Only recently has the South Lake Union area that I remember been transformed by the sprawling landscape of Amazon’s campus, which includes a Harry Potter–themed library, a dog deck featuring a fake fire hydrant, and three enormous, spherical plant conservatories. It was a perfect specimen of the kitsch for which Seattle was known at the time, and I loved it. The main landmark was Denny Triangle’s Elephant Car Wash, with its pair of pink, elephant-shaped neon signs. In high school, the drive to my part-time job took me through what was then the nondescript South Lake Union neighborhood-dotted with auto shops, warehouses, and, along the waterfront, a few marinas. For some time, Amazon’s influence was little noticed. A mile and a half up Bellevue Way, in the garage of a rented house, Jeff Bezos was starting Amazon. My parents would drive my sister and me down I-90 to the Bellevue Square mall on weekends, and I’d sit on the carpet of the B.
I n the mid-1990s, when I was in middle school, my family moved to the suburbs of Seattle, where my father had gotten a job at Boeing. This article was published online on February 12, 2021.
