With the increasing affluence of Belltown, Capitol Hill, and Pioneer Square, where’s a starving artist to go? That’s right—Georgetown.
Hipness and the accompanying cost-of-living increases have followed Seattle’s bohemians wherever they roam, but it seems unlikely that gentrification will be coming anytime soon to a neighborhood surrounded by heavy industry, freight trains, freeway overpasses, and the well-trafficked—and loud—Boeing Field airport. The city also piles it on by occasionally attempting to add such undesirable elements as a city dump and a “strip club zone” to the neighborhood.
All that said, a lot of people—artists as well as others—are proud to call Georgetown home. The rents are cheap and the commercial corridor along Airport Way is funky and thriving, with great bars (
Nine Pound Hammer), restaurants (
Stellar Pizza) and coffee shops (
All City Coffee) as well as record stores (
Georgetown Records) and discount shopping. And the growing community of painters, photographers, filmmakers, and sculptors have begun to set down connecting roots for a burgeoning artistic scene. For many of them, displaced by high rents from their old haunts, the low-flying planes are a blessing.
