Seattleites making a run to the border for … Coke?
White Center finds itself a city divided — literally, down Roxbury Street — by the price of pop.
Ahmed Mohamed’s shop in the farthest reaches of West Seattle is so small you can easily miss it. But he’s nevertheless Ground Zero for Seattle’s latest economic experiment.
Mohamed runs West Seattle Halal Market, a two-aisle store specializing in meats and poultry butchered according to Islamic rules. A few shelves in the middle of the store, though, are given over to a popular side product that now has his neighborhood, White Center, literally divided.
“Here is the precious fluid,” Mohamed laughs, showing me around the store.
He holds up a two-liter plastic bottle of Coke.
He once sold it for $2.79. Now it is $4 — a 43 percent increase, due to the city’s new tax on sugary beverages that went into effect Jan. 1.