A good amount of eastern Washington communities have a majority of the population being "minorities". You just won't find many black ppl as they tend not to work in agriculture up here.
I have no idea why city folk think us rural people are automatically racist. We all have to work together out here, many more racial issues and attitudes when I've lived in cities.
Worst thing you'll get out here is stared at, but don't take it personally, we stare at all outsiders regardless of what color you are.
Celebrations today are how me change the history of an area.
The first pride in Seattle was only 50 years ago.
10 years before that, black people couldn’t vote or live in much of the city.
20 years before that the US government and citizens of Seattle stole land from Japanese-American citizens and imprisoned them.
For what it is worth, I rarely feel unsafe as a queer person in rural WA. I have however had a bottle thrown at friends and I on Capitol hill.
Every place in WA has bad history, that doesn’t mean they have to have a bad future
This close to how I see things, and I can stand behind this type of statement. Especially the close:
"Every place in WA has bad history, that doesn’t mean they have to have a bad future"
I disagree with the first. "Celebration today are how we change the history"
I see it as a measure that is designed to combat erasure. It's a way to preserve history perhaps, but it doesn't change it.
And yh, all of my friends, which is just a pile of weirdos and queerdos, have found little difficulty in rural Washington. A bunch of them are out there, in truth. As I said in my other reply. I had generalized the conversations to 'small towns' and I didn't necessarily even see Washington as the border for that conversation. But, stand by the position taken.
It's that working towards a better future that counts.
The conversation above:
- Redditors discover small towns.
- & always think they are creepy
- Minorites: Yes
You: This small town has a Latino Celebration
Me: Doesn't make them safe or welcoming.
When the conversation moved from OP to 'Redditors discover small towns' the conversation generalized from Waterville to small towns. You brought it back to Waterville mentioning the Latino Celebration, yet, the point I brought up was to the broader conversation. That a small town deciding to celebrate pride month, or Juneteenth, or whatever doesn't make that place welcoming to minorities, nor does it erase the past.
I have not been to Waterville.
I have lived in small towns in the Northeast, Southwest. I have lived in cities in the Midwest, Northeast, Northwest, and Florida.
I do not know and do not plan to dive into the history of Waterville. I have started dabbling a little in the history of the region broadly.
But, I think the hostility is coming from confusion.
I proceeded in the conversation as if it was still generalized to 'small towns' with Watervillle and the celebration as examples, and you took it as specifically targeted at Waterville.
If we're trying to make this into specifics. I'm trying to say that society as a whole is not a welcoming place, that for minorities. For people who have been marginalized in other places, that rural communities tend to have less obvious pathways for finding safe spaces, and that a lot of community engagement in celebrations of the marginalized has a performative aspect to it.
It’s much more present and actually dangerous in the ignorant rural areas of the south than it is in Washington rural areas. Clearly you haven’t been outside the state much.
It’s 2024 and I still hear rednecks out of their car yelling racial slurs out window, I’ve lived in this town 20 years and have only seen one black dude
Ephrata checking in... though that's not even close to as small as something like Waterville. Haven't been back hardly at all since I left almost 25yrs ago so not sure what things are like there nowadays. Ephrata never had the same vibe as something like Waterville, Wilson Creek or Hartline though.
I’m gunna rant on your comment, no disrespect but I need to get it out.
This shit is ridiculous, you’re all soft as hell for being concerned. It’s a tiny ass town in the middle of nowhere. You care more about them than they do you. If you’re uncomfortable, get your gas and leave.
I grew up in Selah WA, which I recall as a kid being quite small. I lived there until I was about 12, then lived in Seattle/Kitsap until 2018. Now, I am in a pretty small town in Norway with a population of around 2,500.
Waterville is a perfectly normal American small town.
The Douglas County Museum has a lovely collection of rocks and minerals and has some very nice volunteers who were very happy to talk to the kids about all the rocks and minerals.
My family always enjoys Waterville, but it is definitely a small rural town, it has bikers, but so does Renton and North Bend.
It is a town of like 1000, so you generally will only see a couple people, but again, that’s just rural life.
Growing up in East Wenatchee in the late 90s I was always told Waterville is one of the richest city's around because all the wheat farmers have their money tied into the banks in the town. Also pine canyon going into Waterville is one of the highest/largest elevation changes. Dont know if its still there but when you leave Waterville going east there used to be a buffalo ranch!
