Just the beginning: White Center hosts its first Pride weekend

When a city like Seattle booms, it’s not just the city itself that sees a change of scenery.

For a long time now, Seattle has been a city on the rise, complete with changing demographics, cultural shifts, and a robust housing market. The surrounding areas have seen some of that change spill outward — complete with their own housing price upswings or population shifts. And White Center is no exception.

As White Center evolves, many of its residents are keeping a hopeful eye on what the neighborhood was, what it is now, and what it will become. A recent influx of of LGBTQ-owned businesses and clientele have led some to dub the neighborhood “the new Capitol Hill,” although locals have countered that the area has been a comfortable home to queer families for years.

By June of 2019, White Center saw the opening of a second gay bar — The Swallow, a little over a year after The Lumber Yard opened across the street — and the first-ever White Center Pride. The weekend, which kicked off the month’s weekend festivities throughout the city, was a smashing success. Lines forming (and lasting) at The Lumber Yard and Swallow, and Southgate Roller Rink’s gay rollerskating event set a “new high record” for the rink, said Matt Maring, one of the organizers of the neighborhood’s Pride event.

The focus, Maring says, is on developing a celebration that fits the community it’s in.

“White Center offers a unique experience,” Maring says. “It's a diverse area that's welcoming to the LGBT population. It's also edgy and quirky and offers a unique experience with its mix of roller skating, gay bars, and amazing food in a highly walkable space. We wanted to help share the unique experience of White Center with more people while bringing our local LGBT community and businesses together.”

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Nathan Adams, who runs The Lumber Yard with his husband Michale Farrar, isn’t surprised that White Center Pride was such a draw.

This year’s celebration confirmed what they’ve thought about White Center: They knew there were LGBTQ people in the area when they opened (they’ve lived here for about a decade, themselves), and say that they haven’t been regulars in Capitol Hill in a while.

According to Adams, most of his White Center Pride clientele seemed to be coming from Tukwila, Kent, Burien and other spots in the South End of Puget Sound.

“Yeah, we had a lot of guys that came down from the Hill. But the ones that I was seeing — that I was a lot more impressed with — is we truly are seeing a lot of business from the south end of the city, and how large our community is growing on the South End,” Adams says.

“Burien really started it, being like, 'We have a community. We want to go out there and celebrate our community, even if it’s only a small farmer’s market on the weekend, there you go.’ And what did they get? They got 1,000 people on the first Pride. This year I think they were up to 5,000—and they’ve expanded.”

This seemed in line with the experience of Jared Mills, who is raising four kids and performs in drag with his husband Reese Umbaugh under the names Cookie Couture and Old Witch. (He’s Old Witch.) They also moved to White Center about 10 years ago, when Capitol Hill was “starting to change.”

“For a lot of people it can be not super welcoming on Capitol Hill,” Mills says, noting that the demographic “skews a little bit older in White Center.”

“If you wanted something a little more laidback, absolutely.”

White Center’s first Pride celebration hits at a time not only when Capitol Hill is seeing a reported 400% rise in hate crimes, but also when the neighborhood is seeing its own boom, changing the look and feel of the area.

RELATED: White Center through the years: 

Much like the city of Seattle, White Center first saw white settlers during the 1800s, when it grew from densely forested area to timber operation to farmland. According to HistoryLink.org, the town got its name based on a coin toss between two major developers of the area, George White and Hiram Green. A streetcar line installed in the early 1900s provided access to downtown and spurred commercial and residential growth, attracting first blue collar workers and their families and later immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, East Africa, Latin America and Ukraine.

And while many Seattle neighborhoods got gobbled up and annexed by the city, White Center remained unincorporated, a status it maintains to this day (though just last year, a plan was in the works to consider annexation).

It’s also long been one of the most diverse areas in Puget Sound. According to the most recent census data, 41% of the community is non-Hispanic white (much lower than Seattle’s 60.4%). Ultimately these demographics haven’t shifted too much yet — in 2010 that same census data showed it was 39.6% white, and although a higher percentage of the population was less than 64 years old compared to 2017 estimates, the median age has dropped from 36.3 to 34.9.

“It has not definitely felt to me like a big drastic change; a gradual change where there’s more people. It’s always been a very diverse queer place and we still think that,” Mills said. “(Now), it’s a little bit denser and maybe a little bit gayer.”

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During that same time, a number of community spots have changed hands: Chubby and Tubby, The Company Store, and 88 Pho.

