what about the plastic animals?

Say Good-Bye To Seattle

With the tiny spare on my rental car I gingerly drove through downtown Seattle, accidentally hit a pothole going down a steep hill in the International District, and generally made my way southbound on Airport Way when I came upon the Georgetown neighborhood.  Not only was I really hungry and ticked off about the flat tire, I also realized that I had to heed the call of Mother Nature very soon or there would bigger problem with the rental car.

There wasn't much to Georgetown, a few shops, a few bars, a few restaurants, the remains of the Rainier Brewery and a really great door, but it had a certain charm that made up for the flat tire incident.  One of the shops was Fantagraphics Books, the great publisher of comics and graphic novels.

Look at this.  You can see where I ate dinner from space.

That's it for Seattle and the Northwest.  There's no telling where the next post will be from.

Have You Ever Been To Experience?

Well I have.  Twice.  The Experience Music Project, which is apparently now called the EMP Museum, is one of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's whimsies dressed up in a Frank Gehry building.  The building is fantastic, the museum rather less so.  On both visits I've left the museum underwhelmed, thinking I had somehow missed an entire floor of exhibits.  The previously discussed Nirvana exhibit was excellent and this time Gort was standing guard in the lobby, so I at least felt safe.

The Iliad

Wasn't The Iliad, Homer's epic poem about the Trojan War?  Lots of battles, death, destruction and Helen of Troy?  Makes for an unusual name for an apartment building, but the lion's great.

I'm out of here for a few days.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

The View From Gas Works Park

Gas Works Park sits on the north end of Lake Union and has a great view of downtown Seattle.  It was a good place to rest for a while and figure out where to have dinner.  The park is built on the site of former coal-to-gas power plant and a bunch of the old plant is incorporated into the park.

Seattle Top Pot

I had heard good things about Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle so I swung by their original Capitol Hill location one morning to check them out.  Maybe it was the yuppie vibe, or that the tray of fritters the guy brought out just as I was about to order did not turn out to be fresh from the oven, or that I had been to the world's best donut shop a few days earlier, but Top Pot did nothing for me.  The fritter was fine but it was no bacon maple doughnut.

Under the Aurora Bridge

There's a giant troll living under the Aurora Bridge in Seattle.  The bridge was built in 1929 and the Fremont Troll arrived in 1990, though there were earlier, unsubstantiated sightings.  Yes, the troll is holding an actual Volkswagen.

Since Thanksgiving is only a week away here's something to be thankful for:  I've only got a handful more things to write about this trip.  That's good because there's other things and other trips to write about.

Double Rainbow, Seattle Style

One night in Seattle Jeff's friend Evan came up and we went out to dinner at Salty's in West Seattle.  First we went to a little park on a hill that overlooks the city.  We noticed a rain shower moving in, that's it on the left of the top photo, and Jeff predicted we would see a rainbow.

He was wrong.  We saw a double rainbow.  It was incredible.  The whole restaurant was abuzz.  People were wedging themselves in between tables next to get next to the windows and take photos.  There was even a guy taking flash photos on his SLR.  I'm sure those turned out great!  Both rainbows made a complete arc across the sky.  Unfortunately my little camera and the building architecture didn't let me get a photo of that.

Speaking of great, professor, and probably all around swell person though I don't know her, Celina Su used a few of my photos in a short oral history video of Eddie Boros, the creator of the sadly missing East Village Toy Tower.

As long as I'm promoting myself, the Wall Street Journal recently used a photo of mine in a story on the future of the Corn Exchange Bank on 125th Street.

Downtown Seattle

This is the view from my hotel room.  I know I said I'd be away for a couple of weeks but I've got a few minutes and I have two elevator stories.  Like the New York subway system this hotel has express and local elevators.  The local only goes up to the 20th floor, while the express skips all the floors between 2 and 20.  The floor I'm on is high enough to take the express.

With that in mind I walked around the corner this afternoon to see a woman waiting patiently for an express elevator.  After a few seconds of observing her I did the obvious and pushed the call button.  Soon an elevator appeared!  I got in and she got in (I wasn't being ungentlemanly, I was in front of the door that opened) and she remarked that the elevators were really slow for express elevators.  She had taken the local elevator but it only got her to the 20th floor and her room was on the 22nd.  I didn't sense any awareness that she needed to push the button for the 22nd floor in order to get to that floor.  She sure was glad her paper session wasn't until Friday because it might take her that long to figure out the elevators.  As the elevator cruised past the 18th floor I hit 22.  Who knows how long she might have stayed in there if I hadn't.

Story number two.  Coming back from dinner I got in the elevator with a bunch of other people.  One person said loudly "I can't tell if anyone pushed 23."  I was next to the set of buttons on the right side of the door so I pushed 23.  He thanked me by rhetorically asking "What's that old saying about some people making better doors than windows?"  Seriously!

Come on, geographers, elevator skills aren't that difficult to master!