R. I. P. Burgermaster

As forecast in an earlier post, my favorite burger joint, where I have routinely alternated between eating breakfasts and lunches, will serve its last burger, its last pancakes, tomorrow.  I had my last breakfast there this morning; tomorrow, I'll try to brave the final day crowds and have my last lunch, my last meal. .

Ever since the imminent closing was announced a couple of weeks ago in a Seattle Times article, the place has been full of customers for both breakfasts and lunches.  Lots of folks have been dropping by the Burgermaster's death bed, as it were, to pay their last respects.  This week, a television crew from a local station showed up, interviewing customers as they stood in line. Many older folks have been bringing their grandchildren: "See, Johnny, this is where your grandpa and I had our first date!" 

Yes, as the painter has painted on the front window, this was the 73rd and final year for the University area Burgermaster.  It opened in 1952, in the same location but in a much smaller building.  Sort of a burger shack, I guess, judging from photos on display.  I'm not sure when it expanded into its present building, capable of seating a fairly large crowd.  As it certainly did today.

Things I liked about it:  The carefully tended plantings out in front, changing with the seasons.  The illustrated celebrations of current holidays, painted on the large front windows.  (The current paintings, celebrating Valentine's Day, contain for the first time a small signature by the talented artist.)  The play area for small children, giving them toys and books with which to amuse themselves while the "big people" chatted.  The usually ample parking.  The friendly staff who, eventually, greeted you by name.  The coffee jugs full of "help yourself" coffee (assuming you paid for the first cup).  The way in which, after your meal was brought to your table, you were left alone to peruse the newspaper or read a book, or simply stare into space as long as you wanted.  No one kept dropping by asking you if everything was okay, or if you were "still working on" that piece of ham.  

In other words, it wasn't a formal restaurant, nor was it a McDonalds fast food joint.  It was something in between, with the better aspects of both extremes.

It was also a community center, one whose destruction will leave a big hole that won't easily be filled.

Unless the Burgermaster organization -- yes, the university area establishment became the "flagship"of a small local chain, although the others tend to be car service take-outs -- finds another convenient location in the same neighborhood, and opens up a similar new establishment.

Please?

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Photo:  Customers lined up before 8 a.m. this morning, ordinarily a slow period.  

Despair of a NIMBY homeowner

I'm a liberal Democrat.  I believe in affordable housing.  I recognize the often desperate lack of affordable housing in Seattle, as well as in most other large cities.  I'm pleased to see attractive large apartment buildings being constructed surrounding light rail stations.  (I'm also a light rail fan.)

Unfortunately, like many other well-meaning citizens, I'm happy to endorse the efforts of city and private authorities to satisfy the need for such housing.   But . . .

Not In My Back Yard!! 

I live in a middle to upper middle income Seattle residential area.  My neighborhood, Montlake, lies immediately south of the University of Washington, across a canal called the Montlake cut.  The median value of a single residence home in Montlake seems to be about $1.4 million.  That figure seems a lot to persons living in much of the country, but is only a bit above average for Seattle.  I live on a rather long block that was platted and developed by two separate developers in the early 1920s.  The street on which my house faces makes a small, funny jog about three lots south of mine, where the labors of the two developers met.

Unlike many or most post-World War II developments, the developers did not build houses all based on three or four basic floor plans.  They seem to have done the platting, provided the streets and sidewalks, and, I assume, built the sewer lines.  The lots were then sold to prospective homeowners who then built their dream houses with their own architects.  No two houses up and down the streets of Montlake appear identical.  Some are three-story semi-mansions, some are small one-story cottages, and others fall everywhere between.  

But the lots are small, and zoning requirements for side and front yards restricted the size of the houses.  They all appear quite "nice," to varying degrees, but not -- at least in my portion of Montlake -- in any way pretentious.

City zoning has long permitted apartment houses and other multi-family dwellings only on major thoroughfares.  In my part of Montlake, that includes only 24th Avenue E.  (Lake Washington Boulevard is also a thoroughfare, but it passes through the Arboretum and has no housing.)

We have a small business area on 24th.  There are a couple of restaurants, a coffee shop, a bicycle shop, a small grocery, a cleaner's, and a branch of the Seattle Public Library.  Aside from a couple of other very small specialty businesses, that's about it.  Montlake's business area is smaller than those of most other neighborhoods.  There are a few small apartment buildings, taking advantage of the traditional exception from single-family zoning along an arterial.

In 2023, the state legislature passed HB1110, which removed the ability of cities statewide to impose certain forms of restrictive zoning on residential housing.  For cities Seattle's size, the act prohibits zoning that limits builders to one residence per lot.  Local zoning codes must permit at least four residences per lot in general, and six residences per lot on construction within  quarter mile of a "major transit stop."

The Seattle City Council is now considering specific changes to its zoning code, to bring it into compliance with state law.  My own neighborhood, fortunately, would fall within one of the least-modified areas.  The developer would be able to build four-unit housing with no more than three or four floors.  Just a half-block to the north, in a block identical in character to our own, and considered part of our same mini-neighborhood, the Code would permit 40-foot-high, four-story apartment houses.

