Rat City

[randy_byers]

One of the things I learned this weekend (I can't remember who told me, but maybe the waiter at TS McHugh's) is that Rat City is a name for White Center, which is where the Rat City Roller Girls started out. White Center is a little working class town outside of Seattle that has a bit of a (no doubt classist) low rent reputation. The only reason I've ever gone there was because Victor's grandparents lived there, and I visited them with him a few times. I had never heard it called Rat City before, and the Wikipedia entry on the name is fascinating. It's short enough that I'll just quote the whole thing here:

Rat City is a colloquialism for the area of White Center, Washington, a small, low income suburb of West Seattle. White Center garnered a poor reputation due to its high crime rates and small homes. An alternate scenario for the moniker is that the name refers to the "rink rats" who roller skated at the Southgate Skate Center (which still stands). Rat city is also known as mice city There are a couple theories as to how "Rat City" got its name. Some people assume there was once a prolific rat problem in the 1940s, but RAT might have also been an acronym for Restricted Alcohol Territory, which Seattle was designated as during WWII. Unincorporated areas such as White Center were a draw for servicemen in part because of less stringent liquor regulations. Additionally, a military Relocation and Training (RAT) Center was located in the area during that period.

Somewhat incoherent even by Wikipedia standards ("Rat city is also known as mice city"?), but I love the indeterminacy and sheer weirdness of some of the derivations. If you google "Restricted Alcohol Territory", you mostly get references to this Wikipedia article. Even HistoryLink.org seems to be paraphrasing this article. Very strange. Google finds no references to Restricted Alcohol Territory that aren't an explanation of how White Center got its nickname. Smells fishy to me.

Comments

[jackwilliambell.livejournal.com]

Well, I grew up around here and the story I heard has to do with White Center being the red light district for the docks along the Nisqually back when there were big ships coming up the river and lots of warehouses along the river banks. 1890s to 1940s timeframe I think.

The story is that the Nisqually would flood regularly and when it did the warehouse rats would go up the hill to White Center, thus the name.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Makes more sense than these attempts to treat RAT as an acronym!