Sleepy in Seattle

Ah Seattle.

I lived there once, a long, long time ago, while I interned at the Virginia Mason Medical Center.  Coming from San Francisco, where an affordable apartment meant living in a pit that made you constantly expect someone to lower a basket down and ask for lotion, it was a breath of fresh air.  Green, wet air, but fresh.

I got to visit again recently, and was lucky enough to catch their one weekend of summer, where the temperatures hovered around 90 degrees.  Oh well, I'll be home soon enough...except by the time I got back to LA, the temperatures had soared to the 90's there too.  Apparently I shouldn't have refused that rose, from the witch...

I stayed at the Maxwell Hotel--a quirky little hotel across the street from the Seattle Center.  Themed around some obsession with pineapples, they had complementary pineapple cupcakes in the lobby every day which, along with the free parking, made them the best hotel ever.

Oh did I mention I had a car?  Alamo gave me way too many choices at the airport, and as a result, I wound up with a Fiat--clearly the smallest car known to man.  I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to fit my luggage in, but with a little (lot) amount of effort, it all jammed in.

Although I wasn't terribly sure what I was going to accomplish with my extra day in Seattle, I figured I would do some of the touristy things I never did while I was living here, like gawking at the needle, etc.  Walking through the center, I got to see an enormous amount of people cavorting about a huge fountain, like it was the that Bradbury story "All Summer in a Day."

It seems irreverent, but pretty much the whole day, I can only hear the music from this MST3K short going through my head.  I need it as an MP3.

Continuing onwards, there was even more noisy merriment as I apparently happened to arrive on Brasil Fest Day!  I don't really know what all the celebrating was about, but toujours gai toujours gai.

As it turned out, 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair (where the Needle comes from!) so there was a number of new exhibits around the area.  I spent the whole day and the next morning there and didn't even get to half of what was there.

One exhibit I did attend was Chihuly Garden and Glass, a space designed particularly by Dale Chihuly to display a selection of his works.  I didn't even realize he was from the Pacific Northwest.


They were having a special deal for the summer:  You could buy a ticket to wander through during the day, and then re-enter at night, when the garden was illuminated.

If you paid slightly more, it included a ticket to go up the Space Needle...so...alrighty, then.

 Some interesting things I learned about Chihuly:  He no longer does most of the glasswork himself, as he's had damage to one eye and a shoulder.  He seems to come up with the general concept of the sculpture and then directs his assistants amidst a sea of glass parts as to where to attach them.

As you walk through the various galleries, you're supposed to be listening to an audio tour.  Unfortunately, the only way to access the tour is to stream it through your smartphone.  Even more unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the Awesome Power of the Edge Network penetrates through the gallery structure, so I couldn't get a signal for anything.

I noticed there was a wifi signal called "Audio Tour," which I thought might be useful, except it wasn't.  I asked the guy in front if we were supposed to be able to access it for the tour, and he said "I think you have to bring your own internet."  Later, I spoke with another docent inside, and he said "oh, just use the Audio Tour wifi."  I said I had already asked about that, and he said "yeah, I don't think he knows anything about that."

Anyway, the outside garden and greenhouse area was pretty enough in the daytime...

...But was really impressive at night, with the special lighting.  Well worth a trip.

While I was walking over at nighttime, it was around 10pm, and I was vaguely hoping not to get mugged and thrown in a dumpster.  There was no one around, but all at once I heard some one speaking loudly, as if through a megaphone.  Great.  Loud Homicidal Guy is coming to kill me.  Actually, it turned out that the center was having outdoor movie night, with a jillion people sitting around on the grass watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets until midnight.

The next day, after checking out of the hotel, I wandered back over and almost by accident stumbled onto an exhibit dedicated to the 1962 World's Fair.  Did I tell you I'm obsessed with the idea of World Fairs?  No?  Well it was serendipitous. 

There was so much optimism inherent in the post-war World's Fairs.  Surely nothing could ever be as bad as what we just went through, they seem to say.  It's all clear sailing from here. 

Having a map of the whole fair on your uniform must have been a time-saver, at least.

Of course my Holy Grail is actually the 1964-65 New York World's Fair, featuring all the wonderful breakthrough attractions Disney debuted while he was testing whether that sophisticated East Coast market might bite for his style of corn.

I want to go to this Fair SO BAD.  Someday someone will invent a time machine, and this is the first place I'm going.  I'm sorry about not saving Archduke Ferdinand, but priorities are priorities.

Anyway, off to The Future!  Or at least 1962's future--their Alweg Monorail, unlike the Disney monorails--seem pretty close in style and substance as they must have been when they first came about.

The inside feel has more of a bus gestalt about it than anything, and the two-minute ride takes you directly to a shopping mall downtown.  Nevertheless, it is a monorail, and therefore cooler than almost any other kind of  transportation available, public or private.

So finally, time to ascend the needle...except, in a horrifying development, the line for the elevators up is now something like an hour long, which is way too long (even for a chronoptomist such as myself,) to make it to the airport on time.  Sullenly, I pony up the dough for the "fast pass" equivalent, and bypass the line of people quietly baking in the sun.

It's a fast trip up, and if you're not going to eat at the restaurant up there, you probably don't need a whole lot of time to check out the view.  But it is nice, and after all, you are on the Needle.


So after that, I successfully made my way back to the airport and JetBlued my way home.  It was a very nice trip, and see?  You don't need anything Disney to have a fun outing...

 

 ...Oh.