Fabian and I left NYC for Seattle in the late afternoon of Wednesday 13 September 2017. I had been telling him about Seattle for so long, and he had never been. My hope for the visit was that I could show him what the city meant to me, and how what I did in places around the city helped me to decide what I wanted to do with my time.
Fabian was unsure about imposing on Lee by staying in his apartment so we checked into a person to person room rental in u-district that night but did a quick walk down the Ave before bedtime.
Thursday 14 September
On Thursday morning we walked a bit around u-district then went to the University of Washington. We looked for the greenhouse but could not find it. Later in the trip during a conversation I learned that the reason that I was disoriented was that the university tore the greenhouse down to make room for new construction. We looked around the campus then visited the Henry Art Gallery where I was a tour guide from 2003-06. At the James Turrell Skyspace we were having a conversation about the art when a group of people came in and announced that they intended to have a meditation session in the room, and wanted quiet. I took Fabian outside, where he asked me how a group of people can take over a public room in a museum without a reservation. I explained that Seattle was a smaller city than NYC and that sometimes strangers ask favors of other strangers for exclusive unplanned use of public spaces.
We walked down the Ave and visited the Gargoyle Statuary where Fabian purchased a statue for his altar and a mirror to use for his work. From there we went to see Lee at his p-patch at the University Heights community center. He had his chihuahuas Ricky and Peanut there and was collecting vegetables. I remembered that years ago we took a pet hamster to the garden to eat vegetables, and the hamster became very interested in a tiny sprout the size of its own finger. All sorts of creatures experience this garden in their own way. Lee took us for a car tour including to see the Fremont Troll. After that we went to Archie McPhee.
Friday 15 September
We registered for a bike sharing program which Seattle just began then took bikes to Gasworks Park. We enjoyed for a while then rode back the same way to the upper Ave to meet Sage for lunch at Araya’s. After lunch we relaxed at Ravenna Park and had coffee at the coffeehouse across the street. Fabian had an old friend from his hometown San Antonio. We met with him, Aurelio, and he said that he volunteered as a photographer with the Tibetan Nuns Project which I knew from their time in the now closed 619 Western building from the Monthly Art Walk. Aurelio dropped us off at Jet City Improv where we met Lee for vegan pizza at Pizza Pi then went to see the show.
Saturday 16
We took a stroll around u-district and looked at new construction. A new apartment building installed some street art for people on the sidewalk. Fabian played on it and cut himself a little but we still enjoyed it and maybe dangerous art is better than sterile art.
We met with Lee and drove to the Seattle Center to see a Latin American festival, Seattle Fiestas Patrias. Before we visited a p-patch which was at the top of a parking lot there. My former housemate Santiago was performing there with a Puerto Rican troop. After the performance we drove to the top of Queen Anne and visited the part on the west side and the lookout to the Space Needle at the other lookout. Some people had planned a wedding there and had posted a City of Seattle permit. The permit was not really any permission, but it just stated that a group had expressed their interest in having an event for one hour at a public location. While they could not bar anyone from also visiting the public location, they were requesting cooperation from others to have their event. Fabian remarked that these kinds of arrangements would not work in NYC because there is not a culture there for having peer to peer discussions of getting consent to use public space for private events. It was the same kind of situation as at the art gallery meditation room.
That night we went to the Pocket Theatre to see Weedini, a magician who specialized in making cannabis puns throughout his act. This was in Greenwood. Next door after the show we visited a coffeehouse and bookstore which had just finished a poetry reading. We wanted another show so we went to Julia’s on Broadway to see the celebrity impersonation drag show. Fabian remarked that NYC drag shows typically feature original characters rather than celebrity impersonations, which is the theme at Julia’s. We talked about how drag performance as an industry depends heavily on bachelorette parties, where women want a party environment around sexy guys but the way it plays out socially is for them to be gay underwear boys. Julia’s definitely markets to this crowd. Fabian wanted to see the most prominent drag show in Seattle and this was it.
Sunday 17 September
On Sunday morning our first room reservation ended and we would have moved into the Green Tortoise Hostel at the Public Market. However, Lee invited us again to stay in his place and Fabian agreed, so we cancelled all further reservation and moved in there.
Fabian and I went to meet my friend Evan and a friend of his for lunch in Capitol Hill at a vegan bistro. We waited an hour for food, which is a crazy use of table space for any restaurant’s lunch hour. In general businesses in Seattle are so much more relaxed than NYC and I notice this more now.
