Visiting Seattle
My first few visits to Seattle, I didn’t go the right places.
Over at the SPU MFA program—the best writing program of its kind and not just because I teach in the poetry portion— we’re about to have our first residency on campus, having usually conducted them at Camp Casey on Whidbey Island. This will allow our writers to experience some of the cultural riches available in our fair city during the course of their program, rather than bypassing said cultural riches in quick exchange for the natural ones. But, I’d hate for anyone visiting from out-of-state, or from abroad, to put their foot wrong and so miss out on the big ones.
My first few visits to Seattle, I didn’t go the right places. I headed for the tall buildings thinking that’s where the action would be and found a hollow business core with nowhere to eat and nowhere to look but up. Since I am now a resident of this lovely place, here are some things I’d try to see while on oh, say, a ten-day visit which will be productive and full but will also feature some free time.
Note: there are many great ways to experience a city as complicated as this one. The following tips are meant for writers and artists visiting town who are staying in northern Queen Anne. Note 2: Seattle is a city of neighborhoods. You don’t go to see sites, particularly, but areas that are charming and funky and walkable. Get to a few of them and the riches will reveal themselves.
Upper Queen Anne
Atop the hill from SPU (take any of the buses on 3rd headed up) is a strip of businesses along Queen Anne Avenue. It’s pretty logical just to walk along finding cute places, but I’d be sure not to miss the following.
Eden Hill Provisions Big Max Burger (they changed the name. Same place though)
unbelievable burgers, shakes, fries and an adorable picnic area on Crockett street.
Blue Highway Games
this is a place to buy board games and puzzles and dice, but it’s super unique. They let you sit and play most of the games and the staff seems to know everything.
Mail Dispatch
as it sounds, this is where we ship packages, but there’s a good selection of gifts and clothing and wool socks.
Moonrise Bakery
recently opened bakery where everything is outstanding.
Queen Anne Book Co.
our local spot, run by an alumnus. Tell them you’re an SPU student for a discount.
Stuhlbergs
fancy gifts and cards and soaps and things.
Hilltop Alehouse
best beers on tap in the area, a nice back patio, and pub food that doesn’t need to be great but is anyway.
Fremont
Just across the blue bridge from where we are is a compact neighborhood full of great eateries and drinkeries. It’s easy to understand, all falling in likely lines surrounding the PCC (local, organic produce), but if you go, make sure to see these places.
Dusty Strings
a stringed instrument shop worth visiting even if you don’t play stringed instruments. They build guitars and harps right on the premises.
Theo Chocolates
the best chocolate in the city is made right across the canal from campus. Stop in for copious samples, or even a factory tour is you have time.
Fremont Used Books
a cozy little shop that has a good section of literary biographies in the basement and an upstairs reading nook that you can’t stand up in.
Simply Deserts
get a piece of cake. Trust me.
Aesop
a beautifully designed selection of personal care products . They usually have a copy of Paris Review or Poetry Northwest sitting around by the high-design chairs. Smell things. Wash your hands in their stone basin.
Fremont Antique Mall
tucked in the alleyway, this is a large and funky collection of kitch and LP’s and all the other ephemera from eras past.
Fremont Coffee House/ ETG
these places are opposite one another and both great. The former is an old house converted to a coffee shop; sit and linger on the broad front porch. The latter is a tiny closet that makes great biscuits and serves European-style espresso you drink in the courtyard nearby.
Mischief
my second-favorite whiskey maker in the Pacific Northwest with a chic interior for hanging out with a wee dram.
Ballard
Anyone who visits Seattle without spending a morning in Ballard is getting ripped off. I’d do this before seeing the Space Needle or Pike Place Market. A working-class neighborhood suddenly made good featuring the city’s best food and drink. On Sundays, they have a Farmer’s market that’s huge. Basically, you want to see everything on Leary Way and Ballard Ave, but especially don’t miss these.
Lucca
my favorite store anywhere. Writing papers and pencils, Italian aftershave, trinkets: this place is a whole argument for a certain kind of life.
