Quick Geography Lesson Home

Page updated 10-Dec-1999

Seattle is an hourglass shape, surrounded by water on left and right. The ship canal cuts across just above the small part and divides north Seattle from the rest of the city. There are more hills than in most places, but they're less steep than in San Francisco.

I live in the north east in the University District. I work in Ballard in the north west, a half-hour bus ride away.

Capitol Hill/Downtown is at the small part of the glass, along the left coast. Thus, from the U-District or Ballard the path forms the bottom of a triangle, and it's a half-hour bus ride from either place.

Downtown is unique because the streets go diagonal to follow the waterfront. In the rest of the city, the streets go north-south, east-west. Denny Way marks the north edge of downtown, Yesler Way marks the south edge. This was also the boundary for the curfew zone, a 24x15 block area. The northern half of downtown is Belltown and has high-rise apartments. The southern half is where the office buildings, retail shops and government buildings are.

Denny Way comes down Capitol Hill straight west, forming the northern edge of downtown, going past Seattle Center (a big recreational area from the 1962 world's fair) on Queen Anne Hill and ending at the Sound.

Downtown, the main street has traditionally been Pike Street, which starts at the Pike Place Market. But the department stores and trendy shops have made Pine Street directly north of it into a rival. South of Pike Street is Union Street, which is of no importance except that many of the protests happened around it.

All these streets continue east up Capitol Hill, although Union is broken where it runs under the convention center and becomes a freeway exit. However, because the streets downtown run diagonal, it's only three blocks from Denny Way to the Pine/Pike/Union trio on the hill, but a 20 minute walk downtown.

It's about twelve blocks from the I-5 freeway, which was the end of the curfew zone and more or less the eastern edge of downtown, up the hill to Broadway. Southwest Capitol Hill has the highest concentration of apartments in the city. This part of Brodaway has Seattle Central College right next to it, and is one of those places that used to be semi-seedy but is now being gentrified. It's also where most of the clubs are. South Broadway are the hospitals, north Broadway is one of those gentrified neighborhood shopping districts. The neighborhood is a magnet for gays, punks, skinheads, hip-hopsters, city-lovers, immigrants, and lots and lots and lots of activist liberals. Although the alternative scenes are slowly losing ground as the rents go up and the suburban-ish yuppies move in.