There is no getting away from the fact that It will always be some anniversary of the pandemic. First presumptive cases. Masks. Vaccines. This week brings a milestone of the COVID-19 outbreak that, thankfully, already looks like the distant past. This week three years ago, CHS visited a dark Broadway and Pike/Pine as bars and restaurants closed and businesses locked up under some of the first restrictions of the pandemic.
“Monday night, CHS found a very quiet Capitol Hill,” we reported March 17th, 2020. “In 48 hours, the neighborhoods of Central Seattle transformed from warily busy pockets of activity to a state of battened down storefronts and handwritten signs imploring ‘we’re still open.’ The Comet Tavern was covered in plywood and coffee shop patrons lined up one by one, spread out as much as possible, for a warm cup on yet another weird day of COVID-19.”
Three years later, official tallies show 50 COVID-19 deaths across Capitol Hill and the Central District and more than 21,000 reported cases. The true numbers are surely higher. And it could have been much worse.
The restaurants, bars, and shops of Capitol Hill are back open now and the lights are back on. In March of 2020, it wasn’t clear if that would happen in days, years, or, ever.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
Thanks for the coverage through it all 🙏
The best time of my life was when the yuppies couldn’t go to work and shut themselves away for almost 2 years. The world was calm and peaceful. You could skateboard in streets with no traffic. Toast to yourself in a vacant parking lot watching the sun set over the Olympics. People had the time to coalesce and converse about important societal issues and the homeless had space to live and create shelter for themselves. Humanity flourished when american society failed. Those who saw it with their own eyes will never forget.