I grew up in Kirkland and loved it as a kid. When I got back from Korea in 06 I was stationed at Lewis not far from where I grew up and stayed until 2010. When I can back through from four years of recruiting in Montana this fall on my way up to Alaska I spent a week "home" and realized that the place has changed a lot. Or maybe I got too used to Montana. I had people look at me with dismay when I told them that I regretted not getting to deploy to Afghanistan but only Iraq. I felt a bit of hostility as a gun owner also getting strange looks when perusing gun magazines at walmart or wearing my hunting tee shirts. I think taxes, cost of living and overcrowding aside, I also felt extremely frustrated after the outcome of the initiatives dealing with background checks. The state isn't what I remember or maybe I'm not the same person anymore.

I used to be proud to say I grew up in WA now I find myself hesitating to answer when people ask where I'm from. It's almost like saying you are from California now a day, especially when you are in states like MT or AK. When you tell some people their response is sometimes "Oh" in that somewhat disapproving tone. And I can't even imagine what western WA would have been like in the 50's-60's when my parents grew up there. Must have been like Mars by comparison today.

It sucks. I don't feel like I belong in my home state and I don't feel like I am fully accepted in the states I love to be in since I didn't grow up there.

Anyone else feel this way?

I know exactly how you feel.
Except for the 3 years I served in the Army, I've lived here all my life - hitting 60 next month.
Most my life I've never wanted to live anywhere else but this state has dropped into the toilet and as soon as my wife and I retire, we're out of here.

Yeah pretty much. I'm 30 and even in my short lifetime it has changed drastically. Without a doubt the tech boom brought a massive influx of people to the Puget Sound area, most of which brought their politics and ideas with them. That combined with the exodus of Californians has really done us in politically. I mean Puget Sound region alone has grown by nearly a million or more in the paat 20 years alone..

My dad grew up in Renton. They used to have a rifle range in the basement of their school. He and his brothers used to go hunting and fishing around the farms that used to be just around I5 in the valley. Hell, in the early 90s my friends and I used to carry around our BB guns in town in Bremerton, walking between our houses and patches of woods, and nobody batted an eye. Imagine that now.

I spent a lot of time growing up on our old family farm in the Palouse, and my wife and I thought about moving over to the east side within the next few years. Now we are thinking about going to Montana or Idaho instead. Her mother and stepfather recently left for Montana as well, built a house and out buildings with basically zero permits, and their annual taxes on 15 acres of land is barely over $300. Out here in rural Pierce co, the county still sends out people down our long dirt road to look for unpermitted structures, and my taxes on 2 acres of property is over $2500 - why?

I'm especially in agreement with your point of feeling like a lot of the state is just plain hostile to us as gun owners, or political conservatives. I'm not even a real hardcore conservative, more of a libertarian, but I find it hard to talk politics with nearly anyone I meet in the Puget Sound area, and I just assume that most people in the area disapprove of my hobbies and opinions - some of them, very violently in fact.

I definitely feel like most of western WA would like people like us to simply go away, even though most of them were born somewhere else, came here and gradually destroyed what has always been a fine state which was very free and, as you said, was a place I was proud to be from.

I've been here since 92 and seen some changes, but it's still not as bad as some places in the country and we are still lucky to have no state income tax. I don't care what state that you live in, they all have their positives and negatives.

I know how you feel OP...I've been a WA resident all my life, and I want to leave this place as soon as I can afford to, it no longer feels like home =-(

My plan has been to stay until I can semi-retire back to eastern WA, but it seems this left leaning culture is expanding east as well, so of the havens I was considering no longer seem to be an option.
I may have to move to Idaho, I love it there. Depending on how long it takes to get financially ready, I may have to move to Butte MT where my mother was born, and many of my family still lives.

