Apolo Ohno honors father’s devotion to Belltown shop as retail core suffers through pandemic By Nicole Brodeur, The Seattle Times
Published: December 13, 2020, 7:00am
Share: USA’s Apolo Anton Ohno cools down after skating in the men’s 5,000-meter relay short track finals during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., on Feb. 26, 2010. Tribune News Service files
SEATTLE The video is only 20 seconds long, but it packs a punch: Boarded-up businesses, empty streets, graffiti, and, near the corner of Fourth Avenue and Bell Street, a single neon sign in the window of Yuki’s Diffusion hair salon.
It was nothing like what eight-time Olympic medalist Apolo Ohno remembered of growing up here, walking every inch of the Belltown neighborhood and eating burgers from the Two Bells Tavern after a long day spent amid the hair salon’s clients, washbowls and his single father Yuki’s watchful eye.