They make good coffee in Seattle.
Ask for a macchiato and it comes just as it should.
Believe me, I am asking. Sucking ‘em down. Well, in a sophisticated macchiato-sipping way, of course. One doesn’t want to offend the sensibilities of hipsters.
Then again, the Seattle coffee culture does strike me as hipster dominated at all.
This is a city of immense diversity. There are lots of sleek and chic people.
Then again, it is utterly quirky.
Our day begins in a coffee shop, of course. We are waiting to meet my theater simple friends, Llysa Holland and Andrew Litzky. They are theatre folk of exceptional skill, intelligence and ingenuity. I have seen and reviewed a number of their works at Adelaide Festival Fringes and they are five-star theatre-makers and human beings. We’ve been mates from the word go.
The fact that they are Seattleites was a huge ingredient in my interest in Seattle. Yeah, move over Frasier.
Now this is just one of a zillion coffee shops in downtown Seattle - Bacco on Pine Street. We settle on it when the queues at Biscuit Bitch are too long and we need a coffee and the loo pronto after the traffic jams of the drive in from Bothell where we are staying.
We perch on barstools beside a very intense young woman. She is alone and squeezed into the corner. She is very stand-offish. Indeed, she seems to be having some sort of a crisis. When B pops out to find the loo, I can't help but notice that she is contorting her face almost into a tearful breakdown. Then she calls the waitress. “My coffee,” she murmurs. The waitress promptly pops a large mug of brew in front of her and she seems to recover.
There ya go. The power of Seattle coffee.
Down along Post Lane where people are in immense queues for chowder. There’s a ginger beer place making flavoured ginger beers. Cucumber and tarragon? Blow me down.
We pause at a Latino store with a wall of chilli sauces. I swoon and buy a new one.
There’s a fish market with a glory of fresh crabs and great swirling clouds of steam from crab cook pots. Llysa’s target is a Filipino food stand called Oriental.
We order adobo chicken and tuck in, watching the huge brim-full cauldrons of chicken and beef bubbling away with the day’s supply.
Pike’s Market is one of the hotspots of Seattle.
Even without the tourists, it is busy. It is not a busy day, says Andrew. But it is swarming.
We follow Llysa through cheese stores, tea stores, American Indian jewellery stores, out onto a people’s roof garden with vegetables and flowers thriving and which no one may pick because, according to a notice, "it scares the plants".
Back through a labyrinth of quaint specialist stores, past a glorious fishmonger where one man hands us samplers of smoked salmon while another is ringing bells and tossing fish in front of a huge whooping crowd. This is bloody wild.
And there are huge pig sculptures in amongst it all. Rachels, says Llysa. A whimsical city art project. We follow Llysa down the road and into a cheese shop where they are making curd cheeses on the spot behind big glass windows. Stirring vast stainless steel vats of milk and rennet. Slicing set cheeses in another area. We sample the curd. Salty. Nice.
A pirogi store nearby has a queue snaking way down the pavement. The aroma is gorgeous. Another massive queue heralds the original Starbucks coffee shop.
We weave through arcades and lanes, climb stairways back up to higher streets where we can get a good view of the backdrop of the bay.
We drive a short distance and park easily outside Olympia Park, a vast outdoor art centre, and go walkabout among the huge sculptures. Oh, my. This is sensational. They have created wonderful wilderness gardens as environments for the works - with paths smooth and rough and Puget Sound’s waters there beside it all. Marvelling at the marvellous.
Alexander Calder’s Eagle is probably the star piece. It arches high and rusty red, color co-ordinated with Bruce’s shirt.
Richard Serra’s Wake is just huge - great rusty metal waves curving high. One can walk among them but not touch. There is a no-touch policy which seems really odd for open air sculptures.
Jaume Plensa’ Echo is fenced off with wildflowers at its base. Oh, how serene and utterly lovely she is.
Oh my god. Of course! It is time for another coffee.
If it’s Seattle, it must be coffee time.
We pile into our friends’ Subaru and drive to their favourite coffee shop, Lighthouse Roasters, where we have very fine coffee and an orange and peach scone.
They want to show us that high art is not all Seattle is about.
Low art stars also.
He’s massive, crouched under the eves of the bridge, staring out with one big hubcap eye.
He’s very ugly and people apparently like to paint and graffiti him. Others like to clean him up. He is the world’s most beloved troll.
Rain is coming and going as we zip around to see these wonderful things.
Rain is another Seattle specialty.
Fremont is not just a special part of Seattle.
It is the place where being eccentric is valued.
Hence, it brags a massive statue of Lenin.
West of Lenin is the latest theatre in the area. Llysa and Andrew’s theater simple has performed there. They took us to meet its creator, AJ Epstein.
He’s a lighting supremo by specialty but he decided to turn an old warehouse into a stunning performance space and gallery. A team of techs is preparing it for an anniversary celebration as we visit.
It reminds me a bit of The Bakehouse Theatre in Adelaide. It has that spirit of adventure. It also has the zaniest tiny dressing room and, in the absence of wings, it has a slit through which actors make their entrances.
Oh, and then the naughtiness.
As if it is not enough that Llysa buys snacks from a Mexican roach coach, they steer us down the road to taste chocolates at Theo’s. The ghost chili and salted chocolates are pretty divine but of course I fall for the artisan specialties. I mean, cucumber chocolate?
I have to have it.
We need another walk to make up for it. No, we don’t really. But we stroll down to look at the canal and the handsome topiary dinosaur.
Ye gods, is that a space rocket? Yes it is. Of course it is.
It’s a real one, what’s more.
It was erected by a pack of Fremont drunks. Well, they were a group who hung out in an ale house. They decided Fremont needed something significant to elevate its significance as the Centre of the Universe and this 1950s Cold War rocket fuselage was purchased just before it was due to be sold for scrap. Apparently the lads had a bit of trouble erecting it. It took years and needed a real rocket scientist. Or not. One can’t be sure what to believe, but there it is. Proud and priapic. The pride of Fremont.
Oh, and there’s an antiques mall round the corner.
Off we go.
So many things from one’s past. And some of them so odd. Big containers of light globes? When did they become collectibles?
Across the road, past the road signs which tell one how far the rest of the world is from this Centre of the Universe, there is the grand statue of Lenin.
Right now Lenin has blood coming from his mouth, probably from eating babies. And he has blood on his hands.
I stand tippy toe to hold his hand, but can’t quite reach. That is how big he is. Or how small I am. Llysa says that volunteers caretake the statue and restore it to its natural glory as regularly as other people make political or comical statements with it. It is not unusual, for instance, for Lenin to dress as Father Christmas.
It is seriously raining now.
Rush hour will soon beset the city. Seattle has the same problems as the other American cities. Hideous traffic jams. Travel across cities is slow and frustrating. Everyone says “meditate, meditate”… It is the coping mantra which is sweeping hapless America.
He sits there stewing.
As much as I say that this traffic jam is on the road and this is a road trip…he still grumps from the wheel. Don’t say anything, but I actually find the jams a chance to get a close-up look at the urban landscape.
Gee, there are a lot of cannabis stores...
lovely overview of Seattle. Sadly my last visit was a brief one.
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