Seattle's Best Neighborhoods: Maple Leaf

Seattle Magazine’s cover story features the Maple Leaf neighborhood, saying that families flock to Maple Leaf for the “small-town feel in the middle of the city.”

They interview Jill Killen of Cloud City Coffee: “Nobody knew where Maple Leaf was,” she says. “We were always clumped in with Wedgwood or Green Lake, never our own spot.” Killen started handing out bumper stickers that read “Maple Leaf 4 Life,” part joke and part community-building effort, she says. Eighteen years later, those bumper stickers—spotted on vehicles ranging from minivans to Mini Coopers—are a badge of honor for the folks who have been in on Maple Leaf’s secret from the start.