Clover Toys
This shop used to be much more beautiful than it is now, but it is still well-stocked with toys and clothes you wouldn’t see elsewhere.
Ballard Locks
watch the ship traffic; see the Salmon jump if they’re running.
Filson
Local outdoor outfitters set-up to equip the hopeful on their way to the Yukon gold rush. Still around and still making gorgeous things.
Hot Cakes
Oh man, everything on their menu is incredible. A late-night desert spot. Try Butter-beer, if you’ve ever wondered.
Elsewhere in Town
Should you find yourselves wandering further afield, keep these spots in mind.
Elliot Bay Books
best bookstore in the city. Used to be the best in the country in their former location. Extremely well-curated. In a cool area where you’ll find many diversions.
Open Books
one of only two poetry-only bookstores in America. Heads up: they moved locations since you were last here.
Le Pichet
if you’re going to do the Pike Place Market thing, do yourself a favor and have a little something here while you’re in the area. A little bit of France downtown.
General Porpoise
the best doughnuts you’ve ever had. Two, maybe three locations now.
Citizen
if going to the Space Needle, this is the best food in the vicinity. Lots of outdoor seating and good coffee.
Central Library
a building worth seeing both from the inside and out.
There is much, much more, obviously, but this list should get the curious traveller started. Feel free to flag me down for more details or tips. And have a good trip.
Naked and Aimless
I had heard, vaguely, that there was a parade, but saw no evidence thereof until I saw a fully nude man riding a bicycle.
I'm teaching a writing class at SPU this term that I'm calling Thinking Out Loud, the course text for which is Alan Jacobs' How to Think. Yesterday, we were discussing the chapter "The Money of Fools," which, among other things, discusses the metaphors we live by. The book has been a success in class, though sometimes I worry that Jacobs writes so lucidly that I'll have little work to do. We're trying to frame take-aways from the book: how will we conduct ourselves differently after having confronted these ideas, and for this week, one of them was simply to mark, to listen for the embedded metaphors around us, and then to interrogate those for possible unintended (yet still powerful) influences. We'll try to notice when a political commentator refers to the peaceful transition of power between two parties serving the smae country as "a battle," featuring "victories," and even "casualties." And then we'll try to think of other ways the same phenomena could be framed, perhaps more helpfully.
We talked about the Italian phrase for good luck (particularly on tests)--in bocca al lupo-- "Stick it in the wolf's mouth," and then someone brought up the admittedly strange benediction wherein we suggest to our performing friends that they "break a leg." Our class discussion reminded me of a buried metaphor I heard a few years ago and have been thinking about—on and off— since.
I found myself sitting on the outside deck at Fremont Coffee one summer morning, on what happened to be the summer solstice. I had heard, vaguely, that there was a parade, but saw no evidence thereof until I saw a fully nude man riding a bicycle, standing on the pedals as though looking around for someone. I looked to my fellow customers for verification that we were all indeed observing the same bizarre phenomena. They were non-plussed. Then three girls rode by, looking similarly lost and also in the buff. By that point, we coffee sippers had pieced together that this was some kind of demonstration, likely connected with the solstice, and I thought: four riders; that's about right for the exhibitionist population of a city this size; plus, it's cold out. Then 150 more rode by, variously body painted, pierced, shaved, not, and otherwise just so very there.
It was funny to me how the critical mass mattered. The one guy I took for a pervert. The three lost girls I felt sorry for. But when the parade route rode right down the street I was sitting on, the whole mood changed almost to elation. People clapped and cheered. They brought their kids to line the streets, carrying them on shoulders like at any other procession of mayor and firetrucks and marching bands. And then the man next to me said the strangest thing; raising his fist, he shouted to the naked bikers, "Go get 'em!"
Right then, I asked myself some questions. Go get whom? And how? The clothed? Christians? All that was going to take place, objectively speaking, is these people will ride their bikes naked around a few blocks, then go home, shower, and go out to brunch. But this fellow seems to have thought they were warriors of some kind, conducting a raid. I mused and smiled, and, thinking back now on the morning while thinking through Jacobs' book, I think, I think he imagined these riders as a kind of cavalry and that they were, by airing their fannies thus, going to take down "The Patriarchy," whatever they took that to mean.