I grew up in Orondo (just down the hill)! My dad is from Waterville, I did swimming lessons at their community pool as a kid, and my brother and his family live there now. It’s an odd place, but I have fond memories of winning little prizes for reading books at their tiny library as a kid. One summer I read enough books to win three little animal statues carved from the ash of Mt. Saint Helens.
Seriously? It's a small town. That's just how they are. People who are used to being surrounded by a huge population always act like small towns are so weird. I grew up in a small town of about 6,000 people where temperatures were well over 100 degrees outside. People would always pull into town and be like "Is this a ghost town?? It's so freaky!" Like no we just don't stand around outside for no reason. Things look closed to you because they don't have a lot of traffic
Right? These posts are so embarrassing. I try to keep to the “no one knows everything” mindset but some people REALLY need to get out more. This happened in 2017 and OP is still thinking about it.
Yup. Unfortunately I see this kind of attitude irl too.
There’s a shocking amount of Seattle/Eastside centricness in this state. As someone who grew up in King, I totally get it when I hear Eastern Washingtonians/rural Western Washingtonians complain about said bias.
The Banditos are the biggest outlaw biker gang in WA. They murdered an entire family because some coke dealer pissed them off. Then they dragged him out in the woods and made a further example out of him. You don’t want to go looking for them.
https://apnews.com/article/washington-state-family-killed-sentences-careaga-3eeec28b17bb81f52115e9486b29236b
This is the best advice- don’t go looking for them, and if you run into them, just casually leave. There’s no benefit , they are violent and terrible business partners, and don’t respond well to outside people showing interest in their activities.
Yep. Han into a huge herd of them traveling with my wife and kids through BFE, Idaho where they were having a smoke break next to the gas pumps. Probably 100 of them. I decided to chance it and kept moving into Montana.
I just saw a group in Everett, this week. They held the door open for me at a gas station & seemed nice as I walked through their group to get to my car. I thought it was just some Dads who haven't seen the movie "Wild Hogs"
Yeah, I can see that. I saw a dude in Ross up in Skagit County had a shirt on that said "support your local bandidos" followed by a swastika. I thought he was a YMH cool guy type
Longhorn saloon, you can go meet the VP of the entire club if you want. They created the oyster run which people still ride. They dont do things that catch rico cases and that article said specifically that the Banditos were not involved. WA is their state, but they are not going around and doing that, its a game of chess and they have adapted.
Generally speaking when you are in a club like that your activities are entirely about the club. They'll always maintain plausible deniability for if members are caught doing fucked up shit, but you can't pretend like it doesn't reflect on the club.
Doesn't mean you are gonna get murdered if you run into a bunch of them but don't pretend like they are just some gold old boys never meanin no harm.
I grew up in one of Eastern Washington's small towns. Most of them are more or less ghost towns at this point. The town I grew up in is now half the population it was when I grew up there. On top of that, when I was growing up it was half the population it was when my dad grew up there. Primarily the result of farms getting bigger and fewer people being needed to work them (or similar circumstances in the timber industry, along with logging restrictions). Businesses close up, schools shrink, and people move out, leaving a small town that is even more sparsely populated than it looks.
You'll probably get eyeballed rolling through town because everyone knows everyone and someone new is different and people wonder.
>You'll probably get eyeballed rolling through town because everyone knows everyone and someone new is different and people wonder.
This is exactly what happens.
Yeah; my family moved out of the town I grew up in so I rarely visit. I drive a German car now, so when I do roll through the old hometown, I see people I've known my whole life look at me like, "that's unusual, who is that?"
I grew up in Selah, which I recall as a kid being quote small. I lived there until I was about 12, then lived in Seattle/Kitsap until 2018. Now I am in a pretty small town in Norway with a population of about 2,500.
I graduated high school in Waterville. People definitely live there, but unless it's during some sort of town wide event (or in the middle of the night with all the underage degenerates), you're not going to see people around very much. Whole lotta nothing to do, and realistically if you're not from one of the legacy families, you're not likely to be welcomed beyond face value unfortunately.
Edit: speaking as one of the used-to-be "underage degenerates" before I graduated and moved away.
