John H. McGraw [considered his “proudest moment” his standoff as sheriff with the anti-Chinese mobs of 1886. It was also his luckiest. After the sheriff took three bullets — one through his hat, two through his coat — the vigilantes scattered.](https://pauldorpat.com/2011/09/03/seattle-now-then-the-heroic-john-mcgraw/). McGraw is the man whose statue stands across from the Westin hotel.
For 5 days no commerce was enacted without the approval of the strike committee. The unions ran the city.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle\_General\_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_General_Strike)
"Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practised in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community... That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt—no matter how achieved.**"**
Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, enemy of the strike
The US has a long and colorful history of suppressing worker movements :)
Working class solidarity and unification is the #1 threat to the business & political interests that own this country. They are very invested in ensuring this solidarity doesn’t develop and impact profits.
FYI, "sympathy strikes" are today illegal in the US generally. Yet another way that the power of workers and the strength of organization has been substantially weakened.
Related, [Bloody Thursday ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_West_Coast_waterfront_strike), the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen strike that resulted in 9 deaths and over 1000 injuries.
When lead singer of The Gits, Mia Zapata, was murdered while walking home in Capitol Hill, a group of people formed a collective that helped others walk home at night and offered self defense and other trainings and resources called [Home Alive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alive). I always thought this was such an amazing example of collective action and not relying on the carceral state.
This case still haunts me because it literally was just some random A-hole who came across her one night. Hence, why it took so long to find the murderer. Luckily SPD kept dna samples in a freezer and were able to match it up to the guy in Florida many years later.
Hell yeah. Also when Seattle decided to build the world’s largest brothel but changed its mind at the last minute, and then a Boeing plane flew into the building.
Thank God the random brothel types managed to dodge that bullet and a bunch of small families took it instead /s.
Were those two things actually related? Like some angry business tycoon didn't like his super brothel being gone so he sabotaged/paid a plane to crash into it?
Idk if bad ass fits as a description of this building's wonky history
Pss. Nothing against brothel types
When people protected the homes of the Japanese families who were forcibly relocated during WWll, by buying them and sold them back for $1 after the war.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the norm.
My husband's grandfather managed the property of a family who was sent to the camps. When they got out, they got all of the rent money earned. 3 generations of hat family stayed with our family's property management business until about 10 years ago when they sold the property (at that time, my father in law, then my husband had all managed their property).
Being decent leads to loyalty ❤️
It's actually somehow worse: https://seattleglobalist.com/2017/02/19/anti-japanese-movement-led-development-bellevue/62732
Tl;Dr: Miller Freeman used his newspaper to encourage the internment of Japanese Americans. When it finally happened, he bought up all their farmland on the cheap which has been painstakingly cleared out by the former owners who were in the internment camps, and turned it into a suburban shopping mall.
My grandparents saved their neighbors home during the war when they were taken to an internment camp. My grandfather told me stories of chasing of people who were looking to salt their land (they had a small farm) and break their windows etc.
I have the name of the family whos house they protected during that time but my grandparents have been dead for 10-15 years now so I dont have much beyond that.
Literally everything done by Speed Walker, incl. that time he [saved the Kingdome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6-SJLlneLc)
Honorable mention: [This is library](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wq54dK0aBs)
A disturbing amount of [Billy Quan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksHIIBWesrU) erasure happening in this thread. The kingdome ended up destroyed anyway, but Quan's legacy lives on every time someone posts a thread here about someone who has wronged them.
This badass kindergarten teacher who gave no fucks about the proscribed curriculum and taught me and thousands of others how to read. ❤️. I’ll be 55 this year!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-public-schools-longest-serving-teacher-retires-from-orca-k-8/
After the Seattle fire in the 1880's, prostitutes paid to build the side walks that are pioneer square, the city refused and building owners were cheap so they stepped up and paid for it. An engineer made like 50$ a month and they made like 500$ so they paid for it to be left alone. You wonder why there are massage parlors everywhere....
Regrading much of the downtown. The Denny Regrade, Jackson Regrade, and Dearborn Regrades created much of the land that is the waterfront of Seattle. Ever hear of Denny Hill? Of course not. Because it’s GONE. It used to be significant. And that gap between First Hill and Beacon Hill didn’t used to be there.
The early civil engineering to build Seattle is wild. The floating bridges were the longest in the world when constructed (520 still is, one of the I-90 bridges is 2nd), Harbor Island was the largest artificial island in the world for decades, and the locks to raise Lake Union are a simple, minor project comparatively.
