the thing itself and not the myth

After a movie Saturday morning, I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and walk around Seattle a bit. I started in Pioneer Square, walked down the waterfront, and took the “Waterfront Street Car” back up to the International District.

More photos than anyone cares to see after the jump. Plus maybe a little history.
The thing about Seattle, which I don’t think you can really appreciate if you weren’t raised on the West Coast, is that it is ridiculously young. When I’m travelling, I’m frequently overcome by the sheer amount of history that people live among, that they take for granted. We don’t have that here. Pioneer Square is basically the oldest (developed by white folks) area in Seattle, and it only dates to 1852.

Down there I took a picture of Merchant’s Cafe, billed as the oldest restaurant in Seattle.

If you click through to get this bigger, you’ll see that the text on the eaves reads: “Established 1890″. Positively ancient.

Of course, there were people here earlier than all that.

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A bit of signage. The ghost signs are remnants of Alaska outfitting at the start of the last century.

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Nowadays, Pioneer Square is a bunch of clubs I don’t go to and a few groovy shops that I do. Obviously, Elliott Bay Books is at the top of the list. This time I also stopped in Fireworks and got a button for my knitting bag, which I apparently forgot to take a picture of. I was pleased to see that Rialto Movie Art (totally insane store) is still around, though I resisted buying anything there or at Cutty Sark. I think I should get props for that. But look! They have Patrick O’Brian in the window!

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Click through to see this one bigger. I dug the combination of the brickwork, the ghost sign, the broken windows, and the wheatpaste wolf.

From there it’s just a block down to the waterfront, home of terrifying things like Ivar’s (where the seagulls will attack you for your french fries) and Ye Olde Curiosity Shop (with its mummies as well as acres of junk, both of which are freakin’ AWESOME when you’re about seven).

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But the point of the waterfront is, y’know, the water.

The best part of shots like this is I could take them, turn around, and see buildings I used to work in. Every day I catch a bus about six blocks from the waterfront. I see water and mountains every single day. I don’t know how people live without them.

From the waterfront on Saturday I caught the ‘Waterfront Street Car’, which is currently just another bus. I should have taken pictures inside it, though, because the ads were totally different than the ones on all the other routes. It was clearly tourist oriented. I took the ’streetcar’ up to the International District, formerly Chinatown.

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And then I went home, because that was enough adventuring for one day. Ta da!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 10:06 am and is filed under photos, seattle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.