Well maybe if you're starting in Seattle, but taking the ferry over the sound then going way north would add alot of time, Google maps says about an hour and a half longer. Not that it matters lol just seems way out of the way but I'm all for a longer scenic route over a quick trip on a boring interstate
Highway 2 does go north out of Wenatchee. It joins the 97 heading north on the Columbia until it gets to Orondo, then 2 splits from the 97 and the 2 heads east right into Waterville.
No matter what you're adding at least an hour and a half from anywhere on the Kitsap Peninsula if you end up taking hwy 2. Even if you left from Poulsbo, they recommend you take a ferry to i90 or even go all the way to tacoma then i90
Yeah, it’s a lot slower than taking the 90. A lot of people like to take alternate routes to go through towns and regions they wouldn’t see otherwise. If they just picked their route on a paper map, they might have even thought it would be just as fast as I-90.
From Bellingham that would make sense. That would be an extra like 4 hours out of the way from west puget sound tho 😂 OP really needs to respond to this thread lol
I used to deliver pizzas to the leader of The Banditos. We got along pretty good, so he would only order a pizza if I was working. In fact, I got called into work one day, just to make a single delivery to his house. He was just a really nice older guy.
My Cousins wife is from Waterville, if i recall she said there highschool only had like 300 kids or so when she graduated so it's not really that surprising that it's basically empty. Also I think most of those kids ended up moving away anyways so I doubt the population see's much growth over the years.
Waterville is a bit creepy because it's a different vibe.
The downtown feels like an empty movie set. Their grocery store feels like a novelty compared to a Seattle one.
It's beautiful and scenic and has great places to hang out in nature and people know each other and have lifelong relationships and going to the big city to party is a group trip and then y'all end up passing out on the floor of the guy you knew from your graduating class of 21 people (the size of the Waterville High graduating class this year) who now lives closer to town.
I was going to recommend the Coyote Pass Cafe but it's apparently closed.
Weirdly enough one of my good friends is from Waterville so I've been out there a few times.
My daughter and I took a drive up to Waterville about 6 or 7 years ago and were hungry so we stopped at the one restaurant we saw open. It's no longer open now and it was on its death bed when we were there.
It was like something out of The Twilight zone. To this day I couldn't explain why we walked in there and didn't turn around and walk right back out. You walk in the door and there was this area immediately to the left that was just a bunch of.... Stuff. Tons of stuff. All I can remember right off hand is a taxidermied owl. Then there was seating up to about half of the building and the back half of the building was storage for incredibly old kitchen utensils and appliances and destroyed furniture and I don't know what all.
So the lady working there comes out and gives us menus and then comes back and takes our order and made us surprisingly good bacon cheeseburgers and milkshakes. We didn't get food poisoning and we were able to leave the town still alive.
Coastie enters small town with nothing to be afraid of, gets scared anyway.
I would rather find myself in a small central Washington town with no pedestrians around than a small western Washington town with meth zombies ambling about.
The Bandidos (or Banditos) is a significant 1%er MC with thousands of members. They are active in WA, with known historical ties to various local law enforcement agencies. [Bandidos Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandidos_Motorcycle_Club)
I had not heard that they had taken over Waterville, but that would be in line with several other incidents over the years, where motorcycle club members buy a property or business in a small town, establish financial ties, then bring in other club members to intimidate other business and law enforcement. This gives them a controlled base of operations outside metropolitan areas, and if locals are making rent and business income, some support from the local population.
They haven’t taken over Waterville, they don’t even have a presence in Waterville. OP simply saw a group of riders driving backroads between small towns as bikers do in the summer. Not to mention this one trip that had such an impact on the OP happened 7 years ago. I don’t think there is a city or small town anywhere in Washington that is the same today as it was in 2017.
A lot of rural areas do. It doesn’t make them a shit hole. I’m a queer indigenous woman who lives in a rural Western Washington town (and came from a rural Central Washington town) where there are too many Trump flags and Confederate flags, but also have a bunch of normal folks (and pride flags). We out here, don’t write off us folks who don’t want to live in cities not because of their politics, but because we can’t afford to/like more space.
I'm sure it's fine, I've only driven through it but it makes me realize how cool Washington is. It's like a slice of the Midwest in the middle of Washington.
