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SEATTLE
A CITY OF GREEN AND BLUE HUES
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
The early evening night, under the long embrace of volcanic fragments, turns the horizon deep shades of ocean blue as if the color of the sky reflects off the water surfaces of the many nearby inlets, bays and oceans.
Commuters, in their beloved motor vehicles, create similar pools, except of glass and steel along the multiple lane Interstate Highways and downtown city streets, often going nowhere fast in defiance of a light rail system established in 2003.
The city of traffic stalls and left hand turn, slow switching traffic signals has more to offer visitors if you can get to the destination on time.
Link (light rail) makes 22 stops along a 32 kilometer corridor from the SeaTac International Airport to Waterlake Street in the downtown business district. The transportation corridor divides the attention of commuters, among two highways and the many traffic lanes.
Visitors can then take a modern streetcar to Lake Union and the Monorail to the Space Needle and Seattle Centre built for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962.
Lake Union offers seafood dining and a number of water sport opportunities. Seattle Centre has majestic mountain views from the Space Needle and glimpses of popular culture inside the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP).
World famous architect Frank Gehry designed MoPOP with a world renowned trademark design involving the bending of sheet-metal into unconventional shapes for such buildings as the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, USA and Gehry Tower in Hanover, Germany.
The MoPOP was established by Microsoft billionaire co-founder Paul Allen. Alan began Microsoft in Seattle with Bill Gates. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of philanthropy is nearby, just a bit down the street, and to the South East.
Microsoft has a campus in Redmond, Washington. Bill Gates lives in Medina, as does Jeff Bezos of Amazon. The Bezos space company, Blue Origin, has offices in Kent. The Bezos on-line market place, Amazon, has offices in Bellevue where the Amazon story began.
Seattle Center rests on the original fair grounds of the 1962 World’s Fair. The city has maintained the Space Needle and the Monorail including the original footprint as a major city tourist venue with park spaces, water fountains and street food vendors.
Transit riders can purchase a hard plastic ORCA CARD for $5, and then add stored value and passes for multiple rides on the transit system throughout the metropolitan area.
Waterlake Station can be used as a bit of a hub for people not shy of walking a few blocks to Pike Place Market. The historic Seattle tourist attraction opened for farmers and crafts people in 1907. Pike and Pine run parallel to each other. And the market sits on First Avenue and Virginia Street, but the eclectic collection of farmers’ tables and curiosity shops takes up more than two city blocks.
The Waterfront Tourist area is a few blocks to the West of the market. The venues are clearly two separate tourist attractions divided by Alaskan Way and about 100 feet of elevation traversed by a number of staircases. Pike Place Market has some restaurants with waterfront views several blocks above vehicle traffic.
Seattle replaced an unsightly and non-earthquake resilient viaduct with the Auburn Tunnel that directs through traffic down and away from the city congestion. The south of the tunnel begins near the Stadium District and the north of the tunnel on or about and between the Space Needle and Lake Union. Tourists heading north into the city should take the Mercer Street Exit on the right to get to Seattle Centre and Lake Union.
The map directions from your GPS may not have been updated to replace the old viaduct exits with the new tunnel access points. The old ‘stay left and turn on Mercer Street’ driving direction is just not possible inside the two-mile tunnel.
Visitors can find accommodation anywhere along the direct light rail line to the city venues. Drivers heading into town from the south will encounter congestion near the state capital, Olympia, and then again at Tacoma near Sea-Tac International Airport, and then again closer to the Seattle boundaries on Interstate-5.
And you just don’t want to get trapped downtown during rush hour.
People can avoid some of the heavier commuter traffic on the East Side along I-5 by staying West along Hwy 99. Hwy 99 begins just north of Sea-Tac and continues through the tunnel underneath the city and past Lake Union and into Auburn and Lynwood before cutting back East to get onto the I-5.
Route 99 predates the I-5. The highway extended from the Canadian border down into California before being replaced by the Interstate.
99 is also called Auburn Avenue. And this stretch of highway turns into an urban highway and should only be considered a freeway when it continues under the city through the recently completed tunnel in Auburn.
