Uncommon Commentary: I love Seattle (sort of)

My love of Seattle started back in the 80s when I use to visit my eldest sister at the University of Washington when I was 5 years old. Seattle through my child-eyes back then was great and I especially liked the sprawling campus of the UW. I remember a burger joint near my sister's apartment called Arnold's and she had discarded burger wrappings in her trash which smelled heavenly like a real burger not like McDonald's or anything but I can't recall if I was able to get a burger from there.

As a teen, I continued going on trips with my sisters to Seattle and I expanded my horizons to Pike Place Market, the waterfront and the downtown area around the Westlake Center. And the myriad of cultural festivals that take place in Seattle Center have been my main interest now for about 10 years. In addition, I love the shopping options in downtown Seattle.

The Westlake Center, which is a great mall has so many great stores but my fave is Daiso Japan, the Japanese Dollar store or 100 yen shops as they are called in Japan. I also like the food court with it's extensive selection of affordable restaurant options. Pacific Place, Uwajimaya, Nordstrom, Gap, Banana Republic, Spehora, J Crew, H & M and Macy's are some of my other favorite stores downtown.

The scenery, the shopping and the cultural events are all the things I love about Seattle.

Now for the bad news, the part where I only am sort of loving Seattle these days. It's simply because of the growing amount of litter on the streets that is not getting picked and the shady characters that lurk around the city. These include homeless people and drug addicts which are often one in the same. Many of these people are very brazen in their attempts at harassing and intimidating people and begging for money. Because of this, Seattle is becoming an increasingly family unfriendly place and I barely see families out in droves like I used to see in NYC.

My wish for Seattle is that it would become a more family friendly city and work on the homeless problem so that both families and single women can safely walk around without having to worry about being accosted by ne'er-do-wells.