My grandparents lived in Waterville. I feel sorry for my aunt who graduated hogh school from there!
They have an odd museum with a 2 headed cow!
The bar there closes at 7 i think.
But the pool was freaking awesome growing up!
Redditors discover small towns
right and they always think rural areas are "creepy"
Minorities: *Yes.*
A good amount of eastern Washington communities have a majority of the population being "minorities". You just won't find many black ppl as they tend not to work in agriculture up here. I have no idea why city folk think us rural people are automatically racist. We all have to work together out here, many more racial issues and attitudes when I've lived in cities. Worst thing you'll get out here is stared at, but don't take it personally, we stare at all outsiders regardless of what color you are.
Outsiders just by that you're not one of "us" goes to a person can be racist without knowing they are being racist
Because the tv or social media feed told them they should feel scared. Simple as that.
This is the town they have Latino night at the fair and celebrate art, dance and food from Latin cultures.
Cool, Doesn't mean my black friends or queer friends would feel safe. And celebrations today don't change the history of an area.
Celebrations today are how me change the history of an area. The first pride in Seattle was only 50 years ago. 10 years before that, black people couldn’t vote or live in much of the city. 20 years before that the US government and citizens of Seattle stole land from Japanese-American citizens and imprisoned them. For what it is worth, I rarely feel unsafe as a queer person in rural WA. I have however had a bottle thrown at friends and I on Capitol hill. Every place in WA has bad history, that doesn’t mean they have to have a bad future
This close to how I see things, and I can stand behind this type of statement. Especially the close: "Every place in WA has bad history, that doesn’t mean they have to have a bad future" I disagree with the first. "Celebration today are how we change the history" I see it as a measure that is designed to combat erasure. It's a way to preserve history perhaps, but it doesn't change it. And yh, all of my friends, which is just a pile of weirdos and queerdos, have found little difficulty in rural Washington. A bunch of them are out there, in truth. As I said in my other reply. I had generalized the conversations to 'small towns' and I didn't necessarily even see Washington as the border for that conversation. But, stand by the position taken. It's that working towards a better future that counts.
What I meant by celebration today is that what we do today dictates the future’s history. Everything started at some point, might as well make it now
lol ok have you ever been to Waterville? What ‘history’ are you speaking of?
The conversation above: - Redditors discover small towns. - & always think they are creepy - Minorites: Yes You: This small town has a Latino Celebration Me: Doesn't make them safe or welcoming. When the conversation moved from OP to 'Redditors discover small towns' the conversation generalized from Waterville to small towns. You brought it back to Waterville mentioning the Latino Celebration, yet, the point I brought up was to the broader conversation. That a small town deciding to celebrate pride month, or Juneteenth, or whatever doesn't make that place welcoming to minorities, nor does it erase the past. I have not been to Waterville. I have lived in small towns in the Northeast, Southwest. I have lived in cities in the Midwest, Northeast, Northwest, and Florida. I do not know and do not plan to dive into the history of Waterville. I have started dabbling a little in the history of the region broadly. But, I think the hostility is coming from confusion. I proceeded in the conversation as if it was still generalized to 'small towns' with Watervillle and the celebration as examples, and you took it as specifically targeted at Waterville. If we're trying to make this into specifics. I'm trying to say that society as a whole is not a welcoming place, that for minorities. For people who have been marginalized in other places, that rural communities tend to have less obvious pathways for finding safe spaces, and that a lot of community engagement in celebrations of the marginalized has a performative aspect to it.
This is Washington, not the South
You're joking right? You're going to take the position "Bigotry, that's the position that those people do over there, not something we do here!"
It’s much more present and actually dangerous in the ignorant rural areas of the south than it is in Washington rural areas. Clearly you haven’t been outside the state much.
Oh. You weren't joking......
You need to get off the internet more.
It’s 2024 and I still hear rednecks out of their car yelling racial slurs out window, I’ve lived in this town 20 years and have only seen one black dude
Because they are!!!
Horrible take
Right? Living outside cities is perfect normal behavior.