I think he thought--and I think they thought--that they were soldiers, giving up their own dignity, rather than their lives, to wage war on Mr. Rogers, or Andy Griffith, or the guys from Mad Men. That somehow, their taking a stand now against the normal worked to undo the very idea of normalcy and thereby of the status quo and somehow thereby against the church, or the married w/ 2.5 kids, or maybe the suburbs.
I suppose that's the strange thing about bacchanalian rites: they're great fun, but one can never quite see what the objective is. But that's also the strange thing about metaphors: they burrow and sometimes need to be burned backward out, like ticks.
Our June
When it isn’t summer, I always think of it as a magical time, but can’t always recall why. Sure, the weather is better, but does that really lend so much to my experiences? Last month we moved back to Seattle after 2 years away. It’s bliss. This is some of why.
When it isn’t summer, I always think of it as a magical time, but can’t always recall why. Sure, the weather is better, but does that really lend so much to my experiences? Last month we moved back to Seattle after 2 years away. It’s bliss. This is some of why. Here’s what I did each day in June, when I wasn’t working.
- Lunch at Senso Unico w/ my daughter while wife shopped downtown.
- My first day getting into the gym at SPU.
- Finished my children’s book.
- I don’t know what I did this day because I forgot to write it down.
- Pancake breakfast at Swedish Cultural Center. This is kind-of a Seattle tradition and something I’d always wanted to try.
- Family evening walk in Mrytle Edwards Park along Elliot Bay.
- Morning walk with wife on the beach at Golden Gardens. A heard of sea otters barking like mad!
- Normal day: worked then grilled outside in evening.
- Poetry Reading at Phinney Books, featuring Richard Kenney, and where I was tons of friends. Beers with Fowler before.
- Quiet evening at home.
- Meet Jeremiah at Third Place Books at the top of Lake Washington. (I buy Iphegenia at Aulis trans. Merwin)
- Art opening for my friend Hopkins, spent the day meeting people and having hors d’ouevres at Zingaro. Wife attends Pacific Northwest Ballet season finale in evening.
- Recovery day
- Visit to Frye Art Gallery
- Tennis in the morning
- Lunch with my friend Andrew, then family evening walk from Queen Anne to Fremont, over the bridge at sunset. Drinks at Red Door.
- Surprise concert by The Helio Sequence, a favorite, right across the canal. We walk to it in our pajamas and dance like children.
- Wife attends Whim W’him show at Cornish Playhouse
- Day in Capital Hill: Top Pot doughnuts, Elliot Bay Books, then CD store. (I buy MWS Project)
- Worked and grilled in eve.
- I teach evening class at Northwest University.
- Alain de Botton reading at Seattle Public Library. Drinks after at Good Bar in Pioneer Square, which is amazing.
- Taking it easy.
- Our friends the Foxes come for dinner.
- My first soccer game ever: go Sounders!
- Picnic lunch by Fremont canal, evening church meeting.
- Sunny day, reading Henry James on bench in front yard.
- I get good news regarding a publication.
- Men’s morning meeting; dinner al fresco.
- I write this, thinking what a blessed existence this is.
Next month, we’re hosting my friend El Che, going to the Olympic Peninsula with my brother’s family, and camping on the Lower Skokomish river with my father-in-law; wife is having a dance show at Bellevue Art Museum, and Shakespeare-in-the-Park begins, so things don’t show any sign of letting up.
Why I'm Leaving Seattle
My wife wrote a much more moving elegy about our time in Seattle here, but we deal with loss differently, and my mode has a touch of the grape fox.
I've never loved a city the way I love Seattle. I read books about it, most of them excellent, like those below (to name just a very few). I buy her music; I read her poets, I patronize her theaters and I tell everyone I know how great she is. And she is. But I'm leaving. Here's why:
My friends left
Not all of them, mind you, but ones I liked having around. Weirdly,
- Nancy
- Matt
- Brian
- Amber
- Jeff
- Nhadira, and
- Devorah
all left within a year of one another. There are some super people still here, obviously, but this exodus really took something out of my social circle.
