damn, am I exhausted.
I write this on the final afternoon of my 4day short break in Seattle, and my energy levels have been seriously depleted by the non-stop action-packed time i've had. It has indeed been a mad, mad, wild one! where to start?......the beginning is usually pretty good! as mentioned in my last email, i'd met these 2 chickadees, Lisa and Leslie in Vancouver last week, and they had made the offer of a free ride down to Seattle, as they were heading down to visit their boyfriends for the weekend. How could i refuse such a kind offering.....2 hot babes cruising the I-5 to possibly the funkiest city Stateside, with me riding shotgun! Take out the minor fact of the boyfriends, and to quote that Aussie legend, Bush-Tucker-Man, Les Higgins..."it doesn't get any better than this!"
So, Friday straight after work I hooked up with them for the 3-hour drive to the U.S of A. Crossed the border without any complications (surprisingly!!), and then stopping off at a gas station along the way, we took the opportunity to stock up on some tasty beverages. In the fridge beside the usual Bud and Miller offerings was a beer rather quaintly titled, I kid you not, 'Arrogant Bastard Ale'! I just had to buy a bottle of this. Reading the label, it got even funnier....
"This is an aggressive beer. You probably won't like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to be able to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth. We would suggest that you stick to safer and more familiar territory - maybe something with a muilti-million dollar ad campaign aimed at convincing you it's made in a little brewery, or one that implies that thier tasteless fizzy yellow beer will give you more sex appeal. Perhaps you think multi-million dollar ad campaigns make a beer taste better. Perhaps you're mouthing your words as you read this.".....!!!!!! (http://www.arrogantbastard.com)
Having arrived in Seattle, I said my thank-yous and goodbyes (the girls invite only extended as far as the free ride - they had a pretty full weekend planned since before i'd met them), and got dropped of at the Green Tortoise Hostel (http://www.greentortoise.com) - a grungy, funky hostel right downtown on 2nd Avenue, right in the middle of all the action. This was it! Here I was in SEATTLE!!!! Let me say that this moment has been a loooooong, looooooong time in coming. the phrase 'excited' doesn't come close to describing how I felt as we drove down the freeway, and over Puget Sound, with the bright lights and skyscrapers of Seattle, and not forgetting the futuristic Space Needle building, looming large.
Seattle has been pretty close to the top of my list of cities to visit in the world, for pretty much the past 15 years. I was very much a grunge-o-phile as a kid, having been incredibly fortunate to have spent my teenage years from the late 80's to mid-90's, when the Seattle 'scene' came to the forefront as the main exponent of the musical revolution named 'grunge'. Nirvana, Soundgarden, TAD, Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam to name but a few of the more famous names hit their peak around the time i hit my 16th birthday, and I totally got caught up in the swell of adoration that swept over these, and other, bands worldwide. The music from this city had a huge, profound and long-lasting impact on my life, and still continues to do so, so it's pretty damn amazing for me to be here right now!!
So, with the pilgrimage, as it were (I use the term with the religious context and fervour with which it is meant, considering the reverential status i hold this city in), to my personal Holy Grail, Seattle, finally under way, I was going to have as mad a long-weekend as I possibly could, treating myself to a kaleidoscope of all the sights - and sounds - on offer. My first night tho, was spent in the confines of the Hostel.....I found it pretty hard to leave because IT IS SOOOOO MUCH FUN!! Aside from the fact that I'd bought a variety of beers at the gas station earlier, which i needed to consume - and quickly! - The Common Room, and Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em room were abuzz with travellers shooting the shit, getting to know each other,swapping stories....the usual deal, I suppose. With my selection of beers at the ready, I sat myself down at one particularly boisterous table in the smoking room, occupied by, among others, a coupla loud and funny Queensland chicks, Chelsea and Danella (hi girls, by the way). The majority of my weekend was spent in their company, and i don't think i've laughed so much in such a long, long time. That first night in itself ended at a boozy 4 or 5am, with the plan 'to be up at 9am for some sightseeing'.....yeah, right!!
Aside from the grunge movement, Seattle is way famous for being the hometown, musical making, or burial site, of many more musical and theatrical greats from the past, among those being Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce and Brandon Lee....this city certainly has seen its fair share of a decent pedigree of folks! With this is mind, it is absolutely key and essential as a visitor to this town to pay your respects to these artists and legends. After a rather slow, late and hungover start, we began our rather hectic Saturday by hopping a coupla local buses to a cemetery 45 minutes out of the city in the suburb of Renton.
