In which I am briefly culturally insensitive...

[elfs]

On the new Seattle Light Rail system that goes from the airport to downtown, there are several stops between that are destined to become gentrification hubs in the coming twenty years, pushing out the low-to-middle income, ethnically mixed demographics that currently occupy that corridor. That low-income, low-political-power population also probably why it was politically expedient to put the train along that corridor in the first place.

While we were on the train today, I saw a "Guide to Sound Transit Art along the Light Rail Line." I picked it up and entertained myself with the safe choices the art board had made, along with an explanation for each. Some made sense: A tiara for the high-end shopping center at the end of the line; opera glasses for the station below the symphony center; even the canoe for the station near the Duwamish River makes sense if you know your local history.

But the Othello Street Station line's icon makes no sense. It's of a deer. And the explanation reads, "We chose a deer to honor the local fauna."

Othello Street Station is in the middle of one of the most dense light-industrial zones in King County. There hasn't been a deer sighted there in years! You know what I think? "We chose a deer because the icon of a white woman being strangled by a black man egged on by a lying Jew wouldn't go over very well."

Comments

[marketeer]

Astor Place in New York has tiles showing beavers in the subway station (apparently because the Astors made their first fortune in the fur trade).

[casualprofessor.livejournal.com]

And I had always thought the beaver was a traditional sign of engineering, since Astor Place station is next to Cooper Union. Rationalization will get me anywhere ;)

[(Anonymous)]

I would have thought that beavers would be in the decor at the subway station nearest Times Square, with the trout, because, um, never mind.