Took a little trip to the Pacific North West a few days ago. Some people told me the place was cool. They were wrong. I now understand why Frasier doesn’t leave his apartment much in the TV show and it’s not because of the cost of outside broadcasts.
The city is so obviously the home of grunge. Never more has a city spawned a more apt music. The oppressive, dank cave-like atmosphere resonates the mood of distorted guitars and sad apathetic lyrics so perfectly I think Nirvana didn’t so much as record music as describe the tortuous effect of having to spend time in Seattle.
If you’re tired of London – the saying goes - you’re tired of life. If you’re tired of Seattle then you’re tired of the smell of fish and wet dog hair, the deification of Starbucks, miserable gloomy people and the angry homeless.
The supposedly beautiful and historic Pioneer Square was full of boarded up shops.
The Freemont Troll was being repaired from water damage.
There were locals in Seahawks hats waving placards in which Obama was portrayed as Adolph Hitler. OK, they could have been plants conjured for some tea-party rabble rousing and not locals but it didn’t add to the overall impression and their were people dropping money into their collection bins.
I was looking forward to seeing the Olympic Range and the San Juan Islands in the bay of the Puget Sound but it wasn’t possible. It was overcast and gray the whole time I was there. I questioned the locals, “the, clouds come in and sit on us for months,” said one poor chap in the Grand Central Bakery. There was a lost look in his eyes that said, ‘kill me now’.
Another friend who sometimes goes there for work told me the sun appeared one afternoon last year and everyone just left the office and went outside. The freak occurrence of nice weather was so rare – work abandonment was allowed and expected. People gathered on corners pointing at the sun and giggling.
At the famous Pikes Place Market the big draw is watching market traders dressed like deep-sea fishermen throw small and expensive packets of fish back and forth to each other like embarrassed teenagers forced to play hacky-sack for the old folks.
At the ‘Space Needle’ they wanted to charge us a hundred dollars to go up to the revolving restaurant to get a better look at the oppressive gray nothing, the industrial docklands, the frozen people marching about like the poor citizens of Pepperland after the attack by the Blue Meanies.
The Bardahl sign and the farmers market are not worth the trip to Ballard. Unless of course you’ve never seen a farmer’s market and can’t possibly imagine an old neon sign for an oil company.
I suppose it’s not all bad. Wild Ginger is as fine a restaurant as you’ll find. The Musiquarium at the Triple Door is a decent bar with live Jazz and Blues. The Arctic Club is a nice hotel. Stick to these if you have to go there.
