The Mighty Seattle

In July the hurricane of my life brought be to the Seattle area, and in addition to visiting FuSE'13, I wandered around, yawned, ate, and took pictures -- an activity very characteristic of the true intellectual "elite" in the 21st century.

Seattle Downtown

Locked in between two lakes -- Puget Sound to the west and Lake Washington to the east -- the downtown has a distinctive look to itself. (... well, it's a lie. All downtowns are the same. I should cut off this weird urge to put up their photos.)

Downtown, the front view.

Trees go along many roads in downtown.

Although the banal glass dominates the downtown architecture, it has a special boxy and brown-ish style -- not too aggressive and pleasing to the eye.

The 80s are looking straight into your soul.

Besides the lakes downtown has two more "delimiters": the Space Needle to the north and Smith Tower to the south.

Hey needle, don't be shy, come out (left).

There it is.

Yes, this midget to the right is Smith Tower.

The west bank has a pretty riverwalk and the Seattle Great Wheel.

Some pics above were taken from the wheel.

Some delicious seafood, for instance.

 
A light rail runs through downtown. I haven't yet decided if it's good or bad or neither. At the very least it's unusual.

If this is excavated in 1000 years, what will those guys think?
A cult of soups and black rounded rectangles.

One peculiarity of downtown Seattle is ubiquitous construction sites. This is a right thing to do: when I'm moving there, I need a lot of space.

Big. Red. Fantastic.

Subway looks so very classically American...

... until you see a bus driving on top of the railway. Pros: buses can go underground and use the existing infrastructure; tourists are ecstatic. Cons: overall confusion, trains can't go be as fast/predictable.

Art

Like probably any city known to be cool, Seattle has no shortage of art. It is me, however, who is short of its (meaningful) interpretation.

Don't ask me.

Worldwide communism lives!

And, speaking of art, the weather was really awesome -- especially for July. It was cloudy and breezy, sometimes with open sun. Felt much better than something as choking and exhausting as Pittsburgh.

A Big Birthday Spider.

Seattle has a museum of psychedelic glass flowers -- Chihuly Gardens. It is a place where your color processing part of brain makes a hole in the skull and flies away into the open space.

Flamingos.

Snakes.

Don't judge me: I was tired. Vry trd.

A berry pie.

My sister.

Lots of intestinal worms.

Intestinal worms chewing on lemons.

A throne room. 

A poisonous orchid.

Fall 2013 is coming.

Hunting on passers-by.

All this glasswork is both amazing and painfully artificial. I wish those things were alive.

A wall with pictures of all glass botanical gardens in the US.
Pittsburgh's Phipps Conservatory is there!

Another site to which I sacrificed my precious time was EMP Museum.

The railway goes through EMP Museum.

This place was hot and cold. On the cold side of it was the rock history museum. I cannot be more impartial to anything that has guitars, long beards, and sappy lyrics. I cringed and walked past all the exhibits devoted to northwestern bands like Nirvana and the like.

The explicit message: use your guitars to build meaningless structures.

Videogames and a sci-fi fiction sections comprised the warm part of the museum. Star Trek, the Matrix, and all that.

Kids playing Harry Potter on a gargantuan screen.

Finally, to the hot part -- the Horror Museum. Brilliant!

I spent over an hour, going through every single infographic and record there.

They dissected the history and nature of horrors, explaining different facets of the attraction of the horrific and its role in modern media.

Shots of people in the scare camera.
I didn't fit into it: I'm too sizeable.

Basically, we like horrors because they are a challenge to watch, safely stress us, explore the taboo topics, and are among the few socially acceptable opportunities to be scared.

The dimensions of horror movies: what scares you, when, and how.

One analogy that I liked was, horrors are similar to humor and sex -- it's all about anticipation and release.

He likes you.

There was a button to troll people around museum by triggering creepy sounds. The scream was the best.

I wish it were louder.

Space Needle 

I blame the Space Needle for building up all the unmet futuristic expectations of the space race times. What builds up an unrealistic hype around space travel more than an alien-looking tower at the World Fair two years after the first manned space mission?

Like a vanilla tourist, I went up the needle and took a bunch of pictures. Everyone is allowed to have a boredom attack per month, right?

Southwest. Puget Sound. Waterfront.

West. Puget Sound.