After lunch we separated. Fabian and I had coffee at Caffe Vita. We walked around Capitol Hill visiting the Starbucks Reserve, the coffeehouse where Traveler’s Tea House used to be, Victrola Coffee, then we walked down Broadway to end at the stealth Starbucks Roy Street Coffee. We caught a bus on Broadway back to u-district to have dinner at Lee’s then go to bed.
Monday 18 September
We took a bus to Belltown and had coffee at Street Bean. From there we walked to the Seattle Center and entered the Museum of Pop Culture. . We checked out the fantasy exhibit, a Star Trek exhibit, a David Bowie exhibit, and some of the permanent collection. From there we went to the coffeehouse at KEXP. Outside there we saw a sticker at the bus stop which was promoting white supremacy but using LGBT+ rainbow branding to claim diversity so as to blend in better. I am sensitive to hatemonger propaganda and negativity. In Seattle many people speak out against it but obviously it exists everywhere.
Tuesday 19 September
Attila the hamster had died 1 September. He was born in June 2015 so he lived a long time for a hamster. I told Lee that we would join his funeral so he had the hamster in the freezer. That morning we went to Discovery Park to bury him. Previously we had been burying hamsters around U-district. Since Amazon opened their new headquarters in South Lake Union real estate in Seattle has changed and where previously there were patches of earth for burial now the urban landscape is getting redeveloped, paved, and converted to designated patches of lawn rather than just earth. The local neighborhood is less appropriate for burying pets now. There are a few hamsters buried in Ravenna Park, but Ravenna has a lot more people walking the trails these days and all of them are nosy about anyone digging holes. We decided that Discovery Park was a better place for a hamster burial.
We went there, walked some trails, found a natural setting which was inspiring, and I dug about two feet into the ground. After I dug the hole I put the hamster inside. He was thawed enough that his fur was as soft as any hamster’s. Lee started putting dirt on him and I read from the Book of Common Prayer. It was a nice service. The three of us went on.
We went to the Pike Place Market .The speedy construction everywhere in Seattle has changed so much of what seemed stable for the 10+ years I lived there prior to 2012. Where the market was so dumpy before now it seems so upscale, plus they did something strange to the hills behind it so that now somehow it is more of a multistory complex rather than simpler buildings for simple individual sales stalls.
I showed Fabian the original Starbucks. We browsed Left Bank Books for a while and I reminisced about all the times I selected and shipped packages in their “books to prisoners” program. I have met people at Left Bank lots of times and had discussions in their little window bench on the second floor. It was nice to talk over the books, the location, and the philosophy of the place. We went for coffee at nearby Seattle Coffee Works where we sat outside and talked about the neighborhood. Previously the neighborhood was dirty. Lee was saying that when he was younger, Second and Pike near now-gone J.C. Penney was the male prostitution area. The Stranger used to print stories about haunted places in Seattle, and one of the haunted places they described in the early 2000s was a haunted porn store across from the Public Market. I just searched online and I cannot find this story in their archives; perhaps their older stories are not digitized or available. Somehow this porn place still has their location and appears to still be haunted. I suppose everything in the neighborhood is a transition. It is some of the most valuable real estate in Seattle and everyone sees everything in this area, and also, there is a weird store selling porn on pre-Internet physical media in what was a scummy location before 1995 and what now is a place for any retail store’s flagship presentation.
On the way out of the market I bought some bouquets of flowers for Lee’s neighbors to say hello. I appreciate how they all look after each other a bit. From the Coffee Works we went to the Seattle Central Library for a tour. I shared that I studied at this library for many hours, attended lots of talks here, and that I with friends had visited all the libraries in Seattle. Then we went to the Columbia Tower to the Starbucks with the view. We had the chihuahuas with us in carriers. The general rule is no dogs allowed, and they started barking, but as we were late in the day and no one else was there, I think we did not disturb anyone.