The Auburn stretch is difficult to handle psychologically with the frequent stops at traffic lights knowing all along that the uninterrupted I-5 is just on the other side of Lake Union. Too late now, though. Not soon enough motorists will come to the 523 turn off to go East and connect with the I-5.
You can continue north along the 99 until connected with the I-5 further north, but after losing so much time heading home through Auburn – and having now gone beyond the early morning city traffic moving north – the 523 to the I-5 becomes very compelling, long before you see the street sign for the turn-off.
Don’t turn too early as the sign is posted before a right turn street that comes one-half a street before the right turn onto the 523. The GPS will not help you here either because the streets are too close together to be distinguished by satellite imaging from near orbit.
Left turns are heavily restricted until Auburn. Drivers can turn off Auburn Avenue to the right and then go underneath the highway to turn around and go in the opposite direction. These underground turn around spots are not clearly marked, giving a decidedly American advantage to commuters over tourists. Visiting drivers may just have to guess a bit.
Street signage is a real problem in Downton Seattle and in the surrounding areas, forcing a heavier reliance on the GPS for guidance. Having said that, the GPS can sometimes be wrong, perhaps outdated in a city going through a construction boom, or somehow disconnected from the tracking satellite at the most inopportune times.
Even with a properly functioning updated GPS, visitors still need to confirm a turn with the street sign.
Several street signs are obviously posted too late, some signs posted one turn too late as opposed to one turn too early in most other cities. Street signs are obscured by overgrown shrubs, branches and trees. Still other important street signs do not seem to exist at all.
Prices in Seattle are comparable, but then international consumers have to add a hefty exchange rate, making the normal bargain shopping for clothes, sneakers and food less than advantageous.
The grocery stores do have refrigerated aisles for cider, beer and wine, thankfully. The larger grocery stores will have a separate wine aisle with the red wines nearby the chilled white wines.
One of the world’s leading coffee shop franchises began with one store in Seattle and then accelerated exponentially until opening two stores per day year round. The original Starbucks coffee shop was at 2000 Western Avenue and then moved to 1912 Pike Street in 1971.
Waterfront along Alaskan Way has a cruise ship terminal with foods and curio shops stretching along the various piers.
The waterfront side of the Alaska Way has a bit of a promenade, not quite the boardwalk of Coney Island in New York, and not quite la Rambles in Barcelona, but decidedly Pacific Northwest in flavor, with the stage dominated by coastal waters and seafood restaurants.
When I was last there, the atmosphere had become somewhat stunted with the nearby deconstruction of the Alaskan Way viaduct directly across the street. In a few years though, that day being today, Alaskan Way might yet have the tone of a seaside carnival. Dining on seafood from the Pacific Northwest seems to be the mainstay of restaurants in this stretch of tourist activity.
Martin Luther King Jr. has a significant presence in the city. Seattle is inside King County and traffic engineers have constructed essentially a boulevard, Martin Luther King Jr Way. The Light Rail link runs along Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
The Waterfront also has a large Ferris Wheel at Union Street and Alaskan Way along the water.
Pioneer Square and City Hall share a beautifully sublime underground light rail station.
The historical district has been preserved in an original brick and mortar form with intact below street level curiosities. The area has regular sized shops and pubs and restaurants serving the tourists and the sports fans. The short walk from the downtown through Pioneer Square not only gets you drunk but gets you to the ballpark on time. The stadium district tailgate party starts just a few steps after the last pub in Pioneer Square.
Street venders will sell you hotdogs and bottled water. The restaurant and pub district has encroached closer to the stadium with several newly constructed establishments if the history of Pioneer Square scares you off the tourist area a bit.
Chinatown and a plate of sweet and sour pork is nearby.
Seattle also has a modest Art Museum at 1300 First Avenue.
Visitors can easily move from one venue to the next within a relatively small downtown geographic footprint. However, Pike Place Market has a lot to offer. And, so, people might want to break up the day into breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the exception of not really having the option of breakfast on the Waterfront unless you like seafood for breakfast.
The Pike Place Market entrance has row upon row of flower shops several hundred feet along the street level with individual craft merchants on the other side of the aisle. The delicate smell from flowers of all sorts blend together in the cool breeze of the day.
