Spend any time in the Emerald City and you’ll be sure to find those eager to espouse a doctrine of what is or isn’t proper Seattleite behavior. As our once secluded, hilly town on an isthmus has become more and more metropolitan, people’s attempts to assimilate (or even ward off) transplants with a laundry list of norms and etiquette — or even stranger purity tests — have gone too far.  

Culture is not static. What starts off as a novel trend can end up becoming a deep-seated tradition later, but people every day choose which traditions are worth adhering to, rejecting, or swapping out for something else. 

Seattle culture is not a monolith but rather an amalgamation of various groups that came to call this place their home, as is the story for the rest of the US (for better or for worse). And just like the broader culture, the city has also historically expected newcomers to assimilate, which hasn’t always been the most fair or equitable process — just take a look at the American Indian residential school system that stripped children of their families, language, culture, etc., as an example.

Some may fear that our home is losing the unique attributes that once made it distinct from other places — and that is a very understandable, human reaction. It doesn’t help that every day we see beloved local institutions on the verge of closing down, or worse, disappearing entirely (note the rise of projects like Vanishing Seattle as a result). And with the advent of social media homogenizing culture around the world, those feelings have only been exacerbated.

But make no mistake: it isn’t the friendly Trans woman from the Midwest, Palestinian refugee, or Chicano transplant from SoCal not adhering to the “Seattle Freeze” that is causing our city to lose its beautifully unique identity — it’s the billionaires and multinational corporations. 

As Seattle locals, we have watched for years as very rich people act with little to no regard for the things we hold dear and sacred (Stuart Sloan’s attack on Denny Blaine Park as a historically Queer nude beach being one of many examples). Culture naturally evolves with time, and given that, we should embrace differing attitudes as our hometown becomes more multicultural.

However, what we have been experiencing has been nothing short of a full hollowing out of the city’s cultural soul purely in the name of increasing profit margins for a small minority of very affluent people. What will ultimately determine the fate of our cultural soul in all of this is how we decide to collectively respond to these pressures. 

What I find to be the most quintessentially “Seattle” is not these superficial indicators, used against others as arbitrary litmus tests of people’s “nativeness,” but rather having a collectivist mindset and irreverent attitude toward the system. The WTO protests, longshoremen strikes, and 1990s grunge culture all shared a working-class attitude of rejecting the conformist pressures of American corporate capitalism. That is the true culture of Seattle I have come to know and love the most. 

One of Seattle’s best-known figures, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, made it a point of his career to reject the system, wearing dresses and kissing his bandmates on SNL as a way to trigger the corporate media networks and “piss off the rednecks and homophobes.” SGN publisher George Bakan embraced a large-tent mentality in his activism, and advocated for the inclusion of Bisexual and Transgender people at Seattle Pride at a time when some Gay and Lesbian activists didn’t want to; he also fought against police harassment of Gay cruising in public parks. 

And so I argue that the true, authentic “how to Seattle” is actually the opposite of what The Stranger and others prescribe: dare to speak on public transit, use an umbrella sometimes, embrace where you’re from, and rebel against the system! But most importantly, don’t feel the need to rank your “Seattleness” against anybody else’s.