April Fool: 22 Things About Seattle That We Wish Were a Joke

There’s nothing funnier than a good April Fools’ spoof. We’ve done some memorable ones at this paper over the years. But right now, reality is giving fiction a pretty comical run for its money in Seattle. So we’re taking a tip from the Uptight Seattleite and subverting the dominant paradigm, offering up a list of people, events, and trends we wish were a joke—but, sadly, are not.

1. Dan Savage is threatening to run for mayor.
From Mike the Mover to the Owl Party, unfunny joke-candidates are a tradition in Seattle, and a fairly benign one. But the sex columnist's threat to enter the mayor's race is a whole other level of ridiculous. Righteous as ever, like a KVI hot-talker for the Pike/Pine set, Savage claims his lunge for the spotlight is all for the sake of our political system. "I have a love for democracy," he declared last week. "And it doesn't flourish in places where people aren't challenged by legit candidates at the ballot box." But Savage's presence only insures that any "legit" candidates remaining on the fence will immediately flee, rather than run the risk of ending up on a Muni League debate stage with the biggest attention hog in town. Savage claims he'll bow out if "somebody else jumps in," but last we checked, a couple of legit candidates already had jumped in. Dan has apparently designated himself kingmaker, which is perhaps unsurprising given that he previously took credit for getting Greg Nickels elected in the first place. ("The mayor of Seattle is the mayor of Seattle because of us," he told an interviewer. "He won by 1,500 votes, and we put him on the cover and people voted for him.") Like the fruit-smashing comedian Gallagher, who ran for California governor in 2003, Savage's candidacy will be an embarrassment for all concerned, but at least Gallagher didn't pretend he was upholding any principle other than the revival of his own flagging career.

2. The Convention Center wants to double in size.
You remember former Seattle mayor Paul Schell's old line about how you should "fix the roof while the sun is shining?" Well, the Washington State Convention & Trade Center has turned that idea on its head. In the middle of the worst economic shitstorm of our lifetime, the folks running this Chamber of Commerce darling want to put a giant new addition on their house. With help from servile state legislators like Sen. Ed Murray, the WSCTC is looking to spend $766 million in King County hotel-tax revenue to double its event space. As usual, we're told the project will more than pay for itself as even more conventioneers descend on our city, emptying their wallets in the process. Which sounds great if you happen to be the owner of a hotel, Cheesecake Factory outlet, or Levi's store. Everyone else will just see more of downtown given over to the tastes, needs, and interests of Midwestern claims adjusters, and even more diesel-spewing Gray Line buses idling under the giant glass canopy that encases Pike Street (thanks to the previous convention center expansion in 2001). Ironically, the WSCTC is already scheduled to expand its space by almost 20 percent next year, when it takes over a building across the street. But apparently, in these boom times, that's just not enough. Or maybe it is. As The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner has pointed out, the WSCTC's move is basically just a money grab to prevent the state legislature from diverting the hotel-tax stream, as it did last year, to unworthy causes like education and low-income housing.

3.The take-'n'-bake pizza phenomenon grows exponentially.
Like turtlenecks, feathered bangs, Oingo Boingo, and Reebok pumps, take-'n'-bake pizza is one of those ideas that really shouldn't have made it into the 21st century. In fact, it shouldn't have made it at all—at least turtlenecks looked awesome with gold chains, and vintage Molly Ringwald is still adorable. Meanwhile, take-'n'-bake pizza is utterly pointless, seeing as the entire point of ordering pizza is to acquire it in ready-to-eat mode. Making a 30-minute round trip to Papa Murphy's, only to have to come home and cook the pie for another 30 minutes—uh, yeah, try to explain the logic of that. Yet not only has Papa Murphy's stood its ground, but from that ground the three-location 'Zaw chain has sprouted, peddling the relative freshness of its ingredients. While 'Zaw at least has the sense to deliver their unfettered pies, thus reducing take-'n'-bake's pointlessness by half, it'd still be better—lots better—if they had the temerity to cook the fucking things. It's not that hard; your customers have been doing it for years. And while we have no idea why any take-'n'-bake operation would have customers in the first place, we're sure they'd appreciate the experience all the more if you invested in a goddamn oven.

4. We're getting more public transit we don't use and less of the transit we do.
They're bright orange, they're empty, and they seem to putter back and forth endlessly without reason: That's the South Lake Union Streetcar. Then there's the Metro buses: Yellow and aquamarine, they're packed to the gills every rush hour with overburdened commuters. Which transit system would you rather see get more money? Sorry. Mayor Greg Nickels' toy gift to Paul Allen is the one slated for expansion, as the Seattle City Council voted to explore extending the line to Pioneer Square and the U District. An extension to First Hill was slipped into the Sound Transit package approved by voters last November. Meanwhile, King County Executive Ron Sims announced in February that bus service may need to be cut by 20 percent due to a projected $100 million funding shortfall in 2010. Granted, the trolleys and buses are funded from different sources, but come on—$40 million per mile to lay down new putt-putt tracks when we could increase our bus trolleys for a fraction of that? Sounds like it's time to seriously rethink our whole scheme for getting from point A to point B.