One problem with writing about things in the real world is that nothing stays the same. People, places, and circumstances all change. But it is also fun to write about specific places and events that some readers can recognize or relate to. When I started writing the Blackhope Scar story in 2006 Seattle was a very different place than it is today (2020 as I write this). And so some of the references and landmarks that I included in that story seem dated, now, and others are simply no longer true. In 2006 there still was a Seattle Center Pavilion with a pay phone inside. Finn uses this to call Marie-Claire Blancmange in Chapter XIII, How To Annoy A French Snob. The Seattle Supersonics basketball team still played there (they moved to Oklahoma City in 2008). In the next two chapters I describe Finn, Hadley and Wullie going on the Monorail to the north end of Downtown Seattle, and having adventures in the Westin Hotel. At that time (and still true in 2020) those Seattle landmarks are still pretty much the same as they were then:
In Chapters XIV and XV of Blackhope Scar our adventurers hide in a smelly alley in Downtown, walk down to the Pike Place Market and then go under the Alaskan Way Viaduct to get to the Seattle waterfront. The Alaskan Way Viaduct was demolished in 2018-2019, although the Pike Place Market looks much the same today as I describe in Chapter XIV.
The waterfront itself is constantly changing. When I wrote the story in 2006-7 the piers stopped at Pier 70 and so I invented an extra pier farther north called Pier 71. At that time there was no Pier 71. There were scruffy piers with barnacles clinging to posts. There were rusting barges moored offshore and marinas where fancy boats were moored. So even if it all looks a bit different nowadays I hope that it will still feel similar to the way I describe it during the climax to Part One of Blackhope Scar:
