Olympia money: High floor — low ceiling

David Scherer Water

The Olympia economy isn’t broken. It’s just small — small enough to leave plenty of people financially frustrated, unsatisfied, or feeling stuck. If you’re interested in living here — or making a living here — you’ll need to understand a few things first.

Economics 101

Some elements of the local culture (art, music, politics) are reminiscent of San Francisco. The economy is another story. This is a high floor, low ceiling economy. That means it’s unlikely to crash like a tech hub or a manufacturing town, but it also means it’s not going to boom. This capital city with a population hovering under 60,000 has an economic engine fueled almost entirely by the government of the 13th largest U.S. state.

Government work isn’t just number one on the list of Olympia’s top 30 jobs. Add up the next 29, and they’re still only a fraction of public sector positions. Once you get your head around this foundational reality, you’ll be able to set realistic expectations and navigate.

Evergreen adds pressure by dumping a yearly crop of cool-ish graduates into town. The kind of work recent Greener grads find meaningful just isn’t here in large enough quantities to meet the demand. That’s why so many residents are perpetually considering moving away.

Others solve their financial woes by lowering standards or letting go of world-changing hopes. Many work crappy jobs. Some renew efforts, however unlikely, to land one of the scant not-so-crappy positions.

Olympia is a small cake cut into tiny pieces. Until someone discovers gold, oil, or literally anything besides public service, many residents will not find this place financially satisfying.

The inverse is equally true. Poorer people in Olympia seem to have more time for relationships, making art, getting involved in activism, and taking it easy. Compared to other cities, Olympia has long been a place where people making less money can live a good life. This is the main reason Olympia produces inordinate amounts of consequential music.

If you have a state job and like it, you’re set. You can stop reading. Enjoy yourself.

If you want to get a private sector job, or start a business here, what follows is for you.

Why should you listen to me? I made a fortune flattening Olympia beer cans and burning toast.

Courtesy of David Scherer Water

Strange business

In Olympia, weird survives. Niche survives. Conformity struggles. Incongruity is paramount and always has been. Even before Evergreen grabbed Olympia by the white bread, Olympia had a history of being home to some of the oddest shops in the world.

Drees, Olympia’s oldest knickknack shop, began in the 1920s when Jimmy Drees turned a paint store into a haven for homesick East Coasters craving big-city style. Not much has changed. The store continues today as Olympia’s version of Anthropologie.

What accounts for Drees’ hundred years of steady success? Hard to believe, but this western town once represented the edge of civilization. And at 524 Washington, you can still hear echoes of frontier scarcity. These echoes perpetuate the feeling that we’re far from the commercial center of the universe. This lures locals to Drees’ Parisian-styled counters to harvest armloads of one-of-a-kind treasures sold by the dozen. Other shops offer similar wares, but none can claim being at it longer than Drees. Seniority has earned Drees the right to charge boutique prices for boutique treasures.

Strangeness has only gotten stranger over the last 100 years. Born from counterculture minds and mainstream dreams, Olympia’s odd shops have stretched into the furthest corners of the county. Perhaps the most striking thing about it all is that nobody blinks. It’s all accepted as part of the abnormal norm.

Ultra-niche specialty stores have long bucked conventional business logic and found a market. There was a shop that only sold walking sticks, another only sold tutus. For over a decade, there was a bookstore that only sold murder mysteries. Mario’s on 4th Avenue, a popular hangout of the 1980s, only sold cigarettes. Simply Australian was a store devoted entirely to koalas, boomerangs, and foods no Australian actually eats.

Olympia didn’t have one, but two teddy bear outfitters: Nana Lou’s and Bearytale Kingdom. Neither sold actual teddy bears. They sold clothing and accessories for your existing ones, performed repairs and routine maintenance.

Phat Sacs sold used fanny packs and rave survival gear. Bonanza 88 only sold items that cost eighty-eight cents. Druid’s Knook sold dusty Celtic figurines and scantily clad fairies titillating on plastic logs. Accusatory proverbs were scrawled on the shop’s Miller Lite dry-erase board, such as, “Don’t waste your life!”

Today, Olympia’s tenacious-yet-tenuous standbys maintain an edge through one rule: solvency through eccentricity. You’ll find side-by-side class contradictions, deliberate disorder dialed in to appear deshabille and staged chic to entice the bourgeoisie. Old School Pizza’s restroom has the well-worn personality of a venue that’s hosted generations of hand-drawn conversations. 