We had the best bookstore in the world and now we don't
The closure of the Elliot Bay Book Company ripped the heart right out of the city for me. Sure, it moved to Capitol Hill, and has spearheaded a revival of that already-flourishing area, but not only is the new location not the same, it's not as good. Gone are the meandering paths, the human-scaled rooms. Gone the sense of discovery. It is still a very well-curated bookstore, but the building isn't half so winsome, the neighborhood not so fun to walk around, the used book section removed, the reading room louder, and on and on, ad nauseum.
Sure, we still have Wessel and Lieberman (now the best bookstore in the city, for my money) but it too has shrunk from it's original light-filled space on First Avenue to the hind quarters of same. And we'll always have the Magus, headquarters of the surly, dismissive help, and even little places I love like Mercer Street Books, but the Mecca, the flagship, the anchor of civic literary culture dried up all but completely.
My favorite coffee shops changed hands
Muse. There and not.
I used to know the owner of the place I frequented most (in walking distance to my house), the Muse Coffee Co. He was friendly and cool and made great coffee. It was a neighborhood joint, and one of my de facto offices. About two years ago, he sold it to a guy who had never worked in coffee before. I was there when the previous owner showed the new owner how to make an espresso for the first time. He's probably a good guy, but he doesn't seem to like people much. It's a depressing place to be anymore: nearly always empty, and always glum. The coffee isn't anywhere near as good and neither is the atmosphere.
One year later, the same thing happened at my second-most-frequented place: Cafe Zingaro. The previous owner, who was a joy to be around and who made everyone feel at home, left. With her, half the patrons left too, who don't appreciate shouted from the till a corporate, overly-theatrical "How can I help you?" upon entry.
And now my bet for Best Coffee in the City, Bauhaus is closing and re-opening somehwere else. Whatever.
The record store in my neighborhood became a Chase bank
R.I.P. Easy Street Records. You were one of my favorite places in the world.
The city cancelled my bus route
It now seriously takes me one hour door-to-door to traverse the 5.5 miles to the University of Washington on the newly created route #31. That is insane, especially given that an express (the #45), which only ran three times in the morning and therefore couldn't have cost the city much, used to make the trip in 15 minutes flat.
My church exploded
This I won't say much about, because I disapprove of many people's new favorite pasttime: Hating on Churches, but I used to belong to an edgy church that met in a warehouse and had great music. Now it is a multi-site conglomerate of 15 campuses across 5 states, that runs on video simulcasts, which I think is terrible aesthetically, but also socially, since there are so many people ready and willing to serve as leaders of those churches instead.
That's all for now, not because I'm out of reasons, but because I'm tired of typing. Also because I have to pack. I'm sailing on.
C. M-H R.I.P.
This week, I resumed my reading of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, from a new copy I picked up at Elliot Bay Book Company, having left behind the Tübingen Library's copy in Germany, at...the...Tübingen Library. For a bookmark, I am using a postcard from the Linda Hodges Gallery here in Seattle that was an advert for a painting show by Christopher Martin Hoff.
Every day this week, when I picked up the book to start reading, I glanced at the reproduction and said to my wife, "we really have to buy this painting; this guy is amazing." Yesterday, I found out that the artist died this year, quite young, but apparently of natural causes. It was sad to hear not only because he'd been, weirdly, on my mind all week, but because his work was so good, and because he was apparently a thoroughly decent human being. The city was better for his being here.
On the Town
My wife and I were missing our hometown (Seattle) the other day, as we are exiled and adventuring abroad for the year, and counting its many glories, not least among which is the thriving theater scene. "Remember that one play?" she'd say, and I: "that was great; remember this other one?" Suddenly it seemed like we'd seen a lot of plays during the last two years. Suddenly it seemed we should try to make a list of those we remembered particularly.