I feel like WA has become far more liberal and that it is people aged 16-35 or so that are the problem.  Many of them have grown up in our decaying school system and now they are entering the workforce and then they find that they can't get a job, become disgruntled and blame conservatives, despite not having a conservative governor in many years.  My district has a real shit head for a representative.  His name is Rick Larsen and is only out to promote illegal alien's rights and get himself into office each and every year.  Check out his facebook, he is very slimy.

I feel that the politic are what has ruined WA for me.  I would like to move to MT but the jobs just aren't there.  Anyway, I may expound more on this later, I get frustrated thinking about the way our state has gone.  Attending WWU was frustrating as everybody is blindingly liberal without knowing why.

Built up areas have turned into Northern California...





and the Californians brought their politics and ideology with them.

Heh.. I just got back from our son's swimming lessons at the YMCA in Gig Harbor, where every fourth car is a Subaru or Prius with Obama stickers. Overheard in the family changing area was a woman in her late 30s, heavy "SoCal" accent, talking to some other woman, "oh we're up here from Californiuhhhhh visiting my brotherrruh, I really like it hereuhhh, we're thinking about moving up."

I grew up in Everett...was there for some 47 years.....I don't like my old town anymore.

While I didn't grow up here, I grew up in Upstate NY, and moved out here after I separated from the AF, I have noticed a definite change in attitudes since I moved out here.

I've been here for more than 25 years.  The demographic and cultural change driven by Seattle isn't going go stop without a natural disaster.

My solution is to buy a remote piece of property in the mountains and simply do as I please, and only interact with others when I choose to.  If they come to me, against my will, God help them.

I grew up here, work for one of the Fortune 50s, setting aside enough money to take a lower paying job in Idaho or Montana in the next 5-10 years.

I've been here 20 years, and much has changed on the wet side—none of it for the better. I never thought I'd be thinking about moving, but I am.

The biggest change I have noticed was the explosion of the tech boom and considerable number of new residents that it brought into the state from the later 1980s and into the early 1990s. Otherwise, I don't think this area has seen a significant change in the cultural climate in the last 20 years or so, the region has long had liberal/progressive/activist and independent streaks. I don't sense hostility or ostracization because I own and use guns, hunt and enjoy off highway motorsports.

I think a good part of what is going on is actually just people's perceptions. Wherever a person is born and raised, they don't have the perspective or context to know how good or bad it really is. Experiences are still new and the world seems like a place of limitless opportunities. That's a time in life that most people look back on fondly and often with rose colored glasses. Odds are that things weren't really as great as remembered and things haven't actually changed as much as thought.

And as population density increases, some activities are going to get pushed further out. That is understandable. There are still tons of places in even western WA where a kid running around with a BB gun or even a traditional rifle won't raise any eyebrows.

Also, familiarity breeds contempt, the grass is greener on the other side and all that. We are intimately familiar with all of the little faults we have found here as a result of living here for so long. These so-called "free states", not so much. I guarantee those places have their own problems, too. Just ask any long term resident of them. I have.

Having family spread throughout ID and UT and spent considerable amounts of time in MT and WY as well, my thought is that those states are changing at about the same rate as ours. Boise and CDA are becoming more liberalized in ID, SLC in UT (I never thought that I would see a burgeoning LBGT community in the heart of Mormon country) and talk to any old school people in any of those states and you'll get and earful about other-staters moving in and screwing everything up. Hmmmm, sounds familiar.

I am reminded of my in-laws who semi-retired from Arlington to UT 10 years ago and thought they were moving to a conservative utopia. Now all my FIL does is complain about the liberals in SLC. Seems like all that changed were the names of the locations.

I'm not ready to give up on WA yet. Not even close.

Ive been here for the better part of 40 years.  The wife and I gave up on it last year and we are already planning on moving out.



I remember when this place was a conservative state.  Now its a liberal mecca that everyone with an Obama sticker on their car makes an annual hadj to and then decides to plant their roots.



