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(Not) sleepless in Seattle

Editor’s note: This is the second of two installments detailing the author’s recent excursion into the prickly pretty Pacific Northwest.

By JEFFREY SIMMONS/Staff

Two cost-cutting tourists, a whole lot of crazy people talking loudly to the other people in their heads and a smattering of locals walk onto a city bus….
The joke was on us.
Much to my wife’s chagrin, I decided last month that public transportation would be the best, and, more importantly, the cheapest, way to get from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to our “downtownish” hotel once we’d dropped off our rental car for the urban leg of our Washington State adventure.
After trying in vain to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphics that were the city bus routes and trying in vain to find an easier, albeit more expensive, transportation option, we gave up and pretty much jumped on a bus that appeared to be going in a direction more or less away from the airport. For $1.50 each (compared to a $40 cab ride), the driver said he could get us to a transfer point for another bus that may or may not being going near our lodging establishment and/or the Pyramids of Giza.
While Seattle’s bus system is efficient and even free in some parts of the city, it was never intended for travelers toting luggage larger than a fanny pack. As such, we pretty much had to become one with our suitcases as the uncomfortably cramped bus lurched around curves, made its stops and picked up more passengers.
After finally departing in an underground station, we lucked upon a city bus information booth where a friendly fellow praised the pharaoh before pointing us toward another bus that would get us closer to our final destination.
While less crowded than the first conveyance, this one was much more “colorful.” Talking—well let’s make that screaming—to no one in particular, several members of the city’s, shall we say, “transient” population were railing against a litany of injustices that I’m now glad didn’t include penny-pinching tourists taking up all the interior space with their oversize Samsonites.
Thanks to my wife’s careful observations, we managed to jump off at a spot that I knew was at least within range of our inn, which, preserving my marital bonds, turned out to be a much better idea than my previous one.
After checking in and tossing our heavy burdens in the room, we immediately employed foot power to explore our surrounding environs.
As we approached Seattle Center, an area developed for the 1962 World’s Fair and known for its iconic Space Needle, museums and theaters, we heard the shrieking.
Curious and perhaps concerned that we’d somehow boarded another bus or been followed from the forest by our serial killer stalker, we moved closer to the clamor.
What we found was far from sinister.
Taking advantage of a somewhat sunny summer day in Seattle, toddlers, teenagers and all ages in between were laughing, yelling, splashing and generally cavorting in what was one of the coolest free public attractions I had ever experienced.
Resembling a halved, spiky, shiny metal basketball at the bottom of a cement bowl, the giant fountain sporadically spewed massive columns of water in every direction as the kids tried to avoid and/or seek out the soaking streams. This liquefied game of cat and mouse elicited looks of pure joy from the participants – and from us. A ring of benches around the top provided plenty of room for people watching, catching a sliver of sunshine or drying off after a fountain foray.
Every community should have a similar just-for-the-heck-of-it space.
Moving on, we toured two not-your-father’s historic repositories in the Space Needle’s shadow – the Science Fiction Museum and the Experience Music Project.
We saw robots, “Star Trek” sets, movie memorabilia, guitars, and enough Seattle son Jimi Hendrix artifacts to put one’s vision in a “Purple Haze.”
Wytheville native and successful author William Gibson even had his own place in the science fiction museum’s hall of fame.
One of the music exposition’s unique draws is a hands-on exhibit that lets would-be Kurt Cobains and “Louie Louie” (the Kingsmen apparently played at the music museum’s opening) interpreters generate their own out-of-tune vibes on drums, keyboards and guitars.
The thing is, however, there are way too many hands for way too few hands-on exhibits.
In the mood to crank out some distorted grunge licks, I roamed from pod to pod waiting for an opening. Thinking that the 5-year-old girl pretending to be Keith Richards would soon tire of running a pick up and down the strings in no particular pattern, I camped out at a polite distance…and camped and fumed and camped some more.
At one point, little Keith wandered off to find her band mates, or mother, while grandmother Richards stood guard over the vacant Stratocaster.
You could tell by the pandering, pampering and indulging that this particular youngster was well on her way to becoming a future member of the rock and roll hall of fame, or possibly shame.
Disappointed, but undaunted, I gave up, and me and the little wifey took off to see what more that we could see.
Following many wrong turns and a little fussing and feuding, we had dinner at a delicious pizzeria on our dining to-do list.
Sitting alone at the next table was a striking, impeccably dressed woman who seemed woefully out of place among the T-shirts, shorts and Stromboli.
Even more puzzling, instead of the typical “security blanket” newspaper or magazine preferred by solitary diners, the woman was poring over the pages of a mathematics textbook.
Tapping into my finely honed journalistic observational skills and looking for scientific reasons to explain the lingering glances to my wife, I surmised that the woman was likely a television personality on break before the evening newscast.
Being a bit stereotypical, however, I guessed that an on-air Barbie Doll wouldn’t be brushing up on cosines and circumferences, but more likely cosmetics and celebrities.
Flipping through the local TV news stations that night, I got my answer.
The woman who ate enough salad and pizza slices to feed an entire newsroom was a meteorologist.