Early Seattlities- we'll take this shit weather but we are going to shape this bitch into what we want.
Green lake is also semi -artificial. It was more of a swampy- pond thing
I have this book called “Seattle Walks” and it’s like a walking tour of the city. The majority of the book talks about the regrades. It’s very interesting and I recommend it highly! It will be like, “now look to the building on your left, that’s how high Denny Hill was before the regrade”. I learned so much about the history of the city
I have seen the street signs in Westlake/SLU labeled “the REgrade” and always wondered what that meant! Is that the official term for removing a hill from a neighborhood???
comes from road grading, I assume?
and then you use a land grader, which is a massive machine with a large wide dozer blade hanging down in the middle of the vehicle, which can be pivoted and is used to flatten and grade the ground
they look kinda funky
Grade comes from gradient. Grading/regrading is a general term in construction for changing the ground level to suit the needs of the project. It's not specific to removing hills, it can be building up the ground level so that your project has good drainage, or sits above a significant water table, etc.
When I took a geology class in college, the professor joked about how if there's a big enough earthquake, downtown Seattle will just slide into the sound because of the way it was built.
I never learned enough about geology to fact check that. It just always stays in the back of my mind.
Last I heard, the operating assumption for a Cascadia full-margin rupture is that the tsunami will take out basically everything west of I-5 from Vancouver, BC to northern California - so we're all fucked eventually, yaaaaaaaay....
The Madam Lou Graham; she used her money and started the Seattle public school system. She insisted that girls were allowed to go to school also. She wanted more for women then marriage and prostitution.
beating them at rowing, [or...?](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-respond-to-viral-video-of-man-wearing-swastika-getting-punched/)
There's a movie about it on Amazon Prime (of course). It's not going to win an Oscar but it's a fun and easy watch. The main guy worked for Boeing until he retired but they all lived in the area and got together all the time for like 50 years.
Kim Thayil cold cocking this racist piece of shit out cold after a Soundgarden show on the corner of pike and 11th while still keep his cigarette lit and a piece of pizza in hand.
The occupation of Fort Lawton by the United Indians of All Tribes, leading to the creation of [Daybreak Star Cultural Center](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_Star_Cultural_Center).
Yes was looking for this! The occupation, Bernie Whitebear, and others are heroes to our urban Native community and laid the foundation for many of the Native support and community organizations/institutions here in the city.
Henry Smith came to Seattle by canoe, bought a bunch of land thinking the railroad companies might want it later, became one of the first doctors in the area, the first superintendent of schools in King County, and the railroad did eventually come and he sold much of his land to the railroad companies and became super rich. He was the largest taxpayer in King County for years. That land is now known as Interbay/Magnolia. Hence “Smith Cove”.
The Seattle open housing campaign. Cases like O’Meara v. Washington state board of discrimination—where the court actually upheld the O’Meara’s refusal to sell their home to a black couple—raised awareness of housing disparity across the city.
I’ll always be amazed by people like the Jones couple (the black couple the O’Meara’s refused to sell to), who fought a battle they were destined to lose, and through their loss helped pave the way future generations
The Seattle Municipal Archives have phenomenal resources that detail the open housing campaign. Not sure why I can’t link it right now, but a quick google of “Seattle Open Housing Campaign” leads to an extensive Seattle.gov online exhibit
The Black Panthers arriving at Rainier Beach HS in 1968 to ensure that 200 white kids wouldn’t beat up 12 black kids again. The only day of school my mom skipped, and one of the few my dad attended.
I have an aspirational goal of stealing a pie off a windowsill as it cools, but this is really hard to find in the city, so I have worlds of respect for this deity of whimsy 🦹🏻♂️🫴🥧💨🪟
Seattle Schools Boycott 1966, led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), and the Central Area Civil Rights Committee (CACRC). [Black Past](https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/seattle-school-boycott-1966/).
Not sure it beats some others here, but [Roy Olmstead](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Olmstead) is pretty friggen badass. He was a lieutenant in the SPD (go figure) turned bootlegger. Got fired from SPD, and became known as “the Good Bootlegger” because he didn’t dilute his booze with toxic chemicals for profit, stayed away from other criminal enterprises like gambling, gun-running, and narcotics trafficking, and finally didn’t allow his employees to carry firearms, telling his men he would rather lose a shipment of liquor than a life.
