Spring break for the kids

We took a staycation to big ol' Seattle and acted like tourists for a couple days. Wilder brought a friend along and poor teenage Rose just had me. Funny thing... they had more fun at the small neighborhood park playing lavamonster and getting unseasonably wet in the international fountain at Seattle Center (I don't even know if it is still called that! My 70's roots are showing). We all had fun, I got enormously exhausted. Stayed in a perfect Seattle funky (historic!) hotel next to Seattle Center that was as quiet as my Poulsbo home. Actually quieter during frog season at my house. The Marqueen. If you are looking for cheap and funky... we had a kitchen, reading nook, and four people fit in our room great. We ate well, drove (fast) down the hills of Seattle (poor suspension!), talked to homeless people, went to uberexpensive EMP, took the monorail from Seattle Center to downtown.... some standard tourist stuff, some maybe not so much.

That is my son with the umbrella... prepared to enter the water spray. I can tell them "Don't get wet" but those words just disappear in the wind when they get near the challenge of a fountain.

Wall of Death. Have one in your city? One of the hidden gems under a bridge in Seattle. We also tracked down a troll squeezing a VW bug under a different bridge.
Kerry Park on Queen Anne hill is always a great place for a photo. Hopefully yours will not be a kinda dark, missing a flash photo.
Wow. Seattle traffic. It was insane. I freaked the kids out and said I was going to roll down my window and start asking people where they were from since there was so many more cars. (I didn't.)

Pissed Seattle Driving - Ranting Post

Not pissed like drunk, pissed like I get around inattentive unfocused illegal drivers such as those I drove with in Seattle for two hours.
Arghh. Any nostalgia I had for missing Seattle and it's amazing stores filled with junk I don't need, but boy, is it fun to look at; my old breakfast haunt Vera's in Ballard that I have been going to for 26 years and ordering the same thing all that time(it is not even on the menu anymore); or the hyper-eco bicycle backpack wearin' grannies standing in line in front of me at the coffee shop with their 'put-a-bird-on-it' wallets.... all these lovely Seattle moments have been obliterated by flippin' holier than thou must drive under the speed limit in all four lanes of the freeway cars. People! Move your damn car over one rippin' lane. I swear to god you will not be any less of a man, or woman, or whatever to get your car out of the fast lane when you are going 54 mph. I really promise. I think people who drive in the appropriate lane for their speed are HOT. I don't even care that you drive under the speed limit (well, most of the time) if you are in the furthest right lane for your rate of travel. Did you all even read the driver's education book? This may be one of those posts I should count to ten before posting... nah.
Question for Seattle : What the heck are you doing with traffic and your roads? I drove around through Tacoma to get to Seattle this morn, usually a leisurely hour and a half drive which was right on time until I hit Seatac... then the freeway stopped. No problem, I bounced over the highway 99 to take the back way. Absolutely stopped. No problem, I will get off of 99 and go along the waterfront. Stopped dead, me and about 30 semi-tractor trailers that were also not happy. Then, the waterfront road is closed, and we all get back on 99 (except for those semi's who were picking up loads on the waterfront) Geez Louwheezie, it was dadblame impossible to get into the city today. It took me 2.5 hours. I am going to kiss my front door when I get home. Land of quiet and low density and horses and yard that needs weeding. I can also tell my personality is beginning to match my county. I want my calm two lane roads again. Where traffic is (shock) 11 cars waiting for a light to turn. Pic: The only traffic in my neighborhood, the wait for the Sunday ferry back to Seattle. Which actually, looking at this, is a bit daunting and why if I ever have to go to Seattle Sunday afternoon I take the Bremerton or Bainbridge ferry.

Seattle

Mid pic: Tacoma bridge fee booth traffic. Not really a Seattle pic, but clooooose.

Top pic: The curved portion of the Seattle viaduct with its patchwork of metal plates holding it together. This is the weak link in the whole thing. Nothing really underneath this supporting, since the waterfront was filled a kajillion years ago (okay, about 100) and the worms have eaten through the wood. This bridge is not made of wood,obviously, the stuff under-under the pavement is.

Bottom: Back to SoDo. When I was a youngster, Seattle's Interstate 5 freeway had oodles of bridges that went to nowhere. They just ended in mid-air....(they were blocked off... so no risk of taking an airborne ride.) Great planning on someones part, since the infrastructure was created before the cars came. Interesting, since that is not usually what happens in our wishy-washy can't make a decision without three years worth of public meetings where the dog chases its tail over and over and over. This is one of the former overpasses that 'went to nowhere' now going somewhere. And you can drive on it. Risk free.