Seattle proper has gone straight down the shitter and has turned into a festering disease that is slowly spreading itself through the outlying areas.  Everett used to be a nice little town.  Now its so infested with crime/meth/heroin/homeless its almost intolerable to be in.  Tacoma "appears" to be cleaning itself up but hell, its only taken 20 years.



Home prices are ridiculous, cost of living is ridiculous.  I was at Disneyland in Aug and was shocked to see gas prices in socal LOWER than up here.  Booze/tabacco...fagetaboutit.



I could go on and on, but I have to go nap before I deal with the creatures of Everett.

The politics of the state drive me nuts but, I was born here, my family lives here, I'm staying.

Well I have only lived in the state for about 45 of my 47 years, from Spokane to Sequim to Snohomish. I don't recall this state ever being what I would consider all that conservative. In the nearly 30 years that I have lived near Everett, I haven't seen it be anything but a blue collar town with blue collar problems. Drugs, garden variety street crime, street/homeless people, prostitution, etc. There have never been more than a few select parts of it that I would want to live in and I would not want my kids to go to Everett schools, period.

I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting to pull up stakes to try living somewhere else. Getting out of a rut and experiencing something new can be make life fun and interesting. I still doubt that the grass turns out to be much different on the other side, though. I hope everyone finds what they are looking for.

I cant speak for Idaho but here is what I can say about what I learned living in Montana as an Army Recruiter for four years. I had a lot of opportunities to meet a lot of people in an area about as big as the entire eastern half of WA. Some of the people I was putting in the army were fourth and fifth generation Montanans. Way out in the sticks things haven't changed much in the last three generations. Values are the same as they have always been and families know each other Ie if you meet people with the same last name in two different counties chances are they are related. The biggest fear of these folks is to have what they hear about having happened in WA, CO and already in parts of ID and MT spreading to their areas. I reassure them that my plans to retire have nothing to do with hoping that someday there will be one more Starbucks or cabellas in what ever city or small town but more along the line of how I want to get away from all the creeping liberalism / big box economy driven expansionism and live somewhere that I can be left alone to do as I please in a community of like minded individuals who genuinely care about one another. If you move somewhere truly rural in MT this is about the only way you will eventually fit in and I think even then it would probably take the better part of a decade to be fully accepted in a community. Folks are slow to change and don't want things to change either. Basically you have to forget about where you came from, forget about things being all about you. Find out who the people you live around are about and get to know them. Volunteer in the community and be willing to do more than your fair share at first, let your deeds not your words do your talking and your integrity is everything. Don't every promise something you can't come through on either. This is how you earn their respect. It is a very slow process but in four years I was starting to see people really warm up to me. I only regret not having more time. Even then I still knew I was an outsider.

No not BUTT, MT If you have family that makes things different but I would rather live in Havre or Lewistown before Butte. Not because it was dirty which it is but because the gun shops suck and are over priced and for some reason I like the flat lands better. Helena would be a second choice for me if Great Falls doesn't work out when I retire from the army in 9 years.

I would rather live in MT and scrape by on $40k a year than live in Tacoma making $60k which is still scraping by in my mind.

born in a Portland hospital in '75, but was raised in Vancouver. Lived here all my life other than my 4 years in the Marines and 1 year at Portland State living on campus. To be honest, I'm not sure the state has changed all THAT much during that time relative to other states. Yeah, it's more liberal now than it was back in the day (Reagan did win the state in both 1980 and 1984!), but liberal shit has been happening here for a long time. Cool NFA stuff was banned in 1994...and at least suppressor use and SBRs have been legalized recently. That's progress. In most other ways we seem to be slowly sliding downhill towards 'liberal' as we go along here. If there is one event that defined the political downfall of the state, it was the election of Patty Murray to the Senate in 1992. I contend that PM is the dumbest person ever to be elected to the federal legislature...and that is saying a LOT (I'm looking at you Joe Biden!). The fact that she keeps getting re-elected, means the electorate in WA bears full responsibility. So yeah, in that sense we're going to hell in a handbasket. I have family here...and as soon as I get the chance in my career, I'm bugging out to a free state (UT, OK, TX, NV, WY, or somewhere in the south).

