Final goodbye from the Seattle P-I

Thank you for making us who we were

By DAVID MCCUMBER
P-I MANAGING EDITOR

Goodbye, Seattle.

Thanks for everything.

We probably didn't tell you enough how proud we were to be part of you.

We love your saw-toothed Klondiked Boeing-proud past. It's our past, too.

We even love your nervous overcaffeinated undercapitalized Sonics-free present.

And we're sure you'll still be pretty fetching in the future as a bored-tunnel light-railed one-paper joint (or paper-free zone, as the regrettable case may be).

We love your Koolhaas library and your defiant little Edith Macefield house. We love your ratty Pike Place Market and rattier Pioneer Square, complete with the ersatz totem pole standing in for the real one the P-I-backed drunken expedition stole from the Tlingits in 1899 (not our finest move).

Down here on Elliott, we love it when Rainier rolls into view on mystical ball bearings, and we love the way our old globe looks when the winter sun sets behind it about 4 p.m. and lights up the bay with more fire than Hempfest.

We love the Blue Angels and the hydros and the Duwamish and Northwest Harvest and Dave Niehaus and Elliott Bay Books and Tom Douglas' coconut cream pie. We love guys named Warren (Moon and Magnuson), and Jimi Hendrix, and walking around Green Lake and along Alki and Golden Gardens and through the arboretum. We love the Suzzallo and Salumi and the Burke-Gilman and the Fremont Troll and the best women's crew in the world. We love Benaroya Hall, and also the Croc and the Showbox and the Tractor. We love Norwegians, but most of us fear lutefisk. We love taking ferries, and not using umbrellas, and eating lunch at Bakeman's and the Pecos Pit and the Shanty.

All of which is to say, we love you.

We're overwhelmingly grateful to you for supporting us for 146 years -- for buying us on the street, for inviting us into your homes, for placing ads with us, for telling us what you think and helping us be better. And, over the last two months, for telling us how much you'll miss us.

And we're damned sorry we won't be here in print to cover you. When our kids and your kids make this place even better than it is now. When the Mariners win the World Series. When the city and the county and the state step up to their responsibilities to give our youths better schools and alternatives to shooting each other in the streets, to clean up both traffic and Puget Sound, to actually plow snow, to hold cops accountable, to make this a better place to do business and buy a home.

We won't be here to nudge you along in that old traditional newspaper way, so you're going to have to figure all that out, and more, without us.

It's been a hell of a ride, from Skid Road to the SLUT, from the Great Fire to the Kindle, the first edition to the last deadline in a gut-punched newsroom, and we never wanted to see it end.

Remember: We'll continue the P-I bloodline online with seattlepi.com.

Come see us in the pixels.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/403835_mccumberxx.html