Old Industrial Seattle - SODO

These were taken before I quit my job, when I was still scurrying to and fro around Seattle. I am driving through road construction in the SoDo district of Seattle. (See below for SoDo description)
This industrial part of Seattle used to be fraught with danger by large work trucks. Literally, you would be in the extreme minority when driving through here during the week in a car with only 4 tires. Seattle has changed, the heavy labor industries, grit filled industries are all disappearing, and the old cedar beam constructed workshops and buildings are being converted or torn down. The one on the bottom is my favorite. That building has been sinking or twisting or leaning more and more with each passing year. When you walk in it, the woodwork is amazing. Not that it is fine woodwork in the carpenter sense, but it has timbers so large all I can think of is "we don't even have trees like that anymore anywhere in this state." And we are the Evergreen State. The trees cut down for these buildings were local. The wood is amazing. Sometimes I see it go by on Craigslist, someone has a beam and is parting it out for big bucks. Things change. I know. I also know I am in the minority when I look at a tilting building and get all nostalgic. Looking at an old building to me is like reading a book, or people watching. Look at it closely top to bottom, left to right, and you can see remnants of all it has been through. Cedar gutters? Loft accessible from the outside? Old staircases? Blocked off doors or windows? A prohibition era speakeasy in the basement? Look long enough and it will all appear.
SODO: This neighborhood is competely sitting on fill added to the mudflats of Seattle during the last turn of the century. Another hot spot in Seattle you don't want to be when the earthquake hits.... this area will liquefy, which means shake like jello in a bowl and turn to sloppy sinking sand. I am actually pretty sure that geologists have a better definition for liquefaction, but mine is more food friendly.
The newly named ("newly" means within my old lifetime) SoDo (meaning, cutely, SOuth of DOwntown) ( I don't even want to know how much the acronym folks got paid for that one)
centers around the old Sears building, now the Starbucks headquarters. Another clever acronym in Seattle is the S.L.U.T. (South Lake Union Trolley/Transit) T-shirts were quickly printed up with "Ride the SLUT." That one was quickly changed to SLUS... 'streetcar' instead of 'trolley.' I can't tell you how many times I made our poor transportation historian define trolley vs. streetcar vs. tram vs. train vs. elevated train on and on. Plus add in historic timeline. I can just tell you my former volunteers were amazingly patient.

Images: Top, always construction going on in Seattle dangit... gotta tear something down! Mid: Blue building example of Seattle heavy industry that used to abound in SoDo.

Bottom: Sad sad red building across the street from the Sears building. Trust me, it is cool on the inside. Well, okay. Cool if you are into old tilting things.

Portlandia

If you ever wanna know what it is like living in Seattle or Portland... here you go.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/205428/portlandia-i-dream-of-the-90s#s-p1-sr-i1

Gotta love it, this place can be over the top. I think my favorite part is when they go to the Portland restaurant and get the personal bio of the chicken they want to have for dinner. The "free-range on four wooded acres chicken" with attached photograph and name (Colin? something ridiculous... because lord knows we name our chickens well... Goldie for the gold colored one etc.) And then they get in their old Volvo wagon and go see where the chicken was raised to make sure it is all okay with them. Omigod. The funny part is that this is not a pie-in-the-sky scenario. It rings true for the NW. Wacky. Love it. (It should be noted we do also have normal people who shop at Safeway and just buy the damn plucked bird in the plastic bag without knowing the name...)
Image courtesy : http://www.ifc.com/portlandia/

Ferry Ride

As I was driving toward the ferry last night and the sun was layin' long across the city, giving it a very fall-like glow, I thought : Holy crap, i will not be seeing this lovely city every week now that I quit my job! I will miss that.
On the ferry commute this morning I am behind a beautifully restored '65 mustang that has issues starting. This is the third time this month I have been behind a car with engine probs. I will not miss that. Or driving across Bainbridge! YAY! I will not miss that doldrum event!

Seattle story - "Getting in Touch with Nature"

Every day that I work, (all of three days a week) I go to Metropolitan Market in West Seattle to pickup lunch, dinner, or goodies for our volunteers.
I usually walk around in my own little bubble, as Seattlelites are prone to do, but today I stepped out of my bubble to poke at someone elses bubble.
While waiting in the coffee line for tea and to purchase a lovely tomato plant (one can never grow too many tomatoes it seems in May and June, UNTIL those tomatoes start ripening, and then I wonder what the heck I was thinkin' and start pawning them off on strangers...)
anyway, on topic....waiting in line. The fellow in front of me was talking to coffee gal, and saying he had been communing with nature. That he was getting in touch with nature by going to Green Lake and walking.
Let's visit Green Lake, shall we?
When he was saying how good he felt being out of doors in nature, I could not help but let out one of those nostril blows that is somewhat snortish. He turned around, and said, "you don't like green lake?" I told him I did not really think Green Lake was nature. (man-made lake, giant paved trail around it, that is packed on weekends, surrounded by a busy road on three sides and a highway on the other, and fringed with houses) As is usual when I blurt out these blunt-ish statements, he got a bit ruffled. If he would have been HONEST and said " I went to Green Lake to check out the babes" or some such, I would not have snorted. So sad that Seattle residents are beginning to think a paved trail and lawn is nature. You plant housing and condos like trees, and look what happens. People lose touch with greenspace. Used to be a goal of Seattle... now it is just "build-me-up-baby...make-mine-multi-use-housing-please"
I guess that is what balconies and lanais are for. Plants.

Seattle Viaduct

The Seattle waterfront has a two-level freeway running next to and above it.
Sometimes when things have always been there (ya know, within your own lifetime) you get used to seeing it and cannot imagine anything else.

The unfortunate truth is that this is duplicate to the freeway in San Francisco that pancaked and fell during the 1989 earthquake. Seattle has been ignoring this fact and dealing with it at the same time. Local news reports after the SF earthquake reported--the Seattle viaduct is NOT like the San Francisco viaduct -- and then proceeded to tell us it is not long for this world and sinking and placed weight restrictions on it. See, the freeway is built upon fill. That fill is supported by wood pilings that date back to early Seattle. When where I was standing in the photo was water and docks. And those pilings have been chewed by piling eating worms. So those pilings really are not supporting the pillars any longer. Hence, the freeway sinking. Hence, the metal supports added in pic #1. I think all that temp work to shore it up was over 14 million. Here is the possible replacement that our governor,

Gregoire, and our former mayor, Nickels were in a pissing match about. Well now Seattle has a new mayor, god help that city, McGinn, such a perfect Seattle can't make a decision, let's make sure we all feel good about it, let's have absolutely no leadership experience or budget handling experience but get people to vote for us because we are not the other guy, let's have endless pointless expensive time wasting meetings about it and then still not make a decision Mayor McGinn. I don't know what his opinion is about it other than he may want half the lanes dedicated to walkers and bikers... which the day I see semi trucks from the waterfront hauling cargo all across the US by bicycle is the day I will stop drinking coffee. This simulation of the viaduct replacement by tunnel under Seattle is brilliant. I did not add the simulated viaduct in an earthquake that is also on youtube... that is the sort of thing that makes people paranoid. (And I think my car was represented in there...) but you can google that in your own time. I will not contribute to american paranoia. Except through my own children.

Under Seattle by car.... : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgtOTMJt-AI (note, I can't get this to work, if it works for you, let me know)

Seattle views

The first image is a view of the historic Smith Tower on the right --the smaller pointed-hat topped building all alone. This building - for over 50 years the tallest building west of the Mississippi - is now barely seen compared to the rest of the citys highrise towers. This pic is deceptive, since my camera and perspective make all those towers seem about th same height. The large black tower in the center, tallest in Seattle, was evacuated on 9/11 since the country was flipping out. Justifiably.

The Smith tower has a room you can rent at the top of it with a 360 degree view of Seattle and Puget Sound. The cement structure below is the viaduct, an elevated freeway that runs above the Seattle waterfront and doomed in an earthquake. It is closed this weekend for measuring... since it is sinking and unstable. I used to not drive on it except under duress, or when late. Now I drive on it since it is the fastest route to the ferry.

I have accepted my mortality.

Seattle So Far Away - Land Use

For work, which I don't really talk about much, I ended up at a meeting. A public meeting where elected officials and community leaders spoke. Here is a quick reason why I am so SO happy to be gone from the city.