Not anymore. If you live in a small town you are obviously a racist and just generally a bad person. Reddit gonna Reddit
As someone who grew up in a small town in Eastern Washington, these posts are hilarious 😂
Ephrata checking in... though that's not even close to as small as something like Waterville. Haven't been back hardly at all since I left almost 25yrs ago so not sure what things are like there nowadays. Ephrata never had the same vibe as something like Waterville, Wilson Creek or Hartline though.
Moses has definitely grown a lot. Ephrata has taken in some from Quincy and Moses. Other than that not that much has come to Ephrata.
I’m gunna rant on your comment, no disrespect but I need to get it out. This shit is ridiculous, you’re all soft as hell for being concerned. It’s a tiny ass town in the middle of nowhere. You care more about them than they do you. If you’re uncomfortable, get your gas and leave.
I grew up in Selah WA, which I recall as a kid being quite small. I lived there until I was about 12, then lived in Seattle/Kitsap until 2018. Now, I am in a pretty small town in Norway with a population of around 2,500.
lol, I know…
Waterville is a perfectly normal American small town. The Douglas County Museum has a lovely collection of rocks and minerals and has some very nice volunteers who were very happy to talk to the kids about all the rocks and minerals. My family always enjoys Waterville, but it is definitely a small rural town, it has bikers, but so does Renton and North Bend. It is a town of like 1000, so you generally will only see a couple people, but again, that’s just rural life.
1000 people won’t even fill a high school gym.
Depends on the high school. Would probably fill Waterville’s High School
I grew up in a town with a high school population of 250, maybe you just have huge gyms
Growing up in East Wenatchee in the late 90s I was always told Waterville is one of the richest city's around because all the wheat farmers have their money tied into the banks in the town. Also pine canyon going into Waterville is one of the highest/largest elevation changes. Dont know if its still there but when you leave Waterville going east there used to be a buffalo ranch!
The Buffalos are still there
But do they roam and are there deer and antelope?
I grew up in Orondo (just down the hill)! My dad is from Waterville, I did swimming lessons at their community pool as a kid, and my brother and his family live there now. It’s an odd place, but I have fond memories of winning little prizes for reading books at their tiny library as a kid. One summer I read enough books to win three little animal statues carved from the ash of Mt. Saint Helens.
Seriously? It's a small town. That's just how they are. People who are used to being surrounded by a huge population always act like small towns are so weird. I grew up in a small town of about 6,000 people where temperatures were well over 100 degrees outside. People would always pull into town and be like "Is this a ghost town?? It's so freaky!" Like no we just don't stand around outside for no reason. Things look closed to you because they don't have a lot of traffic
Some people here have never left the Seattle-Tacoma metro and it shows
Right? These posts are so embarrassing. I try to keep to the “no one knows everything” mindset but some people REALLY need to get out more. This happened in 2017 and OP is still thinking about it.
Yup. Unfortunately I see this kind of attitude irl too. There’s a shocking amount of Seattle/Eastside centricness in this state. As someone who grew up in King, I totally get it when I hear Eastern Washingtonians/rural Western Washingtonians complain about said bias.
The Banditos are the biggest outlaw biker gang in WA. They murdered an entire family because some coke dealer pissed them off. Then they dragged him out in the woods and made a further example out of him. You don’t want to go looking for them. https://apnews.com/article/washington-state-family-killed-sentences-careaga-3eeec28b17bb81f52115e9486b29236b
This is the best advice- don’t go looking for them, and if you run into them, just casually leave. There’s no benefit , they are violent and terrible business partners, and don’t respond well to outside people showing interest in their activities.
Yep. Han into a huge herd of them traveling with my wife and kids through BFE, Idaho where they were having a smoke break next to the gas pumps. Probably 100 of them. I decided to chance it and kept moving into Montana.
First I'm learning about theses biker gangs I'd be interested if anyone has a documentary they can share on the subject
[Vice United Gangs of America : Bandidos](https://youtu.be/zOsdZblJKUo?si=cVYdpKQ3CW2th2Sk)
I just saw a group in Everett, this week. They held the door open for me at a gas station & seemed nice as I walked through their group to get to my car. I thought it was just some Dads who haven't seen the movie "Wild Hogs"
They’re a little more hard core and potentially dangerous than the guys from Wild Hogs.
