The Seattle Notes: Part 2

Seattle is a large city. It didn’t really occur to me just how big it was until I began to wandering around aimlessly my first morning. After the brief yet chaotic belt fiasco, I needed something to eat. I had been in the air for six hours and didn’t arrive in the city until 1 in the morning, and the only food available in my hotel room was from the ‘Honor Bar’. There was no honor in this thing. When you charge 8 dollars for a small packet of cashews, honor pretty much goes right out the window. But that first night, I found myself wrought with drowse and hunger, staring at this “honor” bar and thinking about taking a $3.50 snickers out and just devouring it. I seriously contemplated it, and came real damn close to just ripping the wrapper off. Instead, I simply went to the window and took in the view. That view of course was a parking lot and a 24 hour gym. I found great humor in watching overweight people make their way into the gym under the cover of night and proceed to become destroyed on a treadmill. If there’s one thing I learned about big cities, it doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is, there will always be someone around to see you. And I saw these chunky people basically pour their hearts and souls (and plenty of sweat) into their middle of the night workouts. I took the view for what it was. I couldn’t let myself be let down by my fantasy that maybe, just maybe, I would have a window that looked out at the space needle and the downtown skyline. Because there’s only one place that offers that, and it’s probably a lot of money to stay the night in Fraser Krane’s apartment (which I doubt even exists).
Looking for breakfast that following morning, I stopped in at the first restaurant I could find. It was called The Dahlia Lounge, it was swanky and deserted. I could write all about this place, but I think the note I wrote entitled ‘Dahlia Lounge’ sums it up perfectly

25 dollar breakfast was disgusting. Dry ass potatoes.

I left a bit disappointed and just began to wander around. This is not a good idea for a young man such as myself in a big city that I had just set foot in for the first time not ten hours ago. With a Starbucks on every corner, it’s real easy getting lost. And I knew I was getting lost because the buildings were looking less and less ‘Downtownish’ and more and more ‘That area outside downtown that tourists usually shouldn’t go aimlessly walking into-ish’. You hear a lot of people say that Seattle is a safe city, but it definitely is still a city, which means you shouldn’t be acting like an idiot (of course the majority of my behavior in the coming days could very well be described as ‘idiotic’).
It’s early morning, and suddenly I notice the crowded hustle of people has disappeared. I hadn’t been keeping track of the streets, and wondered just how far away I was. Later I would discover that I was actually still downtown and not in a dangerous neighborhood at all like my suburban paranoia had hinted. I just happened to be on a few blocks where there was just some parking lots and empty buildings. How silly of me. Those incoherent homeless guys were probably more scared of me than I was of them…actually, probably not.
There are a lot of homeless people in Seattle, and some are downright vicious. Shortly after a breakfast stop at a McDonalds one morning I was walking back to my hotel smoking a cigarette. A homeless man approached me and shouted ‘Enjoy getting cancer!!!!’. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. I was not expecting it at all. I mean, I couldn’t turn around and yell back “Enjoy dying from exposure!”, that would be mean. Oh, it was such a good comeback though.
There was another one, much friendlier, who always stood in front of a Vietnamese restaurant that I came to really enjoy. He had a straw hat and flashed a peace sign to everyone and spoke with a Jamaican accent saying ‘Ok, peace now brotha’. And the guy who stood by Nordstroms was about my age, only a lot more Kurt Cobain-ish holding a sign that said ‘Need money to pay my weed dealer’. I wonder how effective that technique is.
But back to the first day. I’m semi-lost and realizing that I don’t even know what street my hotel is on. For all future trips, I will make it a first priority to learn the crossroads of my hotel. You have got to have a centralized strategy. So I just turned back around and basically said ‘Maybe if I can see the Space Needle I can figure out where I am’. Seriously, what good would that do for me!!?? I just had to go get even more lost until I stumbled ass backwards into something that resembled familiarity.
By some luck I happen across my hotel, and instantly looked at the street sign. I’ll be 99 years old with no memory left and if you ask me where my hotel was on my first trip to Seattle, I just may be able to muster up the words ‘6th and Stewart’.
But I would like to speak for a moment about the people of Seattle. I’m not sure why or how it originated that Seattle is populated with overly friendly people, but that simply is not true. They are very isolated and emotionally withdrawn, but they are not rude. They are very polite, they just don’t seem interested in other human beings. Very bizarre, maybe they’re robots. Actually, that’s not all true, there were plenty of friendly people that I met while in Seattle. Granted the majority of friendly people I met were sitting at a bar, but friendly nonetheless.
One of those friendly people was a bartender at a pizza shop just down the street from me. It appeared to be a pizza shop on the outside, but once I wandered inside, it had all the makings of a bar. So, what the hell? I sat down.
“I’m from out of town.” I said.
“No kidding.” She replied. I’m not sure what gave me away. It could be my Midwestern accent, which I was constantly being told I had a ‘heavy Michigan accent’ which I never even knew existed. Or maybe it was the umbrella I was carrying everywhere even though it was not raining (which is an interesting fact, most Seattle residents spot tourists because of their umbrellas. Seattleites do not carry umbrellas). Or maybe it was my Michigan driver’s license that I handed to her. Nonetheless, she had me pegged. Damn, she was good.
She told me all the touristy things I should do while in town, and then all the non-touristy things I should do in town. Then I ended up having a conversation with the guy next to me about the different ways you can eat ramen noodles. It was the first time I had ever heard someone refer to eating dry ramen noodles as ‘ghetto popcorn’. I recounted all the times I had done this and slowly slid down my stool in shame. After having a few drinks, the great ramen philosophizer, having bestowed countless different variations and recipes all concerning ramen noodles stood up, wobbling a bit and proclaimed “Ok, gotta go back to work”, paid his tab, and then headed out the door. Amazing. He must have one of those jobs where it’s ok to be completely hammered while doing it. Like school bus driver or air traffic controller.
The woman sitting next to me began to speak.
“You’re from out of state right?” She asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m gonna say Michigan.”
“Son of a bitch! How does everyone know I’m from Michigan!?”
“You have a heavy Michigan accent.”
I would be told this at least four more times throughout the week.

