I spent part of last week in Seattle, thus the lack of blogging around here. But I've returned to Portland with photos and anecdotes that are sure to delight you and yours this holiday season. Er, something.

Seattle has a lot of things that Portland lacks. Skyscrapers. Sounds. An amazing farmers market/underground retail labyrinth. A (granted, now defunct) music scene that was important enough to land itself an actual name. A Game Works.

Nevertheless, there's at least one thing this town has up on the Emerald City (besides better livability, better weather and better coffee). We've got a proper town square that makes the one in front of Westlake Center look exactly like what it is: a half-hearted addition to the front of a shopping mall. Because of its dainty size, Seattle's square could never handle a proper Christmas tree like the one that's currently sitting in Portland's "Living Room." Here's a photo of Westlake's pipsqueak. The snowflakes are a nice touch though.

Sure, Portland has Burgerville but I'd happily trade its overpriced, homegrown milkshakes for a Dick's Drive-In. Dick's is basically a small Seattle chain similar to In-N-Out but without the hokey t-shirts and pretense. The locals supposedly have a love/hate relationship with the chain. From what I hear, Seattle PD routinely has to show up on weekend nights to turn away crowds of drunken cluphoppers at the Capitol Hill location at closing time. Some swear by their burgers' magical ability to cure hangovers.

I hiked up there around lunchtime one afternoon and found a large, diverse crowd waiting in line. This location lacks indoor seating, providing only stainless-steel outdoor counters. I ate my burger while standing between a businessman and a hipster, across the counter from two street kids. The burgers are on par with In-N-Out, the fries are superior but the chocolate shakes could use some work.

City Market is apparently popular among discouraged Republicans. Not pictured here: the signs encouraging nude bicyclists and Santa Claus to stop on in for their quality convenience store goods.

The Space Needle was all lit-up for, no, not Christmas. The top was illuminated with eerie blood-red lights for World AIDS Day. Here's what it looked like from the ground. Please ignore the super happy festive tree up front and focus instead on the somberness of a deadly disease that continues to impact millions worldwide. Thanks.

The staff wouldn't let me take photos of Captain Kirk's chair in the science fiction wing of the EMP. Here instead is a shot of a creepy Donald Duck ride in the amusement park section of Seattle Center.

One evening the fire alarm went off in my hotel. A voice came on the PA system and said, "We are currently investigating a fire alarm." That's it. No further details. A woman down the hall stuck her head out of her room long enough to ask," Are we supposed to leave? I'm not going down 15 flights of stairs in these heels unless I have to." I decided not to worry about it until, two minutes later, I saw two firetrucks blasting down 3rd Avenue towards the hotel. I grabbed my laptop, my camera and ran downstairs to...

...find a smoke-filled lobby and a small crowd watching two fireman investigate an elevator. A motor had sputtered out, filling the first few floors with smoke. I hung around long enough to take this photo. I didn't see the lady in heels down there.

Labels: Seattle

I recently killed part of an afternoon in Seattle's Capitol Hill district and the Pike/Pine Corridor. Supposedly the "heart of trendy Seattle," they've been dubbed everything from Seattle's equivalent of San Francisco's Castro district to the birthplace of grunge. Supposedly, Pearl Jam came up with their band name in a Capitol Hill coffeehouse and several bands from that era got their start in nearby clubs.

On Wednesday the only signs I could find of the district's grunge past were a few record stores, a head shop and a middle-aged homeless man busy screaming out the lyrics to a song from Vs. outside of a QFC. I can't say I was surprised. When I visited the Haight a few years ago I found a burnt-out junkie standing next to a Ben and Jerry's across the street from a Gap at the district's famous intersection. Apt metaphors for the dark sides of two generations worth of hopeless dreamers?

Sure.

Capitol Hill and Pike/Pine seem like they're experiencing the first pangs of gentrification. Or maybe it's more like the fifth or sixth-thousandth pangs. Apartment buildings are turning into condos and I spotted a few people trotting down the street pushing baby carriages. You can practically watch real estate prices climb like time-lapse film footage of weeds growing but there's still a few rundown, graffiti-covered buildings to be found. The impression that I was left with is that the entire area is on the verge of going full-blown Pearl District at any given second.

One sign that the neighborhood is mutating into a yuppie stronghold is Bimbo's Cantina, formerly Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen. The internet tells me that this place was once a hole-in-the-wall hipster hangout with a staff known for being rude and, well, downright bitchy to customers. Its new location, sans the lucha libre stain-gassed windows and south-of-the-border brick-a-brak, could easily pass for a martini bar.

