Welcome to Sisleyville.
Or the latest news from "A Bad Day in Black Rock," the Roosevelt neighborhood's long-running film noir about a community held in thrall to Hugh Sisley, a slumlord-in-denial, and Keith Gilbert, his intimidating right-hand man.
The midwinter sun shines a little brighter on the Roosevelt neighborhood since federal agents took white supremacist and convicted felon Gilbert away in shackles last week. The gray-bearded, bearish Gilbert, 65, along with several others, was booked for selling automatic weapons to an undercover informant. Gilbert is also a felon caught with firearms.
Maybe 100 firearms, including machine guns, in fact.
Gilbert is a classic poster boy for three strikes, you're out. With Gilbert out of the way, this is an interesting moment in the perverse saga.
Sound Transit is coming. Third Place Books is a community hub. Roosevelt Square is a happening place. Roosevelt High School, bordered by numerous Hugh Sisley properties, is being renovated.
Sisley, 78, lord of derelict properties, stands to be a very rich man if he plays his cards right.
In the meantime, "people feel safer with Gilbert gone," one neighbor told me. "Hugh can't have a thug doing things for him anymore."
Gilbert, who considered Hitler a prophet, came to town about a dozen years ago. In 1965 he was convicted of possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite with the intention of blowing up the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In the 1980s, in Idaho, according to a federal indictment, he threatened black children and nearly ran one child down with his car.
And so the man with Aryan Nations connections struck up a relationship with property owners Hugh and Drake Sisley, the brothers who gained notoriety as two of Seattle's worst slumlords.
Over the years, Drake Sisley distanced himself from Gilbert; more recently, so has Hugh, who owns about five blocks in Roosevelt and Ravenna-Bryant. In fact, Sisley's lawyer told the daily papers, Hugh, like the rest of the neighborhood is now afraid of Gilbert.
Sisley's Frankenstein got away from him, it appears.
And therein lies the pathological lie and denial that has occupied the heart of this affair.
"We're doing the community a service," Sisley told this newspaper in 1999. He was referring to his squalid, low-rent housing. "The city wants my land."
In the same interview, Gilbert, standing by Sisley's side, opined, "The city controls the neighborhood groups. [It] even funds them."
Gilbert also had this to offer: "You get a lot of jealous people when someone owns a lot of property."
Seattle Nice and all its DCLU process and public meetings were practically impotent in the face of such Hunnish outlooks. Individuals were sued. The Roosevelt Neighborhood Association was sued. Gilbert monitored people's comings and goings.
Gilbert was considered so dangerous that a few years ago health-department inspectors, having obtained search warrants to check for rats in the slum dwellings, brought along a posse of police officers.
Sisley, who once worked three jobs in order to buy the properties, would seem to be a Horatio Alger type - on paper, anyway. But a real American dreamer doesn't consort with neo-Nazis. Or create a nightmare for his neighbors.
And these neighbors are not millionaires with Eastside sensibilities. This is a modest area where people just want to lead their lives and raise their families.
Some in the neighborhood are now crossing their fingers about the future. They see this as the time for Hugh Sisley to do the right thing and develop his properties.
Sisley has a pretty slick website: www.hughsisley.com. It greets you with "Welcome to Sisleyville" and a link to Sound Transit and a graphic of two construction guys pointing at a blueprint.
And this: "If you're interested in additional information, please feel free to contact us via e-mail. We carefully review each and every offer orproposal to determine fitness and applicability for the Roosevelt neighborhood."
And this gem: "There's a certain amount of humor to be had when people refer to this area as Sisleyville, but substantial logic was applied when 'Old Man Sisley' started purchasing propery (sic) in the area nearly 40 years ago.
"As much as some might prefer to overlook the efforts of Hugh Sisley, significant recognition for his vision and ability needs to be given...," it continued.
Self-interest may be tugging Sisley toward developing his properties, but the stubborn denial is still there.
There's a ray of hope ahead. And the need for hard work and diplomacy on the part of neighborhood activists.
Mike Dillon is publisher of the North Seattle Herald-Outlook. He can be reached via e-mail at mdillon@ nwlink.com.
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