As you may remember us mentioning before, there was talk of a proposed law to make it easier for restaurants to attain permits to add outdoor dining patios. Everyone I talked to about it seemed very pleased. Outdoor dining = fun. Am I right? Well it seems the Seattle Community Council Federation doesn't seem to agree. The Council, which is made up of neighborhood activists, is voicing their concerns that the cafe proposal won't protect pedestrians. There are complaints as it is about the tree growing in the middle of the sidewalk outside of Shorty's on 2nd, and that if more cafe's are added to Belltown, pedestrians will have to "weave" even more than they do now.
I'm a little irritated with these concerns. It's not like restaurants would build the dining patios smack dab in the center of sidewalks. Come on. People "weave" around the cafe filled streets of Europe all the time, and they seem to be doing just fine.
I think this is turning into a bigger deal than it needs to be. Sidewalk cafes add flair and personality to a city and encourage people to get out more and mingle.
Click here for more information on "The Great Sidewalk Debate."
Obviously, you are a nice, healthy pedestrian, and don't need a mobility device. If you needed a walker, cane, scooter, or wheelchair to get around, you might have a different perspective. I live on Fourth Ave, and use either a walker or scooter. Sidewalk cafes are a pain in the ass, or my knees, depending on which I'm using. Upright pedestrians just love to stand around and talk on the sidewalk, especially near sidewalk cafes, obstructing traffic. There is at least five or six sidewalk cafes from here to the library. I hate them all. But at least the one at Shucker's disappears in the winter. The rest of them just sit there, getting in the way.
I hate the people standing around them, talking, too. I have to say "Excuse me" to get through the throng. As opposed to what I would like to say, which is "Get the f*** out of the way."
Even trying to negotiate who is going to give way when people are coming in the opposite direction is a pain. Especially if you take up more room than the ordinary pedestrian. Sometimes they will shove you off the sidewalk, into the trees. So I think sidewalk cafes are lovely. In a piazza where there is a lot of room to negotiate. On Seattle sidewalks, between trees, for three months a year? Screw it. Or make them like the one at Sport, completely out of the way of traffic.
I don't mind the cafes too much except that a lot of them are in restaurants that are part of residential buildings so that the noise level goes up for the people living above. My big pain with them is that they leave up their barriers protecting "their" sidewalk area even during the winter when there are no tables out. They take up more than half of some of the sidewalk space even when they aren't using it. They also constrain people into a pretty narrow area so the restaurant smokers stand between the sidewalk cafe area and the street. I've been forced out into 2nd ave more than once by people hanging out in the remaining sidewalk left over by the outdoor cafe area. I've spent plenty of time in Europe, that never happened.