Some see the recent years — anywhere from the last decade to the last few years, depending on who you talk to — as the first signs of gentrification.

Gentrification is a tricky thing to name statistically; it’s typically defined as the blanching of character, diversity, or edginess in a neighborhood, but exactly how those parameters work (or what is being cut from the neighborhood) has no set definition. Seattle is no stranger to the concept though, with neighborhoods like the Central District and Rainier seeing new development and long-time African American communities getting pushed out.

White Center still has a number of businesses that have endured, along with the distinctive look of the neighborhood.

And yet, many White Center residents feel like there’s a sea change in the area. A second location of the popular Capitol Hill bar The Unicorn will be opening in the La Camera building in December. And plenty of residents have spotted more families in the neighborhood. They all admit that the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be, but the next phase isn’t exactly something that they’re dreading.

“For me, I’m not worried about [gentrification] yet — you’re still seeing the good parts of it,” Janice Young, Manager of Young’s Restaurant said. “You’ve got families taking their dogs out with their kids. Before all this, I would never walk down [on 16th]."

Which is not to say the neighborhood is free from strife. Just this week, several people were injured in two unrelated shootings in the area. But things are changing, and for the better, residents say.

The hope is that this change can continue being done with respect to the community that’s already living in White Center. After all, many of the spots that opened there have already found themselves pushed out of Seattle — often thanks to prices elsewhere in the city, like Young’s found itself when it first opened in the ‘80s.

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“We were looking for (an) area, and downtown was too expensive; we couldn’t afford it. Just like, a bar, (with) five or six stools — it cost a fortune! So we didn’t do it. And somebody told us that a restaurant right there (was) for sale,” Ella Young, Janice’s mother, said of her and her husband’s search to find a space after immigrating from Vietnam. “(The) whole world, the yeast, the food costs are getting higher. Even the wages are higher, and (we don’t) make it up like we used to.”

So far, many business owners — who have seen changes come and go in the neighborhood — believe that the ones that stay are the ones who feel like part of the community, and really set down roots.

Tara Scott, who was raised in White Center and now owns Taradise Cafe, says she’s found she “never feels negativity” when she walks around the neighborhood.

“I keep the business in White Center, because basically we have everything we need here,” Scott says. “It’s about keeping people here, and keeping people not afraid. That’s, I think, the biggest thing, we have such a bad rep. And people don’t realize how much love is here.”

Her biggest concern is that as change sweeps through the area it will push the marginalized and long-time residents out with it.

It’s why The Unicorn Two owner Adam Heimstadt said it’s important to him that his new White Center location be “something that is sustainable for the neighborhood,” that “will be here forever hopefully.” And it’s why White Center Pride made it a priority to be in step with the community it was celebrating.

Rather than just recreating Capitol Hill a few miles south, Mills noted that the Lumber Yard and The Swallow both fit in with the aesthetic and vibe of White Center: “Swallow’s the gay version of The Locker Room (a long-standing dive bar across the street). There’s really an understanding of the neighborhood at those kinds of place.”

“Everybody takes a lot of pride in what they’re doing,” Adams agreed. “We are just lucky enough to be in the right place where our community has found that you can still (buy homes), and if you’re looking to settle down and start a family but if you’re looking to go out every once in a while ... that’s who we are.”

With it, they hope the almost “small town” feel that comes with White Center stays in place. Even though it’s wedged between the former hottest housing market in the country, and the current one.

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“I think that because it’s so out of the way, White Center, you have to kind of want to live and play there,” Mills said. “(It’s) an area that had more of that classic Seattle vibe; very working class, very diverse. It has the best restaurants in the city, it has beautiful street art. (And) it’s got really involved local business owners care about their community as well.

“It’s just a really special place queer families, immigrants, refugees, artists, all sorts of people can come together. They have a very active community that’s very supportive of each other and looks out for their neighbors.”

He found no clearer example of this than midway through June, when both the Lumber Yard and Swallow got their pride flags vandalized on the same night. The thief hadn’t just taken the flag, but knocked the holder out of the concrete on the side of the building.

When the owner ran into trouble replacing the flag, Mills said the bike store owner of Aaron’s Bicycle Repair came over to help repair it on his day off.

“He’s not queer, but he took his day off to come and fix this flag thing so the queer-owned business could open their business and not have to deal with that really irritating messed up thing,” Mills said. “I wasn’t surprised when I heard that story because that’s what people do in White Center.”