I should mention a couple of things before I go any further. The Green Tortoise Hostel offers a free breakfast every morning, which includes as much filter coffee as you like. WIth my two bits of toast that I could stomach, I had ONE cup, to wash down the two Tylenol i took for my hangover. I dunno what the hell was in that coffee, or if coffee and paracetemol aren't a great mix, but BOOM did that one cup send me spinning off into an hours-and-hours long hazy mist of a caffeine-fuelled speed buzz! Throw into the mix two half-crazed lunatic-chicks from Brizzy (that's Brisbane for all you non-Aussies out there) and Cairns, and the beginning of the all-day-laughter fit I mentioned earlier was well-under way, with the Tony-led karaoke soundtrack of Eric Calpton's "Lay Down Sally" as accompanying music (abley doo-wop backed by Chels and D)....(I really need to start compling a soundtrack of my life - all the songs that spontaneously entrench themselves into random episodes of my travelogues). Oh yeah, I shouldn't neglect to mention on the bus renditions of "the wheels on the bus go round and round", The White Stripes/Holly Golightly duet "You know that we love one another"and countless bursting-with-laughter incidents that quickly became pop-culture references from "The Simpsons"....As Danella would say - "Oh, not another person whose lives revolve around The Simpsons"....yep, 'fraid so!
Anyway, back to Jimi. We got out to Greenwood Memorial Park, having successfully negotiated the somewhat vague directions supplied by the hostel....and then proceeded to spend the next 30minutes wandering in vain search of 'a grave next to a sundial'...helpful instructions, not! Then it turns out there's TWO sundials in the cemetery!! THEN, it turns out that they'd had moved his site because some crazed "fan" had at one staged attempted to dig up his coffin to steal the guitar he had buried with him. In the end, it was the most obvious burial plot in the entire grounds - a huge granite domed memorial some 20-feet high, with a 1/2 dozen fans mingling about.
Now, I wonder if there's any truth to the rumour that if you leave your guitar pick at his grave overnight, you can pick it up the next day and play Purple Haze left-handed.......!!
Okay, so we paid our respects to Jimi, got our photos taken...time's a tickin, and we've got a lot to do today, number one priority of which was LUNCH!. So back on buses into Seattle, get a little lost, skip said-required-and-much-craved-and-desired LUNCH in deference to time and the ticking away-of, find the right bus route, and head out to Capitol Hill to the Lake View cemetery, where Bruce and Brandon Lee are buried. It was getting on to 3pm at this stage, and we'd been tooling about on PT for a good few hours now, so we gave ourselves 5minutes max to find this particular site.....
I reckon about 6 and 1/2 minutes had passed when a resonating Aussie-twanged 'FOUND IT' bellowed out over the peaceful grounds...good work girls! More paying of respects, photos, and really bad Hong Kong cinema-styled "My name is Bruce" impersonations, where the mouth moves even when there is no dialogue, then it was time to move on....AND GET SOME LUNCH!!
Back in town, almost 4pm, and we hadn't even made it to the EMP (Experience Music Project) (or had LUNCH!). The EMP is a monolithic, interactive music museum, dedicated to the sounds of the Pacific North West, completely built and paid for (at the measly expense of some US$100 Million), and donated to Seattle by local rich boy and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Its like the rock 'n' roller side of the computer geek realising a teenage fantasy wet dream, and making it accessible to the world. There were displays on the history and evloution of the grunge-era, old school doo-wop, jazz and blues, scenes, a permanent exhibit on Jimi Hendrix, and a retrospective on Bob Dylan, to name but a few of the displays. The Liquid Room bar, and a live band room rounded out the complex. Those in the know recommend devoting a minimum of 3-4 hours in the place, but unfortunately for us, the museum was closing at 6 rather than 8 that night for some wanker-corporate function.
Nevermind.....(pardon the pun, I needed to throw that seminal Seattle reference in somewhere!), it was money well spent (by us to get in, and him to build it!). I guess if I had a few billion dollars lying around in the bank, I'd do something similar to! Needless to say, it was awesome. But also needless to say, the experience was the better for having had some LUNCH!!! Prior to getting there, Danella and I said au revoir to Chelsea who had a hot date, and made our way desperately to a shopping mall food court, and finally got some LUNCH!!! Finally satiated, we opted to spend money to save time and hopped the Monorail (cue The Simpson's vaudeville song-and-dance scene of THAT episode) to the Seattle Centre and the Space Needle where the EMP was located. These two constructions were Seattle's ode to the future, having being constructed for the 1962 World's Fair, and while being cool and adding to the cities character, wouldn't look out of place in The Jetson's cartoon.
Having had an AMAZING Saturday adventure of epic proportions, all that was left to do for the day now was to head back to the hostel, recharge batteries with a power nap, and hit the bars in the evening.
More later. Tony
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