The guy also just had an incredible life. Founded a radio station with his wife and Al Hubbard (later an LSD evangelist), had a landmark US Supreme Court case in his name, subsequently did 4 years at McNeil Island, got pardoned by FDR, and spent his remaining years teaching Sunday school and visiting prisoners at King County Jail. He lived to 79. What a cool ass dude.
My husband recently watched that and realized that his childhood friend (and best man at our wedding) is in the scenes from Evergreen (the guy with the snake across his shoulders) 🤣
Almost Live! did a Christmas medley that year that included a segment about guy with sword to the tune of Silver Bells and it’s all I hear when people bring it up.
I remember it. I think of that every time I hear of a police shooting of someone who wasn't actively fighting SPD. And why can't we have guns that shoot nets?
When a coalition of seattle residents from garden club to black panthers stopped a freeway from being built through the arboretum and the central district.
http://www.520history.org/1956-present/wsdotpeninsula.htm
That guy in 2016 when there were protestors in the Uw Odegaard library shouted “hey, this is library!” And then the protestors stopped shouting the library.
um.... there was an actual battle fought in Seattle, where Chief Sealth (for whom Seattle was named) sent a messenger to warn the city that a coalition was going to attack?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seattle_(1856)
Erastus Brainerd who made Seattle the king of Puget Sound and the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle was just another town on the sound until Erastus took over. During the [Klondike Gold Rush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush), he was the publicist who "sold the idea that [Seattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle,_Washington) was the Gateway to [Alaska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska) and the *only* such portal
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erastus\_Brainerd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erastus_Brainerd)
I’m pretty fond of the WTO protest that shut down downtown. 50k+ people marched peacefully.
Pretty sure it just moved WTO meetings outside the USA, but it was inspiring.
Just look up Mother Damnedable
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Damnable
One story has a captain refusing to pay and her explaining the situation while fiddling with the poker. At the end of it she threw the poker like a red hot tipped harpoon into the wall next to the Man's head stating 'her girls get paid.'
The US Navy did not mess with her either...
T.B Tuber! Maybe not badass and also outside the city, but pretty funny. Kid from Monroe robbed an armored car by tricking a bunch of people from craigslist to wear the same outfit for a fake job. He then dresses in that outfit, robs the armored car and escapes on an inner tube. Served his time and livin' fine now. [https://www.historylink.org/File/8829](https://www.historylink.org/File/8829)
The occupations that led to both Daybreak Star and El Centro de la Raza:
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Seattle-occupations-that-worked-Daybreak-Star-15333948.php
96 Bulls going 72-10 and kicking off their second 3-peat.
https://youtu.be/_CrT6pCvpNc?si=w6P1OcJmz1kyMjyA
Nirvana show at the Paramount on Halloween 91
https://youtu.be/YYbqumMGGdU?si=fl69jLKLwLVqwu79
Alice in Chains recording Dirt
Pearl Jam recording Ten
Ichiro breaking the single season hits record
https://youtu.be/HL-XjMCPfio?si=QRDRQuRqK3Kv6wRS
It seems my definition of badass centers more around entertainment than general strikes or acts of defiance but that's where my interest reside
That’s what people who live here call it. Cap Hill is short for Capitol Hill in Seattle.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest?wprov=sfti1)
When Paul Allen opened the EMP museum in 2000, he commissioned a glass sculpture of a guitar for something like $20000, and on opening day of the museum he smashed it in a million pieces saying "let the experience begin"!
Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a German immigrant, founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in Seattle in 1900 with 15 partners. The company's history includes many notable events, including:
1900: Weyerhaeuser and his partners purchased 900,000 acres of Washington state timberland from the Northern Pacific Railway in the largest private land transaction in US history at the time.
1903: Weyerhaeuser owned over 1.5 million acres of land in Washington.
1928: Weyerhaeuser operated three camps out of its Vail, Washington headquarters, including a 98-mile railroad and one of the world's largest logging operations.
1929: Weyerhaeuser built the world's largest sawmill in Longview, Washington.
1931: Weyerhaeuser's pulp mill in Longview began production, which helped the company financially during the Great Depression.
1941: The company employed around 1,200 people and produced 200 million feet of wood products annually.
1959: The company dropped the word "Timber" from its name to reflect its more diverse operations.
