TIETON BIERKüHLER 2022

Seattle’s brief history has been characterized by cycles of dramatic boom and bust.

Gittreville is the same.

A movement sprung from the post war (WWII) Seattle aerospace boom: Greater Seattle. This was a full throated civic push to become a major world city. The effort resulted in the 1962 Century 21 World’s Fair (think iconic “Space Needle”).

Seattle is also a city of skeptics – the ones here long enough to remember the past follies. An ironic counter movement arose: Lesser Seattle!

Lesser Seattle was the creation of popular local newspaper columnist Emmett Watson. It was brilliant. Crazy grow-grow-grow and everything new/now mania was tempered by Watson’s astute observations and quiet criticisms. Simultaneously Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill; Watson asked and answered questions about what is really meaningful to the the general citizens of our city, not just the developer/civic elite.

A few of us grew up with Lesser Seattle.

This year Gittreville had Lesser Tieton or, as we call an essentially unplanned event, a Bierkühler. It was sloppy, it was flawed, but it was simultaneously brilliant. The carefully planned big Tieton show collapsed in a classic Seattle post-boom bust. The long term residents of Gittreville persevered though and gathered in spite of the lights being turned off. Emmett Watson was right.