Elliott Bay

It smelled cold, stale, and completely undisturbed.

His beam cut across the three missing windows, dirty with thirty years of street grime looking out over Elliott Bay.

Then he pointed the beam down at the floor beneath the sills.

Sitting there in the dust were neat, organized little piles.

And you never, under any circumstances, take a broom and sweep the floor dust outward into the central aisle while the market is open.

You always sweep inward, towards your stall, towards your feet.

If you sweep out into the aisle, the old vendors say you're sweeping your profits straight down the hill into Elliott Bay.

If you take the stairs all the way down to Western Avenue late in the afternoon, after the crowds have thinned out and the stalls are being hosed down with salt water, look back up at those six windows on the fourth tier.

Very exciting.

It'll be right next door to Unicorn Bar across the street from Wild Rose, a block away from Elliot Bay, which is something else we talked about too, is like the question of competition.

I don't think... think that that point made it into the piece but it was really fascinating talking to the two owners about their relationship to like proximity to other bookstores and how i think the way they described it is like um uh a rising tide is good for all of them totally that just means i'm gonna go to both next time i go to one you know exactly and like obviously charlie's queer books has a bit of a corner on the market a bit of a specialty it's in the name so if there's something you can't find at elliott bay it will be at charlie's And the inventory will be massive.

Like it's kind of wild already walking into the Fremont location and just being surrounded by queer books.

My name again is Cecilia Hayes.

I use the pronouns she and her, and I am coming to you from the beautiful Pacific Northwest on the shores of Elliott Bay and the unceded lands of the Duwamish.

the Muckleshoot, the Sammamish and the Skykomish people who have cared for these lands forever, I want to affirm your joys and sorrows with a libation for the ancestors.

Ancestors of our blood and spirit and heart, known and unknown, those whose names are spoken, and those remembered only by the Holy Earth, we call on you with humility and thanks.

Cargo ships arrived from Asia carrying tea, silk, and manufactured goods.

Dock workers unloaded freight among miles of wharfs that stretched into Elliott Bay.

Those docks were busy.

Those docks, though, were also filthy.

Two young men one morning in October 1851 were cutting logs on a long point of land now called Alki Point.

It is just across Elliott Bay from Seattle and a part of West Seattle.

It had not even a name then, and these two youths, Lee Terry and David Denny, were entirely alone.

That part of Puget Sound was not settled at all, except for one or two farmers who had built cabins on fertile lands on the Duwamish River.

The first winter at Alki Point proved that the location was not a good one.

There was no harbor, and the high wind sweeping across the point made it almost impossible to load ships there.

Early in the spring, two or three settlers in a canoe, paddled by Indians, went over to Elliott Bay to sound the depth of water, as that seemed a better location.

With a horseshoe fastened to the end of a cotton clothesline, they sounded the bay and found the water very deep, even close to the shore.

In fact, that's a business you could say we stole from Vancouver.

As cruise ships got bigger and they couldn't navigate under some of the bridges at the entrance to Vancouver's harbor, well, Elliott Bay, conveniently no bridges, our cruise ship terminals can accommodate, you know, pretty much any size vessel as I understand it.

So we've seen the cruise ship business to Alaska soar.

That's good for the port, good for longshoremen.

I'm like up here.

I'm like, Right over Elliott Bay, the city is on one side, the water is on the other side.

It was like, this is a fantastic drive.

How have I never been on this road before? But I'm surprised that they didn't do what they did in New York with the High Line.