From there we went south to Vela in SoDo to see their shop, cannabis grow operation, and cannabis processing lab. Since the legalization of cannabis various people have claimed that the only public access to view cannabis growing is Vela. I asked this last time I went there and around Seattle, and I asked the staff this again this time. The situation seems strange to me – apparently the law says that the same company cannot both grow cannabis and do retail sales. This means that there are grow operations, and that all storefronts do retail sales of various growers’ products. Vela circumvents some of these restrictions by having two separate business with leases in the same building. In the front, they have a cannabis product storefront. In the back, another business is growing and processing, and any visitors to the retail location can look through windows to see the other business. We talked to one of the growers there. He said that he learned from books and now was as expert at growing as anyone could be in Seattle. I asked him if Seattle hired experienced cannabis growers after sales became legalized, and he said no, the businesses got their start from investors with no prior relationship to cannabis, and they hired staff and growers who similarly had no experience in the field, and now practically all expertise in Seattle cannabis is from experience since legalization. There was no obvious or public continuity between illegal cannabis production before legalization and the now legal commercial sector.
Wednesday 20 September
The morning of Wednesday 20 September Fabian and I went to Cunning Crow Apothecary, which is a storefront selling supplies for magic and healthcare as well as a community base for classes and organizing the people who participate in these things. My friend and colleague Ilva Mara established the place after I left Seattle, but since I met her around 2008, she has always promoted discussion about traditional medicine.
It was nice to be able to have a conversation with her about her work in her own shop, now. She talked about classes, sales, her own personal projects developing technique and practice, and other community members in her professional field.
From here we went to the International District and talked about Seattle’s relationship with Asian cultures. We visited Uwajimaya and for lunch went to the Loving Hut. Fabian and I both want vegan food and I love religious figures like their Supreme Master, so it was a fun choice. We called Lee to meet us at the tofu factory to pick up supplies for dinner and join us to stroll in the Kubota Garden. After a long afternoon walk we rode back home by Lake Washington Boulevard seeing the water and trees where we could. We talked about the various parks near Denny Blaine and Seattle’s fun culture of encouraging everyone to run around naked. Seattle rains almost all year and for the little time when there is sun and warmth lots of people gather to play nude at parks, lakes, fountains, and summer festivals. I think that cannabis culture and nude culture contribute to Seattle’s spirit of protest and activism, because most city cultures do not tolerate either of these things, and the way that people in Seattle have agreed to encourage transgressive behavior in public is a contributing factor to encouraging free thought in lots of ways. One part of cannabis legalization which I regret is that it means that future generations will not be able to have the discovery of the fun of cannabis as a taboo in an environment where propaganda says that it is a poison, and where being caught with it is a serious offense meriting prison and exclusion from job opportunities for life. I never want anyone punished for cannabis use, but having cannabis as a nexus of rebellion makes it useful in an additional way. It is the same with gay nude meetups. When homosexuality was criminalized or more taboo, then being gay and naked flirting with other naked guys at non-gay public events had a political context which cannot exist in an environment where gay rights are the default. I have always liked outlandish behavior at Gay Pride events, because public reaction to the most attention-seeking behavior is such a great predictor of public acceptance of routine everyday behavior.
Thursday 21 September
We went to visit Mount Rainier. We had those puppies and walked up the mountain for a couple of hours, then down the same way. The park was no dogs allowed so we kept the puppies mostly in carriers. They are sleepy animals anyway and accustomed to being carried, and being small even for chihuahuas, carrying them is easy. They came out periodically to look around then wanted to be carried more.
After spending the say at the mountain we went to the Puyallup Fair. Fabian and I were most interested. I thought it was fun to see the farm animals and how proud everyone was to show off the animals that they raised. Fabian and I liked the musicians. Lee felt that the entire event was a bit rustic, and expressed that the kind of people who participate in organizing this fair were likely to be the sort of people to oppose freedom of expression. I think he was remember unfair treatment in his past of the sort which originates in less diverse, less media-connected rural places, and which urban places tend to counter. Times have changed and now I think everyone in the world is becoming more accepting of all kinds of people. We all need each other, and we all have to collaborate, and the best way to do this is with a positive attitude toward anyone who will collaborate with a positive attitude. The rural / urban divide is less relevant.
Friday 22 September
Fabian and I went to Bellevue Square to meet Pine, my long time Wikipedia colleague who has done so much to organize Wikimedia Cascadia and policy in Wikimedia discussion forums. Pine has been a big encouragement to me for many years and I meet him in person when I am able to do so.
At this mall there was a physical Amazon bookstore, which is a bit odd considering that Amazon came into being by putting Barnes and Noble and Borders bookstores out of business. I have memories of the public discussion about whether online sales could ever compete with physical storefront sales, and of how Amazon’s business model was a popular subject of coffee chat among all sorts of people. Borders no longer exists, and Barnes and Noble does not compete with Amazon in the same way. I have doubts that this Amazon storefront is a viable business, and instead expect that it is an advertisement or a research experiment or anything else. Fabian and I saw a copy of The Alchemist there and decided to get it from the library back home and read it together.