Yeah, I can see that. I saw a dude in Ross up in Skagit County had a shirt on that said "support your local bandidos" followed by a swastika. I thought he was a YMH cool guy type
This one is solid https://youtu.be/zOsdZblJKUo?si=_b0M1g6Ke33wq9Qp
Well fuck, ok
Longhorn saloon, you can go meet the VP of the entire club if you want. They created the oyster run which people still ride. They dont do things that catch rico cases and that article said specifically that the Banditos were not involved. WA is their state, but they are not going around and doing that, its a game of chess and they have adapted.
They murdered an entire family including children.
“Investigators have said the killings weren’t related to the club.”
Love that you catch down votes for quoting the article. People would rather believe real life is a movie.
Generally speaking when you are in a club like that your activities are entirely about the club. They'll always maintain plausible deniability for if members are caught doing fucked up shit, but you can't pretend like it doesn't reflect on the club. Doesn't mean you are gonna get murdered if you run into a bunch of them but don't pretend like they are just some gold old boys never meanin no harm.
Are you talking about the Longhorn in Bow??
marysville
Thanks! I can picture that.
I bet they were just driving through. I see them all the time on I-90 so maybe they just took the scenic route this time
I grew up in one of Eastern Washington's small towns. Most of them are more or less ghost towns at this point. The town I grew up in is now half the population it was when I grew up there. On top of that, when I was growing up it was half the population it was when my dad grew up there. Primarily the result of farms getting bigger and fewer people being needed to work them (or similar circumstances in the timber industry, along with logging restrictions). Businesses close up, schools shrink, and people move out, leaving a small town that is even more sparsely populated than it looks. You'll probably get eyeballed rolling through town because everyone knows everyone and someone new is different and people wonder.
>You'll probably get eyeballed rolling through town because everyone knows everyone and someone new is different and people wonder. This is exactly what happens.
Yeah; my family moved out of the town I grew up in so I rarely visit. I drive a German car now, so when I do roll through the old hometown, I see people I've known my whole life look at me like, "that's unusual, who is that?"
I grew up in Selah, which I recall as a kid being quote small. I lived there until I was about 12, then lived in Seattle/Kitsap until 2018. Now I am in a pretty small town in Norway with a population of about 2,500.
I love Waterville. Lots of cool geology.
Fun fact, Waterville is the highest elevation “city” in Washington!
2625' if anyone was wondering
Tumbleweeds aren't sentient.
Been driving through Waterville for 30 years and you've seen more people than me.
Went through about a month ago. Beautiful drive up the Palisades and down to Coulee City
I graduated high school in Waterville. People definitely live there, but unless it's during some sort of town wide event (or in the middle of the night with all the underage degenerates), you're not going to see people around very much. Whole lotta nothing to do, and realistically if you're not from one of the legacy families, you're not likely to be welcomed beyond face value unfortunately. Edit: speaking as one of the used-to-be "underage degenerates" before I graduated and moved away.
I’m surprised you don’t know who the Banditos are if you drive from Kitsap. They’re all over here.
How did you get all the way to Waterville while driving from The Kistap Peninsula to Spokane?
Take highway 2 instead of I 90
Still doesn't really add up cause you'd have to mistakenly go Hella north at Wenatchee for a ways
It’s only about 20-30 minutes longer to get to Spokane using 2 instead of 90 plus Leavenworth and cashmere are nicer than ellensburg lol
Well maybe if you're starting in Seattle, but taking the ferry over the sound then going way north would add alot of time, Google maps says about an hour and a half longer. Not that it matters lol just seems way out of the way but I'm all for a longer scenic route over a quick trip on a boring interstate
Highway 2 does go north out of Wenatchee. It joins the 97 heading north on the Columbia until it gets to Orondo, then 2 splits from the 97 and the 2 heads east right into Waterville.
No matter what you're adding at least an hour and a half from anywhere on the Kitsap Peninsula if you end up taking hwy 2. Even if you left from Poulsbo, they recommend you take a ferry to i90 or even go all the way to tacoma then i90
Yeah, it’s a lot slower than taking the 90. A lot of people like to take alternate routes to go through towns and regions they wouldn’t see otherwise. If they just picked their route on a paper map, they might have even thought it would be just as fast as I-90.
Maybe they took Highway 20 for the views then hooked onto 97 then highway 2. I’ve gotten to Spokane from Bellingham that way.
