SEATTLE — An earthquake rumbles. Mardi Gras celebrations turn violent. Microsoft battles a breakup order. Dot-coms fold. And now Boeing declares it's leaving home.
After an unbelievable string of misfortune, Seattle residents are wondering what bad news is yet to come.
"We are feeling a bit like an urban Job. What's next? Boils? A plague of locusts?" asked Seattle historian Walt Crowley, who runs a Web site called www.historylink.org.
For a decade, the city sat smugly atop the livability charts in national magazines, its image polished by high-tech prosperity against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. "Seattle Reigns," Newsweek declared in a 1996 cover story.
The first signs of rust appeared in 1999, when a federal judge ruled against Microsoft in an antitrust suit, saying the software giant unfairly used its monopoly power to bully competitors. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson followed up with an order last summer that Microsoft be split in two. The case is now on appeal.
In December 1999, more than 50,000 World Trade Organization protesters poured into downtown streets. Gangs of anarchists smashed windows and vandalized cars, and police took on the crowds with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Two weeks later, the city canceled its New Year's celebration around the Space Needle after a suspected terrorist was arrested at the U.S. border, allegedly trying to smuggle bomb-making materials with millennial mayhem in mind.
On Jan. 31 of last year, 88 people died off the California coast in the crash of a jet operated by Seattle-based Alaska Airlines.
Throughout the year, the faltering fortunes of many Internet companies shook the confidence of Seattle's high-tech industry.
Last month, Mardi Gras celebrations turned ugly, as marauding groups attacked people on the streets, killing one and injuring 70. The next day, on Feb. 28, Seattle was rocked by a magnitude-6.8 earthquake, its largest in 52 years.
Throw in a drought, described as the state's worst since 1977, and rising energy costs because of California's power crisis, and Seattle was ready for a bit of good news.
What it got instead: Wednesday's announcement from the Boeing Co. that it is moving its corporate headquarters from the city it has called home for 85 years. The economic hit was small, since Boeing's huge aircraft-manufacturing plants are staying put, and only about 1,000 of the company's nearly 80,000 employees in Washington state will be relocated.
But the psychological impact was huge. Before there was Microsoft, Amazon.com or Starbucks, there was Boeing. For years, the city's fortunes rose and fell with the aerospace giant.
In recent years, even though the economy has diversified, Boeing remains the state's largest private employer, and Seattle enjoys its worldwide reputation as Jet City — apparently more than Boeing values being known as a Seattle-based company.
On Friday, as Boeing executives considered Denver, Dallas and Chicago, this city acted like a jilted lover, wondering what went wrong.
Politicians and business leaders debated what they could have done to keep the company from straying, with improving Seattle's snarled traffic at the top of the list.
Conversation on the street, meanwhile, turned to what awful thing might happen next.
Tim Foss, a telephone technician whose two brothers work at Boeing, clutched a grande latte in a Pioneer Square cafe and said of all the recent bad news, Boeing's exit was the worst.
"It was a shock," he said. "It left people reeling. Boeing has always been synonymous with Seattle. They're like our rock."
He lifted his coffee and looked around the bustling cafe.
"Hopefully," Foss said, "Starbucks will be here to stay."