West Side Not Interested In Our Disaster

Spokane is freezing in the dark, but apparently that’s not news on the West Side. It wasn’t until Thursday morning that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put Spokane’s plight on the front page. Even then, no reporter was dispatched to the state’s second largest city, declared a disaster area the day before.

The reporter collected a few quotes over the telephone, including one from Spokane’s mayor who noted that he took a “Viking shower.”

That’s better than The News Tribune of Tacoma, which carried front-page weather stories Wednesday and Thursday with no mention - not one word - of the mess in Spokane.

The Seattle Times was oblivious until Thursday, when the paper finally mentioned at the bottom of a regional wrap-up that power was still out in parts of Spokane.

Apparently, more than 100,000 people without heat, three deaths, a state of emergency and the governor calling out the National Guard doesn’t attract the interest of West Side newshounds.

Maybe if there was a militia angle Spokane’s disaster would have been West Side news. Or, maybe, there’s a new latte trend that was more important.

Assessing the Kingdome

The trend has begun, and it’s not a good one for taxpayers.

Whenever Seattle’s Kingdome appears in print in Western Washington these days, it’s always described as “the aging Kingdome,” or “aging and flawed.”

This is not a good sign.

As billionaire Paul Allen pressures policy-makers to come up with a football stadium deal, the Kingdome is being tossed rhetorically aside as a viable venue.

Time for a reality check, says Carol Keaton of the Kingdome. “This building was built in 1975 and it’s a great facility.” The Kingdome has been the site of everything from soccer to basketball, baseball, football, monster truck shows and the Promise Keepers. More than 60 million people have visited the stadium.

The Dome was raising enough money from ticket sales and a county hotel/motel tax to pay off the stadium’s construction debt by 2012.

Then in 1994, King County managed to spend $70 million fixing the Kingdome roof - more than the $67 million cost of the original building.

The stadium debt ballooned to $130 million, devouring $5 million of the county general fund a year.

Now the King County Council is talking about giving Allen the Kingdome for nothing, if he’ll just pay off the roof repair debt.

Allen says he doesn’t want the Dome, period. He wants the Seahawks’ lease cut short, and help from state taxpayers to build a new stadium.

Keaton says the Kingdome should remain the Seahawks’ perch.

Perhaps Washington residents should take a hint from East Coast sports fans. Somehow they manage to enjoy Boston’s Fenway Park, vintage 1912; Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, also built in 1912; and Chicago’s venerable Wrigley Field, home to first-class baseball for 82 years.

Free-falling

Texan Andy Calistvat jumped off the Seattle Space Needle Thursday, free-falling for three seconds. Then his parachute opened, gliding him the rest of the 520 feet to the ground. It was so much fun, he did it again. “It was incredibly exhilarating, exciting, a little frightening,” said Calistvat, who not surprisingly is single and has no girlfriend.

His mother makes him call home after every landing.

Calistvat said he’s been fascinated with falling ever since visiting the Empire State Building at age 4, and asking his dad if he could jump. One of his favorite falls is a 900-foot drop from a bridge in West Virginia.

The jump by Calistvat and three other daredevils was the first ever authorized from the city landmark.

All four jumpers had their own liability insurance. Good thing: One jumper was hospitalized with a fractured vertebra after a hard landing.

“She’s fine. Just has a bit of a sore back,” Needle spokeswoman Lynn Brackpool said.

Small wonder.

, DataTimes