Roy thinks he is cool because of all the crimes (he's right)

For my actual birth date, my partner took us to the top of Smith Tower in Seattle.

Smith Tower was built in 1914. The decision to built the tallest structure on the West Coast - overtaken by the Space Needle only in 1962 - was apparently a stunt “to steal the crown from rival city Tacoma's National Realty Building as the tallest west of the Mississippi River”.

It’s difficult to talk about this place without a bit more history, which the most recent renovation of the tower in 2016 attempts to provide.

That the now-Goldman-Sachs-owned building makes no mention of the increasingly powerful labor movement of the time, or insanely violent state response to that movement, should come as no surprise. It does talk about the lone member of the Seattle Police department that deserves anything more than our collective contempt: Roy Olmstead.

Was Roy Olmstead fired from being a Seattle cop because he was running booze from Canada? Sure. But really, given his ethics, I don’t think he would have hung around very long anyway.

After paying a $500 fine, Olmstead switched to crime full time. He sold only bonded liquor directly from Canada and prohibited his crew from carrying firearms “telling his men he would rather lose a shipment of liquor than a life.”1 At the height of his power, more or less the entire political establishment and justice system of Seattle were on his payroll.

When they eventually went after Olmstead, his case made it to the Supreme Court - arguably the single worst political institution in the United States. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled evidence obtained from warrantless wiretaps were cool and good, actually, because telephones were new and stuff.2

Olmstead served out his sentence on McNeil Island, the Washington States’ “island of misfit toys”, having just missed rooming with the magnificent Flores brothers and the Birdman of Alcatraz. McNeil Island is now home to some 200 sex offenders the state has no real idea what to do with - they served their sentences, but are involuntarily and indefinitely committed.3

The view from the tower was also pleasing at night, made more interesting by the fact a packed concert for Coldplay started just as we went outside to the observation deck.

When we got home, whatever Twitter is calling itself these days surfaced a post related to the event.

So this almost certainly isn’t real (I couldn’t find anything to corroborate it) but I had two friends at this thing and I haven’t heard from them since??