[hauntedheadnc]

After a few fun-filled days in Vancouver, we set out for Seattle by train and that in and of itself was a nice experience. Smooth, comfortable ride, nice scenery... Amtrak catches a lot of hell, but it's a nice way to get from point A to point B.

However, I'm sorry to say that we were immediately able to tell when we had crossed the border -- and I'm not talking about the Homeland Security people or NTSB or whoever the hell they were who boarded the train and asked for ID. Upon arrival in Seattle, considered one of the fittest cities in America, we were still able to notice an exponential increase in the number of fat people. This was in addition to a visible increase in the number of Black people, Hispanic people, visibly poor people, and people who exhibited two or more of these characteristics. As he is wont to do, while we were walking around -- and God, how we walked around -- my boyfriend kept a running tally of the number of Black people he saw wearing suits or driving nice cars. There was a perhaps surprising reason for this which I will reveal later...

Now personally, I enjoyed Seattle more than Vancouver. There seemed to be more to do, and more to do that was free or cheap. The quality and amount of art that you can see for free in Seattle alone was astounding. On a negative note, however, Seattle's transit system was not nearly as user-friendly as Vancouver's. In Vancouver, we rose buses, trains, and ferries on the cheap and went all the hell over town. At one point we even rode a bus through the darkest wilds of North Vancouver (where, to judge from the architecture, the 80's are alive and well and send their love) and then crossed the Lion's Gate Bridge on the way back downtown. In Seattle, we attempted to ride a bus through the free-fare zone downtown on the way to our hotel in Belltown. When it turned north toward the convention center and away from our destination, we asked the driver what bus we would need to take to get from there to Belltown, only to have the driver tell us he didn't know where Belltown was. Perhaps he was just being a dick. I don't know, and don't care, but we avoided transit for the rest of the trip until, by necessity, it came down to a choice between riding a bus from Fremont to downtown, or else lie down on the sidewalk and die. We also rode the train from Westlake Station to SeaTac on our last night there because neither of us felt like paying upwards of $40 for a cab.

And now, pictures. Be sure to check out Part II (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=5461076#post5461076) and Part III (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=5461087#post5461087)

P5T1pIsjLAM

King Street Station is a very nice welcome to Seattle. After seeing this, thanks to that bus driver, we had to walk two miles in the rain dragging our luggage.

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The hotel was located on the fringes of Belltown, away from the trendy part, and close to two homeless shelters. This meant that whenever we emerged, we were treated to the spectacle of schizophrenics out on the sidewalks shrieking at one another -- or possibly at no one at all. Trying to guess was half the fun! Anyway though, our room wasn't ready so we ditched our luggage and set out on foot. Setting out on foot would soon become a very common theme to our days.

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Our first stop was the Frye Art Museum. To get there, we marched right up Spring Street which, if you will recall (and you don't, so don't lie) was the location of a very large, carnivorous mansion called Rose Red in the Stephen King miniseries of the same name. Tragically, we were unable to locate any carnivorous houses either there or elsewhere in the vicinity.

And yes, I know that Rose Red was complete fiction. I was not one of those stupid people (this really happened) who called the Seattle tourism bureau trying to find out more about it.

Later, I learned that the Frye Museum is located in a neighborhood called First Hill, which happens to be where three huge hospitals are located. Who knew?

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Here at St. James Cathedral, my boyfriend opened a side door to see if we could get inside to take a look at the interior. He encountered instead a bride fussing with her hair. Whoops.

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Our hotel room overlooked the hotel's courtyard.

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On Sunday, I got a rare chance to be one of those visitors at a church who gets to stand up and tell where they're from while everyone murmurs appreciatively about how far you had to come to attend. It's my boyfriend's and my tradition to stop at Starbucks before we go to church here at home. In Seattle we did the same, although we stopped at the original Starbucks, which was a rather nice change of pace.

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Pig. Lol. It was hopeless to try to get a picture of the pig by herself because as soon as one group of tourists stopped groping her, another group stepped up.

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Inside the Seattle Art Museum. We didn't get to see all of the museum, or even the central exhibit that we'd come to look at. Frankly, after so many galleries, we were experiencing art fatigue and so left to see other parts of the city. We meant to come back, but didn't get the chance, sadly.

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I thought the manhole covers in downtown Seattle were interesting. I noticed three different decorative designs.

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Seattle's International District/Chinatown was an even more sedate affair than Vancouver's. It was also my impression that it was on the verge of dispersing, the way that New York's ethnic neighborhoods move elsewhere over time and only leave their names behind. The International District seemed to need more of a focus, but it was a nice place over all anyway.

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[rockyi]

Very nice!

[seaskyfan]

Great shots. Nice to hear you enjoyed your time in Seattle and so sorry you hit a dickish bus driver - there are at bunch of routes that would have taken you from King Street to Belltown and it's inexcusable a bus driver wouldn't know where it was.

[Nineties Flava]

However, I'm sorry to say that we were immediately able to tell when we had crossed the border -- and I'm not talking about the Homeland Security people or NTSB or whoever the hell they were who boarded the train and asked for ID. Upon arrival in Seattle, considered one of the fittest cities in America, we were still able to notice an exponential increase in the number of fat people. This was in addition to a visible increase in the number of Black people, Hispanic people, visibly poor people, and people who exhibited two or more of these characteristics.

You say "increase in the number of black people, hispanic people, visibly poor people..." as if being black or hispanic is a negative characteristic equivalent to being fat or poor.