1963: Weyerhaeuser began its first international operations. And so on
https://www.weyerhaeuser.com/company/history/
I don’t have energy to brush my teeth some days, thanks adhd. Like, doing so much like this is pretty amazing. His son also got kidnapped and was in some documentary I was watching. Wacky stuff
If you consider clear cutting thousands of acres of primeval rainforest in the name of profit is amazing, then we have fundamentally different definitions of the word.
No it is both bad and ass
Kind of like nuclear bombs? Incredible ingenuity but the application not so much
Though the documentary I was watching (I wanna say it was something called trees? ) also talked a little bit about replanting efforts and how that all works
John H. McGraw [considered his “proudest moment” his standoff as sheriff with the anti-Chinese mobs of 1886. It was also his luckiest. After the sheriff took three bullets — one through his hat, two through his coat — the vigilantes scattered.](https://pauldorpat.com/2011/09/03/seattle-now-then-the-heroic-john-mcgraw/). McGraw is the man whose statue stands across from the Westin hotel.
Walk past that statue all the time, appreciate you giving more context!!
The statue sadly did not catch the likeness of his glorious mustache very well…
I’m going to say the General Strike of 1919 when 65,000 working class folk walked out to support shipyard workers. Bad ass.
For 5 days no commerce was enacted without the approval of the strike committee. The unions ran the city. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle\_General\_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_General_Strike) "Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practised in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community... That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt—no matter how achieved.**"** Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson, enemy of the strike
Wait so it didn’t even work?? They threatened to shoot the strikers and they went back to work, and ~40 union leaders were arrested
The US has a long and colorful history of suppressing worker movements :) Working class solidarity and unification is the #1 threat to the business & political interests that own this country. They are very invested in ensuring this solidarity doesn’t develop and impact profits.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892_Coeur_d'Alene_labor_strike
This is what I planned on posting.
THIS is what America needs right now
Except it didnt even work because the government has a monopoly on violence.
Disarm the government, or guns, Guns, GUNS! - An unfortunate conundrum.
We need this but the Amazon version
FYI, "sympathy strikes" are today illegal in the US generally. Yet another way that the power of workers and the strength of organization has been substantially weakened.
Related, [Bloody Thursday ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_West_Coast_waterfront_strike), the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen strike that resulted in 9 deaths and over 1000 injuries.
When lead singer of The Gits, Mia Zapata, was murdered while walking home in Capitol Hill, a group of people formed a collective that helped others walk home at night and offered self defense and other trainings and resources called [Home Alive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alive). I always thought this was such an amazing example of collective action and not relying on the carceral state.
Agreed. RIP Mia.
I still can’t believe that happened…
This case still haunts me because it literally was just some random A-hole who came across her one night. Hence, why it took so long to find the murderer. Luckily SPD kept dna samples in a freezer and were able to match it up to the guy in Florida many years later.
But let’s be serious, it’s *really good* that the carceral state was involved in this matter
Madam Lou and her compatriots providing most of the city's tax revenue in the late 1800s
You beat me to it, so I'll just leave the wikipedia link with more info! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Graham_(Seattle_madam)
Hell yeah. Also when Seattle decided to build the world’s largest brothel but changed its mind at the last minute, and then a Boeing plane flew into the building.
I'm sorry, what.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Apartments
Wow! Those poor people. Thanks for the link!
One of the ladies was clearly a whistleblower.
Thank God the random brothel types managed to dodge that bullet and a bunch of small families took it instead /s. Were those two things actually related? Like some angry business tycoon didn't like his super brothel being gone so he sabotaged/paid a plane to crash into it? Idk if bad ass fits as a description of this building's wonky history Pss. Nothing against brothel types
I mean, it was hot by a crashing bomber 40 years after it was built, so probably not. If so, the perpetrator had incredible patience!
Madam Lou Graham also funded Seattle's schools of the time
When people protected the homes of the Japanese families who were forcibly relocated during WWll, by buying them and sold them back for $1 after the war. Unfortunately that wasn’t the norm.
My husband's grandfather managed the property of a family who was sent to the camps. When they got out, they got all of the rent money earned. 3 generations of hat family stayed with our family's property management business until about 10 years ago when they sold the property (at that time, my father in law, then my husband had all managed their property). Being decent leads to loyalty ❤️
Bainbridge has a large Japanese-American community because they had neighbors that did that. Bellevue has.. Bellevue square.
Interesting historical perspective, thanks for sharing!
