Seattle Afternoon

Seattle Afternoon: How not to find your way home in Seattle...

Eric Larsen, my host (and recruiter) was supposed to arrive around 4:30 PM. I called him to suggest that instead of him parking his car and riding with me, perhaps we should take his car and not get so lost. He agreed amicably and suggested he might be a little bit later. I returned to my room to grab a quick nap and rushed down to the lobby at 4:30. Eric arrived right on schedule and we proceeded to explore downtown Seattle at breakneck pace.

There are more neighborhoods and small communities in Seattle than young Shirley Temple made movies. I remember "Bell Town" and something about "this is where the university students are found" and "that is something-or-other hill". Yes, I should have taken notes, but the point was that the city has distinctive areas, each with its own character (and characters). We also agreed that I probably was way overdressed for a geeky Internet-related job. But since I cannot fit into my jeans right now (and I'm too stubborn to buy a size up), I'm going to be the best dressed geek in downtown Seattle. Get over it.

Since we only had an afternoon, Eric drove me down to Seattle Center, where the Space Needle is located and surrounded by museums, theaters, concessions, restaurants, and other neat stuff. We approached the Space Needle on foot and nearly broke our necks trying to look up high enough to see the top. For a chronic vertigo sufferer like me, seeing the Space Needle from down below was sufficient. Maybe one day I'll go up there. Maybe....

I snapped a picture of Michaelangelo's Restaurant as we walked toward it. On the way back, I realized I had taken the picture from the wrong side. Well, that should serve as an incentive for people to check out Seattle themselves, rather than depend on my photographic skills. The Michael Martinez who operates a photography business in Houston will, I am sure, be glad when the Web realizes I have moved to Seattle. My pictures won't do his business any favors, I am sure.

As we walked through Seattle Center, I snapped pictures here and there. The girlfriend kept texting back, "I love it!" and "I'm so jealous!" and "I wish I could be there!" It would have been great if she could have come along, although I probably would not have heard the end of it about my inability to drive from point A to point B along what should be a fairly standard street. Needless to say, as we walked toward a cascading water fountain, she changed her tone. "I want a picture of you," she said. Well, by that point we were too close to the water to pass up an opportunity to look at a spectacular display, so Eric took a couple of pictures of me looking goofy in front of jets of water shooting dozens of feet into the air. He stood far enough back that you cannot really see just how powerful the fountain really is.

The water jets lie at the heart of a huge bowl. People can actually walk down to the water and Eric told me that during hot days in the summer parents often let their children play in the jets. We saw a few people sitting along the edge of the bowl's central zone, but I could not fit them into the picture. The bowl is easily a couple hundred yards across, larger than an American football field.

We left Seattle Center and went down to the Public Market. Unfortunately, by this time the day was winding down for most of the vendors and they were closing up their stalls. I decided not to take many pictures because I wanted to show the market in its full, vibrant life. This turned out to be the market where I had to navigate my rental car between pedestrians and bicyclists. While the street is technically open to vehicles, it is clearly owned by the people. A friend of mine visited this market some years ago while he was on a business trip. He told me that when he went to buy some fish for his family, he asked if he could throw the fish toward the front. At first, they looked at me kind of weird, John told us. But then they shrugged, turned, and hollared something like, "garbled-whatchamacallit-AMATEUR". Everyone cleared a path, they put an apron on me, and they took me back to where the fish lay. John (being a large, strong man) threw his fish in one reasonable attempt, and the market guys applauded him (so did the customers).

I saw this bronze pig standing by the street near Pikes Place Market and decided the girlfriend would want to see it. So I snapped an image and sent it off to her. Despite the late hour, there was a lot of activity in the area. Tourists were snapping pictures, ordering fish, and buying fresh fruits and vegetables from an open-air vendor across the street. But after looking around the market place for a few minutes, Eric led me over to a stairwell. Unbeknownst to me, there are several levels to the market, which is built on a hillside. We went down 2 or 3 flights of stairs to reach the bottom level. The shops were mostly closed but that actually made it a nice opportunity for me to gawk and snap more pictures.

I guess the Pikes Place Market customers are invited to leave their marks on the wall along one stairwell. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds of drawings of fish with people's names in them. I did my best to capture the splash of color and names in one frame, but the stairwell was just too long for any decent resolution. The smell of fish was pervasive, and Eric wanted to move on to show me some more interesting shops.