Comedy of Errors
dir. George Mount for
: we saw this Shakespeare-in-the-park production twice, once at the show's open, and again at its close, as a treat for our out-of-town wedding guests.
Julius Caesar
: Another Shakespeare-in-the-Park, this time at Seward, and a season before.
Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World
dir. Anita Montgomery for
: Staring my good friend Carol Roscoe in a breakout role.
The Tempest
at Seattle Shakespeare Company: featuring, on the night we went, live music by
, composed especially for the show.
Crime and Punishment
: one of the only competent productions I've seen at this beleaguered, (since closed) regional playhouse more concerned with furthering a sociological agenda than with making good art.
Othello
Intiman: Officially the worst play I've ever seen, despite (because of?) the cast's having been shipped in from New York, to the understandable pique of Seattle's own talented acting pool; we walked out at half-time and were dismayed for weeks.
On the Town (a musical)
at 5th Ave: the actress/singer/personality Sara Rudinoff enlivens everything she touches.
39 Steps
Seattle Repertory Theater: disarmingly charming and British.
Jude the Obscure
Erikson Theater: My own entry in Book-it's Novel Workshop Series; actors reading from stools on stage hasn't been so entertaining since Dylan Thomas' reading of
Under Milkwood
in New York, which I unfortunately missed, having been born forty years too late for the premier.
The Cider-House Rules
(parts 1 and 2): an epic production full of moving performances, which addressed, I think, social problems we're not really having. It made terrific sense when they staged it 15 years earlier, to general acclaim.
Great Expectations
: Unbelievable directing, a terrific supporting cast, and Jane Jones (as both Havisham and Betsy) in a performance I think I'll always remember.
Oh Lovely Glowworm
dir. Roger Benington for
: A flawless production of a flawed but terribly-inspiring play. Magical in nearly-every way: this was one of those rare (for me) pieces of art that made me want to do everything differently.
Hunter Gathers
: This tiny theater is (was) the most important thing happening in the Northwest for the last decade. The ambition and level of artistry on evidence was just stupefying. Then, they lost most of their ensemble, artistic directors, and lighting designers either to New York or to theaters with bigger budgets, and have since become a gay teen youth center that sometimes does plays.
Twelfth Night
Seattle Shakes: A Christmas production! So fun and Dickensian!
Two Gentlemen of Verona
: A mod-production that used technology in a smart way: characters texted each other and we could read their screens via subtle projections. Sounds fishy, but it wasn't. Definitely the coolest production I've ever seen of this play.
Electra
: This was kind of a play, but mostly a vehicle for the emoting of its female lead Marya Kaminsky. She's a phenomenal actress, but it was unsettling to basically watch someone hurt for two hours straight; like watching
Passion of the Christ
, that.
Those were the big ones anyway. Added to the concerts (notably, the XX, Sunny Day Real Estate, Rufus Wainwright, and Mark Kozalek) and dance shows (importantly Nacho Duato,
--which may be the single best thing I've ever seen--Pacific Northwest Ballet's
Romeo &Juliet
and year-end
Gala
, Seattle Opera's
Don Quichotte
, and the powerful modern company Sonia Dawkins' Prism Dance Theater), well, we were busy. Still, what a city.
Things I'm Happy About: King Street Station
King Street Station in Seattle’s once-glorious and much-neglected Pioneer Sqaure, is a beautiful, classic train stop whose clock tower is modeled on San Marco in Venice. It was grand and lovely until the 1950’s, when, in a misguided attempt to modernize, they put in a drop-ceiling, covering the height, windows, and terra cotta carvings on the ceiling. Instantly, the place felt like a bus depot: a cramped and criminal bin for only the most-desperate travelers. Ridership dropped to a trickle. Thanks to some heroic Democratic legislators, spending political capital, and standing up to virulent, inchoate, spittle-flecked, rage-driven opposition, we’re getting the money to update the station, bringing some decency and grace to an area that badly needs it, some jobs to a town that does likewise, and some future-planning to a region that could use it.
This update came out today from the department of transportation.