My family has lived here since before WA was a state.  I have family members in every part of the state who are involved in a lot of the area's traditional industries (logging, fishing, apples, wheat, etc...).

This post originally had a long diatribe about politics, but I deleted all of it.  Suffice to say that this isn't the good place it used to be.  Some very bad things have been happening over the past couple of decades.  WA has always been pretty far to the left politically and I don't see that as a major problem, even if I tend to lean a little to the right, but what we have going on now is just insanity.   The problem is that I don't really think I can go anywhere else in this country and escape it for long.

At this point this is my home and this is where i'm gonna hunker down and wait for some sanity to return, or for the whole system to just go off the rails.

WA has definitely changed in my lifetime, which goes back to the 60's. The state has always been fairly liberal, but it was a small l, not L, liberal. People were more libertarian in their attitudes. It was more of a "do your thing, I'll do mine" and you would be left alone. The initial shift in attitude started with the influx of Californians in the 80's. They started changing things to be more like "back home" instead of leaving things alone. Unfortunately, it will never go back, we can only slow down the slide into being Cali-north.

Came here as refugee, stepped off a boat in Ballard ( pre condo colonial) took a bus down town Seattle and knew this was where I wanted to live. It was the antithesis of what I knew in Detroit. A place where you took what was given and lived your life two weeks a year, where the unions were the only way to secure a future, life happened, you could not make life happen, there was always someone to blame and the cultural landscape was so empty and barren that the best people could hope for was a vicarious experience through a sports team.....winters were cold and summers violent. It was a place where knowledge was scorned with superstitous fear and only " faggots" read books.....So when I got off active duty and found myself working in Alaska ( four days later ) I was only sure of one thing. That no matter what happened, no matter what I had to do, I was NEVER going back.

So Imagine what Seattle looked like to me. It was summer of 1998, it was still Seattle...people read books at bus stops the word " brother" was used in every convo.

I remember going to REI and getting a ruck for a hitch hiking trip to Vancouver Island, It was getting dark, I lived on the boat in Ballard, I asked the check out girl what the safest way back to Ballard was. Where I come from predators come out at night and white boy do not let the sun set on you here...She put her hand on my shoulder, had bright blue eyes and said : " Brother this is Seattle, you have nothing to worry about here"

That would never happen today

In the short time I have lived here it has changed for the worst, I want to say it got bad around 04-05....My pops came out to visit in 02, was amazed at how nice ppl were and how much there was to do. He came back in 07 before I deployed...and asked me what changed, everyone seemed so angry.



The colonization of Ballard and other places by Californians is part of it, but I honestly think that  a big shift downward happened when Greg Nickels and the circus freak show of city council fed the existing culture of corruption and added a new flavor :  the green card. ' the war on cars'  charging people for plastic bags in grocery stores, the fleecing we all took for the monorail that never happened, his attempt to prohibit concealed carry in a "pubic place" with a cpl etc. and on and on and on...



I owned a house back then and it began to make sense. Why did I have to pay all these property taxes, while the local schools asked parents to bring things like tp and supplies because they had no funding? why did the brand new town homes go section 8 while I was working two jobs to pay for mine? why did it always take at least an hour to get anywhere?

Over crowding, raising costs of living and traffic....fucking traffic....hard not to be furious when your life is schedualed around traffic, when a simple trip to the store is an hour long adventure, when your day off is spent sitting in traffic to spend an hour at the range....it makes a person crazy, creates feelings of being bound, trapped and robbed.

