nowadays it isn’t about the media letting you know something is good, its about you knowing something is good and finding other people who think the same way.

5. Olympia and the DIY Platinum Record

DIY culture is a massive part of what makes Olympia itself to most people who don’t live here. Ben Haggerty is from Seattle, but he went to school at Evergreen. Likewise, for Kurt Cobain, I’d argue Olympia was much more important than Seattle. So, much like soccer making itself big and religion making itself small. Culture in Olympia and Cascadia finds itself, and sometimes doesn’t do shit. Other times it spawns The Heist.

As the long history of the Washington Territory was being rolled up, and statehood was on the horizon, a few people wondered whether it was a good time to change the name of the political organization. As long as we’re changing the nature of the organization itself, right?

So in May 1888, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a poll, asking readers to suggest a new name. We’ve already read about how a few years earlier, our territorial representative suggested the name Cascadia for the possible new state.

From the PI:

The main cause of the desire for a change seems to arise from the fact that giving of the name Washington to the new state would lead to confusion, and that endless trouble and annoyance would arise from the confounding of the national capital and the political division on the northwest Pacific coast.

Out to of 695 replies, 564 were in favor or Washington and these were scattered evenly over all parts of the territory. 

Another fact worthy of note is that there was an entire absence of any local prejudice. Yakima was favored by more non-residents of the valley of that name. Tacoma was the choice of more people in King county than the people in Pierce county, while nearly all of the expressions favorable of Rainier  were outside of Seattle.

If you were paying attention last week, you saw this story:

For weeks, the man from the Seattle suburbs found himself getting emails from people he didn’t know about a bachelor party and a groom he’s never met. 

He saw names of Philadelphia landmarks like Reading Terminal Market thrown around in the emails but couldn’t put his finger on where they were located until he searched the names online.

“I had no idea what any of these places are,” said DiJulio, 31, who’s never been to the Northeast. 

“After Googling them, everything was pointing to Philadelphia.”

It turns out DiJulio, an information technology worker and a married father of one in Burien, Washington, had been mistaken for a friend of the groom with a similar last name. He sat as a “fly on the wall” for much of the email chain until Monday, when he broke the news after the groom’s brother wanted a headcount of people attending the party.

But it didn’t end there. Groom Jeff Minetti, 34, figured: Why not still invite him?

Well, why not indeed?

To me, the reason why not is obvious. You don’t know this person. He could ruin your entire wedding. He’s a stranger and you don’t invite strangers to your wedding.

But, that’s the Cascadian talking, and we’re not talking about a Cascadian who invited DiJulio to the wedding. In fact, the Cascadian DiJulio was the one who quietly watched as strangers talked around him. He didn’t chime in, he just waited.

This is the Cascadian Calm, the laid back, open and quiet regional personality that often gets described as the Seattle Freeze.

And, this is almost the polar opposite of the regional personality that DiJulio was dropped right in the middle of. In fact, Philadelphia is dead center inside a regional personality that has been described as “temperamental and uninhibited.”

Here’s another version of the same map, which shows the entire country in the same context.

Uninhibited makes sense here. It made total sense to the groom to invite the interloping and eavesdropping stranger.

Temperamental makes sense too. We usually think as temperamental as moody. As in “bad mood.” But, in this case, it means almost unreasonably good mood. “Hey, you’re a stranger that’s just been listening in?? Yeah! You’re invited too!”

But, it also means for that DiJulio, in contrast to the Cascadian Calm (which is very not temperamental), that there’s another side of the coin. People get angry man. Just saying.

For two cities basically in the same spot on earth, Portland and Seattle do have significantly different civic personalities.

Think of Seattle’s Demons of Ambition. Or, in this case, Portland’s Demons of Provincialism.

The differences are real.

Take how the two cities dealt with Uber (and other ride sharing companies).

Seattle took a long road to compromise. They never cracked down, they accepted the newcomers and then crafted a legislative package to create space for innovation:

“I believe Seattle once again will lead the nation in showing how what appears to be conflicting interests can actually come together,” Murray said after announcing the agreement. “We have deregulated a highly regulated monopoly, allowing taxis and for-hires to become far more competitive than they are in the current situation. We are recognizing that a technology exists that is rapidly changing the marketplace.”

(In its ability to access money from outside the region) Washington possessed important advantages of its “web-footed” friends south of the Columbia, advantages credited by any analysts to the new state’s 1890 census lead. Oregonians themselves admitted that “mossbackism,” defined as a tendency of long entrenched Portland interests to impede new-coming rivals, diverted outside money to more energetic points. “The laws of Washington,” the bi-monthly West Shore magazine noted in reference to a more substantive difference, “favor investment of capital, while the laws of Oregon practically forbid it.”

(Willamette farmers’) response to the California (gold rush) market — their enterprise — was motivated by as much by a modest desire to improve their landholdings, assure their households’ self-sufficiency, and enhance their families’ material comfort as by a drive to command greater market share or increase production as an end in itself.

Its a fairly old trope in Washington State history and civic life that the name Washington State is pretty horrible. Our own state and territorial founders wanted Columbia as a state name, but eastern politicians hung the name Washington around our neck as a way to avoid confusion with the other Columbia.

I hope I don’t have to tell you how well that lack of confusion thing worked out.

But, along the way, there were a handful of other suggestions for names, including (you guessed it) Cascadia. Our territorial representative, Thomas Brents, suggested in 1885 that a new name accompany the territory when it gained statehood:

Cascadia, in allusion to its many grand waterfalls and to the name of its principal range of mountains, the cascades (sic).

Brents was a bit early in his urging for statehood, and he also suggested that we bring in the northern part of Idaho along with the rest of the state. This was an obvious suggestion by the Walla Wallan Brents, as it would have tipped the balance of power in the new State of Cascadia to the east (given Idaho’s mining industry and eastern Washington’s agriculture).