.
1stAvenue between Union and Pike, Seattle: photographer unknown, September 1972 (Seattle Municipal Archives)
The truck shot forward across 1st Avenue to the Pike Street Market. Through the rain, moving slowly down the plate glass shine of the store fronts, one can see the people of this world moving on their way to and from carrying the inevitable shopping bags. The old ones carry umbrellas. The old men have broad, flowered, disreputable ties around their necks. In the plate glass reflected world are the brisker types in blue suits standing in the entrances of shoe stores and jewelry stores, ultimately, but they don't know it, in the hands of all these people with so little money each, but collectively what is referred to as a consumer power. Something, each man in flimsy slacks is saying, will have to be done about it. But probably nothing can be done about it. With each new man born, a jewelry store is born for him. The terrible leveling of Malthus plods on, on this frontier which no longer is a frontier. A dead atmosphere.
Edward Dorn: from 1st Avenue (1956), in The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, ed. Leroi Jones, 1963
1st and Union, Seattle: photographer unknown, 1972 (Seattle Municipal Archives)
Shellback Tavern, Seattle: photographer unknown, 1972 (Seattle Municipal Archives)
1stAvenue between Cherry and James, Seattle: photographer unknown, 1973 (Seattle Municipal Archives)
Aerial of Pike Place Market, Seattle: photographer unknown, September 1970(Seattle Municipal Archives)