All that number and crust crunching must have paid off, because her forecast promised us great weather during our entire visit.
We took advantage of the rain-free skies the next day for a visit further downtown – specifically to Pike Place Market, another tourist “must see” that we “must saw.”
Located an ambitious latte throw from the waterfront, the teeming retro retail bazaar was a feast for the senses and one of my most memorable vacation moments.
The electricity was palpable.
Vendors with tattoos, piercings and strangely colored hair hawked Rainier cherries, plums, peaches – often offering fresh slices from their fruit-stained fingers. Asian men and women arranged hopelessly aromatic fresh flower bouquets. Street performers plunked and strummed chords and balanced hula hoops on their chins. Surrounded by iced piles of mussels and mackerel, fish merchants famously tossed their merchandise from booth to counter, transforming a Sunday dinner purchase into free theater. Tourists filed in and out of the original Starbucks, which was right across from and next door to the other original Starbucks. Just kidding.
Finally, a lovely young woman from Southwest Virginia was savagely traumatized – by an elevator toilet.
Actually, the elevator toilet as I like to call it was a public restroom at the market’s edge.
It looked like an elevator – hence the name – or the entry hatch for a spaceship complete with buttons and blinking lights.
As my wife attempted to use said device, she was given some helpful advice by a 9-year-old boy who pretended – for what I believe were dastardly motives—to be an expert on the subject.
According to him, once the automated toilet flushed, the occupant had only seconds to get decent before the equally automated door flung open in full view of the gathered masses.
Armed with this misinformation, my wife panicked after the water began swirling down the drain and wasn’t able to take full advantage of the public convenience.
Consequently, I had to stand guard on try number two as my wife discovered that the user had 10 minutes after the flush to take care of any necessary business. Kids!
Relieved in more ways than one, we later took the Monorail – another World’s Fair remnant – back to Queen Anne where we were treated to an unexpected entertainment extravaganza.
Unbeknownst to us, we had booked our vacation during the city’s annual Torchlight Parade, an eclectic event so popular that some folks had chained up lawn chairs the day before along the best viewing route.
Since part of the lineup started at Seattle Center, we hung around there for hours eating our Starbucks sandwiches and watching a “We are the World” menagerie of parade participants dance, beat drums, shout, march and unfurl an American flag the size of a football field.
A simultaneous occurrence at the adjacent Key Arena further complimented the chaos.
Nine Inch Nails, an easy listening group (assuming you have no hearing) with such sunny offerings as “March of the Pigs” and “Big Man with a Gun,” was getting ready to play a concert as the fresh-face middle and high school students and various ethnic celebration associations prepared for their evening in the spotlight.
Dressed in what could best be described as industrial scary and, in many instances, resembling patients during work release day at the vampire/zombie asylum, these concert-goers – let’s call them Nail Heads—seemed perplexed or maybe bemused at the plump girls in cowboy hats and bright red boots practicing their feet stomping, fake gun spinning routine.
We loved it all and watched until the darkness sent us back to the zombie-proof deadlock of our hotel room.
On Sunday, possibly tormented by too many toilets and brushes with diversity, we went underground.
On the recommendation of guidebooks and friends, we signed up for the late newspaper writer Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour, which gives customers, as the Web site puts it, “humorous stories our pioneers didn’t want you to hear.”
It was fabulous. Thanks to a witty guide, we stayed amused and entranced as we ventured above and below old Seattle’s streets and sidewalks and heard stories about inept politicians (forgive the redundancy), ill-conceived sewer systems (think high tides and toilet geysers), houses of ill repute and the big Seattle fire. Please forgive my shaky memory, but it was apparently this blaze, street level squabbles and rebuilding that led to some first-floor storefronts being preserved underground when the buildings’ second-floors became the existing street-level entrance.
Confused?
Anyhow, if you ever find yourself in Pioneer Square with an hour or two to waste, take the tour.
Pioneer Square is also home to the Elliott Bay Book Co., a sprawling literary wonderland housed inside a creaky old building. It was kind of like an Amish Barnes and Noble.
Then we met him.
Stumbling upon a cauldron of cookout smoke and caustic guitar licks in Occidental Park, we found ourselves enveloped in what appeared to be a free Christian rock concert/outreach for the city’s homeless.
As the tunes echoed and the attendees mingled, he began to dance. Eyes fixed and blindingly bright silken scarves in hand, he twirled. He spun; he kind of scared me.
An apparent Seattle cultural icon, the “crazy scarf guy” – a moniker I found on a Web site dedicated to sightings of city notables – had the hair of a demonic Santa Claus and the outfit – colorful kilt, vest and no shirt – of a cross-dressing Scotsman.
Rumor has it that he takes his bizarre ballet to venues and events all over the city for reasons known only to him and the mother ship.
I think I’ve found my retirement hobby.
Saturated with memories, photographs and silken scarf overload, we finally grabbed our suitcases on Monday evening, boarded another packed out bus and suffered our way back to the airport.
The flight was on schedule, the terminal spaghetti wasn’t half bad, and the nice lady with the window seat slept quietly until we touched down in Charlotte early Tuesday morning.
On a vacation scale of one to 10, I’d have to rate this one a nine. It could have been perfect, but “crazy scarf guy” can’t make my family reunion.
Jeffrey Simmons can be reached at 228-6611 or .