These changes all come to seem less theoretical when new construction begins appearing.

A few doors down from my own house, there was a modest house adjacent to an empty lot, both owned by the resident of the house.  The empty lot, mostly lawn with a number of trees, one of them quite large, enhanced the character of the two lots, as well as the attractiveness of the neighboring lots.  I always considered the homeowner lucky to have such a beautiful park-like area extending his overall living space.  

A few months ago, workers began sawing down the trees.  As work continued, it became obvious that the existing  house's owner was building two large, blocky houses, one behind the other -- both now nearing completion -- on the previously undeveloped lot.  Both new houses are a full three stories high, and they appear to have been built as close to the lot's boundaries as zoning permits.

Neither house appears designed to provide "affordable housing," either to homeowners or to renters.

Our neighborhood can absorb the sudden increase in heights and residential density imposed by this construction, viewed in isolation.  But there are a number of houses in the neighborhood that are probably candidates as "tear-downs." Each such property is no doubt attractive to developers choosing not to replace them with attractive single-family houses, but instead to develop their lots to their full allowable density under the new state law and the proposed new city zoning ordinance.

I have already received a number of form letters from area realtors offering to buy my house, "as is," cash on the barrelhead.  I have restrained myself from angrily replying to these letters.

But this is obviously our future.  Seattle has beautiful neighborhoods, each resembling suburban areas outside other large cities.  These neighborhoods have significant tree coverage, advantageous both esthetically and environmentally.  The single residence atmosphere of these neighborhoods makes it possible to know your neighbors and work together on neighborhood activities as simple as street parties and children's holiday parades.

But Seattle also has a severe shortage of houses.  We want to be a big city -- major universities, renowned symphony and opera and ballet, theater groups, museums, major league athletics.  And we also want to be a city with a suburban residential flavor.

I guess we can't have both -- at least as comfortably as we have until now.  "Comfortably" for those who happen to already own  houses.  Greater residential density is great in places like New York.  I love walking along the townhouse-lined streets of Manhattan's Upper West Side; they have a pleasant urban "feel."  But that's New York.  That's not been Seattle.

But I guess it may be our future.  

Waterfront park

One of the pleasures of having visitors from out of town is showing them sights that you've been wanting to see yourself, but haven't yet gotten around to.  Such as Seattle's new Waterfront Park.

One of Seattle's prime tourist attractions has always been the Pike Place Market.  The Market consists of old buildings, many of them perched on a steep hillside above the waterfront and lining the narrow Pike Place street -- a street or alley crowded with pedestrians and vehicles competing for passage.  Building filled with vendors of produce, fresh fish, and a plethora of tourist knicknacks, and of places to eat and drink.

Another sight has been the waterfront itself, a street along the shore of Elliot Bay, with its numbered piers jutting into the bay.

Unfortunately, getting from one of those attractions to the other has never been particularly easy, and even less attractive.  Until now.

My friend Jim, our friendship dating back to UW student days, was visiting from Indiana on Wednesday.  The weather had been snowy off and on, and the streets -- at least streets around my home -- were full of slush.  We wanted to get out and do something, and finally the weather cooperated.  The temperature creeped into the high 30s, and the slush began turning into water -- clearing enough pavement that we felt like getting out of the house and walking.

Jim grew up on suburban Mercer Island, and attended school at the University of Washington, so he was familiar with the city.  Or at least the city of the 1960s.  We walked a mile through the draining streets to the UW light rail station, and took the train downtown.  We wandered through the Market, and then into/onto Waterfront Park.  We walked through the park, admiring the views of the Seattle skyline in one direction, and the ferries and commercial boats cutting their way through Puget Sound on the other.

I hoped that Jim, a Seattleite by history although I call him now a Hoosier, would be impressed.  He didn't disappoint me.  

He remembered the waterfront as it had been until very recently.  Several flights of steep stairs dropped down behind the back side of the market to ground level.  There one had encountered a two-level elevated freeway that separated downtown and the Market from the waterfront.  The highway -- the Alaska Way Viaduct -- didn't pose a physical obstacle to pedestrian access, but it was definitely a psychological block and an esthetic horror.  Californians familiar with the old elevated Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco have a fair picture of the problem.

But now, the Viaduct traffic has been re-routed through an underground tunnel and is totally out of sight and out of mind.  The new park extends from the Market out over the waterfront street traffic and leads pedestrians through a series of plateaus, ramps, and steps gradually down to ground level, right at the waterfront.  A considerable amount of landscaping has been installed, which will come into its own when Spring arrives and leaves begin bursting out on trees and shrubs.  Also bursting out will be outdoor cafés where weary tourists and residents can stop for a meal or libation.  

No one was eating outside in 35 degree weather, so we worked our way down to the waterfront and walked most of the length of the touristed area until we reached Ivar's where we had fish and chips.  Ivar's has been around even longer than I have (founded in 1938), and is another Seattle icon.  Eating there, out doors but under cover, watching seagulls scarf up French fries tossed by amused diners, was a perfect way to wind up our explorations.