The Seattle Notes: Part 1

I decided to break up my writings on Seattle into individual parts because it‘s looking like it‘s going to be quite lengthy. I will be posting each part as they are completed. Hope you enjoy.


I recently took a trip to Seattle, Washington. To most people, that seems like an unlikely and completely random place to take a vacation, especially in October. And well, they are correct, it was completely random and it made it that much better. I meant to write about my trip immediately after returning back home, but some douche who sat next to me on the airplane would not stop sneezing, and by some chance I ended up with the flu, go figure.
The first thing I want to talk about though is airports and airplanes. To sum it up simply, they are just awful. I had to do the full body scan, which I desperately wanted to see, just to see if my body looks flattering in a 3d x-ray. After the scan, they then said they detected something on my foot leading to what I refer to as ‘a taxpayer subsidized foot rub’ from a gentlemen in blue latex gloves. Sidenote: I thought of making the foot rub joke right there on the spot, but was wise enough to hold my tongue, because I didn’t want to get strip searched. Not because I’m afraid of strip searches, but because I would probably miss my flight.
My siblings and friends who have flown in the past have told me about how they usually make friends with the person they sit next to on the plane. Not in my case. I had a woman cram her two obnoxious children next to me while she tried to order as much booze as legally possible from the drink cart. And that was just the first of four flights I took. After a brief connection in Denver, on the way to Seattle I had to sit next to a guy who said the word ‘Yeah, bro’ way too much and said his life’s motto was ‘Everything works out, just not always the way you want it to’, to which I wanted to tell him my motto was ‘Don’t share your life’s motto with strangers’. But in adherence to my motto, I didn’t.
And having four flights with the same airline, I had the same cookie four times, and each time it was just a little bit more disgusting. On the return flight home, the first ‘neighbor’ I had was the aforementioned sneezer, a man from Georgia who enjoyed talking about football and….you guessed it, sneezing on people. Every time he sneezed, I could feel it on my arm, and being in the window seat I felt like I was in a dark corner being preyed on by some sinus predator. After getting off that flight, I slept nearly all the way back to Michigan, seated next to a nearly sober man in very short shorts and a very long ponytail.
I took extensive notes the entire time I was in the city in hopes of being able to write about it when I got home. When I emptied my briefcase out, it was a mess of yellow legal pads, small scraps of papers from my hotel room, anarchists newsletters (which will be explained later), endless receipts, pamphlets, brochures, tickets, and a piece of hotel stationary that I used to jot down quick ideas before I forgot them. I’m glad I did write things down, because looking over this stuff, I had forgotten about some of it already. One of the notes just simply says:

A newly departed vegetarian at the pizza place.