Farmers and fish mongers trying to sell you something for dinner balance off the curiosities and crafts for the tourists. Visitors stall in the first of several vendor aisles close to the street entrance, but the market extends back toward the water and down a bit with novelty shops and restaurants.
The Stadium District has a light rail station for sports fans requiring a short walk on a pedestrian walkway that extends over the rail yards. Fans have access to professional baseball, American Football, and soccer in this same area with stadium back to back.
Seattle also has a significant music history, with Ray Charles gaining popularity playing the city’s early jazz and blues clubs.
Jimi Hendrix has been one of the most influential guitarists still to this day several decades after his death in London. Musicians can trace Hendrix’s steps from where he learned to play guitar in Renton just East of Lake Washington.
Hendrix then toured with established musicians throughout the United States before being courted to the London music scene of the 1960s.
Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Keith Richards emerged at the same time from London town, but for a few brief years until his death, Jimi Hendrix’s innovative music style impacted rock and roll to such an extent as to influence the rock and roll music genre for decades.
Seattle clubs also developed the Grunge music genre. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and other Grunge bands found their form in the many pubs and music clubs that still exist in the area, such as the Paramount Theatre which opened in 1928.
America loves cars and the city dweller loves traffic congestion. This sweet and sour of the motor vehicle is ever present in Seattle.
Seattle also has airplanes. Airplanes are everywhere in Seattle. The Boeing Company participated in the early years of the development of human flight and then dominated the skies with the production of the Jumbo 707.
William Boeing founded the company in Seattle making some of the first aircrafts out of wood and fabric in 1916.
Boeing was also instrumental during the Great Wars and the Vietnam War, building the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress and then the B-52 Stratofortress bombers.
The Museum of Flight has found a home beside Boeing Field where many of the new planes have been tested just south of Seattle. The Red Barn where Boeing made those first single engine planes out of wood and fabric overlays sits along Marginal Way.
This flight museum has dozens of restored planes from various stages of aviation history. The museum also has a number of full size replica models.
Visitors have to walk a bit further onto an overhead walkway that crosses the street to the Aviation Pavilion. Several original planes are on display, such as the Supersonic Concord and the Unites States President’s Air Force One, used by Richard Nixon. People are able to enter the front of the plain by the flight crew’s cabin and then walk through the passenger cabin to exit at the back of the plane.
The Museum of Flight had a temporary exhibition in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. The Apollo 11 capsule that brought the three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, back to Earth had been on display during the anniversary year.
Various bits and pieces of space history, such as a rocket engine, are on display.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos retrieved from the ocean floor pieces of the Saturn V rockets used in the Apollo program, including an Apollo 12 F-1 engine, and a flywheel. Some of these pieces have been restored for display at the flight museum.
The Port of Seattle is ever present.
Seattle also has a number of dedicated bicycle lanes extending from a growing downtown residential neighborhood with people commuting south along the West side of Lake Union. Hourly rental bikes can be seen scattered here and there. Bicycles can be rented through apps.
The app locates the bike and takes reservations, and then subsequently accepts payment. The bikes can be left anywhere within the fare paid zone when they are no longer needed.
Generally, though, most of the tourist spots have been established prior to the extensive development of Artificial Intelligence at company’s like Uber and LIME.
Pioneer Square, Seattle Centre (Space Needle and MoPOP), Pike Place market and the Waterfront are meant for walking and browsing relatively short, high density distances.
Kerry Park has the high ground to the north of the city with the Space Needle to the East and Mount Rainier to the West. Mount Rainier needs an early morning/late evening clear sky for viewing.
Discovery Park is located on the northwesterly corner along the coast.
Seattle has a lot to offer, part of which is not being the size of Los Angeles and New York. Large metropolises have local trouble as well as a considerable influx of international tourists for which many venues are still unprepared.
Seattle hosts SeaFair every summer, if you need that type of intense tourist experience, but generally you should avoid driving into and near the downtown on the best of days.
Visitors can experience the charm of an historic seaport side by side with residents literally on the way to the ball park in this small footprint.
