“People in Seattle seem to love old things – old books, old buildings, old shops,” Dinah Lance remarks to herself. “I’ve been coming to Mr. Cinchelli’s shop for almost five years now, but Cinchelli’s been here for more than fifty. And next month, he’s retiring, turning it over to his niece. I really enjoyed bringing him my boots to repair this last time. It’s a sign of respect.”
Dinah Lance and her significant other Oliver Queen – likewise known as Black Canary and Green Arrow – moved to Seattle in 1987 with the premier of Mike Grell’s Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. After playing a supporting role in the long-running Green Arrow comic book series that followed, Lance was given her own four-issue series in 1991 and then a twelve-issue series in 1992. It was in Black Canary #4 of the latter that Dinah Lance made her way to Cinchelli’s store.
As Mr. Cinchelli admires Dinah Lance’s boots, he insists that he repaired them the month before and doesn’t understand why they need fixed again. Although Lance’s identity as Black Canary is a secret within Seattle, she knows that if anyone was capable of connecting the dots, it is Cinchelli. Still, she has no intentions of volunteering the information despite his prodding.
“Five times, the old Mafia, they shot me,” Mr. Cinchelli tells her. “And I didn’t say nothin’ they wanted to hear. Nothin! You, Miss Dinah, should not be fearin’ to tell me your secrets.” Cinchelli was also a boxer during his younger days, and even claims to have “single-handedly cleaned up the state’s boxing racket.”
As Dinah Lance goes to leave, two large thugs enter and confront Mr. Cinchelli. “I told your boss I have a lifetime lease from the original owner, and I ain’t payin’ anymore rent,” he says while punching one of them in the face. Before the thug can retaliate, Lance kicks him in the back of the head and sends him crashing through the front window. When Cinchelli insists that he didn’t need any help, Lance finally decides to reveal her secret identity and simply states, “The name is Black Canary.”
“Ah, well, you tell Dinah her boots are done tomorrow, no charge, OK?” Cinchelli nonchalantly replies. “When you see her, that is.” He then suggests that Black Canary spend some time talking to his niece Sophia.
“This neighborhood has been called Garlic Gulch since the turn of the century, after the Italian immigrants who first settled here,” Black Canary learns. “No majestic view. No waterfront. It had always been a poor neighborhood, and as one group of immigrants moved up, another would move in. The diversity of the neighborhood was amazing. But it was starting to die. ’Phia thought it was inevitable, but that didn’t make sense to me. Seattle’s a boom town. Neighborhoods don’t just die of neglect here. Somebody has to kill them.”
Italian immigration to the United States peaked between 1880 and 1920, with four million Italians making the journey across the Atlantic Ocean. Most remained in the American Northeast, but close to 4,500 of them made their way to Seattle. According to Rita Cipalla of HistoryLink, close to half of them settled in north Rainier Valley and Beacon Hill. As a result, the neighborhood became known as Garlic Gulch.
“Just about everything a family needed could be found in Garlic Gulch,” Cipalla writes. “There were Italian grocery stores – Padine’s on 26th Avenue was a favorite – along with a pharmacy, barbershop, meat market, bakery, and macaroni factory. The Vacca brothers sold their fresh produce at their produce stand, Pre’s Garden Patch.”
Unfortunately, the original Garlic Gulch had a short lifespan. Interstate 90 was built in the 1940s and then widened a few decades later, cutting through the heart of the commercial district. Many of the original families shut down their businesses, sold their homes, and moved as a result.
In the Black Canary comic book, something other than a highway is trying to kill Garlic Gulch. His name is Jakob Whorrsman, a real estate developer looking to build luxury apartments in the neighborhood. The mayor of Seattle insists that no permits will be granted unless Whorrsman agrees to make ten percent of the new apartments available for low-income renters. The real estate developer is willing to accept the requirement but only if the mayor assists in relocating the current residents of Garlic Gulch.
“Don’t play me for a chump,” the mayor replies. “The last time the city did that, Seattle inherited a small village of people living in the Kingdome parking lot.” When investors from the Rainier Valley Development Cooperative later arrive for a meeting, Whorrsman is forced to admit “we’ve hit a little snag in our agenda.”
Dinah Lance, meanwhile, has paid a visit to liberal radio talk show host Gan Nguyen to see if he has any information on Garlic Gulch. “He had plenty,” she says afterwards. “Racial violence and hate crime had been on the rise throughout the state but it was worse in the Gulch. The mayor had his hands more than full. And no one seemed to know why this formerly sleepy little neighborhood had suddenly turned into a pressure cooker of frustration.”
Nguyen also had a theory. “Remember the guys who lost their bid to turn Pike Place Market into a shopping mall?” he asks Lance. “Well, they still got their checkbooks and they need a new toy. I saw it happen more than once in Detroit. A brick through your window tonight, a land speculator at your door tomorrow. The population around the Puget Sound has tripled in the last seven years. And right now, Garlic Gulch is possessed of some preciously cheap land.”
Gan Nguyen even offers proof – fifteen new houses had just been condemned under imminent domain and purchased by a private company. “Someone’s looking to make a killing in that Gulch,” he tells Dinah Lance. “And they’re not going to let a few stubborn shop owners hold them up.”
Mr. Cinchelli and his niece Sophia are on their way home after visiting a local movie theater when a bomb explodes outside Cinchelli’s shop in Garlic Gulch. Cinchelli survives the blast but his niece is rushed to the hospital. “I’m sorry,” she says as she’s loaded onto the ambulance. “Please, Uncle Tony, promise me you won’t do anything…” Mr. Cinchelli does not heed her words as he immediately heads off to find the two thugs who had earlier paid him a visit. While he is an armed with an axe, however, the two thugs have knives and are about to kill Mr. Cinchelli when Black Canary arrives to save the day.
As for the real-world Garlic Gulch, a 1980 census showed there were still a thousand or so Italians living in the neighborhood despite the previous exodus. “They were joined by Japanese residents, then the Black community spread south from the Central District,” Naomi Tomky explained in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “In the late 1970s, refugees from the Vietnam War moved in, along with Latino immigrants and newly arrived people from East Africa. By the early 2000s, (the remaining Italian stores) shared the streets with pho shops, taco trucks, teriyaki counters, and Ethiopian restaurants” – giving the neighborhood a new lease on life and transforming Garlic Gulch into one of the most culturally diverse communities in the United States in the process.
Anthony Letizia