I was in a pizza shop and I witnessed a man come in and buy a pepperoni pizza and then say that he had been a vegetarian for ten years and decided to quit that very day. All I kept thinking was ‘Ten years without meat and you’re first day back you’re going right into greasy pepperoni?….you are going to get sick.’ That’s like saying you haven’t had a drink in ten years and then smoking crack.
There are lots of vegetarians in Seattle, and almost every restaurant I went into had a vegetarian menu. Being a beef loving mid-westerner, I found this most bizarre. I had been raised to believe that salad was an appetizer, something to hold you over while they rotated an animal over an open flame. Of course, I have nothing against vegetarians, but they sure are missing out on some deliciousness.
My first day in Seattle, I actually found out that I forgot to pack a belt. I purposely did not wear a belt so I could get through security quicker, but with my slim waist and abnormally curved back, all my pants constantly sag. Funfact: There is no place in downtown Seattle that you can buy a belt at 7:30 in the morning. I must’ve walked every block of downtown, holding onto my pants so they wouldn’t fall down, trying to find any place that I could get a belt. I couldn’t get a belt, but I definitely could get coffee. They never seem to close the coffee houses in Seattle, everything else closes, but you can get coffee anytime of day. Naturally, I end up drinking lots of coffee. So here I am, a stranger in a big city, jazzed up on coffee, and my pants are falling off my ass and there’s nothing I can do about it. I must’ve looked insane. I asked the desk clerk at my hotel where I could find a belt because I had stupidly forgot to pack one. The only place he could recommend was Nordstroms. I needed an emergency belt, I was thinking something like five-ten dollars, and I most certainly was not going to find it there. In typical Midwestern fashion, where do you think I ended up finding my belt? The drugstore!!!! They have a chain of drugstores that carry literally everything, for a second I thought I was in an ACO Hardware. Five bucks, got a belt, fit perfectly.
        After that small hiccup, things started to go much better for me, and I started to walk around the city. I got lost instantly.

Candy, Video Games, And Other Childish Matters

Strategically placed candy dishes are all over my house. They are placed under the pretense that I wish to be a good host and have sweets to offer to my guests in a readily accessible manner. The real reason though is that I personally want to have candy readily available to myself regardless of where I am in the house. For instance, let’s say I am deeply involved in a video game, and I do not have the opportunity, time, or desire to pause and go to the kitchen for candy. Anyone who has ever played a video game knows that the minute you pause a game, you completely throw off any sort of positive momentum you’ve built. It just throws the whole game off. You come back, unpause it, and thirty seconds later you’ve been killed. I’ve seen it a hundred times.

My siblings and I used to play Playstation a lot. Usually it was Tekken 2 or Twisted Metal 2, and the secret weapon was always the abrupt pause. For instance, if my sister was a demented ice cream truck that was ten seconds away from pelting my vehicle with napalm (as demented ice cream trucks tend to do from time to time) I would pause the game, claiming my nose itched and I had to scratch it. This would throw her off and give me the ideal path to avoiding her destruction. Of course, whatever violence I could escape on the TV in this fashion always manifested itself in reality. A fist fight could break out between my brother and I. He would shout “YOU PAUSED ON PURPOSE!!!” and then the gloves came off.

But this immature violent side of children does not stem from video games as some people would claim. Because these outbursts are the same kind of behavior exhibited in a board games, where one person flips the board over, quits while throwing a temper tantrum, or refuses to clean up after losing because “you fucking cheated!!!”

A huge thing about childhood that I miss though is fort building. When you’re a kid, literally anything can be turned into a fort. Children are like MacGyver meets This Old House. Take two bar stools, the sheets off your bed, cut up a cardboard box to make walls, and suddenly you have a three room fort right in your bedroom. Put a flat board high up in the trees across some branches and you got a fort. And there were no rules in the fort. It was the one place you could safely hide and say 'Shit' or 'Ass' or any swear words you wanted.

And there were always new friends. You were constantly getting ‘new friends’, some kid you met in the park who taught you how to start a fire, or a someone in your elementary school who claimed to have all this cool stuff at their house but would never invite you over. When you’re a kid, you can hang out all the time basically. I’m learning as an adult that ‘hanging out’ seems to be mostly a childhood thing. Not that adults don’t want to hang out, they just simply can’t. When you’re in your twenties, everyone is working part time with crazy hours that always overlap your friends. When you’re working, they seem to be at home, and when you’re at home, they’re working. And by the time we all transition into the Mon-Fri 9-5 jobs, we suddenly have families and can’t make the time to hang out. As an adult, you can’t just walk into a park and meet someone on the swing set and bring them home and say ‘This is my new friend’

At 21, I feel like an only child anymore. My older siblings have houses of their own now and are starting their own lives, my little brother is in Japan, and I’m just a big kid who lives with his mom and occasionally goes to work. But I’ve yet to feel like I have become an adult. I will still waste an entire day playing video games, or watching TV in my pajamas with a bowl of cereal. And that is why I keep strategically placed candy dishes around the house. Because I am still just a kid.