By Dave B.
Please, no more Audis? The Subaru PNW Outbacks are bad enough. I love all of you on Vashon, but when people come to the Island or move here and try to fit in, think about where you are? You are not in Seattle; Newport Beach; Boulder, Colorado; or anyplace else where it is okay to be rude to the locals just because you think you are a local. Being here a year or in the summer does not qualify you to be rude or arrogant.
My wife would say, “You have to drink the Kool-Aid.” What exactly does that mean? I am going to try to interpret it, but understand that my pea brain sometimes lacks the skills to articulate. Here goes: We are a hippy commune, a farming- and gardening-loving, family-driven, K2-skiing, mountain-climbing, kayaking, biking group of people who smile at you at Thriftway, IGA, or the hardware stores. We love our pets, forest, recycling, and trail running and even the killer deer mentioned in past articles. The coyotes, not so much!
We like to drive old trucks, moss-riddled cars, and have dogs sticking out the window of our vehicles. That is what and how Vashon has drunk the Kool-Aid. We understand how to adapt to our Island, weather, ferry system, and forests. And we love our TROLL. If you don’t know about him, you are not really here yet. You should check it out!
I grew up in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa in Southern California – now wait for it – in 1965. Back then we were ALL locals. The beach there was Vashon in every way. We were safe enough to even ride our bikes (at 13 years old) from Costa Mesa to Cooks Corner, halfway up Saddleback Mountain, while the city was beginning to build Irvine. The point here is everyone was exactly what I said at the beginning of this piece. Calm, kind, with no attitude. We loved it.
I know people (including my wife) all say that we Californians ruined Colorado and other states, but everyone from the east coast moved to California, and instead of drinking our California Kool-Aid, these transplants gave us some attitude. I left it to them by 1990, and when I go to visit my friends who stayed, it is unbearable to me as an old local. What a rat race.
Vashon does NOT want to be Seattle. I feel (and most locals agree) that we do not want to change Vashon to resemble Seattle. If you want to, fine, go back to Seattle or Newport or Boulder or wherever you are from. I know it can be frustrating to get anything done here, and since we are SO Democratic, we need to have five committee meetings to change a light bulb. We still like who we are and what we represent: the PNW at its finest (and silliest).
It is expensive to live and work here, hard to find an affordable house, and jobs are very difficult to come by unless you know a LOCAL (i.e., networking). Yet, I wake up to birds singing and the wind blowing through our giant 130-year-old trees. The stupid raccoons and the deer eating my garden and blueberries still make me laugh (and cry), but I would not trade the ferry ride for the I-5 and I-405 corridors now or in the future.
If you can get along with the folks here, work out the ferry schedule (that sometimes exists), and roll with the diversity here, you are good to go. Understand that it takes a while to really be accepted, as folks tend to come and then leave often, and putting time and attention into someone who may or may not stay is exhausting. Riding a ferry sounds like fun until you do it every day, right?
My neighborhood has residents that have been on our street for 30 years. We have been on this hill for 10 years, and block parties are becoming the norm. And I know fifty percent of my neighbors by name, their pets, and some of their political views (not the best idea, though!).
Once you are established here, it is nirvana. When a bad snowstorm hit a few years back (“Snowmageddon”), Thriftway was party central. Try that in Seattle. People traded food to get folks what they needed, and shared stories while in line to checkout.
Enjoy the hospitality, and hopefully you can adapt to the lifestyle I love so much.
Bye for now…
