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“The Ave and the Have-Nots” Audio Story Transcript   

NARRATOR : Something strange happens when a street gets a nickname.  It becomes human.  A living, breathing functioning member of that community with a personality, history, and future entirely its own. 
Seattle has over a hundred and fifty avenues running through the city limits.  But there’s only one “Ave”.        If the Ave were quite literally human – let’s feminize it for tradition’s sake – she would be quite the force to be reckoned with.  She’d be a short woman, slightly inclined, highly educated and globally enlighted but with a mysterious past involving drugs, alcohol, and assorted crimes.  In recent years, she would’ve recently cleaned up her act and sought out a career in the commercial sector.  And in that endeavor, she’d be largely successful.  But her troubled past would never totally go away.      

This is the Ave.  It’s a highway of bars, Thai, Vietnamese, and Chinese restaurants, sandwich shops, print shops, cafes, book stores, and second hand music stores, all in the progressive shadow of theUniversity of
Washington.  It is a bastion of small business, rivaling Capitol Hill’s Broadway as the most concentrated collection of non-corporate enterprises within a single street in
Seattle proper.  Bruce Lee opened his first kung fu school here.  Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Alice in Chain’s Layne Staley each held apartments here at one point.       

The namesake nickname comes from its ancient days as merely

, a moniker that was changed to

in 1919 after a student contest held at UW.  Its abbreviated handle, however, has been known as such for nearly ninety years.   The turn of the millenium marked an increase in violence on The Ave.  In 2000, The Ave’s crime rate per 10,000 people was more than twice that of
Seattle’s median.  That same year,
Seattle passed the first in a series of anti-aggressive panhandling initiatives, specifically designed to improve the commercial viability of such districts as The Ave.         

But things on The Ave would only get worse.  On Tuesday, April 9^th 2002, motorist Demetri Andrews was struck in the head with a skateboard by Timothy R. Strano.  Strano was described by the city’s deputy prosecutor as a young man who’s led “led a rootless and itinerant life,” seeming to fit the profile of the nickname also given to those making their daily lives on The Ave, “Ave Rats”.    The gruseome nature of the attack brought city-wide attention to the state of affairs on The Ave.  The following year, in 2003,
Seattle mayor Greg Nichols launched The Ave Revitalization Project : an urban improvement initiative widening sidewalks, installing lighting, public art…an initiative bent on beating down the public image of The Ave as a seedy    

Peter works as executive director with a non-profit organization housed within theLutheran
Center on The Ave.  He’s been in the building for twenty years and has seen The Ave evolve tremendously over that time.  As far as he’s concerned, the Revitalization Project did what it set out to do.  

 PETER : As far as the revitalization, it appears to me that [the Ave has] cleaned up dramatically.  Primarily from youth homeless.  You will still have the occasional addictive personality : drugs, alcohol, whatever, that are homeless and find refuge on The Ave.  But as far as the largest change I see is in the youth homeless. 

NARRATOR : But the Ave Rat is finding a new place amidst the Starbucks and Chipotle’s and American Apparels on The Ave.  They’re getting comfortable being there again.   

Geno Amenta Morah has been living around The Ave for just a year and three months.  So he represents the new guard.  Among other things, Geno is iconic.  He’s tall.  He’s bald, but still manages to sport striking, matted dreadlocks on the other three sides of his head.  He wears a long, raggedy trench coat : possibly white in a past life. You can usually catch him lounging against a black grate fence fronting a Japanese diner, bumming smokes or spare change off the stream of students passing him by.     

At fifty-four, Geno entertains a knack for vocabulary and oratory that burst out of him when asked even a single question.  When asked of “his story”, he lets loose all sorts of answers.  He’s from
Fresno.  He did a stint in a
California state prison.  He was moved to the
Pacific Northwest by his big sister, who seemed to think the move would be good for him somehow.  He lived on Capitol Hill previously, but an eviction from his apartment there led to his migration to the U District, where a guardian of his found him an apartment.  So he’s not homeless.  He just panhandles.  And he philosophizes.   That philosophical side explains how he’s treated on The Ave.  

GENO : Well, I get objection and opposition.  React, respond. Or treat me unfairly or unjustly…or don’t treat me right.  Usually how I’m treated is that I get objection or rejection-…objection or opposition.  -I’m a Pisces and I do have a fear of objection and opposition. NARRATOR : His reasons for liking the neighborhood are as good as a lot of students.   

GENO : What it is I like about this part of town the most is the availability of sometimes – since I like to smoke marijuana – whites give me marijuana, sell me twenty dollars worth for four dollars.  And they seem to do it freely and willingly.      This is interesting to take in.  The rampant availability of drugs on the Ave   

Some members of the old guard are still around.   

SUNNY : I’m Sunny.  I’m fifty-four.  And I’ve been on The Ave for about four years.  NARRATOR : Sunny is known to more students than Geno.  He’s known for sporting sunglasses, a nearly all-black wardrobe, and his infamous pitch of “spare change” that’s cast in a very polite, nearly whispered drawl.  Sunny also bears an uncanny resemblance to Lou Piniella.  

He doesn’t speak much, even when engaged.  His likes things short and simple.  He takes home about $7 on an average day.  Sunny, however, remembers the Revitalization Project but doesn’t seem to think it’s changed The Ave much.  He’s a
Seattle native, having lived here all his life.        LUKE : Why do you prefer to panhandle in this part of town, as opposed to some other neighborhoods? SUNNY : Oh, I enjoy the people.  I think they’re an interesting group to be with…more than some other places. LUKE : Has The Ave changed much since the Revitalization Project?  SUNNY : Not that I know of.   

NARRATOR : It’s about as simple an observation anyone can give.  The Revitalization Project and anti-panhandling legislation certainly hasn’t gotten in his way.   Chances are Sunny and Geno will never escape.  They’ll always be Ave Rats, no matter what neighborhood they happen to move to.  They would certainly like to have more money and a better place to stay.  But there’s no sign that either of them is immediately horrified   .  This is their lifestyle.  This is what they do in the universe, and they know the rules of it.