Underground Seattle

The Quick and Easy:

What: Bill Speidel's Underground Seattle
When:  Year Round
Where: Pioneer Square

Down and Dirty on the Underground Tour
My favorite thing about Bill Speidel's Underground Tour is the same as any other bit of pre-Starbucks Seattle history: it reminds me that the city is, at heart, a town of ruffians. Built by corrupt businessmen, prostitutes, drunken gold prospectors, and short-sighted engineers, our now virtuous and gleaming Emerald was once a mudflat with a serious sewage problem. And no one was a bigger fan of embracing our gritty past than The Seattle Times columnist and author Speidel, whose legacy lives on in this 90-minute tour around Pioneer Square. If you're looking for “the truth” about Seattle, the Underground Tour is probably as close as a tourist can get.

The Tour
Jim Gall, tour guide and 14-year veteran, appeared to genuinely still like his job. Good news because city tours, like Vegas dance shows, are heavily reliant on entertainers still wanting to perform after doing the same routine 100 times … a day … for a decade. Of all the people who have experienced the Underground’s brand of humor, I’m probably one of the few that actually find it amusing.

Jim Gall, tour guide of 14 years, appeared to genuinely still like his job. Good news because city tours, like Vegas dance shows, are heavily reliant on entertainers still wanting to perform after doing the same routine 100 times a day—for a decade. Of all the people who have experienced the Underground’s trite brand of humor, I’m probably one of the few that actually find it amusing.

In the 1960s, Pioneer Square—Downtown's ugly, drunk cousin—was slated to be torn down and turned into a parking lot. It almost worked, as is evidenced by a parking garage built in 1962 that's still there and so hideously obtuse it would make Stalin weep. Speidel was working for the The Seattle Times when someone wrote in to ask him what the deal was with the underground of Seattle. He ended up giving that person and 300 of their closest friends a tour on Memorial Day weekend in 1965. He charged each of them a dollar and the Underground Tour was born.

Speidel started petitioning to have the square turned into an historic district to preserve the character of the buildings. In the 1970’s, that's exactly what happened. During the first days of the tour people had to bring their own flashlights. Winos, rats, garbage, and earthquake debris filled the tunnels. The modern version is cleaner—the earthquake rubble is still there, but it's pushed to the side of the well-lit path. Standing on the corner of Yesler and James—yes, you stick out like a sore thumb, but at least it's not the "Ride the Ducks" tour—Jim made it clear that he didn't want anyone leaving without understanding how the tunnels came to exist. So here's how it goes:

Seattle History
The heart of the city was built on the coast, leaving it prone to flooding in the streets. It also made toilets do weird things (there's an elaborate story about the invention of the crapper at this point, but I don't want to ruin the surprise for you), like backflow during high tide. These geographic obstacles were taken into consideration after a fire destroyed most of the city on June 6, 1889.

Why then? Because with the rebuild came the opportunity to raise the level of the city with the Denny Re-grade, another fascinating bit of the Jet City's history. (Pike is steep today? You should have seen Madison a hundred years ago.) Business owners rebuilt immediately, purportedly having to throw water on the embers of the old building foundations so that they could start new construction. Knowing that commerce would eventually be moved to the second story, buildings were constructed with two entrances. There was a simple door for the first floor, eventually hidden, and an elaborate one for the second floor (ground level today).

The city started by building retaining walls around the sidewalks. This created a lot of traffic problems and made it dangerous (or nearly impossible) to cross the street. The space between the walls was eventually filled with stuff like dead animals and fire debris. The last step was connecting the existing second story building fronts with the new street by creating sidewalks at the elevated height, thus raising the ground level and creating underground tunnels. So when you're walking through the underground, you see the surprisingly well-preserved old storefronts.

All the Rest
At the end of the tour, you're led through a little red gate into the awaiting gift shop and gallery. The gallery consists mostly of an antique toilet, an item seemingly ubiquitous on this tour. The gift shop is a mix of Bill's books and various snarky trinkets of the Archie McPhee variety. The books are worth a read if you're a local or just into history.

If you don't get enough vice on the tour, you can always take the late night Underworld Tour, which covers the same route but chronicles in greater detail the opium trade and sex-for-business side of the area. You have to be 21 to attend, and you get a cocktail at the end. Nice.

Bonus: For $8 more you get lunch with your tour. Make your reservations about an hour before you actually want to go on the tour. I went in October, and it was still sold out despite the bad weather. Speaking of bad weather, dress appropriately. You aren't really inside, so you're at the mercy of the elements to some degree.