Seattle

so Jeanette, Andrew and the Kids dropped me off at the bus stop. it was a bit sad to wave them goodbye, but i guess all good things must come to an end and i'll see them when they get back to Oz for a visit. i boarded the bus and i noticed a little old man (probably in his 80's) with a laptop. the bus i was on had free wifi so a few people on the bus were making the most of this to kill a bit of time. anyway, i thought, isn't that great that the old guy still wants to learn how to use a computer, even at his age. i sat down in the seat behind the little old guy and didn't really think too much of it. it wasn't until i caught a glance at his screen when i realised why he wanted to learn how to use a computer. he was watching hardcore porn! not only was i a little shocked (talk about never judge a book by its cover) i was a bit worried about his blood pressure.
not long after i got on the bus, i was at the border, so we all had to get out and go through the drill, which was actually pretty painless this time and before i knew it was in seattle.

before i'd even made it to the states, i always knew i going to visit Seattle. growing up listening to the sounds of the Seattle grunge scene, how could i not? i guess in a lot of ways that's where my obsession with music all began. i don't really remember having much music in my house when i was a kid. it wasn't until years later, when i was in my mid teens, that i found my dad's record collection and it was full of classic albums like: The Who 'Live at Leeds', The Beatles 'Abbey Road' etc. when i found them, i was almost angry that i hadn't been brought up with this stuff - i had so much musical education to catch up on! so i guess you could say, it wasn't until my brother introduced me to Pearl Jam, that i really began listening to music. in someways the love affair with that style of music continues. every now and then i'll dust off the case off a Pearl Jam album and listen to it again. i still get a kick out of it. even though i've never been a heroin addict or really dealt with many of the subjects of the songs personally, it kind of feels like so much of my DNA is in those words and sounds. so as you can imagine it was pretty exciting for me to be in the place where it all started.

i read a bob dylan interview recently. in it he said how much he really admired Neil Young, so much so that a couple of years ago he found out where Neil used to live and went to his old house to have a look around, and kind of put himself in the same situations Neil was in. ie: looking out his bedroom window to have a look at what a young Neil might have seen, etc. i guess, to try to piece together whatever it is makes Neil Young and why he writes songs the way he does. when i read it, i totally identified with it.
i'm really into song writing, and occasionally i dabble in it a little bit. but i'm mainly into finding out how songs come about; where do songwriters get there influences from? how are they written? why were they written? where did those words come from? what makes a song make connect with you? how come sometimes a few words in a song can say exactly how you feel? music is really magic to me, i say magic because i just can't explain it. i guess you could say there are sometimes i'd really love to be a magician.
anyway, i kind of felt the same way Bob Dylan did as i walked around Seattle. experiencing all the sights and smells that my musical heros would've experienced. it was just cool to think that maybe this is the cafe Eddie Vedder gets his coffee from. having said all that. i found out what Eddie's address is in Seattle, and i'll be honest i toyed with the idea of going there, but then i thought:

A) it would be a bit creepy me hanging out the front of his house, but also

B) it might be a little disappointing.

i think sometimes when you meet your heroes, they dont live up to what you expect, so i thought it would be better just to let it be.

but i did go visit the house of one of Seattles rock stars, but i didn't think he would mind (he's a little bit too dead to do that), thats right, i went to Kurt Cobain's house. it was actually quite a modest place as far as mansions go. it kind of fit in with all the other shingle houses in the neighbourhood and had a nice view over the water and a little park next door. apparently he would go there and sit on the park bench. as you can imagine, the bench has turned into a bit of a shrine now. there is still a bit of mystery about his death, some people say his wife killed him or had him killed, (it seems that a lot of people that wrote on the bench seem to believe this one) others say he was simply depressed and wanted to end it all. i guess its one of those things that we'll never ever know. but i can't help but wonder, i wonder what his music would be like today?
while i'm on the dead guy theme, at my hostel there was a tour that visited all the dead famous people, like Kurts house, Jimi Hendrix’s grave, Bruce Lee’s grave (which i found by accident trying to find Jimi’s) but it was so popular that i couldn't get on it, so in order to visit the grave of Mr Jimi Hendrix, i had to catch a couple of buses out to where Jimi was buried. It wasn’t so bad because i met an older Australian lady by the name of Kathy at the hostel who was also keen to check out the grave, so at least i had someone to share the pain with. I should probably mention that public transport is free within the city during certain times of the day. Anyway, when we got there i was a little worried mainly because the cemetery was pretty big and i thought i would’ve been like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Christ i was wrong, talk about elaborate. the thing was bloody massive!
Anyway, while i’m on the topic, i should mention a book called 'where are they buried?' i brought it a couple of years ago and if you're like me and interested in reading about famous peoples lives, there demise and also where there buried, it might be up your alley.