We went back to East Lake to the kayak club where I was a member for so many years. We went from Lake Union into Lake Washington talking about various places in Seattle. In passing the rowing club at the University of Washington I have the same reflection, that sometimes I miss being out in the cold at 5am to row, and sometimes I do not miss that at all. We visited the wetlands and went as far as the 520 bridge then returned the same way.
For dinner we met Evan at Araya vegan Thai on the Ave. Evan likes horror and so do I. We went to a haunted house in Georgetown and went through in a dark scary place with jumpscares. After that we went to a bar, the Back Door in Fremont for chatting.
Saturday 23 September
On Saturday we went on bike ride to Fremont Sunday street market. We wanted a tour of Theo Chocolate, as I still am grateful for the mentorship which their founder Jeff Fairhall gave to me for many years. The chocolate factory was full for tours. Around Fremont we paid respect to Lenin at his statue, checked out the Spaceship and talked about what it meant, and had a brief visit to the library. We had a nice long chat at Fremont Coffee. We finally biked further into Ballard and got supplies for cooking later.
We regrouped to visit Capitol Hill. We visited the Out of the Closet gay thrift store, where Fabian got decorations to wear for the evening. We had burritos at Bimbo’s, a favorite of mine, then went to Neighbors bar for a drag show. This was a special event which the Seattle Public Library was sponsoring to encourage gay guys to get library cards. At the entrance of the bar people could register with the library and they even had books there to check out. The performers each had to enact a book of their choice for their part in the show. I like that the city arts council made an effort to do outreach to this demographic in a fun way. Anyone who is a stage performer is a community figure and leader, and forever after, they will be able to tell that they did a show for the government in promotion of the library. Seattle has always been a book friendly town but Capitol Hill probably has preserved more bookstores than most places, and it also has its own public library and easy access to the central library. Evan and his boyfriend joined, as did Lee, and we all enjoyed the show.
Sunday 24 September
Fabian and I walked to Chaco Canyon for coffee, which is yet another vegan restaurant in Seattle. The puppies joined us and we chatted outside. We walked to Goodwill on the Ave and I got an REI bag, which is high quality and which Seattle has in surplus with REI being local.
In late morning we went to the Sunday Ballard Street Fair. I got a huge zucchini for snacking later then we went to the Ballard Locks. We were looking at the fish in the underground tank and later. I was holding a chihuahua and a lady ran up to the glass very excited and was calling people over to look at the fish. The fish was only the reflection of the chihuahua in the glass, which could have been a disappointment if it were not so silly. The locks are extremely busy for only a short time, and this late in September is a couple of weeks too late to see many fish. Somehow I was tired and I took a nap in the grass. When I woke up I was scared to be surrounded by geese. The puppies saw me in the distance but they would not come to me because of the geese and I had to make my way to rejoin the group myself.
We watched the entire process of a boat going through the locks. A boat came in, the water shifted, then the boat left. We could make out the relationship on the boat, where there was a wealthier guy as captain and he had hired crew to manage his family’s day trip. I was thinking what it must be like to be a crew boy, as I suppose that any job tedious but also as far as jobs go it must be nice to ride a boat and see the sights for single clients.
We went to the beach at Golden Gardens and saw turtles and birds. We visited the old barracks there and then went to Daybreak Star. I had been to Indian festivals there and tried to learn about tribal relations with the city. All I had heard was that their organization was starved for resources and also as the various different tribes all shared a single legal relationship with the city, they had to contend with how to share the resources to which they had access, creating further conflict. I personally have a bias to build out digital resources, and when I see a nice physical space like the Daybreak Star which seems unable to afford the staffing to make use of the place as an investment, I think that the remedy would be digital investment to increase accessibility at scale at lower cost. Daybreak Star or outreach to this community is not my issue and I cannot join every project.
Monday Sept 25
Lee dropped us at the train back to the airport. We flew back to NYC at noon. On the flight back we watched Neo Yokio, a video series with lots of jokes about NYC culture and places. I stayed the night at Fabian’s house, and we started the next day Tuesday 26 September by having coffee at Little Skips. That was our trip!