Murray Morgan, the Sage of Tacoma and perhaps the finest historian and raconteur this region has ever had or will ever have.
LAST FRIDAY, we started fantasizing about what life might be like in a high-tech town such as this one should Internet-company stock prices collapse like some observers predict or even hope they do.
Today, a few more such ponderings.
Thousands of unemployed software developers and business-plan drafters are going to have to find new work at something actually useful, such as designing better bicycles or sewing underwear.
The affordable-housing shortage will be solved by (1) converting office-park buildings into artist live-work spaces (creating the new 'art-cubicle' aesthetic), (2) converting monster SUVs into mobile homes, and (3) converting suburban monster houses into apartments and rooming houses.
Thrift stores, once cleaned out by would-be eBay sellers, are again filled, this time with "shabby chic" furniture and now-worthless Beanie Baby collections.
The expensively-sold but cheaply-built condo buildings with those non-watertight fake stucco exteriors will become the new slums; while affluent families in non-Net professions (doctors, shipping brokers, janitors) will have snapped up every urban residential structure built before 1960--or even before 1980.
This means cities and towns with "real" streets, sidewalks, and houses will become more valuable to the affluent than suburbs and exurbs. The old parts of Tacoma and Everett could see higher average house prices than the new parts of Issaquah and Redmond.
Reality, as opposed to "virtual reality," will be the next age's entertainment craze. Live, in-person entertainment will be the upscale class's preference, instead of distanced, "intermediated" experiences--and not just computer-based ones. The "cultured" and the intellectuals will disdain books, movies, radio, recorded music, and all other prepackaged arts even more than they currently disdain television.
One aspect of e-biz that will continue to thrive is that aspect which promises to help companies cut costs and fire workers. This means U.S. corporate annual reports will most proudly emphasize not how much money was made but how many workers were sacked (like the annual reports of British companies in the Thatcher era did).
This also means more just-in-time shipping and fewer goods sitting in warehouses.
Abandoned warehouses, then, will still become available for rave parties (with all-live performers) and art-colonizing. It's just that they won't be classic city brick buildings but suburban industrial-park windowless concrete boxes.
Of course, few or even none of these things might happen, or they might not happen quickly. Tech stocks (at least those not principally focused on dot-com business models) could take a gentle summer swoon (as they seem to be doing now), giving investors plenty of time to put their dough into real companies that make real things.
And some other, post-dot-com fad might begin to employ less-than-competent CEOs and an otherwise-surplus white-collar workforce, at least long enough to cushion the transition into whatever next-next-next-big-thing finally shows up.
TOMORROW: Some buildings that have been colonized by the dot-commers.
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