Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (24681)	11/6/1998 9:57:00 AM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

<Wow, Robert; i bet you've seen lots of changes in your hometown, eh?> Yes, it's a very different place, in some ways for the better, in many ways for the worse. In the 60's, i remember 1 good Chinese restaurant, 1 good Japanese restaurant, and only 1 Mexican restaurant of any kind at all. (My Spanish class had a choice of one for the annual lunches!) Nordstrom was still a shoe store (but a darn good one!) Eddie Bauer was a single store near skid road (now trendy Pioneer Square) downtown. When our family moved to a little subdivision in the woods in 1955, Bellevue had just incorporated with a population of 2,000 and one blinking yellow light. That little subdivision is still there, but it is surrounded by a freeway (405), a hospital complex (Overlake) and an industrial park. In 1959 my grandmother bragged that her (admittedly classy) Mercedes 300 was one of only 4 in the city - other than the Boeings and Weyerhauesers, there wasn't much big money in Seattle. Most incredibly, I remember when I5 and the Evergreen Pt bridge opened for the first day of business back in 1963 - nobody was on either and they stayed uncrowded for years..... In 1971 I left for college and to see the rest of the world, because other than the city's incredible natural beauty and access to the outdoors, there was no there there. It was the airplane capital of the world and that was about it. It was just when I left that the city began to change - first with the restaurant explosion. The 80's of course witnessed the Microsoft phenomenon, the money from which helped to transform the entire region. Seattle became the capital of leisure activities such as coffee drinking and grunge, and something of a tourist mecca. Traffic soared and will continue to be a real problem for the "topographically challenged" region. But the wonderful old neighborhoods - Queen Ann Hill, Capitol Hill, Washington Park - retain much of their charm and in them you can often ignore the changes around you and live life not too different from that that I, my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have lived there throughout much of this century.