First, an apology. Despite my three days in Seattle I did
not make the most of my new camera. Part of the problem was that I am not used
to having it, and part of the problem was that 50% of my time in Seattle
consisted of figuring out the rest of my journey, while the other 25% consisted
of worrying about the rest of the journey. I promise that when I get to my next
stop I will be tourist as all fuck!
Ok, now that the PSA is over.
I have been to the Emerald city all of twice, and it has
left me feeling a bit strange both times. Superficially, I like the city as
much as one can like most North American cities – this is because for the most
part, most American cities look the same. Seattle is no exception, its downtown
is just a clone of downtown Chicago, only smaller and with more hills. All
American city centers strive to be Manhattan, and all of them are failing at
it. But from what I have seen of the rest of the city, it is fine enough; I
stayed in a neighborhood called Belltown, and it felt homey enough. I would
have liked living there more than I liked living in DC. If I had to rate the aesthetics
of the city I would give it a firm and confident ‘meh’. I also ate some very
good fattening American food, and I already regret not having eaten more of it.
I may have the chance to eat more of it in Vancouver tomorrow.
The real interesting bit of the city is its inhabitants. It
is common knowledge that the United States northwest is populated by a
subspecies of Homo Sapiens Sapiens
known in modern parlance as the hipster douchebag. It seems like everywhere you
go in Seattle you are confronted by unsightly body hair, and before anyone
thinks I am being a misogynist, know that I refer to handlebar moustaches,
ironic or otherwise.
To the foreigner walking this strange land, it is not immediately
interpreted as a bad thing. While the whole East coast is already talking about
whatever the game currently refers to
at this point in the year (American Handegg), and DC specifically is talking about
how terrible C3PO or whatever robot name the Redskins’ quarterback has, I
walked into a coffee shop in Seattle and the two baristas are talking about politics.
It was an interesting discussion, and I was happy to follow it while they
prepared my espresso. This got weird when they realized I was following their
discussion, and they briefly tried to include me in it before just kind of
staring at me wondering what it was that I wanted. An awkward 15 seconds
elapsed before someone told me that they had made my espresso, served it to a
neighboring counter, and simply never fucking told me that they had done such.
It was just barely warm by the time I drank it.
I had many such encounters. We should however address the
bias in my research; I am a thirty-one year old man (at the very least, I am a
thirty-one year old fuck up) who still insists on staying at youth hostels. I
shouldn’t apologize for it too much, it’s a pretty brilliant short cut to
social interactions. If you sit down in the lobby long enough, someone will
invite you out for a drink. But certainly it must be admitted that the age of
the average person you meet is going to be in the early to mid 20s. I would
like to think that I have no problem with people this young, but the evidence is
starting to weigh in favor of the contrary. Normally the class of people you
meet at a hostel is a lot worse. It is very often the kind of people one would
call a ‘bro’. A lot of high-fiving, a lot of drinking games, and a lot of
stories of reckless bravado. But there is something in the air of Seattle (and
the US northwest in general) that attracts a slightly different kind. Many
people wanted to talk about politics (with a certain leaning of course, as ever
the Australian I met had a deep disagreement with what the republican had done),
many people had books in their hands (as the stranger who sat next to me in the
lobby with the collected works of Christopher Hitchens), and many people wanted
to discuss weighty topics (as the young Swedish girl who asked me if I had read
The Social Construction of Reality, and
tried to hid her disappointment when I told her that Searle is not much of a
relativist).
Truly, you don’t meet these people in the youth hostels of
Rome.
That was all well and good, and if it had been as simple as
that I would have had a wonderful time. It rarely is as simple as that. I once
had some flat mates from Seattle who really encompassed the stereotypes. The lasting
memory I have of them is of pure sophistry; there is nothing they would not say
simply to make themselves look smart. It led to some maddening discussions,
where one would wonder why they couldn’t please just shut the hell up already. During
this visit to Seattle I met a young man who wanted to be a cover comedian. The
same way one would be a cover band (a band that replays the music of more famous
musicians) he wanted to re-perform the material of older (now deceased) comedians.
For some perspective, this same young man respond to someone’s complaining
about the problems in their live with the ever-sage panacea of ‘I smoke weed’. The
conversation we ended up having turned into an incredibly irritating version of
the style/content debate, to which his ultimate argument was that it did not
constitute plagiarism because the message in the content was important for
people to hear. Thankfully, someone took us out of the conversation once it got
stale.
That is just the first one that came to mind. There were
squabbles about whether such and such word was offensive, the strangest
political beliefs and opinions about politicians I have ever heard (Bernie
Sanders is apparently already a sellout, though I could not be told to whom he
sold out), Gender neutral English Pronouns (they already exists, don’t invent
them), 9/11 conspiracy theories, what words were or were not offensive and whether
context ever made a difference, Italian and French cuisine in the medieval and renaissance,
and the person who had asked me about John Searle knew very little about
relativism, except the lazy kind that doesn’t really apply to anything.
The kind of arguments and enthusiasm I heard there may have
been the kind of thing I would have found thrilling ten years ago, but now simply
exhausts me. It was a repetition of many of the beliefs I came to learn were absolutely
stupid during my Master’s degree (and shortly thereafter).
The long and short of it? Why oh why did I not move to
Seattle in my early 20s? It would have been the absolute wet dream of the
arrogant prick I was back then.
Anyway, the ship sails in two hours. Next stop Vancouver!
Edit: In my hostel-atendee shitlist, I forgot to mention the girl who, having just finished a book on sociopaths, was accusing everyone in the hostel of being a sociopath. Except yours truly. She thought I was cool.
