Will the last person leaving Seattle . . . ?

In the early 1970s, there was a Boeing bust in Seattle (think end of the Apollo space program, end of the Vietnam experiment, demise of the American SST, and the yet-to-be-returned stupendous investment in the 747). Huge economic downturn, even before the recession of the 1980s. Someone posted billboards northbound along Alaska Way asking, "Will the last person leaving Seattle, please turn out the lights?"

Seattle was still mean streets for much of the 1980s, before Microsoft took off. In the 1990s, when I lived there, disaffected suburban kids who couldn't afford to fake homelessness in the Bay Area would come to Seattle instead. Most of them would eventually go back home, or enroll in art school, or make a killing in the dot-com economy on the mere ability to pronounce the word Internet. They weren't like the homeless kids Seattle saw in the '80s, documented in the film Streetwise:

Rat and Jack come upon a familiar dumpster and start digging in.

Rat and Jack (in unison): It's the Chinese Dumpster!

Rat (Voice over): When you get regular dumpsters, we call 'em regs, you go there every night. You check all these dumpsters all these different places. And you can tell because they're regs what's been there since last week and what was put in there that night. 'Cause a lot of people say, "Shit, that shit could be a week old and you can't even tell," but you can because it's your reg, your regular dumpster.

Rat samples some fried chicken.

Rat: I think I hit the jackpot.

The kids who weren't making enough as prostitutes worked petty scams:

Patrice: There it is. (He opens the bottom of a pack of cigarettes.) "Blotter acid." You get two "hits" out of every pack, man. Five dollars a hit. It sells like pancakes. me and Junior made a hundred bucks selling nothing but bunk at a concert. Then we went and bought some good cocaine and psshhook. (Laughing.)

James goes to a blood bank.

Rat (Voice over): You gotta be over eighteen to sell blood, so most of the kids on the street can't sell it, so they can't make money that way. But, if you get a fake ID and you look eighteen, then you can go there and sell blood.

Then the 1990s happened. While my household didn't make a million billion dollars, we did buy our first home just before the real estate market boom, and then we bought our next home with cash. Current Seattle real estate prices are a legend in their own time, which is especially surprising considering how flimsy the construction can be, compared to what I've always been familiar with in the harsher climate of the mid-Atlantic.

But my point, and I did have one when I started this post, is that Boeing is in serious trouble again. At the end of the business day on Friday, Boeing announced that it's starting 2009 by cutting 4500 jobs in the passenger jet division, which is in greater Seattle. Happy New Year!

The machinists (who won't be the ones laid off) struck for about 2 months this past fall. So airplane purchasers went with Airbus. And fewer people are flying, so airlines aren't buying so many planes to begin with, and the 787 has been delayed further than it already was, and and and.

When Boeing's in trouble, so is the rest of western Washington, from Everett through Seattle down to Renton. (They build Chinook helicopters here in Philly, but it's not a comparably major contributor to the local economy.) Looks as though one of the Seattle dailies is going to quit printing soon, too.

Maybe -- if Seattle is heading into another major downturn -- it won't be as bad as it was in the '70s and '80s. But it does seem as though when there's economic stress, Seattle feels it worse than some other regions of the country. It's not as resilient. Happily for some, housing costs will probably go down. My concern is that, if that does happen and homes are suddenly affordable to buy, it will mean that Seattle will have taken heck of an economic hit.