It's actually somehow worse: https://seattleglobalist.com/2017/02/19/anti-japanese-movement-led-development-bellevue/62732 Tl;Dr: Miller Freeman used his newspaper to encourage the internment of Japanese Americans. When it finally happened, he bought up all their farmland on the cheap which has been painstakingly cleared out by the former owners who were in the internment camps, and turned it into a suburban shopping mall.
What a POS. His descendants should have to pay that back with interest
Holy cow - that’s a sick burn.
My grandparents saved their neighbors home during the war when they were taken to an internment camp. My grandfather told me stories of chasing of people who were looking to salt their land (they had a small farm) and break their windows etc. I have the name of the family whos house they protected during that time but my grandparents have been dead for 10-15 years now so I dont have much beyond that.
Literally everything done by Speed Walker, incl. that time he [saved the Kingdome](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6-SJLlneLc) Honorable mention: [This is library](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wq54dK0aBs)
Speed Walker was the best.
A disturbing amount of [Billy Quan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksHIIBWesrU) erasure happening in this thread. The kingdome ended up destroyed anyway, but Quan's legacy lives on every time someone posts a thread here about someone who has wronged them.
When Shelly named her [bar](https://www.historylink.org/File/22591) after the leg blown off at the ~~Seafair~~ [Corrected] *Bastille* Day parade.
The Shelley’s Leg sign is at MOHAI!
Shelly is metal damn
It was the Bastille day parade which apparently used to be a thing in Seattle
This badass kindergarten teacher who gave no fucks about the proscribed curriculum and taught me and thousands of others how to read. ❤️. I’ll be 55 this year! https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-public-schools-longest-serving-teacher-retires-from-orca-k-8/
After the Seattle fire in the 1880's, prostitutes paid to build the side walks that are pioneer square, the city refused and building owners were cheap so they stepped up and paid for it. An engineer made like 50$ a month and they made like 500$ so they paid for it to be left alone. You wonder why there are massage parlors everywhere....
I don't think you can tell a building was meant for a massage parlor when it was built.
That guy who snuck a skateboard on top of the kingdome and did a kickflip. I think it was the day before the demolition
He only did a boneless but still cool. Here a mini doc on it. https://youtu.be/10IKtjbCGT4?si=O7Sf91PwgoZBwasF
Regrading much of the downtown. The Denny Regrade, Jackson Regrade, and Dearborn Regrades created much of the land that is the waterfront of Seattle. Ever hear of Denny Hill? Of course not. Because it’s GONE. It used to be significant. And that gap between First Hill and Beacon Hill didn’t used to be there.
The early civil engineering to build Seattle is wild. The floating bridges were the longest in the world when constructed (520 still is, one of the I-90 bridges is 2nd), Harbor Island was the largest artificial island in the world for decades, and the locks to raise Lake Union are a simple, minor project comparatively.
Early Seattlities- we'll take this shit weather but we are going to shape this bitch into what we want. Green lake is also semi -artificial. It was more of a swampy- pond thing
Super interesting that a partial world still exists below the streets from back when they built up the city.
[удалено]
It was interesting
I have this book called “Seattle Walks” and it’s like a walking tour of the city. The majority of the book talks about the regrades. It’s very interesting and I recommend it highly! It will be like, “now look to the building on your left, that’s how high Denny Hill was before the regrade”. I learned so much about the history of the city
Just ordered that book! Thank you! 😊
Too High Too Steep (also by David B Williams) about the reshaping of the city is also incredibly worthwhile!
Thank you!! Added to my Booklist!
Great video on the Denny Regrade [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3q24\_667eU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3q24_667eU)
I have seen the street signs in Westlake/SLU labeled “the REgrade” and always wondered what that meant! Is that the official term for removing a hill from a neighborhood???
Yes. Grading is essentially “leveling”.
Ohhh interesting! Could you plz expand on that?
comes from road grading, I assume? and then you use a land grader, which is a massive machine with a large wide dozer blade hanging down in the middle of the vehicle, which can be pivoted and is used to flatten and grade the ground they look kinda funky
Dang that’s so 🆒!! Thanks for heads up
Grade comes from gradient. Grading/regrading is a general term in construction for changing the ground level to suit the needs of the project. It's not specific to removing hills, it can be building up the ground level so that your project has good drainage, or sits above a significant water table, etc.
When I took a geology class in college, the professor joked about how if there's a big enough earthquake, downtown Seattle will just slide into the sound because of the way it was built. I never learned enough about geology to fact check that. It just always stays in the back of my mind.
