[music]
One object in the Archives that I like, is this item from Mayor Wes Uhlman's records. It's an
anonymous letter from 1970 written to complain to the Mayor about the hippies in Seattle.
It's visually fun with all the caps and underlining and the complaints about
Pike Place Market being a "rat's nest of hippies" are pretty funny to our ears today.
He complains about their dirty clothes and their long hair and whiskers and he's angry
that stores are catering to them by selling hippie clothes and sometimes even having hippie employees.
Partway through the letter, he changes perspective from an angry Seattleite to that of an imagined
hippie, inviting all his friends to come to Seattle to block the sidewalks and get welfare. The letter
says that hippies had taken over the lower level of the Pike Place Market. And the Market actually was
a pretty different place then than it is now. Photos from that time show it looking pretty
run down. The following year there was a citizen initiative to save the Market from redevelopment
and this led to the creation of the Market Historical District and a major rehabilitation.