Northwest. Puget Sound.

North. Queen Anne.

Northeast. Lake Union.

East. Central Seattle and Lake Washington.

North. Downtown Seattle.

Downwards. McDonalds?

Microsoft Research

It was personally disturbing to see how the usual winner of the prize "Most Hated Foreign Corporation in Russia" invests heavily into research and looks beyond its 5-year revenue plan. Do all myths of my childhood have to collapse?

The MSR territory in Redmond looks very much like a university campus. The biggest difference is that everyone's older and wealthier. And the buildings are numbered instead of being named after people. Ah those heartless corporations!

An outside eating area. So much campus-ish.

Microsoft makes an extra effort to not stress the geekiest of people as they move from campus to MSR.

Newell-Simon, is that you?

A robot telling directions and jokes. Hello CMU Robotics!

9 out of 10 people would identify this as a grad student office.

I figured MSR is not as bad as I thought. Their agenda on software engineering could use some broadening though.

University of Washington

The legendary UDub -- another place that was completely virtual to me until I visited. Well-known for its innovative approaches and computing research (and, I'm sure, many other things -- but not to me).

The brown/beige color dominates this campus, as well as downtown.

This is the prevalent architectural style of UW.

The electrical engineering and computer science building

They have an open balcony.

Rainier Plaza opens a great view on Mt. Rainier (pale blue area on the horizon).

The view in the opposite direction.

A generally nice building on campus.

Odegaard Library looks brutal.

This is considered to be the coolest building on campus -- Suzzallo library.

The two libraries stand on the Red Square, but I doubt even 25% of UW students know where the original and hardcore Red Square is.

Trees.

The liberal arts quadrangle. Not a place to study.

Another classic UW building.

Does the biology dept try to grow plants in there?

The Foster business school building.

UDub has a lovely campus. Despite having a classic overarching style, it has nice little discrepancies and leaves a warm feeling.

Bellevue and Around

Bellevue left a strange feeling, despite being just across Lake Washington from Seattle. Maybe it's because I spent one day there, and first saw it running through it at 5am, but it's kind of a cold, unfriendly, and deserted place.

Downtown Bellevue.

They have a nice downtown park -- and a wealth of parks around the city.

Bellevue has a lot of crows!
I had a good joke when I was taking this one, but as you can see I forgot it.
No luck.

Speaking of Bellevue, I stayed in Red Lion -- a decent unpretentious hotel with a very northwest-style territory: trees, wooden structures, and small gardens.

Walking through Red Lion.

A good thing about Bellevue is surrounded with forests. The nature and the weather are two extremely strong sides of the area.

The skyline is formed with trees almost everywhere.

A five minute run out of Bellevue takes you to the woods.

The multitude of coniferous trees remind me of Russia.

Geese, why not?

Accidentally, I ran through Medina, where, as I later learned, Bill Gates lives.

No, this is not his house, but it might as well be.

Yeah, I was kinda wondering why I suddenly was surrounded with expensive houses and video cameras at intersections.

Then I ran through Clyde Hill. That was a mistake.

The hill is unbelievably huge.

Just somewhere.

The lakes are a huge advantage on their own. They buy you cooler temperatures, swimming, and the existential balance coming from big masses of watr.

Life is good.

If you are too tired of life, you can sell everything you have, buy a boat, and sail off into the darkness.

Given the surrounding area, Bellevue is comfortable for living: plenty of places around to run. I approve.

Misc

The Seattle police cars are old-looking and have this pacifist blue tint.

I wouldn't commit crimes just to avoid being driven around in such a car.

The plates in Washington did not impress me. Try again.

Seattle postcards and magnets that give the city 4 stars out of 5...

Self-deprecation is an official city PR strategy.

... but it doesn't mean that Seattle is to be messed with.

Life hurts!

The Pacific Northwest appeared more generous than the East Coast. Nobody fights over small things like complimentary photos at sights. No comparison to New York City. Argh, don't even get me started on New York...



Verdict: Seattle is among the few places in the world where I would not mind to live permanently. Not spoiled by the hype and demand like the Bay Area, it provides very similar benefits: lovely weather and nature, the ocean coast, cities-for-cars, and a wealth of technical career opportunities. Mighty and natural like an evergreen tree, Seattle awaits!