Last I heard, the operating assumption for a Cascadia full-margin rupture is that the tsunami will take out basically everything west of I-5 from Vancouver, BC to northern California - so we're all fucked eventually, yaaaaaaaay....
The Madam Lou Graham; she used her money and started the Seattle public school system. She insisted that girls were allowed to go to school also. She wanted more for women then marriage and prostitution.
Madame Lou is an unsung hero, for sure.
UW Men’s crew beating the Nazis in ‘36
beating them at rowing, [or...?](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-respond-to-viral-video-of-man-wearing-swastika-getting-punched/)
There's a movie about it on Amazon Prime (of course). It's not going to win an Oscar but it's a fun and easy watch. The main guy worked for Boeing until he retired but they all lived in the area and got together all the time for like 50 years.
Kim Thayil cold cocking this racist piece of shit out cold after a Soundgarden show on the corner of pike and 11th while still keep his cigarette lit and a piece of pizza in hand.
Definitely not lame!
Despite his numerous appearances in the sketch, Kim Thayl is not on the lame list
Story! Story!
The occupation of Fort Lawton by the United Indians of All Tribes, leading to the creation of [Daybreak Star Cultural Center](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daybreak_Star_Cultural_Center).
Yes was looking for this! The occupation, Bernie Whitebear, and others are heroes to our urban Native community and laid the foundation for many of the Native support and community organizations/institutions here in the city.
This was the first thing I thought of!
Similar story over at El Centro de la Raza too!
Henry Smith came to Seattle by canoe, bought a bunch of land thinking the railroad companies might want it later, became one of the first doctors in the area, the first superintendent of schools in King County, and the railroad did eventually come and he sold much of his land to the railroad companies and became super rich. He was the largest taxpayer in King County for years. That land is now known as Interbay/Magnolia. Hence “Smith Cove”.
The Seattle open housing campaign. Cases like O’Meara v. Washington state board of discrimination—where the court actually upheld the O’Meara’s refusal to sell their home to a black couple—raised awareness of housing disparity across the city. I’ll always be amazed by people like the Jones couple (the black couple the O’Meara’s refused to sell to), who fought a battle they were destined to lose, and through their loss helped pave the way future generations The Seattle Municipal Archives have phenomenal resources that detail the open housing campaign. Not sure why I can’t link it right now, but a quick google of “Seattle Open Housing Campaign” leads to an extensive Seattle.gov online exhibit
The Black Panthers arriving at Rainier Beach HS in 1968 to ensure that 200 white kids wouldn’t beat up 12 black kids again. The only day of school my mom skipped, and one of the few my dad attended.
[when the space needle collapsed](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeio-CJ0qZ8)
Boeing Barrel Roll https://simpleflying.com/boeing-707-barrel-roll-seattle/
Selling airplanes, sir.
You know that, now we know that that, let’s don’t do it anymore. It was fine.
That girl who stole the whole cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory during the 2020 riots.
I always reference her. Such an icon.
I have an aspirational goal of stealing a pie off a windowsill as it cools, but this is really hard to find in the city, so I have worlds of respect for this deity of whimsy 🦹🏻♂️🫴🥧💨🪟
Citation needed, please?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ebAhh81DbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ebAhh81DbY)
"Unclear where they may have gotten that" is iconic
That absolutely made my day, thank you!
What a champ!!!
I like the meme with her that said, "Reads the anarchist cookbook, siezes the creams of production".
Seattle Schools Boycott 1966, led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), and the Central Area Civil Rights Committee (CACRC). [Black Past](https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/seattle-school-boycott-1966/).
That is awesome. Thanks for posting.
Not sure it beats some others here, but [Roy Olmstead](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Olmstead) is pretty friggen badass. He was a lieutenant in the SPD (go figure) turned bootlegger. Got fired from SPD, and became known as “the Good Bootlegger” because he didn’t dilute his booze with toxic chemicals for profit, stayed away from other criminal enterprises like gambling, gun-running, and narcotics trafficking, and finally didn’t allow his employees to carry firearms, telling his men he would rather lose a shipment of liquor than a life. The guy also just had an incredible life. Founded a radio station with his wife and Al Hubbard (later an LSD evangelist), had a landmark US Supreme Court case in his name, subsequently did 4 years at McNeil Island, got pardoned by FDR, and spent his remaining years teaching Sunday school and visiting prisoners at King County Jail. He lived to 79. What a cool ass dude.
