Kirkland: Seattle's Bedroom

A 1966 Seattle Times article quoted one then-Kirkland-housewife as saying, “Kirkland really is a glorified bedroom for Bellevue, Renton and Seattle and it probably always will be.”  That Kirkland “housewife” was Janet Livengood, wife to Gordon Livengood, a deceased Kirkland lawyer and founding member of the still-existing Kirkland law firm Livengood, Fitzgerald & Alskog.

Ms. Livengood’s statement (“…and it probably always will be”) made forty-five years ago was a prophesy for my current situation.  Here it is 2011 and I am an attorney who lives in Kirkland and who works in Seattle.  And I am not alone: I sit next to several other professionals who, on the 255 King County Metro Bus, each morning make their way to the Concrete Jungle that is Seattle.

Janet Livengood maintained an active interest in improving local affairs until her death in 1998.  Yet there is a plaintive and degrading tone in Ms. Livengood’s quote.  “Many of our husbands work outside Kirkland,” she continued, “and we do most of our shopping in Bellevue or Seattle.  You just can’t get everything you need in a small town like this,” she said speaking of Kirkland.  It is as though Ms. Livengood disliked her bedroom; it is as though she longed for a life lived in the living room: in Seattle, not Kirkland.   

But why should she have lamented living in Kirkland, even if it was Seattle’s bedroom?  A bedroom is an intimate place. It is a fun place for family; it is a place where life changing decisions are made after thoughtful late night discussions; it is a place where couples laugh during pillow talk and share secrets from the past; it is a place where children jump into bed with their parents after sleeping late into a Saturday morning; it is where we get dressed for church. A bedroom is a place where you seek clarity from the ever changing and hectic outside world.  It’s a personal place clear from trouble.

And so goes Kirkland.  Having lived in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, I can attest to the trials (and triumphs) of urban living.  But for all that urban living has to offer – and it truly does have much to offer for the people who relish every moment of it – urban life cannot compete with the quaint intimacy of Kirkland’s pillow talk.

If nothing else – even if Kirkland is just a “bedroom” to a bigger and what the mainstream may call “better” metropolis Seattle – then at least there is one heck of a view out Kirkland’s bedroom window.  A view I happily indulge.