Seattle City Council members do endless work and need to be on three committees each. One of the options is to join the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee. Only, this year, that committee has been renamed to C.O.B.E. , pronounced like Kobe, Japan. This stands for the Committee on the Built Environment. Built environment. Let's take away the language of "land" use and "neighborhood" and "planning" and change it to we are only supervisors of the built environment, which is all Seattle will be... Buildings, pavement, pocket parks not big enough to throw a ball. Things controlled, designed, created by humans. Ya know, I am fairly sure people move here because it is Seattle. Not New York.

The other point: We have in Seattle a giant public area called Seattle Center. (http://www.seattlecenter.com/)

Leftover from the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, it holds the space needle, rides,(recently sold) science center, and our fave... the Center House with theatre, childrens museum and free public programming. We have seen amazing cultural events and fantastic dance contests. Our kids have even performed on stage.

In this same meeting, it was said that Seattle Center's future would be to become like New York's Central Park. No offense meant, but Central Park is surrounded by nothing but a sea of buildings. You can walk away from Seattle Center and still see trees and single story buildings. Guess my old hometown shall become the name first placed on our shores wishfully by the Terry brothers from 1851... New York.

Photo credit: Bumbershoot Event, Seattle Center. Courtesy Christopher Nelson

1962 World's Fair Postcard

History - Seattle Totem or Story Poles

Since I have not been posting with pics since I keep freezing my camera by leaving it in the car I am not currently driving and have a bunch of work photos on there anyway I thought I could cheat and treat you to a bit of history.

The unpainted story pole standing in the pic to the right while the fellow is strapping down a painted totem pole is the first pole EVER in Seattle that tells the story of Seattle. Installed in 2007, and carved by a member of the currently federally unrecognized Duwamish tribe.

Chief Seattle lived in the Duwamish River area, and his mother was duwamish. Unrecognized tribe? A major city is named after a respected indigenous leader of whom some of his descendents are unrecognized by the federal gov't as being duwamish? There is a whole lotta conversation to be had on this, as in, who decides 'what' you are? (i know i am in trouble for using this terminology, ms. facci.) How about you are what you are. If you are born to it, if you are raised it, why would that be contested. Why would someone else define your family of origin whether you are born into it, adopted, extended or married. I am fairly sure we are still a free-choice culture. I notice when money, fiscal rewards or property/casino/fishing rights get involved a whole lot more people have an opinion. Ok, done with my wee venting action.

A story pole differs from a totem pole in that from bottom to top it tells a story of something. A totem is just that, totemic figures/symbols representing a community or tribe.

-The replaced horizontal totem pole that is being strapped down was bug chewed and moved away to the local community museum.

The vertical postcard of the single pole and the Seattle city skyline captures an image of the first totem pole ever placed at this park. This photo looks like a 1950's Seattle. This particular totem pole was created for the tourist trade in the early 1900's. The significance of the totem figures is nada, it was created using popular totemic figures, not necessarily significant to the people that carved it. At the top is a beaver, then bear with a salmon, then orca/killer whale. The faces on the side have to do with the orca being this tribes significant creature. But as I said, this is just tourist trade work..

I notice a serious lack of pollution in this photo. The air is no longer this clean in Seattle. Sigh.

And then there is modern day Seattle all the way at the top. What is sad is I remember when the wee dinky Smith Tower, just a bitty point on the far far right was a BIG BUILDING on the skyline. Now you can barely make it out with all the newer larger pointy things rising in the air. We call one of the buildings downtown the "Ban roll-on" building. If you are downtown, you can figure it out. (And I suppose if you are old enough to remember Ban deodorant.....) See the yellowy haze most visible to the right of the pic? This was probably a nice summer day when we had not had rain in quite a while, so the air is full of crap. Did I say I moved away from this city? Why yes, yes I have. And am happy about that since we have an asthmatic child whose asthma has mysteriously been getting much better.

Modern Seattle photo courtesy http://www.alkibeachwalks.blogspot.com/

Feisty woman venting action - Seattle

See this lovely condominium? The one that has no parking, is on a busy street (3rd Ave NW and Holman in N. Seattle) across the street from a stripper espresso drive-through and drive through oil change station?

See this restored craftsman? On a busy street in the popular Ballard neighborhood, most of these once single family homes have been demolished and flat-fronted, bland, soon-to be dilapidated quickly built multi-use condominium structures have replaced them.