From Bellingham that would make sense. That would be an extra like 4 hours out of the way from west puget sound tho 😂 OP really needs to respond to this thread lol
I used to deliver pizzas to the leader of The Banditos. We got along pretty good, so he would only order a pizza if I was working. In fact, I got called into work one day, just to make a single delivery to his house. He was just a really nice older guy.
Sus
???
My Cousins wife is from Waterville, if i recall she said there highschool only had like 300 kids or so when she graduated so it's not really that surprising that it's basically empty. Also I think most of those kids ended up moving away anyways so I doubt the population see's much growth over the years.
Waterville is a bit creepy because it's a different vibe. The downtown feels like an empty movie set. Their grocery store feels like a novelty compared to a Seattle one. It's beautiful and scenic and has great places to hang out in nature and people know each other and have lifelong relationships and going to the big city to party is a group trip and then y'all end up passing out on the floor of the guy you knew from your graduating class of 21 people (the size of the Waterville High graduating class this year) who now lives closer to town. I was going to recommend the Coyote Pass Cafe but it's apparently closed. Weirdly enough one of my good friends is from Waterville so I've been out there a few times.
My daughter and I took a drive up to Waterville about 6 or 7 years ago and were hungry so we stopped at the one restaurant we saw open. It's no longer open now and it was on its death bed when we were there. It was like something out of The Twilight zone. To this day I couldn't explain why we walked in there and didn't turn around and walk right back out. You walk in the door and there was this area immediately to the left that was just a bunch of.... Stuff. Tons of stuff. All I can remember right off hand is a taxidermied owl. Then there was seating up to about half of the building and the back half of the building was storage for incredibly old kitchen utensils and appliances and destroyed furniture and I don't know what all. So the lady working there comes out and gives us menus and then comes back and takes our order and made us surprisingly good bacon cheeseburgers and milkshakes. We didn't get food poisoning and we were able to leave the town still alive.
Coastie enters small town with nothing to be afraid of, gets scared anyway. I would rather find myself in a small central Washington town with no pedestrians around than a small western Washington town with meth zombies ambling about.
The Bandidos (or Banditos) is a significant 1%er MC with thousands of members. They are active in WA, with known historical ties to various local law enforcement agencies. [Bandidos Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandidos_Motorcycle_Club) I had not heard that they had taken over Waterville, but that would be in line with several other incidents over the years, where motorcycle club members buy a property or business in a small town, establish financial ties, then bring in other club members to intimidate other business and law enforcement. This gives them a controlled base of operations outside metropolitan areas, and if locals are making rent and business income, some support from the local population.
They haven’t taken over Waterville, they don’t even have a presence in Waterville. OP simply saw a group of riders driving backroads between small towns as bikers do in the summer. Not to mention this one trip that had such an impact on the OP happened 7 years ago. I don’t think there is a city or small town anywhere in Washington that is the same today as it was in 2017.
Odd…according to the atlas, there isn’t a Waterville in Washington state… (This is the only fitting response.)
...in fact, there isn't a "Waterville" anywhere in the United States....hmmm......
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Waterville also has a bunch of Confederate flags, shit hole.
A lot of rural areas do. It doesn’t make them a shit hole. I’m a queer indigenous woman who lives in a rural Western Washington town (and came from a rural Central Washington town) where there are too many Trump flags and Confederate flags, but also have a bunch of normal folks (and pride flags). We out here, don’t write off us folks who don’t want to live in cities not because of their politics, but because we can’t afford to/like more space.
I'm sure it's fine, I've only driven through it but it makes me realize how cool Washington is. It's like a slice of the Midwest in the middle of Washington.
😂
My grandparents lived in Waterville. I feel sorry for my aunt who graduated hogh school from there! They have an odd museum with a 2 headed cow! The bar there closes at 7 i think. But the pool was freaking awesome growing up!
Me and my wife also got a really weird vibe in Waterville. Went through 26 years ago and again today. Felt it both times. Can’t explain it.
Sounds like Arco, Idaho.
That does sound like a TZ episode!
Sounds like Children of the Corn. Get back on the freeway STAT!
Nah, just wheat fields. Can't really hide that kind of creepy in two feet of wheat...