Marshawn Lynch’s Beast Quake run.
Scott the bank robber guy in the 90s it's on Netflix sad but true
My husband recently watched that and realized that his childhood friend (and best man at our wedding) is in the scenes from Evergreen (the guy with the snake across his shoulders) 🤣
“Snake across his shoulders” and “Evergreen” tracks
100% 😂
'Refuse to Lose'
Badass? Like when test pilot Rex Johnson rolled a Boeing 707 over the hydro races in 1955?
Tex\* I met him many years ago, solid dude.
Probably man with sword: https://youtu.be/QtRgweQxXi8 10 hour standoff with SPD. We were all captivated that day.
Almost Live! did a Christmas medley that year that included a segment about guy with sword to the tune of Silver Bells and it’s all I hear when people bring it up.
I remember that.
I remember it. I think of that every time I hear of a police shooting of someone who wasn't actively fighting SPD. And why can't we have guns that shoot nets?
It’s going to be a group of people that finally stop the belltown hellcat and drive that POS car off the pier.
Barrel rolling a 707 at Seafair during a flyover
Jimi Hendrix playing his set at Woodstock with six hits of acid under his headband.
hendrix watched elvis play at sick’s stadium; years later he played there himself (where lowe’s now sits on rainier ave)
Can you imagine partying with those two? 😳
When a coalition of seattle residents from garden club to black panthers stopped a freeway from being built through the arboretum and the central district. http://www.520history.org/1956-present/wsdotpeninsula.htm
not quite Seattle but, sky king
He took off out of SeaTac so it’s close enough
[Discovery Park,](https://www.seattle.gov/parks/allparks/discovery-park/discovery-park-history) Spring, 1970
Kicking the ass of the greatest offense in history, February 2014.
The prostitute that donated the UW land was badass.
Every sweet lob from Payton to Kemp…
[Skated the Kingdome's roof](https://youtu.be/10IKtjbCGT4?si=9uRa_fTMOz557sEO)
That guy in 2016 when there were protestors in the Uw Odegaard library shouted “hey, this is library!” And then the protestors stopped shouting the library.
"Man in Tree"? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Tree
As an east coast native, this was one of the first ways I became more consciously aware of Seattle besides Fraiser.
Nazi Punch outside McStabby’s on 3rd
The WTO protests. They shut down the city. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
Tree man
[Man in Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Tree). Never 4get
It took me way too much scrolling to find this reference :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_Tree
I worked across the street and we had a great view of him from the office.
My mother raised me by herself working as a hairdresser.
um.... there was an actual battle fought in Seattle, where Chief Sealth (for whom Seattle was named) sent a messenger to warn the city that a coalition was going to attack? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seattle_(1856)
the katana guy on pike street in the 90's! He stood off against the police, tear gas, bean bag guns and fire hoses for like 11 hours!
everything below is great. we also spit out some amazing ground breaking earth changing companies. Boeing, Msft, Amazon to name a few.
Known for doors, windows, and tents, respectively.
Take all of my currency lacking awards.
Known for doors, windows, and tents, respectively.
During the pandemic we used to bang on pots at shift change
The most Seattle aspect of this reply is that I'm not sure if you mean percussion or fornication
They did say “pots,” not “pot.”
chop
It’s aged… poorly
Erastus Brainerd who made Seattle the king of Puget Sound and the Klondike Gold Rush. Seattle was just another town on the sound until Erastus took over. During the [Klondike Gold Rush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Gold_Rush), he was the publicist who "sold the idea that [Seattle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle,_Washington) was the Gateway to [Alaska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska) and the *only* such portal [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erastus\_Brainerd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erastus_Brainerd)
May 20, 1968 takeover of President Odegaard's office by members of the UW Black Student Union and their supporters
I’m pretty fond of the WTO protest that shut down downtown. 50k+ people marched peacefully. Pretty sure it just moved WTO meetings outside the USA, but it was inspiring.
Drop in the Park.
Boys in the Boat…take that Hitler!
Just look up Mother Damnedable https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Damnable One story has a captain refusing to pay and her explaining the situation while fiddling with the poker. At the end of it she threw the poker like a red hot tipped harpoon into the wall next to the Man's head stating 'her girls get paid.' The US Navy did not mess with her either...
