As a native Washingtonian, born and raised in the Puget Sound region, can I suggest a theory? The Seattle Freeze was imported in the late 1980s as the region ge

As a native Washingtonian, born and raised in the Puget Sound region, can I suggest a theory? The Seattle Freeze was imported in the late 1980s as the region gentrified. As we moved from a blue collar economy (logging, building airplanes, etc) to a white collar economy (software, biotech), and especially as we experienced significant population growth as transplants moved in rapidly to be part of those new industries, that was when the freeze set in. Yes, there is a lot to be said for the nordic influence and the fact that Seattle is isolated culturally from the rest of the country, but it was the mass influx of cultural outsiders that generated the distrust at the root of the freeze.