Nonetheless, my rather polite waiter was wearing a flannel shirt straight out of an early Soundgarden press photo and my Homestyle Burrito put the similar "Elmer Fudd" burrito at the Belmont Laughing Planet to shame. Weighing in at what had to be a full pound or more, this monstrosity combined the best parts of a traditional burrito with a Thanksgiving dinner. I left the place feeling like a boa constrictor that had just consumed a Disneyland employee in a Mickey Mouse costume.

I wish I could have seen the neighborhood in the early-90s but I guess I'll just have to settle for the condos, the fantastic burritos and Stumptown Coffee's first non-Portland location.

Some other stuff:

A Jimi Hendrix statue outside the Capitol Hill Everyday Music.

An old movie poster on the side of a warehouse.

Uh, yeah.

"News" being a bunch of show posters and Green Peace ads stabled to the side of a former telephone pole.

Labels: off-topic, Seattle

Here's two herky-jerky clips I captured with my camera on Wednesday night:

Labels: music, off-topic, Seattle

No one else I know was foolhardy to go with me to watch Radiohead in the rain last night. There's plenty of horror stories out there about the White River Ampitheatere. About how it's located in one of the worst spots imaginable for an outdoor venue. About the nightmarish gridlocks that back up traffic all the way from the I-5 on-ramp onto Highway 18. About how what should be a 45 minute drive to or from Seattle can turn into a tedious hell ride.

Despite all that, I decided to head south 30 minutes before the opening act on the heels of an afternoon spent running around the Emerald City. I assumed that I could avoid five o'clock traffic and any traffic snarls leading to the ampitheatere by arriving just before Radiohead was set to go on stage. Well, that didn't happen.

Once I was off the interstate I found myself in an ocean of frustrated Seattle hipsters all trying to get to the same place I was heading. At one point, it took 20-minutes to go half a mile. If I hadn't been traveling alone, I would have jumped out to smoke a cigarette in the middle of the highway like so many other people did to kill time.

Total travel time from downtown Seattle: Two. And. A. Half. Hours. The White River Ampitheatere can found down a skinny two-lane highway in the middle of the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation. Several poorly-timed stoplights along the way bog traffic down even further.

I arrived about 20 minutes into the band's set as they were playing "2 _ 2 = 5" and found a spot in the nosebleed edge of the ampitheater's lawn. Radiohead's light show, which consists of video screens and skinny florescent picture tube doodads truly is amazing. While they mostly stuck to their post-Kid A space rock stuff the atmosphere, the light show and Thom Yorke's spastic bobblehead dancing made it all worth while.

It rained on and off again the entire time and, in maybe a weird way, maybe that's the ideal conditions for a Radiohead show. Or maybe the ampitheater's amazing ability to retain what the crowd was smoking numbed me to the cold and mud.
Yeah, that's what I meant when I typed "atmosphere."

It took 90 minutes to get back to the interstate. Memo to Radiohead's management: there's two gigantic stadiums in the middle of downtown Seattle that can handle a crowd of 20,000+ much better the middle of flippin' nowhere. If they ever make it back to the Northwest you might want to look into them.

Here's a link to the Seattle PI's review of last night's show.

Labels: music, off-topic, Seattle

Those futuristic public toilets in Seattle? They're currently up for sale on eBay.

Bonus: one of them looks like it's been damaged by gunfire. Nothing says "classy" like a bullet-riddled Port O Potty on your front lawn.

Labels: Seattle, toilets

A key quote from today's NYT piece on the closure of Seattle's public toilets:

"I'm not going to lie: I used to smoke crack in there," said one homeless woman, Veronyka Cordner, nodding toward the toilet behind Pike Place Market. "But I won't even go inside that thing now. It's disgusting."

That's the very same toilet I somehow wrote an entire article about here.

Labels: Seattle, toilets

Here's a few tidbits from the weekend that you may or may not find interesting:

The Seattle Museum of Art recently reopened after an extensive expansion, which includes a piece involving flying/exploding Ford Taruses located in the lobby. For reasons unknown, one of these is actually a Mercury:

This can be found in the "Art Ladder" wing of the museum. These two French girls really seemed to dig it:

Other notable modern art pieces: a Mercedes/coffin, a bust made out of dogtags and one of several Andy Warhol prints featuring Elvis dressed as a cowboy. Elsewhere: a Frida Kahlo painting of the two nude chicks hanging out with a monkey that could be found in every Spanish textbook I used during college and more Renaissance-era depictions of Baby Jesus than you can shake a handful of frankincense at. The new SAM gets an B++ from me.