Another blow and one we see empire wide, is this new generation. The state schools have produced self righteous little cowards who, respond to emotional stimuli better than pavlov's drooling dog. Their world and collective personality is like one big skinner box. The self righteous and arrogant mentality operates on hostility and contempt they reject reason and favor emotion.Sadly the West coast is full of these types....sure there is a minority of kids who turned out different, many of them are in uniform. But even they are held in contempt by others their age.

The point I am trying to make is that it is not just natives who see it.

For the record I have done all I can to not bring the shit hole I escaped with me...I do envy you natives when I hear about what it was like before.

What he said

c'mon now, for at least the 5 mins they spent in the voting booth, Washingtonians supported the unabashed conservative in both 1980 and 1984. Liberals prefered Carter/Mondale!

I've been to Montana a few times over the last 20 years. generally for a week at a time. I'm in a pissed off foul mood for 3 weeks when I get home and I don't even live in Seattle but Pierce County.

If there were more jobs in MT I'd go in a heartbeat. Much better pace of life, everyone is nice and friendly. It's night and day compared to around here.

Both Washington and Oregon have seen an increasingly leftward trend. You will also note the voting trends in both state politics are dominated by the urban areas. I find people in the rural areas still have the values we grew up with back in the 1960's and 1970's, and are getting more and more fed up with being led by the poorly informed urban majority.  

I have been here for 10 years and yep.  It changed.  

Traffic got a lot worse and aggressive.  The number of people trying to cut lines, jump out of driveways literally in front of you, running stop signs, etc. grew exponentially.


And now even crime seems to be spreading.

This just happened in Edmonds, where the police report used to show only petty crime such as burglars taking stuff out of garages with doors left open.

http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/breaking-news-woman-edmonds-shoots-home-invasion-s/njG2Q/


WTF is happening here?  Too many fucktard liberals moved in?  

Washington always had a libertarian streak to it. It's only in the past couple of decades that it has begun to veer towards authoritarian liberal, a lot like California.

I agree with the previous poster who pointed out politicians like Nickels, and more recently Murray. Notice how these arrogant mayors and Seattle city council seem to think that it's their responsibility to extend Seattle's influence well outside its limits to the rest of the state. Murray, for example, is well known for wanting to end state preemption, so that Seattle and other cities in the state can enact their own ordinances against carrying or even owning firearms within city limits.

Let's not even get into how Seattle feels entitled to pulling millions of dollars from the general fund to pay for Seattle-only transit projects. When asked by people outside the city what benefit it is to them, you'll hear some schlock about how the rest of the state depends on Seattle's commerce, so it's in their best interest to pay for Project XYZ - whatever is popular this year. One year it's the monorail, the next year it's the tunnel, and they're always monumental failures that end up costing the rest of the state millions/billions in overruns, while infrastructure throughout other areas of the state literally crumbles.

This would still be an awesome state if we could kick out Seattle and some of its suburbs.

I'm am a product of Everett schools, they weren't great but they were certainly better than most Seattle public schools. Most people I know turned out just fine.

The grass is greener in my experience, having lived in Montana, even Missoula for school and coming back here. Everett isn't Seattle by a long shot, not sure how much time you spend "in the city" but I work downtown, have lived in the heart of the city and still live in the city proper near Northgate.

You are right this state has always been a bit progressive/liberal, difference is in the the people and the attitudes towards those with differing opinions, big L or little l as someone pointed out. I've noticed the live and let live attitude has been replaced a lot more with a condescension.

The state is beautiful and the further away from Seattle I get the more I am reminded of what it was like when I was a kid and growing up vs what it is now.

 

When I was a kid, we had cardboard signs that said "Go Home Californians". We would flash these at all vehicles sporting a california license plate.

Better post billboards.    The number of cars with license plates from that cesspool that I see on a daily basis is surreal.  We are literally being invaded by locusts that ravaged their place and are migrating looking for new ones.  

Why do you think that when I passed through from Kirkland for a week on my way up to Ft Wainwright AK that it was the first time in 36 months that I had set foot in WA state. My parents would come visit me in Great Falls, MT every year to get away from there for a week knowing full well I wasn't coming back to WA unless it was for another funeral which is the only reason I came home the last two times.

