Aurora Avenue: Out With the Inn Crowd?

If the staff of the Italia Motel has an ethos, AJ—tenant, de facto security guard, and occasional crack smoker—has just articulated it. Brother to Mike, the Italia's general manager, AJ had just hours before cast a wary eye in my direction as I pulled out of southbound Aurora Avenue traffic and into the motel parking lot. Tallboy of Natural Ice in hand, he then rejoined the growing crowd inside Mike's in-motel apartment, followed closely by a diminutive but feisty prostitute affectionately referred to as "Li'l Bit." Now sitting on the concrete step in front of Room 4, imparting nuggets of wisdom between sips of beer, AJ proceeds thusly: "Look here—everybody in this city has got a vice. But don't nobody else care about that shit as long as you keep it to yourself."

Justin Renney

(Clockwise from left:) The Fremont Inn, the Italia Motel, and the Wallingford Inn have all been flagged by the city as crime-riddled Aurora Avenue properties.

Justin Renney

Charles Reidy (rear) and Erik Pihl.

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• Spencer Anderson
• Sabrina Rene
• Erik Pihl
• Marco Polo
• Jill Inman

As if on cue, Keely, the room's momentary occupant, bursts through the open door to escape the latest shouting match with Eric, her "old man." It's a cool Wednesday evening, and the pair has just run out of crack. Tan, with a raspy voice and a mound of scraggly bottle-blonde hair tucked underneath a blue trucker hat, Keely is one of the youngest and most put-together women walking the notorious Aurora Avenue stroll, which is not to say that crack addiction has left her unscathed. At 29, she looks harder than a person her age should. And Eric, who claims to be a former professional snowboarder, has the kind of drawn face one earns only by years of drug abuse and questionable life choices.

The couple had been flopping with an older man at the Hotel Nexus, a 10-minute drive north and, luxury-wise, half a world away from the fading structures that dot Aurora from the ship canal to North 46th Street. But Keely and Eric's host up and disappeared, taking the entry key with him and forcing Keely to return to Aurora, where she accompanied her friend, a stick-figure brunette named Mercedes, as she trolled the strip for johns.

Keely claims she isn't a prostitute, just a middlewoman. For a cut of her client's take, she'll facilitate a "date" with a pro, or hook up a potential buyer with crack, marijuana, speed, or any of the various other social lubricants available along the Aurora corridor.

On this evening the couple's need was shelter, which can be had at the Italia for $50 a night. That secured, Keely takes to the bathroom, produces a small white pebble of crack from her sweatshirt pocket, and begins packing it into a thin, smoke-stained glass tube. Her eyelids close as she draws in the smoke. Less of an enthusiast than his girlfriend, Eric takes one hit, then backs off. On this night at least, his vice of choice is beer.

Eerily calm for a person who's just taken a mighty rip from a crack pipe, Keely moves toward the door and the waiting strip. It was relatively early, and there was more crack money to scare up.

Room 4 is arguably one of the Italia's nicest—but that doesn't mean it's nice. Unforgiving light from the ceiling fixture makes the walls appear a shade of white normally seen only in the complexions of terminal tuberculosis patients. And there's a hypodermic needle on the counter next to the bathroom sink, a forgotten remnant of some previous tenant's stay. Keely and Eric argue while navigating the narrow path carved by a thin double-size mattress lying atop an even thinner box spring resting on the bare floor.

As she gets up to leave, Keely doesn't let Eric know where she's going, or whom she's going to be with. Nor does she have a cell phone to call him in case something goes wrong. Eric accuses her of fudging the truth about not turning tricks. "There are better ways to make money," he says.

Red-faced and still riding a crack-induced high, Keely replies: "Well, you're not gonna fucking go out and do it, are you?"

AJ, Keely's occasional smoking partner, shoots Eric a pitying look as Keely storms out. AJ shakes his head and gets up to make his rounds.

After years of complaints from neighborhood residents and hundreds of calls to the police for service, the city has declared war on the seedy motels of Aurora Avenue North—five of them, anyway.

The Italia, along with its conjoined twin the Isabella, the Fremont Inn (formerly the Thunderbird Motel), the Wallingford Inn, and the Seattle Motor Inn (better known by its former name, the Black Angus Motel) have since 2007 all been owned and operated by Dean and Jill Inman, a Bothell couple whose business licenses the city of Seattle now seems determined to revoke.

On August 21, the Seattle City Attorney's office filed 152 criminal charges against the Inmans for what it classified as a "variety of tax violations." As of August 31, the city had not yet determined exactly how much in back taxes the Inmans owe, but court documents indicate that shortly after they purchased the properties—all of which, save for the more northerly Seattle Motor Inn, are located within a five-block area just north of the Aurora Avenue Bridge—the Inmans began to either fall behind on, or simply neglect to pay, a litany of municipal taxes.