A hundred years ago, a revolution started in Seattle. A revolt over the price of onions.
Today, its resolution has become a city institution and a national attraction: the Pike Place Market. Noisy, rambling, aromatic, venerable, social and confusing, the Market has become an antidote to the sterilized impersonality of globalized chains and speed shopping. In short, it is everything the 21st century is not.
It started simply. Back in 1907, middleman price gougers on Western Avenue had driven the cost of onions from 10 cents a pound to a dollar. A populist city councilman named Thomas Revelle stepped up. With the bombastic backing of a feisty newspaper publisher named Col. Alden Blethen and his (briefly) anti-establishment Seattle Times, he got Pike Place — a muddy lane perched on the brow of a precipitous hill — designated as a place farmers could sell directly to housewives.
The first day, Aug. 17, was dreary and damp, and only six to 12 farmers (accounts differ) backed their wagons to the curb by the Leland Hotel, not knowing what to expect. Eager housewives rushed in. One farmer told a reporter the crowd pushed him away from his own wagon, and by the time he struggled back his produce was gone and a quart-jar full of coins was in its place.
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