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With the influx of highly paid software developers and engineers, the cost of living has risen, driving out many working-class queer people and artists. John Criscitello, like many Capitol Hill residents, blames Amazon.Ĭapitol Hill is just a few miles from Amazon’s Seattle campus, and thousands of tech workers have moved to the neighborhood in the past few years. As longtime Seattle realtor Penny Bolton told me, “People are coming here who make a lot of money, and they’re coming from places where they had a lot of money.” Redfin reports that more than 40 percent of homes are going over the asking price, many in cash. In this once working-class city of lumbermen and Boeing machinists, the median home price is now $535,000, a 19 percent increase since March 2014, and bidding wars are common. Purchasing a home is even more out of reach. The average rent in Seattle is now more than $1,800 a month, a 40 percent increase in the past five years, and it’s only getting higher. The two cultures - the old queer folks, the new tech workers - sometimes clash, and in the most liberal neighborhood in one of the most liberal cities in America, hate crimes are on the rise.įor Criscitello, the shifting nature of the neighborhood isn’t just about losing his seat at the bar it’s about his ability to stay in the city at all. Weekends on the Hill feel like Mardi Gras, and bars that were once reliably safe for the queer populace are filled with the neighborhood’s new residents - heterosexual tech workers and their girlfriends. But Capitol Hill has moved from a place that was a little gritty, a little divey and very queer to a party zone for straight people. Well before they could get married in Washington or any other state, gays and lesbians could find community, safety and affordable housing on the Hill.
His guerrilla posters, wheat-pasted to buildings and telephone poles, say things like “Welcome rich kids” and “We came here to get away from you.”įor the last half-century, Capitol Hill has been Seattle’s Castro, its Boystown, its Gayborhood. He hasn’t been in the city long - he moved from New York just four years ago - but in that short time, he’s seen the neighborhood change immensely.
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He’s tall and muscled, with tattoos covering most of his skin and blue eyes that stand out against the gloomy Seattle sky. “They’ve taken an area that was formerly a home for gay people, for queer people, for artists,” says John Criscitello while showing me around Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, “and they’ve turned it into a destination drinking spot.”Ĭriscitello, an artist who lives and works on Capitol Hill, is 48 years old but looks a decade younger.