Ken at The Urban Blog is a Seattle resident who usually writes about Reno. So pretty much the exact Bizarro version of what I’m doing with Seattlehound. But he does have rare posts about Seattle, like this post with a Flickr slideshow of his neighborhood on Capitol Hill, and this post about the Viaduct. I know the Viaduct can be a thorny issue with some people, but I have to say I agree with Ken on the subject. The viaduct needs to be replaced with another viaduct. It’s the only solution that will work. I know the car haters want to erase that freeway all together, and replace it with another signaled street, but that will only drive more traffic onto I-5, which is not what the city needs. And the tunnel is the best solution in theory, but in the real world the thing would have to be built and that could be one of the biggest headaches ever seen on Puget Sound. And a ground-level freeway isn’t even one of the options being put out there, because it’s just patently silly. So a viaduct it has to be, as ugly as it may be and as much as it “cuts off” Seattle from its waterfront. There needs to be two freeways in town, and if not on the waterfront then where?

“Traffic flow is more important than aesthetics,” as I said in a comment to that post, as sad as it may be. The trick, then is to make the viaduct sort of attractive and the space under it useful, and it seems like some people have some ideas on how to do that.

And speaking of Ken, how’s this for a view out your back window?

In a lot of ways, the first post on a blog can be both the least important, and the most important. It’s the least because when you start a blog your readership is pretty close to zero (one if you send it to your mom), so it doesn’t matter what you write. But it’s also the most important, because years later, when you’re a fabulous success, people will want to go back in the archives and see how you got your start. And the easiest post to find will be the very first one, and they’ll be able to say, “See? Even back then the genius was already apparent.”

And so with that I launch the experiment known as Seattlehound. This new site is kind of a weird idea, I’m going to be writing a placeblog about Seattle even though I don’t live there, even though I don’t even live in the same state, even though I’ve only been to Seattle about a dozen times in my life. But I have been there enough to know that that’s where I want to move to someday, and right now our plans have us making the big leap sometime in the next twelve months. So this is a good time to start establishing myself, to start paying attention to what’s going on in Seattle, to start getting into the Seattle groove. Then when we finally do move, I’ll easily be able to slide into real placeblogging that will come from actually being there, rather than watching from a distance.

If you’ve stumbled into this site, here’s a little bit of background info. My name is Scott, and right now I live just outside Carson City, Nevada. I run a placeblog there called Around Carson, as well as other local sites like Carsonpedia.com and the Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection. Plus I have a personal blog where I’ve been writing since February of 2002, nearly seven years. So I’ll be pulling from everything I’ve done on all of those sites and trying to apply it to my crazy quest to cover a city that’s 800 miles away.

I still don’t know how this experiement is going to work out. I’ve subscribed to several Seattle blogs, so I can keep up with what’s going on in the city. But will I just link to what others are writing? Will I try to come up with topics and opinions on my own? Will I come off seeming incredibly naive and like I don’t know what I’m talking about? Or will I grow tired of this and let the site sit in mothballs after three weeks? I have absolutely no idea. So, it should be exciting!