I have loved this house for 21 years. I always envisioned offering to buy it from them when i won the lottery. (Should probably start buying the tickets if I really dream of winning...) I am glad it is still standing, even though the surrounding single family housing with yards, the quaint courtyard apartments of the 30's to 60's are gone and.. what? what is there? Ah yes. Condominiums.

I am just going to say right now I have a love/hate relationship with the city I left behind... Seattle.

Seattle Primer - somewhat rant-y

I was rather fond of this response I gave to someone thinking of moving to Seattle and looking for hip and affordable. It was before I left Seattle, and I see in here a bit of WHY I left Seattle....

"Hip and affordable in Seattle. Hmmmmm. Well should start out that there are no real ghetto places in Seattle... compared to other cities. It is a pretty homogenous group with an enormous amount of fierce individualism thrown in. There is probably no street in Seattle that I would not live, although some lean more toward owning a car alarm, not walking your dog at 1 in the morning in the park or making sure your front door is locked. The most ethnically diverse areas are still the central area, international district, and White Center (not yet swallowed up and annexed by the city of Seattle, so still 'cheap') and can be a blast. Some folk are flipped out by the central district, since in white white Seattle it has more of a color range to it's residents... but it is becoming completely gentrified and losing a bit of it's character. But then much of Seattle is losing it's character.... but I digress. Since you said hip: I am thinking you would be fond of (the old) Fremont, Ballard, Columbia City, Capitol Hill and parts of West Seattle. Queen Anne is another hill in Seattle that some may consider hip, I think it has gone beyond that due to being way too expensive and a little high on the 'aren't we lovely' scale. If you mean hip as kinda a self-centered uptight way.. you would probably like the eastside as in Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, or the lovely gem of an island a 30 minute ferry boat ride way-- Bainbridge Island. Good for you to moving to Seattle with so many others: Here is your damn seattle primer: You gotta recycle (really, you will be fined), don't jaywalk (you will be ticketed), you gotta be pc, if you are a baseball fan and go see the Mariners...you need to sit on your rear and cheer (don't jump up! heavens! don't yell! oh no!) during baseball games so the people behind you don't get there panties in a wad because they paid good money for season tickets and don't want you jumping up in front of them during an amazing play, or even being too loud, and no, they won't tell you directly by leaning forward the 3 inches to your back... they will go get the usher who will tell you to hush (oh, no, I am not bitter), so that being said, true Seattle-lites have a bit of a passive aggressive thang going on... and if you stay you will learn the 30 second super-nice attitude to all things and the ability to committee meeting things to death --"the Seattle way" . Please come with the ability to make decisions rapidly, and speak your mind. We need more of that so if you can get through your first two very grey winters which tends to suck the everlovin' life out of some folks... welcome!
Photos: Wilder and I waving a ship with Rose on it heading to camp through the Chittenden locks
Heading down down underground to the express lanes under I-5

Houses, traffic, and progress

Or, an alternate title: Shopping for that discount. Since I now have this old place, I am loathe to update it with current trends in housing fashions. That could be akin to having a post-war box house and turning it into a craftsman. That is not the house's origins, so it can look a bit funky. I am therefore driven to re-use or renew type stores. The ones that get called in to strip a classic home built like a tank so that thin walled condos can be built. Ah, I am showing my opinions. If you are going to call it progress, can you at least construct the new structures as well as the one you tore down?
Back to topic. So going to used house part stores in Seattle, and they charge more than if I bought it new. Which, I don't understand. BUT I found the habitat for humanity store in bremerton, and that has some old, some new, alot of wood and leftover paint and brass fixtures, etc etc for very reasonable prices. I have been back several times. I shall take out the previous owners walmart updates and at least get it back within 30 years of when it was built. I have no issues with updating the things you can't see.... water lines, electrical. plumbing, it is when the whole house is converted into whatever housing trend is suiting middle America at that exact moment that it irks me. You ask : why care? And I am sure I would not if I had not grown up in this area, and seen the drastic changes in housing, landscape and amount of green our city no longer has. That, and the layer of pollution that hangs over our heads. Gee... what do all those trees do? Suck up water so there is less flooding? Suck crap out of the air? What is it that happens when you develop large tracks of farmland way the bum%$# out from the cities where people work? With no infrastructure to handle that amount of traffic? People drive and drive and drive. The asthma level in our city has skyrocketed. No one talks of this, but everyone knows. My doctor told me to move if I wanted my asthmatic daughter to be able to breathe. Good philosophy, and I did, but not everyone has that option.