considering Seattle grunge scene kind of goes hand in hand with heavy drug use, in particular, heroin. i kind of expected to find seattle to be a pretty dirty place. but infact i found the total opposite. of course there were a few people i noticed around town that had some battle scars from days gone by, but overall the city was really clean, the people here are really friendly and from what i saw, are really into recycling, as well as a large portion of people riding bikes.
The Capitol hill area was a bit of a highlight for me. I went up there one night with a couple of people for a drink, and we found this place that did old rock n roll dancing. even though my dancing was limited to doing the Twist (which i felt pretty embarrassed about because the people around me were amazing) it was still a fun night. Anyway, i decided to go up to Capital Hill during the day. There are some really nice little coffee shops there and also some good clothing shops. But the main reason i wanted to go was i wanted to go to bar called the comet tavern. Because it was where bands like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and various other seattle bands started. When i got there i found that there was a giant barrier around a few streets. I asked a couple of people what was going on, and found that there was a block party with a few local bands and also some bigger ones like the Gossip and Sonic Youth, who were headlining. Luckily i could still buy tickets too it (which was only US$25). Anyway, i got in, listened to a couple of bands, then make my way to the Comet. It was here i got chatting to a couple of people who lived in Seattle. It turned out to be the best thing i could’ve done. They took me under there wing and showed me some of acts that i should go and see. Then they invited me back to there place for drinks and even took me to there favourite restaurant (a little Mexican food place) which was very nice of them. After the block party finished we went to see a band called Champagne Champagne (click here to visit there myspace) who were friends of theres. Talk about a great day!

Of course its not just bands that have come out of Seattle. Starbucks, the coffee chain that we love to hate came from here and i went to 1912 Pike Place which is where it all started. I don’t know why i bothered to be honest i probably passed about 80 of them on the way there. But i do have a theory as to why Starbucks went so well in seattle. Its because Microsoft also started in Seattle. who works at Mircosoft? Nerds. and what do nerds need to stay up late and play ‘world of warcraft’ to all hours? Thats right, caffeine! To be totally honest seattle has quite a strong coffee culture and there are quite a number of coffee houses around Seattle, so its not that hard to find something descent to drink. Also Microsoft have quite a good name here. I’ve spoken to a lot of people here and, not only do they employ a hell of a lot of people, Bill Gates and his wife still live in Seattle and give a lot to charity and the community. Kudos to them, i say.

I saw one of Seattle’s most famous monuments, the Sky needle. Its pretty hard to miss to be honest. I didn’t bother going up, because it was quite expensive. Instead i opted to go to the building next to it the ‘Seattle music project’. Which, by the way, is a rather interesting building designed by Frank Gehry. Inside they had a exhibition of musical instruments once owned by a number of bands from the grunge era. As well as a great Jimi Hendrix section with a number of guitars, or should i say, debris because he had a bit of a habit of smashing them or setting them alight. Also they short documentaries on artist and interviews as well as little recording booths so you could record your own songs.
Public market is pretty famous, mainly for the fish mongers throwing the fish around. But i think the most interesting part of the Public market is down one of its little alleys. Its not that easy to find, but there is a wall that is covered in chewing gum. Its got to be one of top 10 most unhygienic sights in the world, but quite pretty in its own way (see the picture below to see what i mean).



While i was here i heard about a film festival called ‘HUMP!’ at first i thought that maybe HUMP stood for something, but nope. It is exactly what it is. Its a film festival for amateur porn film makers. Apparently it’s started here in Seattle back in 2005 and has been going strong ever since. Apparently its quite funny.

Something i found quite interesting was, a lot of Seattle’s revenue in the early days came from it having a big lumber industry. To get the timber from the top of the hill to the saw mill, they used to slide the trees down a road. It was this road that the locals named skid road which they believe the saying ‘skid row’ might have come from. Anyway, as you could’ve imagined, if you have a large lumber industry theres a good chance that the majority of the buildings in town would be built with timber. Problem was they had a massive fire and the majority of seattle burnt to the ground. To make sure this never happened again, the government need to put in a decent water system. But of course they had no money, they needed taxes. When it came time for people to rebuild there establishments, the government told them that they had to build the first level of there buildings with brick or stone. Sounds like a pretty strange request huh? Actually, its genius! They figured out that it they shoot water cannons that the mountains and more or less create a small landslide that would cover the town up to the first story, then they would used the first floor, which would now be a basement to link all the pipes together.
I did a tour of the underground city, which was quite interesting. There were still bits and pieces people had left behind etc. Apparently many shops kept trading underground for many years, until it was closed to the public. Later, during the prohibition years, it was secretly used as to start up speakeasy’s and do other illegal activities.

I really enjoyed Seattle. It might be that i met a number of cool, interesting people. Not just at the block party, but also in my hostel, though there was one asian guy in my hostel who kept calling me ‘handsome’, i know what you’re thinking, I should be getting used to men cracking on to me by now, but i think this was more of a case of his English skills weren’t that great.
I found Seattle quite a cool, edgy and at times wacky place to visit. Its definitely somewhere i would like to come back to some day. next i'm catching a flight to San Francisco, to meet up with Josh and Kate, who i began the trip with, to experience some more of the wild west. California, here i come!