Seattle!

[nibot]

So, Seattle. It's totally different from what I had in my mind, and yet, the reality makes more sense than my expectations. I find it difficult to trust cities with mountains. It's for the same reason I'm lost in places where there is snow but not evergreen trees. In California the cities are away from the mountains. You go to the mountains to get away from the cities. It's cold in the mountains in the winter and where there is snow there must be evergreen trees. I felt a little odd in Salt Lake City and it's the same in Seattle. How can a steel-and-glass metropolis be in the midst of terrain so striking?

Seattle is neon. I mean, there is neon everywhere, like there is in San Diego, maybe more. Neon isn't garish, it isn't all Las Vegas. It's cool light in cool, round letters in the night. What brings neon to San Diego and to Seattle but not to San Francisco or to Rochester? Is it because these are old WWII war-boom towns, that that was the era when the aesthetic cooled and crystallized? I looked it up and found an article from the Seattle Times: "City lights: Two men pursue their passion to save Seattle's neon." I had no idea.

There is music everywhere. Buskers. Tribes of dredlocked, violin-weilding punks. A man playing a pizza tray and an assortment of bottles and buckets better than I've heard drums played in a long time. Walking by a cafe, music blared. Inside a band played a mid-day rock concert to rows of attentive hipsters in neat rows of chairs. Awesome and hilarious. This is the sort of thing I'd heard about Seattle and it's thrilling to see it's true, and hilarious too.

I didn't expect the weather to be so nice, this place to be so much like the Bay Area, or to be greeted by cherry trees in bloom.

Today: Breakfast at Julia's, wandering the downtown, pallas_marisa's Lackadaisy co-op, dinner with squarkz at her apt. Tomorrow: try to get some work done! Next day: We rent a car and head south to Oregon!

Comments

[janviere.livejournal.com]

Funny, that. Somehow I came out of California with the exact opposite expectations. Of *course* one builds cities where there are mountains nearby. I am bothered by cities (New York, Paris) that are out in the middle of flat nowhere.

I think I immediately liked Bergen for this reason.

The mountains around the bay look smaller every time I come home, but at least they're a change of elevation, and you can go in them and look out over the lights and the bay or across to San Francisco on its hill. I remember LA being surrounded by brown mountains, too.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

wow!

I thought that place was pretty incredible.

What are you doing today? I think we're heading back to that area of town to settle into a cafe and try to do some physics.

if i had the time, i'd totally stalk you.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

hot.

mixing glazes?

[wealhtheow.livejournal.com]

Yay! Ping me when you get to Portland! (my phone #'s in my ell jay if you need it)

[squarkz.livejournal.com]

it's neat to have you here, because you notice a lot of things i never really thought about. the neon lights, for instance — i didn't know they were special.

apparently, i look like i'm about to vomit whenever someone pulls out a camera.