Seattle
October 22nd, 2008This past weekend, Kaveri and I flew out to Seattle for the Rawstock Film Festival. The organizers promised to partially pay for the trip, so I said “why the hell not?”
I had never been to the Pacific Northwest before and so, when I had to venture a guess, I imagined Seattle to be town of earnest flannel-wearers, constantly hiking up mountains, high on coffee. I couldn’t really square this image with the show Frasier, so I always decided not to think of the show Frasier when thinking of Seattle. To a lesser extent, I also decided not to think of Sleepless in Seattle.
The Rawstock Festival is a fun, scrappy festival of film shorts that happens about 4 times a year. And for the past year—starting with the “Mister Glasses” series—they’ve been showing stuff I’ve made. And now they were showing stuff Dyna and I (and Bill Buckendorf) had made—three episodes of the “Welcome to my Study” series. What is it with “Welcome to my Study”? People really go apeshit over it. It’s become a minor internet hit. Seattle was full of “Study” fans.
But more on that later; what was Seattle like?
From the little I saw of it, Seattle felt like the city that would emerge if New York and Northhampton, Massachusetts had a baby and that baby decided to live by a bay. It was far more cosmopolitan than I would have figured. The people we met (and maybe this was not a representative sample) seemed to all be done up in black cocktail dresses and suits.
our new Seattle friends
And just like in New York, there is the trend for “pre-prohibition” cocktails in the fancier hipster Seattle bars. So, we got to enjoy drinks that had egg whites in them. Which was fun.
The city has a very walkable downtown area surrounded by a bunch cute neighborhoods that are nearly impossible to get to using public transportation. And so we found ourselves quixotically riding the bus to a neighborhood called Ballard. And then cabing it to Capitol Hill. People of Seattle: invest in modern trolleys!
Ballard
From what I gather, most of Seattle was destroyed in the late 19th century. You can take a tour of the old buildings now buried underground. They sit (I think) below the downtown neighborhood of Pioneer Square which is composed of cute late-Victorian brick and stone buildings in that “American Downtown Vernacular” that you see in a lot of Eastern cities.
What else…there are a few of great, deco department stores and a lot of soulless postmodern office towers from the 80s. Also, there’s the very cool Public Library designed by Rem Koolhaus Koolhaas, which looks like a crystal spaceship descended to earth. Kaveri and I spent a lot of time in that library walking the slowing sloping spiral of stacks. The interior of that building is amazing.
Seattle Public Library
There is also a huge working port.
And a market with amazing floral bouquets and tons of fish.
The Ace (with Kaveri)
We stayed at the Ace Hotel. The Ace Hotel answers the question, “what does a hipster do when he’s too old to stay in a youth hostel and too poor to stay in a nice hotel?” The rooms were breathtakingly small but they were painted white and outfitted with a stainless steel sink and an Eames rocker and ironic landscape wallpaper so it all seemed pretty cool to me and Kaveri. Also, the bathroom was in the hall. Like a youth hostel. But we liked it.
And again, people went absolutely apeshit over “Study”—huge laughs. And lots of people came up to me after the show and told me how much they liked it. So I was really touched. It was great. I have to thank the organizer of the event, the extremely nice Justin Freet, whose mom may have been the most devoted of all the “Study” fans that night.
And the event was sponsored by Bulleit Bourbon which is tasty.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
You left out that someone asked to marry you after seeing Study. Mitchell has some hyp-mo-tizing animal magnetism powers… even on YouTube people are always talking about how attractive you/your eyes are.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Hey Nerds,
I just added Bloggy to my Google Reader. Yeah.
Congratulations on your success, Mitch!
I would have thought a festival in Seattle called Rawstock would be all about “A pure health empowerment party celebrating eco-regeneration, musical ecstasy & raw food delight.” Google confirms this.
P.S. Can I talk to Kaveri on this thing? Is that weird? Congratulations on your new hair, Kaveri. Oh, and congratulations on your sweater perfectly matching part of a Rem Koolhaas building.
P.S.S. Sorry Mitch, you’ve been out-nerded on your Dutch architect name-spelling. KoolhAAs.
P.S.S.S. That’s the sound of a tire deflating. Or someone taking a leak.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:14 pm
So does that mean you liked Seattle? Or were disappointed that you didn’t find more flannel?
Also, Ballard is notoriously difficult to access via public transit from downtown. If you had instead sampled Fremont, Capitol Hill, Wallingford, the U-District, Beacon Hill, or South Queen Anne, you may not have been as frustrated. Then again, New York is so much better at the whole “no car” thing than virtually anywhere else in North America that you may be disappointed any time you venture too far from the Hudson mouth.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Next time be sure to visit Portland as well. It’s whacky! (Oh, and Vancouver, B.C.–lovely).
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:45 am
[...] Mitch wrote about Seattle so I have to write up my party [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Also,
Mitch had HIS OWN DRESSING ROOM at the the theatre. Not so necessary, maybe, for a video screening, but still nice for lounging around in his peignoir receiving bouquets and applying his makeup in one of those mirrors with extremely bright flashbulbs all around it. Also, the theatre was red and plush and very nice. We don’t have pix of the screening, because we left the camera in the dressing room.
Much like the theatre, other places–bars, coffeeshops, hairdressers–that would have been small or at least crowded if they were New York, were, in Seattle, lofty-ceilinged and stylishly spare, often in beautifully restored grand old buildngs. Maybe that’s because we spent so much of our time in the downtown area (like Belltown, where our hotel was, or Capitol Hill, where we went twice for drinks) . After all, probably a lot of Seattle is not that old. But these spaces, combined with drinks like the Ramos gin fizz–a cocktail that was like an alcoholic creamsicle turned into a foam by one of those avant-garde chefs from Spain that are always making foams– make me agree with Mitch that Seattle was super swanky and above my paygrade.
The fruit was also really good. Even in the airport.
P.S. Christian, Thanks for the hair congratulations. May I congratulate you on writing the funnest comment I can remember seeing on this blog? Is it weird that I am talking back to you via Mitch’s blog?
P.P.S. Christian, I suspect I’m outnerding you on how to abbreviate Post Post Scripts (as opposed to Post Script Scripts, of which I know nothing)
P.P.P.S. No, I’m not going to go there.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
You should not be shocked that people like “Welcome To My Study.” “Welcome To My Study” is perfect.
Is it weird that that library makes me want to move to Seattle so I can write in that library?
May 4th, 2010 at 3:01 am
You made some Good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree.
June 21st, 2010 at 12:34 am
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