Day 20: Space Town

As I type this, in the Issiquah library, I am listening to some local high school kids talk about a classmate of theirs, who apparently tried to kill his parents last night. When the police came, he shot at them with a BB gun, and ended up getting tasered. He is currently in jail. What is interesting is the matter-of-factness with which they relate such a story, especially strange for such a seemingly yuppified community. And of course the fact that, if things had turned out differently, my dad would still be the supervisor for this school district, and would no doubt have been somewhat involved in this situation...

I went to a doctor this morning about my toe. I decided it was better to do so that than risk it getting infected to the point of amputation. The doctor poked at it for a minute and then told me to soak it in hot water... basically, exactly what I already knew... sigh.

Below is a park on Mercer Island, one of the most affluent suburbs of Seattle. True to its name, it is indeed an island, with a huge freeway passing directly through the middle of it. This park is built, for some odd reason, above the freeway. This may explain these odd structures jutting out from the grass, but I prefer to think of them as some sort of evacuation pods, in case the waters of the Puget sound start to rise or Seattle starts to sink, at least the rich folk will have an easy way out...



Below is Seattle. Starting with a wonderfully distorted building and progressing to an interesting alley and several more distorted buildings.












Above is the Space Needle, Seattle's most famous landmark. It's in Seattle Center not far from the Experience Music Project, a recently built museum which is so unbelievably ugly that I couldn't bear to make myself to take a picture of it.

I have to say that I'm not very impressed with Seattle. Perhaps it's just that I had been here before and it's therefore less of a surprise than a town like Portland was, but I think more likely I am irritated by little things... for example, the parking in Seattle is as difficult as you'd expect it to be in New York or Chicago, but it lacks the public transportation which makes those cities livable. The Seattle monorail, if you don't know, has about two stops - one downtown (where there is never available parking), and one at Seattle Center (which, being the tourist area, is the place you're going to be trying to get to - so also, naturally, no parking available). I should have knuckled down and bought a parking spot, because I ended up missing out on several things I had been anticipating.

Number one was the underground tour - for those who don't know, Seattle was originally built a few feet below sea level. While flooding was hardly massive, it apparently caused huge problems for their sewer system, which was constantly backed up and would overflow frequently. Sometime around the turn of the century, they decided that the most logical solution was not to rebuild the city elsewhere, but rather rebuild it in the same place - about 10 feet higher. So they built an entire city on top of the old one - paving the roads to be higher and adapting the buildings so that the second and third floors became the new ground entrances... this also created the empty area they later used for the subway. There are several blocks around pioneer square where the subterranean buildings were not filled in with cement - the tour of this area, which I took as a child, is well worth the money. This time around, though, it didn't happen. I parked in an hourly metered parking spot and went to the office, but it was 45 minutes until the next tour. So I went back to try and find longer term parking... and didn't. By the time I managed to find a place to store my car the last tour had ended.

I had also been looking forward to seeing the Pacific Science Center, in particular the center courtyard/entrance area. Essentially it's an acre-wide fountain, with towers jutting out of it and walkways leading you from one to the next and eventually to the entrance. Such a tranquil (and surreal) structure is something I could only really appreciate at night... however, despite the fact that there *were* people at the ticket office, there was no way I could get inside. "The only way you can get through this gate," the pizza-faced ticketseller told me, "is to buy a ticket to the (name of local 'hip' radio station here) concert that's going on inside." "Then I can take pictures?" I asked. "Well, maybe you can take one or two as they lead you and the rest of them into the concert hall," he said, gesturing at a decently-sized line of teenaged mild-thrill-seekers. This was ridiculous. There was even a security guard walking around just beyond the gate... I could see no reason why I couldn't have walked breifly around this area, while said security officer kept an eye on me, making sure I'm not some idiot terrorist who confused Washinton state with Washington D.C. I still took photos, through the gate... but it was the experience of exploring these bridges that I wanted. The fact that the denial of thise experience was pure nonsense made the experience even less pleasant...

"Let this blossom be my fee
To plant within yon dark Satanic mill
It's beauty there for all to see
Compared to which
Hell shall grow bleaker still"

- Jason Blood







The north end of Seattle has one of the hugest cheap motel districts I have ever seen. Not sure why - I didn't see *that* many poor tourists and hookers while looking around the town. I found one for 25, a rather good price. I plan to pay no more than 30 when staying at a motel... Anything else just seems like a ripoff, I may as well sleep in my car...


A wonderful sign not far from the motel. I could see it down the street as I fell asleep.