S E A T T L E

The city

Seattle

Seattle is a lovely city, clean and pleasant, small enough to maintain its hometown friendliness yet large enough to have the requisite number of colorful people and dodgy neighborhoods. I visited there some years ago on a business trip and looked forward to my return as a tourist; the advantages inherent in having the days to yourself far outweigh the convenience of writing meals and lodging off as business expenses.

I remember Seattle as accessible; easily navigated by public transport or on foot, populated by healthy, amiable and intelligent people (judging by the number of book stores) and liberally scattered with cozy coffee shops. It is much the same as I recall, though on this trip, I couldn’t look at the Seattle Space Needle without expecting it to make a WAAAAAAAAAA sound and reach out toward me with a mechanical tentacle.

Run!  They're coming for us! 

The biggest difference, of course, is all the coffee shops are gone.

The coffee culture was booming in the 1990s and every block had at least one locally owned coffee shop. These were genuine coffee houses--many with reading rooms attached--where you could sit and enjoy a novel or gather with friends. They’ve all disappeared; swallowed up by Starbuck franchises, just like every other coffee shop in the known universe.

Selling my Soul to Starbucks

You can't throw a double-mocha cappuccino without hitting a Starbucks. 

I don’t hate Starbucks because they make lousy coffee (which they do) or because they have the worst ‘take-over-the-world’ corporate policy (Wal-Mart does); I hate them because they propagate that insidious American abomination: the lowest common denominator.

And I hate them because they leave me no choice.

Not going to Starbucks is one of my favorite pastimes, but at 7 AM in a downtown business district, there are few other options. It makes me cringe to hear myself order a Grande Latte and organic carrot cake when all I want is a cup of coffee and a bagel for chrissake.

Uggggggghhhhh!

Starbucks has sucked the life, the flavor and every drop of character out of the American culture and replaced it with bland, corporate fare and bio-degradable cardboard. I was surprised that the original Starbucks was not on Seattle’s tourist trail. I’m sure it would be a popular attraction; I know I would go, just to see where the cancer began.

So this is guy responsible.

The People

Seattleites (is that what you call them?) are a tidy, health-conscious lot, the type of people who eschew preservatives, participate in charity walks and name their children things like Ursula, Tavin or Prosperity (honest to God, we met a guy named Prosperity). There was a remarkable absence of dog poo and chewing gum on the pavements, and I have never seen so many gymnasiums in such a concentrated area. With people in them. Exercising.

All that excess health seems to have lead to self-confidence and sensible eating habits. In almost every shop, restaurant and pub we visited, we were greeted by assertive--but in a friendly way--well-groomed people. And while we did happen upon a few McDonald’s restaurants (Are they actually restaurants? Isn’t there a sub-classification they can be filed under?) there wasn’t the McDensity I have noticed in other cities, and there was nary a KFC, Burger King or TGI Friday’s in sight (well, in our sight, anyway).

On the other hand, I did see a disturbing poster pointing out that the North West has the highest incidents of MS in the world. The speculative list of possible causes included the rain, the air, the water and the trees but left out the fact that they are possibly the most health-conscious, eco-friendly and coffee-loving population on earth. Perhaps they should, en mass, sit back, eat a steak, light up a smoke and swill beer for a while to see if the MS numbers drop.

Just an idea.

Bums:

I judge the character of a city by the quality of its vagrant population. Seattle, being affluent and enjoying a relatively mild climate (try sleeping under a bridge in Upstate New York some time in January) has a fairly active subculture of the disenfranchised.

Seattle’s vagrants (or, to use a more polite term I read somewhere, ‘child actors with poor investment portfolios’) are not aggressive or even particularly obtrusive, but they are, like the general population, assertive (but in a friendly way). And many of them are disconcertingly well dressed.

If you’re not in the mood to subsidize the recreational habits of the under-employed, you can mostly avoid doing so by giving them a wide berth as you walk down the streets. But in Seattle, they blend in with the general population. You’ll be walking down the street and people you would otherwise assume to be messengers or casually dressed consultants will step up and ask you for money. One time, a young man on a skate board, wearing the requisite uniform--designer tee-shirt, baggy pants bought at an upscale mall outlet, $150 Nike sneakers--screeched to a stop in front of us to ask for a hand out.

In all the places I have visited I have never encountered such affluent bums.

Playing spot the vagrants.

They are also more literate than your average street-person. I saw a few of them holding signs (I liked that, it made them easier to pick out of the crowd), all with proper grammar and correctly spelled words.

Still, some might benefit from a refresher course in marketing. On one street corner, a young couple sat side-by side. The man held a sign stating: “Hungry. Spare change?” Next to him, the young woman was eating a take out from a Styrofoam container. The concept was sound, but the execution suffered from poor positioning.

Smoking

I realize smokers are evil and have become the new pariahs, but anywhere you go you’ll always find a certain percentage of people who don’t give a shit and smoke anyway. In Seattle, that percentage is unbelievably small. One our first full day, walking all around the downtown area, I encountered only eight people smoking cigarettes (I did see more on the other days, but still, that is not a lot of smokers for a fair-sized city). Only two of the smokers were office workers standing in front of their building having a fag break; and the two I saw were not together, they were at separate buildings. Imagine being the only person in your 42-story office block who smokes.

And there was not an ashtray in sight. Even the outdoor cafes forbid smoking. After the first day, I made an effort to spot ashtrays but never saw one until our final day when I noticed three plastic ashtrays stacked up on a corner table in a bar’s outdoor seating area. But no one was using them.

When it's not raining, Seattle is quite lovely.

One evening, my wife and I wandered out onto a long pier to watch the sunset. We were so far away from everyone I figured it couldn’t hurt to light up a cigar and enjoy the evening. After a while, my wife noticed that the pier was decked out in ‘No Smoking’ signs.

I’m happy to say, I wasn't intimidated into putting my cigar out.

No smoking my ass!

The Gulls

Sure.

I beg to differ.

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