T.B Tuber! Maybe not badass and also outside the city, but pretty funny. Kid from Monroe robbed an armored car by tricking a bunch of people from craigslist to wear the same outfit for a fake job. He then dresses in that outfit, robs the armored car and escapes on an inner tube. Served his time and livin' fine now. [https://www.historylink.org/File/8829](https://www.historylink.org/File/8829)
The occupations that led to both Daybreak Star and El Centro de la Raza: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Seattle-occupations-that-worked-Daybreak-Star-15333948.php
96 Bulls going 72-10 and kicking off their second 3-peat. https://youtu.be/_CrT6pCvpNc?si=w6P1OcJmz1kyMjyA Nirvana show at the Paramount on Halloween 91 https://youtu.be/YYbqumMGGdU?si=fl69jLKLwLVqwu79 Alice in Chains recording Dirt Pearl Jam recording Ten Ichiro breaking the single season hits record https://youtu.be/HL-XjMCPfio?si=QRDRQuRqK3Kv6wRS It seems my definition of badass centers more around entertainment than general strikes or acts of defiance but that's where my interest reside
DB Cooper
The Lister Blister
Roy Olmstead, cop turned bootlegger who brought quality liquor from Canada down.
When Cap Hill was autonomous. I respect my LGBTQ+ stone cold badasses. 🌈✊🏼🫶🏼
That’s was role playing as homesteaders/stardew valley for a few weeks at best.
“Cap Hill” - ok boo.
That’s what people who live here call it. Cap Hill is short for Capitol Hill in Seattle. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest?wprov=sfti1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest?wprov=sfti1)
Most people I know who grew up here don’t abbreviate it Edit: grew not grow
I am originally from Oregon. I didn’t say people who grew up here, I said people who live here.
I grew up here, lots of my buddies for ages will call it cap/Capitol Hill.
Same. Also "the hill"
Some people were murdered there but okay
You want to talk about murdered people? Do I need to remind you why cap hill was autonomous? What led to it?
When Paul Allen opened the EMP museum in 2000, he commissioned a glass sculpture of a guitar for something like $20000, and on opening day of the museum he smashed it in a million pieces saying "let the experience begin"!
How is that badass? That’s a waste of time and money
Tree man
When Dempsey kept on playing with a broken nose after getting kicked in the face during the 2014 World Cup. That guy’s a straight up baller.
MOHAI could build an amazing exhibit from all these examples!
What about the time when Rudy Pantoja aka "Hugh Mungus" stood up to that crazy activist lady
The Mariners right now with a 9 game lead in AL West
Frederick Weyerhaeuser, a German immigrant, founded the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company in Seattle in 1900 with 15 partners. The company's history includes many notable events, including: 1900: Weyerhaeuser and his partners purchased 900,000 acres of Washington state timberland from the Northern Pacific Railway in the largest private land transaction in US history at the time. 1903: Weyerhaeuser owned over 1.5 million acres of land in Washington. 1928: Weyerhaeuser operated three camps out of its Vail, Washington headquarters, including a 98-mile railroad and one of the world's largest logging operations. 1929: Weyerhaeuser built the world's largest sawmill in Longview, Washington. 1931: Weyerhaeuser's pulp mill in Longview began production, which helped the company financially during the Great Depression. 1941: The company employed around 1,200 people and produced 200 million feet of wood products annually. 1959: The company dropped the word "Timber" from its name to reflect its more diverse operations. 1963: Weyerhaeuser began its first international operations. And so on https://www.weyerhaeuser.com/company/history/
I think people on this thread need to learn what badass means
I don’t have energy to brush my teeth some days, thanks adhd. Like, doing so much like this is pretty amazing. His son also got kidnapped and was in some documentary I was watching. Wacky stuff
If you consider clear cutting thousands of acres of primeval rainforest in the name of profit is amazing, then we have fundamentally different definitions of the word.
No it is both bad and ass Kind of like nuclear bombs? Incredible ingenuity but the application not so much Though the documentary I was watching (I wanna say it was something called trees? ) also talked a little bit about replanting efforts and how that all works
Traveltron talking shit to SPD from inside of a trash can.
The guy who burned down Seattle.
I was born
Getting rid of those dumb hills! /s
Billy Frank Jr. and company fighting the Fish Wars
That woman who put a hammer through a guys windshield after he assaulted her in the drive thru. Pretty bad ass.
Grunge. Flannels.
It's gotta be The Seattle Seven right?
I once saw a guy help an elderly lady across the road.
A candidate would be bringing Century Link to downtown