I Wonder Why...?

You might say Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest. Or, Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Pressure. Either way, this provocative statement is a big help when you’re trying to get around downtown Seattle. It’s a mnemonic device, a sentence that helps you remember the names and order of the city’s streets. The first letter of each word corresponds to a pair of streets between Pioneer Square and Belltown. Jesus starts with a ‘J,’ which means Jefferson and James come first. The ‘C’ in Christ signals that Cherry and Columbia are next, and so on. You might’ve already known that, but do you have any idea where the memory trick came from? Or, why it remains so popular? A useful tool It doesn’t seem to matter if you’ve lived here for three years or three decades, a lot of Seattleites rely on the phrase from time to time. “Once in a while, I’m trying to remember what the next street is,” says Tait Bowers. “I’m like, J-J, C-C, M-M. So it makes it easy to know that they’re all paired up together”