A friend recently wrote recently about the phenomena of Seattleites being such weenies. And we are! Seattleites are some of the most politely passive people I know, and we tend to feel attacked by people who are assertive. How sad is that?

Here’s Paul’s story:

At the Italian place, I saw the best possible example of how to deal with street trash. A woman poked her head into the place and began surreptitiously asking people near the door for money. The owner(manager? cook?) saw her and was out from behind the bar and in her face in a matter of like half a second. With no real aggression or anger, he got about two inches away from her and said “Awww HELL naw” just like that three or four times, each time moving a little closer until she was back out the door and half way down the block.

He must not be from Seattle, where people seem to feel guilty for telling someone to get the fuck out.

Paul is so very right. Why are we such gentle, passive push-overs in Seattle? We seem to take someone being up-front as an afront and it’s so irritating. Why are we like this?

Another example: Five years ago, I got on a bus with Andreas and NDS, a family friend of Dre’s who had just moved to Seattle from Chicago. NDS is about 5′ tall, 100 lbs, and has she has blond hair and freckles. Cute and tiny in other words.

The shaggy dude sitting in the bus seat in front of NDS turned around and started rambling at her almost immediately. She simply looked him in the eye and said calmly, but very firmly, “Look: I don’t feel like talking today. Leave me alone.” The poor passive shaggy man was so taken aback that someone actually, you know, told him to fuck off, that he shuffled off the bus at the next stop!

Sadly, most Seattleites (including me) would have been like “Oh, um, what? Uh, ha ha. Uh, huh. Oh. Uh, really? Er, excuse me, sir…” and then shuffled to a different seat. I wish we as a city had some collective balls.

I was asking Andreas for his theories on this passivity, and he figured that it was because Seattleites aren’t especially hardened. Despite what you might think, Seattle is a pretty small town and only within the last 15 years has it become anything even resembling a “world class city,” and so the social climate is still small-town politeness. Oh my golly: no need to be rude, even when someone’s being a total ass.

I’m not suggesting that Seattleites should become rude. Just that we could use some lessons in effective street confrontation.