After examining the brand new ferry terminal -- another revelation -- we worked our way back to the Symphony light rail stop by a more conventional route on Second Avenue.  It was an enjoyable day -- one full of surprises for Jim, and for me as well.  

I also discovered on my phone, once back home, that we had walked a total of 5.5 miles, which we can chalk up as early preparation for our planned hike, with a number of Jim's relatives, along the coast of Wales come June.

Salve! Parli italiano?

Sixty-five years ago, in 1961, I began the study of Italian.  It was a six-credit "Intensive Italian" course designed to prepare me for my stay in Florence, Italy, as a member of Stanford's overseas study program.  I took two more quarters of Intensive Italian in Italy itself.

In those days, unless you were traveling as part of an American Express tour, you really needed some basic Italian just to get around Italy on your own.  Now, almost any Italian who has any relationship with tourists speaks passable English.  Then, very few did.  Even those who knew a foreign language were more apt to know German or French, rather than English.  Those Stanford courses were mandatory for everyone in the program, just as were the series of inoculations for a whole panoply of diseases that were apparently rampant in post-War Europe, but diseases for which we pampered Americans were totally unprepared.

I learned to speak the language well enough to ask directions, buy train tickets, order meals, talk to bank clerks.  And that was about it.  Social chats with local students were pretty much beyond my abilities, although not beyond the abilities of some of my fellow students.  As humorist David Sedaris says about his early attempts at French, for the native speaker, trying to talk to him was like chatting to a child who spoke only baby talk.  

After I returned home, I tried to  refresh and improve my memory of the language a couple of times by taking non-credit refresher courses, but I really hadn't retained much to refresh.  The courses didn't help.

And by the time I first returned to Italy, in 1970, Italy no longer felt like an isolated monolingual country.  Especially among the younger set, it had been exposed to a massive tourist influx which, together with increased teaching of English in schools, made most Italians with whom I interacted  far more fluent in English than I was in what was left of my Italian.

And since 1970, that trend has spread to most of the population, at least in northern Italy, and in all age groups. 

But the language is still useful to know.  A reading knowledge of Italian, to understand what all the signs say, and to read newspaper headlines.  And some speaking and listening ability, just to survive interactions with the occasional Italian who can't (or prefers not to) struggle with English.  Just two years ago, just a two or three mile walk from where we were staying on Lake Como, my sister and I stopped at a tiny café and asked for some cappuccino.  We encountered the sole person in charge, and he spoke no English.  He understood "cappuccino," of course, but we had some other details to discuss, and I found even my very minimal Italian ability quite helpful.

And so, when I returned from Lake Como and ran into an ad for "Duolingo," an on-line language program, offered free of charge, I decided to give its Italian program a try.  I was soon hooked.

Duolingo takes you through a number of levels, designated by various precious stones, as your ability increases.  Each day you start out with five "hearts," and you lose one heart each time you make an error.  When you're out of hearts, you're through for the day.

You are provided with vocabulary as you need it to carry on conversations -- baby talk conversations, it's true -- and examples of the necessary sentence structure.  You translate English to Italian, and Italian to English.  You are given spoken sentences over your computer's speakers, and required to write them out.  Sometimes a paragraph is dictated, and you are asked not to translate word by word, but just to make an educated guess of what was being discussed.  You are asked to fill in blanks in a sentence, mainly as a way to force you to intuit the concept of singular/plural adjectives and pronouns, and the need to make adjectives agree in gender and number with the Italian nouns.

What's interesting is that, unlike in high school or college courses, there is never any abstract discussion of agreement in number and gender.  You simply pick it up by trial and error.  You never are asked to prepare tables conjugating verbs and declining nouns, adjectives and pronouns.  You simply learn that "I speak" differs from "we speak" more by the form of the verb than by the pronoun attached (and often omitted).  Parlo = I speak.  Parliamo = we speak.  You learn grammar by repetition, just as a baby learns.

Soon, you become so absorbed in what you're learning (or at least in competing to reach the next jeweled level!}, that "striking out" by losing your last heart and having to wait for the next day to continue becomes unbearable.  At that point you learn about paying an annual fee and being given, effectively, an infinite number of hearts.  No matter how many mistakes you make, you never "strike out."

Yeah, yeah, I thought.  I'm not getting sucked into that.  They offered me a two-week free trial, but I refused.  I was afraid I'd forget to cancel before the two weeks had expired, and I'd be trapped.  The months went by, and the offer was repeated.  Ok, I thought, I'll give it a try.  I loved it, but not enough to pay for it.  They gave a very clear warning that my two free trial was about to expire, and made it very easy to quit.  Which I did.

Another month or so later, they generously repeated the offer of a two-week free trial.  I was really getting into working my way through one lesson after another, without worrying about my "hearts."  The warning came again as the two weeks neared its end.  I sighed.  I did nothing.  My Visa card was billed appropriately.

I've never looked back.  It's been worth it.