Impressions of the Emerald City

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest. We are on day three of the honeymoon and I have a little bit of down time after a wonderful dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant (Pan Africa Market, I believe) not far from the Pike Place Market. A few impressions:

Seattle is a booming city with a picturesque backdrop. It is, as you all know, the home ground for Microsoft, Starbucks, and numerous other multinational coporations. As a result, Seattle is expensive. It is geared toward affluence and toward the tourism that the region's success has drawn. And yet with the affluence comes a vexing flipside -- those who have not experienced the boom are increasingly visible. And as with other cities in the region, the relatively laid-back attitude toward the homeless and other visibly poor has led to what seems to me to be a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, the liberal attitude toward the homeless is refreshing inasmuch as it reveals a city tolerant of its underclass. At the same time, at the risk of sounding harsh, the city's attitude sometimes is not in keeping with reality. It is one thing to keep the parks free for everyone, including buskers, beggars, and just plain bums. It is quite another to allow an atmosphere in which harassment and vague threats prevail. And of course just typing this makes me feel a bit guilty -- after all, the system created the homeless, and so when the system fails, shouldn't I feel a bit more compassionate toward them? I think I am compassionate. I think I have the "right" politics toeward homelessness and poverty. But I'm not certain that compassion ought to extend so far that I have to feel malingered over when I eat lunch with Ana at a table by the park. I damned well know that if I don't choose to give money to someone in his twenties who otherwise appears able-bodied I should not feel that I might have to throw down right then and there. In one of the most visible public spaces near the Pike Place Market, a must-see for anyone either visiting or interested in fresh fruits and vegetables and seafood, the question of the uncomfortable relationship between the haves, the have-nots, and the ne'er do wells has come to the fore. There are no easy solutions. But the default probably should not be allowing a tone of harassment of generally sympathetic folks to rule the day.

Otherwise, all has been great. Seattle is a pretty walkable city -- thankfully, as parking is a nightmare -- with lots to do. I wonder if the weather would get me down. We left San Antonio with temps approaching triple digits and the humidity soaring and landed in a city comfortable in the mid-60s, which feels just plaijn chilly at times -- but I think I could see myself living in a place like this. There is lots to do. There are professional sports teams (indeed we will spend our last three days of the trip back here in Seattle when the Red Sox just happen to be out here and I cannot wait to catch three games in Safeco, which is located just across the street from the Seahawks' stadium). There is a serious culture of reading and the mind -- we've spent most of our time here browsing in various bookstores and complicating the baggage situation on the way back by buying far too many books, if such a thing is possible. There are sterling restaurants and cultural options galore. And there is a booming music scene, albeit one far less vibrant than the region's early-mid 90s heyday.

This last part brings me back to the haves-have nots dynamic. It has become clear to me in just a few days that the rise of grunge was more than just fashion concomitant with music merging to capture the zeitgeist. Grunge was also a response to the culture of affluence. Kurt Cobain and hundreds like him, both successful and not at all successful musicians, came to Seattle and probably saw themselves rebelling against the image of the Emerald City that had come to dominate perceptions of the region. The skeezy guys hanging around in every corner and alleyway surely share more in common with the grunge ethos than someone like me does in any meaningful way regardless of the role that mjusic scene played in my own life as a music fan. Being here makes it clear to what grunge existed in relation and how it fit in to a larger Seattle-Olympia-Tacoma culture.

Oh, and it goes without saying that there are a freaking lot of coffee shops here. More as I can make the space . . .