As he is wont to do, while we were walking around -- and God, how we walked around -- my boyfriend kept a running tally of the number of Black people he saw wearing suits or driving nice cars. There was a perhaps surprising reason for this which I will reveal later...

I can only imagine what that reason was. :sly:


Ignoring the preface to the pictures though, this was a good set of Seattle.

[hauntedheadnc]

You say "increase in the number of black people, hispanic people, visibly poor people..." as if being black or hispanic is a negative characteristic equivalent to being fat or poor.

Sigh... I was afraid someone would think that. It was just me noticing that the populace of Vancouver appeared visibly wealthier than that of Seattle. There were also only the barest sprinkling of Blacks and Hispanics there. There was an enormous Indian population in Vancouver, meanwhile, that we didn't see in Seattle.

Before you get in a lather, I do need to point out that my boyfriend is Black, and I grew up in poverty, so it would be pretty hard for me to hold anything against someone for being either of those. Nor do I have anything against anyone fat, as I'm not exactly svelte myself, or anyone Hispanic. So, let's just head all that off at the pass.

I can only imagine what that reason was. :sly:

It was because he's Black, and because we were giving a little thought to what it might be like to live in Seattle. He prefers a city with a visible Black upper class because he views such as a sign of a city where his race won't be an impediment.

Did that clear it up for you?

[Nineties Flava]

Sigh... I was afraid someone would think that. It was just me noticing that the populace of Vancouver appeared visibly wealthier than that of Seattle. There were also only the barest sprinkling of Blacks and Hispanics there. There was an enormous Indian population in Vancouver, meanwhile, that we didn't see in Seattle.

Before you get in a lather, I do need to point out that my boyfriend is Black, and I grew up in poverty, so it would be pretty hard for me to hold anything against someone for being either of those. Nor do I have anything against anyone fat, as I'm not exactly svelte myself, or anyone Hispanic. So, let's just head all that off at the pass.



It was because he's Black, and because we were giving a little thought to what it might be like to live in Seattle. He prefers a city with a visible Black upper class because he views such as a sign of a city where his race won't be an impediment.

Did that clear it up for you?


Yes it did. I was thrown off by the wording in the OP... wasn't sure what to make of it. In that case, that's my mistake.


And from what I noticed in Seattle when I was there, there isn't much of an upper middle-upper class black population in Seattle... most upper middle class blacks in Seattle are in the schools (UW, Seattle U) and often they choose not to stay in Seattle. There is a small African immigrant community that tends to be educated but that's probably not the group your boyfriend's looking for.

Where are you coming from btw? I'm assuming neither of you are Canadian. If you're looking for somewhere like Atlanta, you frankly won't find it on the West Coast. San Francisco and San Diego are much more like Seattle in that their black population tends to be poorer or middle class at most... Portland's black population is altogether almost non-existent at this point. The only notable major cities with a large or otherwise significant black population that is socioeconomically diverse are Los Angeles, Oakland (where I am) and Sacramento. Tacoma and King County in general has a significant black population but as far as I'm aware it's not any more well-off than the population in Seattle (I could be wrong though).

I don't want to derail your photo thread anymore, so I'll leave it at that.

[Expat]

This has been an amazing tour of Seattle. I loved the art, etc. By the way, did I miss it or did you show pics of the church you attended?

[hauntedheadnc]

And from what I noticed in Seattle when I was there, there isn't much of an upper middle-upper class black population in Seattle... most upper middle class blacks in Seattle are in the schools (UW, Seattle U) and often they choose not to stay in Seattle. There is a small African immigrant community that tends to be educated but that's probably not the group your boyfriend's looking for.

Where are you coming from btw? I'm assuming neither of you are Canadian. If you're looking for somewhere like Atlanta, you frankly won't find it on the West Coast. San Francisco and San Diego are much more like Seattle in that their black population tends to be poorer or middle class at most... Portland's black population is altogether almost non-existent at this point. The only notable major cities with a large or otherwise significant black population that is socioeconomically diverse are Los Angeles, Oakland (where I am) and Sacramento. Tacoma and King County in general has a significant black population but as far as I'm aware it's not any more well-off than the population in Seattle (I could be wrong though).

It's all good, man. No worries.

We live in Asheville, NC currently. He's originally from Connecticut and came here by way of Ecuador and South Carolina.

The big cities of the South, such as Atlanta and Charlotte -- and even places like Columbia, SC and to a smaller degree Asheville have large, visible, and active populations of Black professionals. With that in mind, if we travel, he keeps an eye out for them wherever we go. He was especially eagle-eyed in Seattle because, as I said, we liked it enough to think about moving there.

We knew not to expect Atlanta-on-the-Puget, so we weren't really surprised by what we saw in Seattle. We never got to Tacoma, which seems to be an affordable alternative to Seattle -- at least close enough to hop the train and come in for some fun -- so we didn't get to see what it was like.

[hauntedheadnc]

This has been an amazing tour of Seattle. I loved the art, etc. By the way, did I miss it or did you show pics of the church you attended?

We attended Plymouth Congregational, and I actually did inadvertently snap a picture (http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb88/hauntedheadnc/Seattle/Seattle16.jpg) of it. As you can imagine from that conversation we had in PM, it was quite a bit different from the church I attend here at home! That new 60's-vintage building was built on the site of the historic home of Plymouth Congregational. They kept the windows from the old church though, and had mounted them along the walls inside the new building. They were quite lovely.

[Expat]

It doesn't look like a church! No wonder I missed it.