My Kind of Town

Seattle is one of the cities I looked forward to most at the start of this trip, mostly because so many people associate me with it. In conversations with roommates and old friends, we’d try to place each other in cities according to our personality, making the art of stereotyping a game. Every time, someone would place me in Seattle, and I was eager to find out why.

As we stood in line for the requisite Starbucks purchases the morning we arrived in the city, I mentioned that eagerness to Rashina, telling her I was curious to see why I was such a “Seattle person”. She immediately started pointing out the “coffeehouse culture” identity with which Seattle is so often associated. A culture many people associate with black rimmed glasses, artistic writer-types, and introverted personalities.

We headed into Pike’s Place Market to buy some trinkets, see some fish get thrown, and talk to some of the people working. I ventured through the market, munching on some of the freshest produce I’ve ever tasted, offered to me by friendly young salesmen with that gaunt, vegan look about them. I talked to the angry, pierced, anarchists in the left-wing bookstore who seemed wary of my questions, but eager to voice their opinions.

I’d only been in the city a few hours, but already I could see why people thought I’d fit in there. There’s a deep look to one’s eyes when you look inside your own head too often. It’s both serenity and aching desire to understand yourself and life around you. I saw that look everywhere I went, reflecting the look in my own.

I sat down with one of the thousands of acoustic folk guitarists with slightly raspy voices and a broken heart in the city and talked with him about his reasons for being in Seattle and his thoughts on American culture. He talked about the immigrants to New York, shipping their lives to a new world because the old world didn’t have room for them. Moving west when New York was too packed in to hold them. Moving west when the east didn’t have time for them. Moving west when the Midwest didn’t understand them. Moving west when the mountains demanded too much of them.

“So we all huddled together in the corner, staring out on the ocean and trying to figure out who we are in the only place that has the patience for a bunch of introspective geeks.” He smiled and dug into the Thai food leftovers he was sharing with his friend, looking up at her as she started another song on a beat up guitar.

The thought stuck through the rest of the day, through a tour of the Seattle underground, a loud, entertaining dinner with the group at Icon, and a trip up the Space Needle to watch the sun set over the harbor. I wasn’t so sure what living with a bunch of quiet nerdy types like me would do to my psyche, but the city has a quiet energy and dry humor that makes me smile.
I asked Rashina on the trip back to the bus if she still thought I fit in with Seattle. She laughed and said, “Hell, I think I could live in Seattle.” I think I could, too. It seems like my kind of corner to huddle in.