Belltown has an underserved bad rap. Who gets the blame for this? First let's sarcastically thank the weekend warriors from Seattle's hinterlands who peregrinate here to wake us with their noisy, drunken and sometimes violent courtship rituals. Also we can thank that small minority of unscrupulous developers whose sleek new high-rises are leaky, shoddily-constructed lawsuit magnets. Stir in the handful of winos, junkies and common loons who rough up the streets, and you get a reputation just barely true enough to be irritating.

So let's take the trouble to crush one popular misconception about Belltowners, which has it that we are little more than a legion of soul-dead yuppies shuttling between our corporate jobs and condo cocoons, too benumbed by our 70-hour tech-sector workweeks to do little more than not shop locally, not show community spirit, not care about our fellow human beings. Know anyone like that?

Please. It's time to remind everyone and ourselves that the typical Belltowner should receive accolades for being - yes, that's right - surprisingly eco-friendly.

Eco-friendly Belltown? Take that condo tower on the corner; let's say it's got sixty units. Those sixty comfortable, warm, yuppie-filled homes are the equivalent of two entire city blocks of Ballard domiciles. Or, to put it more dramatically, two entire acres of lush, green forestland full of bushtits. Belltowners create a smaller, more graceful footprint than our crosstown kin.

What about our carbon-footprint? Condo-dwellers use less energy heating their places of residence than those who live in single-family homes. When you have neighbors above, below and beside you and only one or two walls exposed to the elements, your home is much cheaper to keep cozy than that million-dollar Queen Anne fixer-upper spewing BTUs into the yard. And we drive less! Because all our shopping and entertainment needs are just around the corner; and soon we'll be able to catch a train to the airport. We Belltowners just plain produce less poison gas than our well-meaning pals in the 'burbs.

And you can't cram as much gawdy, high-tech crud in a condo as you can in your typical suburban mini-fortress. Less stuff means less consumption and less waste.

So next time you're congratulating your green sensibilities whilst clogging traffic on the way to some distant über-market, use that fine Anglo-American baritone of yours to sing the praises of Belltown: just possibly Seattle's most eco-friendly neighborhood.

-Alex R. Mayer