With the nearest olive groves hundreds of miles away, Olympia is the unnatural home to OOO (pronounced “Ooo!”), Olympia’s all olive oil emporium. We have a cancer clinic and an optometry clinic for pets. Many Olympia businesses defy explanation: Pickers, Fun Junk, Lily’s and Photosynthesis. I have no idea what's going on in some of these stores, and honestly, that mystery feels very Olympia.

Vaping, the indoor-friendly alternative to conventional fire-based smoke, was propelled into popularity by Washington’s 2005 smoking ban. Since the ban, Olympia has seen vape retail locations skyrocket. Today, there are 219. Handheld vape gizmos look so much like magic markers that people often mistake vape users for magicians. The vibe of Olympia’s strong vape culture is captured in its advertising, “Ride the yawning chasm of dragoscimitar jaggerage and taste the ghost-fog of kaleidoscopic surrender.” Olympia’s most popular vape flavors include: Thanksgiving, Christmas, September, Pizza, and whatever laudanum tastes like.

Since becoming one of the first U.S. states to legalize marijuana, the expansion of marijuana-related relativity has only expanded. Good luck finding the Canni-bus, a semi-visible plant-based greenish 19-seater Econo-van that leaves a certain bus stop at 420ppm.

Olympia has a good history of weird food situations. For fourteen amazing months there was a store that only sold marshmallows. It had a savory section. One of the largest producers of in-flight fresh-frozen fruit cup companies used to be near the Olympia airport. For several years on 4th Avenue there was a bakery for dogs. There was a shop for humans that only sold crackers and cheese.

Many local kitchens work within tight margins and limited supply chains. Fortunately, Olympia diners are an adventurous bunch. Our restaurant scene can be hit or miss. But if you absolutely must go out, here are my recommendations: Arepa (best food cart), La Gitana (best pizza), Danang (best phở), Old School (best fast food), Sofie’s Scoops (best ice cream), Left Bank (best bakery), Chelsea Farms (best shellfish), Swing (best outdoor seating), K-Kitchen (best Korean), Curry Corner (best Indian), Uptown Grill (best bar food), The Mark (best bar), Mi Luna Cuban Café (best overall).

While our culinary fentrudge rolls out like a rope of broken bones into holy heartburn, secret cafés and speakeasies have been a major part of the city’s history. The earliest recorded one occurred at The Mottman Building on 4th Avenue. It was open daily and sold tamales made from seagull meat. The now burned Track House (511 7th Ave. SE) brought secret cafés into their prime in the 1990s. The Red Horse Café had a long run of weekly dinners going into the early 2000s. Then the health department began more concerted efforts. Today, mostly as one-time fundraisers, Olympia secret cafes continue.

By the time you’ve reached this sentence, it’s likely that new restaurants and businesses have replaced those listed, and then have gone out of business before the end of the next sentence. Olympia’s strange business ecosystem appears undaunted in fostering a parade providing inspiration and perplexity.

Conclusion

National and local reports recently ranked Olympia No. 8 for economic performance, citing a surge in high-tech GDP and an influx of big-city refugees fleeing the crushing costs of Seattle and the Bay Area. But for the local, this “growth” feels less like a boom and more like a thickening of the air. The floor is rising, but the ceiling remains as low as ever. We are becoming a Tier 1 destination for people who want to bring their big salaries to a small town. But the cake hasn’t gotten bigger, just more expensive. Interestingly, that same report that ranked us No. 8 for growth (and No. 4 for income equality), ranked us second to last for housing affordability.

However you make or break your money, keep in mind, despite Olympia’s Soviet fashion, this is still America. Play the game, or it will play you. The banks along the Black River have the best mud. The Deschutes offers zero-interest in winter. Deep, Long and Black are lakes with customer support. Ward, Munn and Grass have none. Budd and Eld, the dead-ends of Puget Sound, the furthest saltwater depositories from the open sea, offer the lowest mortgage rates. A great deal collects here at the bottom of this great drain.

This may include you.

David Scherer Water bootlegged nut milk out the back of his Decatur Street bungalow in the late 1990s. “Bihk” came in old fashioned glass bottles and David delivered it in an ice-cooled bike trailer. For a while it seemed like everyone was drinking David’s nut milk (or making rude jokes about it). Sample his literary nut milk here.