To prepare for a British friend coming to visit Seattle, I picked up "Weird and Wacky Washington Places" from the library to see if there's anything neat I hadn't heard of. What's weird and wacky? A banana museum, the Space Needle, Slug Fest, the Jimi Hendrix statue, and the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway.

As surprised as I was that Gary Ridgeway is listed in a guidebook of zany and funny things for tourists, I was also struck by the authors' omission of the fact that his victims were (mostly) sex workers. Is that a good thing- does it reduce the horror of his crimes in the eyes of normal people if he was "just" killing prostitutes? Or is it a bad thing- glossing over an important case in terms of getting international attention focused on the violence against sex workers?

I'm still not sure which part of this perturbs me the most.