Seattle Luxury & Poverty

Name Brands
These three ladies were walking from the mall to a shop off of Pine St. I noticed their attire, their purses and their bags they had in their hands. The three purses were name brand items; their clothing was new, fashionable and clean. They were walking from store to store, buying things.
This represented luxury to me because through their appearance they had the freedom, money and time to go out and walk leisurely around the city. It was interesting to see these ladies walking only a few blocks from the protest against large corporations and them walking around spending money that will increase the corporation wealth.

Searchers
What I noticed about walking in downtown Seattle was that although there are huge buildings, a ton of shopping centers, and large tourist attractions, between these buildings were alleys used to collect trash. This is where a lot of the hobos were hanging out. These two men were going through trash and scavenging for items. After the photo was taken, I could hear the man on the bike talking on a cell phone which I thought was ironic. Someone who was able to pay for a phone and its service, but he is still on the back streets searching through others' garbage.

High Rise

High Rise

As I walked around the streets of Seattle I began to notice that in order to find luxury I had to
look up. Everything representing luxury was above me. Tall buildings, airplanes flying over Elliot Bay, and even art work. This picture captures the essence that everything luxurious seems to be made high…high rise. The taller the building, the nicer it looked. This made me feel that luxury is out of reach from the streets.

Feeding the Hungry

Come In If You Have The Money!

It’s always amazing to walk into the Fairmont Olympic Hotel on University Street mid downtown Seattle. The Olympic is one of the hotel luxuries that Seattle has to offer. We picked this picture because of its beautiful lay out of the front of the hotel. Its trees, bushes, flowers are all trimmed and nicely shaped giving off a feel of luxury as guest pull in. It includes a circular parkway where cars are dropped off for valet, and or parked for momentary meetings or events. It also has windows near the entrance highlighting clothing and jewelry which can also be purchased from stores inside the hotel.

Just for Pleasure... This picture was taken inside of Macy's in downtown Seattle. I chose to share this picture because I thought that this was a great example of luxury for anyone that could afford to simply slide their credit/debit card at this vending machine. It isn't everyday that you walk into a store and there is a vending machine sitting in the isle full of Apple products or other game systems, such as PSP's and Nintendos.

It’s usually a head turner when I see this layout while walking down this street of downtown Seattle. The “Harbor Steps” is a small community of apartments and shops. I never knew this community within the community existed until I happened to be invited to play basketball at the “Harbor Steps” gym, where they just don’t let random people come in to play. This place has grown and added shops to their already street blocks of apartments. It takes up most of the area which will most likely keep growing, and I’ve always wondered what this area was before they built this. We picked this picture because it highlights a luxury community.

Trickle Down

We took this picture at the Occupy Seattle protest where everyone was camped out. We chose this picture because we’ve mentioned in class about trickle-down economics and this poster illustrates the effects (of lack of effects) that trickle-down has on our society. We were struck by the conviction and clarity of purpose the people there had. The news has skewed the movement as disorganized and disjointed: a bunch of people all protesting different things with no cohesion. However, we found that the people there had a great deal of cohesive knowledge of the effects that the income and wealth gap had on their lives.

Occupy Seattle

This picture shows luxery inches away from poverty when Target set up next to the Occupy Seattle protest

Rich and Poor

My group member took a picture with this homeless woman. She is an artist. I think she represents poverty, because she has no money and a place to live. What impress me most is her dog, because we can see that his master lives on the margin of the society and she can't even feed herself, but the dog still feels happy to stay with her. It seems like staying together with his master is the most happy thing in this world. Dogs are human beings' best freinds!

Furthermore, I feel that although America is such a powerful country, there are still a lot of poor people there, and they do exist there, whcih means we can't ignore them, they are also part of the society. They form a distinct comparison between the luxurious building around them. From this point I can see the huge difference between the rich and poor. I believe we should try to diminish the gap. by doing this, the country will become more powerful!

Metropolitan Improvement District: a non-profit organization that patrols Seattle and provides services to the general public as well as a homeless outreach service. They provide a bus service to the homeless persons throughout downtown Seattle and bus them to the mission nearby. The volunteers also provide information to tourist attractions and keep Seattle as safe and as welcoming as possible to the guests and residents. Their role is to keep Seattle an attractive place by cleaning sidewalks and alleyways. But then one thinks of the message behind the words. Are the people of Seattle really as uncomfortable with the unhoused people as this makes them seem? Their job is to make sure the unhoused individuals are constantly moving, never to be in the same place for very long, never there to disturb the peaceful picture that many tourists have of Seattle.

The waterfront is a popular place for both tourists and panhandlers. The homeless that wander along the boardwalk don’t stay in place for long as the MID will come by and ask them to move. Similar to the individuals in Sidewalk, some ask for any spare change while others stand silently to the side with or without signs. This man wandered up and down the boardwalk a few times while we walked through, only staying in one area for about fifteen minutes each.