Seattle - it qualifies as wandering if you didn't know those bits were there

When I was in college, I had a friend for whom college was the farthest she had ever been from home in her life. She did live at the college, and was a full time student. The house she grew up in, where her parents still lived, was 20 minutes away.

You can probably imagine, from the way I talk, that I had a hard time wrapping my head around this paradigm, even back then. At that point in my life (i.e. the fairly traditional age in college of around 21 or 22), I had seen between 15 and 20 of the U.S. states, large swaths of Canada, and England and France.

Since that time, I have been fortunate enough to see more of the U.S. (I think I’m over 30 states now, including Alaska), more of Canada, and a total 17 European countries (I think, I’d have to dig out my notes to be sure) and New Zealand.

I have experienced “Genericana” at its full-on worst. As an example, I walked into a major chain store – Walgreens, Safeway, whatever - not so long ago, that I had never been into before, walked to exactly the place I needed to be without thinking about it, then (because I was on autopilot) had a sudden sense of disorientation and literally could not remember which city I was in, since I could place this exact same store layout in any of four cities. Thankfully, once I could see out the windows at the front of the store, I instantly reoriented. This was a while ago, and I think the store was on the East Coast, where I’ve only been a few times in the last ten years (specifically, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina). At least two of the other cities are here in the Greater Seattle Metropolitan Area.

Now, to come full circle, I had some interesting experiences near Seattle in the last two days. I’ve been in Seattle for about a decade now, and had visited a bunch of times before that, so I like to tell myself I “know” Seattle.

Yeah, whatever. That’s like the blind man claiming he knows what an elephant is because he felt the ear once.

Kristi is working on a film here in Seattle this weekend. It is filming in Madison Park (Seattle) and Bellevue. It is called “Spinning” and she is having a wonderful time. It is not her film; she is crew and learning a lot.


Seattle has a lot of little “neighborhoods” like Madison Park, Leschi, Belltown, Queen Anne Hill, etc. I think these used to be municipalities in their own right, that later became absorbed by “Seattle.” I’m not sure, but maybe I’ll look it up some day. I only mention it here, because it is germane to the scope of ignorance one develops when one’s view of Seattle is defined largely by the I-5 corridor. Sad, I know.

Yesterday morning I was driving along Lake Washington Blvd at 6:30 in the morning. It’s winter right now, so it was dark. By “dark” I mean “DARK,” because this road has almost no street lights. Even down in middle-of-nowhere Graham, we have serious light pollution due to the street lights and subdivisions spawning like rabbits. Lk WA Blvd has a lot of turnouts, so I used one. I pulled over, turned off the lights, and at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, the road was DEAD. I got out of the car, walked across the street to the water, and found some random why-the-heck-is-this-here-anyway dock that sticks out into the lake and just stood on the end for about 15 or 20 minutes. I just listened to the waves. Far, far away I could see city lights. It was a really wonderful experience. Only the bitter cold (I nearly slipped twice walking out because of the frost on the dock) and the creeping onset of dawn spoiled the mood by reminding me that there really was a city out there, not just pretty lights far, far away. I have come to think of Seattle as this great over-lighted sprawl, so this slice of “wilderness” was a wonderful experience.

Today, while going to someone’s house to pick up something, I found an unlit part of Renton. It baked my noodle all over again. Renton is nominally part of the “Great Seattle Metropolitan Sprawl.” (Really, if you’re in North Carolina, and someone asks “Whare are you from?” the answer is “Seattle” because they know where that is.) No street lights, just a big clump of houses out in the middle of nowhere. The view of the sky was gorgeous. It was, actually, even better than the amazing view I’d had on Lake Washington yesterday, because in Renton I was surrounded by trees that blocked the light pollution entirely.

Between the film Kristi is working on, and some social events with friends this weekend, I’ve had a lot of fun rolling around Seattle. Seattle and Bellevue are cities that are old enough to have huge areas that predate “urban planning.” It is really cool to drive through what absolutely feels like a residential neighborhood and every third or fourth door you see is actually a small business of some kind. Dry-cleaning, café, grocery store, video store, computer store, whatever, whatever, sometimes even a huge park with trees and paths and stuff. I grew up in the suburbs with their housing subdivisions, strip malls, shopping malls, designated recreational area you drive five minutes to get to, etc. The entire model of having the various stores and businesses that people need to live stuffed into odd corners of a residential neighborhood is still new to me. It probably always will be, since I just don’t live in those kinds of areas ;-)

Tonight, I wandered into an Albertsons store and had no idea where to find anything. It was wonderful – a brief respite from “Genericana.” Of course, I did find all the brands I’ve grown to know and loathe, but whatever.

Maybe I’ll go visit my friend SR again (I was tooling down Lk WA Blvd to get to his house). Turns out that just three blocks from his one-quarter-of-a-house-that-is-100-years-old apartment is a family-owned store that has been there since 1953. They’ve carved (probably re-carved) out their niche market by going entirely organic and specialty, targeting the very organic “hippie” crowd. Expensive stuff, but really neat stuff. And absolutely nothing like SafeWalRiteAlbMeyer! ;-)