I have grown to have a strong aversion to the place because of what it has turned into.

When I retire I will gladly take a $42k job in MT (which is the household median income for the state by the way as well as the starting wage at the police department) than come back to a place I cant stand to live in. And that is tragic because there are times when I do find myself missing some of the places I used to visit in western WA but when ever I actually go back I'm just reminded of why I'm glad I left in the first place.

Seattle really has gone full retard.

I've communicated with a reporter for a small newspaper whose target audience is Seattle blacks.  Even the black community is getting sick of the Seattle-style Democrats, assorted activists and hanger-ons.

Wow never thought I would hear that, sure it wont be in the Stranger or on NPR

In Seattle, I would bet the dreadlock-having ratio of whites to blacks is something like 10:1.

That sounds like a like things are ripe to improve, not worsen.

After driving to Chehalis to ride the Polar Express, spending the night, driving to Packwood and then home via Skate Creek road, I am once again reminded that there is a LOT more to Washington state than the Olympia-Bellingham corridor. And the Puget Sound area doesn't speak for rveryone.

Boomer,
 They may not speak for everyone, but their votes sure as heck do make us do what they want.

South of Olympia on the I-5 corridor is a different beast entirely, and its a pretty nice place to live, but seattle still rules us sadly.

I'm sure people thought the same thing in Germany right after WWI too.

This. Who cares who speaks for who when your voice won't be listened too even if its heard at all.

Born here.  Not leaving here.

I care. And I do not agree with your assessment. I think it is your perspective that has changed more than anything. This place isn't radically different than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Despite the most recent setback (which has yet to survive a legal challenge) we have made some firearm related gains here in recent years, too. And we have had some of the best CCW laws for decades. But how soon we forget.

It's not like all has been lost. There are still a ton of great places to live in this state. There is a lot to like about ID, MT, WY, UT, etc. as well. But life there isn't really all that different than what can be found here. Why not just stay in AK?

Boomer,

Why do you think it's people's perspectives when the facts speak for themselves? I'd agree in the last 10 years the state hasn't changed a whole lot, but given that the average car is owned for 10 years that's not much of a barometer compared to a place to live.

King county alone has added 800K people since 1980, Snohomish county has more than doubled in that same time period. Seattle elected an outright socialist to city council and recently approved a $15 min wage. The Seattle Police department has reached the lowest level of impotence since I can remember.

The recent gains in firearms were because there were double standards on the books with regards to SBRs/Suppressors and less to do with enacting new laws. I would bet almost any sum of money if put to a vote by the people they would be repealed or never would have passed in the first place.

Best CCW laws... 41 states are shall issue with few opt out locations like Chicago etc. so I'm not sure where you are going with this, most of the country has similar CCW laws to WA, the ones that do not are in the minority. On the other hand the number of forest service roads that are gated and public lands with no shooting posted on the west side of the state is at all time highs.

Comparing Western WA to any of those states is a non-starter, to put things in perspective Snohomish County, which has a comparable area to Missoula County (500 sq miles smaller) has a population density of 341 people/sq mile, Missoula County which is the second most populated in Montana is 42/sq mile. The lifestyle of these places is completely different.

The Everett residents are conservative relative to most Seattle residents I know, even the union diehards at least own guns even if they vote straight Democrat. Most of the state is good to live in, it's the people that make it oppressive.

Alaska is great but I miss lower 48 style deer hunting and elk too. The wife doesn't tolerate the extreme isolation very well either and we met in MT so that should say something about it up here.

The winters in MT are about the max I can tolerate of the cold. I like the flat country too aside from the wind. The wind is the only thing I dislike about Montana. Idaho is nice too but I really fell in love with "big sky" country. If you have ever visited you will know what I am talking about. Whether or not you liked it is a different matter.