When Europeans first started to cobble together maps of the world at they understood it, there were a lot of places they didn't understand, gaps in their cartological knowledge.
Their solution to these gaps was to just draw a sea serpent in that spot and add the words HIC SUNT DRAGONES -- here be dragons.
When Seattle made its final push to cobble itself together as a city after WWII, they annexed a wide swath of land north of the city limits at the time -- 85th Street. But while places like Lake City, Haller Lake, Maple Leaf, Northgate, and Broadview were folded in Seattle, they never entered the lexicon the way places like Ballard, Georgetown, Madison Park, or Columbia City did.
Seattle has treated the north as something akin to its own tract house suburb, even though you'd be hard pressed to find suburban life up north. In a sense, it has been as if this end of the city map has been marked "Here Be Dragons."
When Seattle's blogging community grew and spread out to start what we now call the neighborhood blogging movement, it covered the central core of the city, out to West Seattle, and across the south end of the Shipping Canal. But the lands north of 85th have lacked neighborhood blogs. It was as if the neighborhood bloggers feared the dragons.
This is North of 85th, and we're going to try and cover North Seattle from 85th to the city limits at 145th. It will be a daunting task to cover the north. The area is huge and encompasses as much as 20% of the city's population. But someone has to try.
And we're not afraid of dragons.