The original Starbucks, located across the street from Pike Place Market, has a map on the wall. Each country includes the number of Starbucks locations in it. The US has 8,000+ but in Italy, the birthplace of "good coffee"? Zip. Zero. Nada.

After another trip to Cinerama, it's become obvious that Portland could use a movie palace that screens first-run films. The Baghdad just isn't cutting it. They hosted Pan's Labyrinth for, what, two straight months?

A daily commute on Seattle's ferry system would get old real quick.

Viaduct: a series of spans or arches used to carry a road or railroad over a wide valley or over other roads or railroads, typically impossible to locate after midnight while extremely tired.

20th Century Fox finally licensed the Duff brand name to make an energy drink instead of beer? Weak. I saw a can selling for $5 at that comic book shop in the bowels of Pike Place.

Finally, the locals were going nuts over a place upstairs called the Daily Dozen Donut Co., staffed by a group of punk guys. There was a line 30-deep when we walked by. While I've been in the market a million times, somehow I've never noticed the place. According to this, it's been open for over 18 years. Their gimmick? Tiny "little bastard" doughnuts served hot and tossing out free samples to any kid that yells at the staff. We couldn't get near the place but I wandered back later to take a picture of their logo: a lightening-struck donkey pooping out doughnuts. It didn't come out so here's a blurry cell phone photo of their marquee:

You stay classy, Seattle.

Labels: Seattle

This is where I passed part of the weekend:

And let me tell you something: after spending a night in a covered wagon, you'll find yourself with a newfound respect for our pioneer forefathers. A kind of respect that can't be earned with a round or two of the Oregon Trail game. All in all, it's a supposedly fun thing you'll never want to do again, especially since, if you develop a habit, you might wind up dying from "the squirts."

It seemed like a good idea at the time. With plans to head to the Sasquatch Festival officially squashed, I made plans to head to Seattle with my sister. Having never spent a night in a hostel, I wanted to try out the Green Tortoise but it was already booked. Not wanting to drop a bunch of cash on a downtown hotel, she tracked down the AYH Ranch Hostel on Vashon Island. Given the option of a renting a tepee, a dorm room or two wagons, we went the wagon route.

After running around the city, we rode a ferry out of west Seattle and wound up back at the hostel right around midnight. The AYH Ranch clearly has a lot of love invested in it. A row of activities rooms is set up to look like a wild west strip mall. A barn has been converted into a rec area/kitchen/lodging/tv room facility with large murals on the walls. And, while it might not go with the Wagon Train theme, a giant tiki head sits smack dab in the middle of the grounds.

None of the hostel's other wagons had been rented out and for a good reason. If you're going to spend a night in one, you can't be a light sleeper. The temperatures was somewhere in the low-50s when I finally jumped into mine. This was no REI, GORE-TEX-covered, fancy-schmancy wagon, no sir. Given my nonexistent knowledge of 19th century methods of travel, I can('t) tell you that this wagon was as close to the real deal as possible. A light breeze, which would have stood no chance of disrupting a night's sleep in a modern tent, kept me awake most of the night. After an early morning jaunt to the bathroom, I finally nodded off around 4 AM.

I was up again at 6:30 after my sister began tugging on my feet, eager to ask me the single most annoying question I have ever been asked in my entire life: "are you awake?" After grunting a "no," she asked if I heard the rooster yet. I had not heard the rooster yet. The rooster had kept her awake since 4:30. Initially, she thought it was a girl in the woods frantically screaming out for someone named "Emily." Instead of rushing out into the woods with a lantern, she did what any sensible person would have done, especially since the screaming stopped shortly thereafter: she went back to sleep. Eventually, the real culprit dawned on her: a bird with no sense of common decency. It woke her again at 5, 6 and 6:30. Minutes later, a yellowjacket flew into her wagon and buzzed by her head several times before setting up camp on the ceiling.

Around this time, she gave up sleeping entirely and snuck into my wagon to steal my keys. She was cruising the coastline in my $#$@#! car when I finally got up around 9.

After a night on the ranch, this much is certain: we wouldn't have lasted long on the Oregon Trail.

And the residents of Vashon Island have a passion for creepy statues. This one was dedicated to the memory of "Cool Gary," who, according to a nearby plaque: "loved to laugh."

Labels: dysentery, Seattle, wagons