It’s an age-old Seattle debate: Should our prized Pike Place Market finally become a car-free pedestrian utopia like 80 percent of this city wants it to be? Or should tourists remain able to drive 5 inches per hour into it because what they believe to be the first Starbucks doesn’t have a convenient drive-thru?
We at The Needling, for one, are in favor of the latter—and not just because we are ardent supporters of everyone’s right to a hard-earned S’mores Crème Frap after patiently plowing through a crowd of people. Here are the top 5 other reasons Pike Place Market needs to remain open to all car traffic at all times.
- The rolling steel fortress of an automobile keeps safe those especially scared that the sinister tendrils of the gum wall will drag them into its rubbery maw.
- What pedestrian doesn’t like the warm, vibrational hum of an SUV gently nuzzling their ass before it eventually plows them over? If there’s something wrong with that, we don’t want to be right.
- Tourists will be devastated if their opportunity to naively drive into an automobile version of an escape room is taken away from them. Please, will someone think of the hungry children screaming in their backseat?
- Future generations of Seattleites should not be robbed of their birthright to also walk by smirking at every driver who actually thought it would take less than a half hour to drive down those two city blocks.
- Our fair city needs to be protected from falling into the European depravity of people walking freely down a street without exhaust fumes or crazy, unpredictable drivers nearby in their face. To concede that any spot on our city map might be better off without cars is a betrayal of the American way. What’s next? Believing climate change is real and acting on it?
When it comes to keeping car traffic in Pike Place Market, dig in your heels and your wheels, Seattle! Strawberry frap fans are counting on you.
