SAVE ME, SAN FRANCISCO!
Listen. Don’t move to Seattle. Please. People invariably come to visit in the summertime and they are charmed by the beauty of the place on a sunny day and immediately start making plans to move there. Then they get there and find out that for the other nine months of the year we are completely immersed in a dense cloud cover and drenched in freezing rain, hail, and sleet, you can’t wear nice shoes because they will get muddy and ruined and your entire wardrobe has to shift from leather and suede to Polarfleece and Goretex.
If it does actually snow, it will then turn to ice and you can’t drive in it because of all the hills and the buses go sliding sideways, killing all the pedestrians on the sidewalks. (I heard last year’s pedestrians-hit-by-bus death toll approached 4,000. The mayor’s office suppresses these figures, but I know for a fact there is a watery mass grave of victims under the 520 bridge span that goes through the Arboretum.)
Visitors naively take the elevator to the top of the Space Needle, the only tourist attraction in town, completely unaware that HUNDREDS of people have fallen off of that thing to their untimely deaths while their poor little children look on. (The Space Needle doesn’t report these figures, of course, because it would be bad for business.) I was momentarily upset with a tour guide on a Harbor Tour boat who described the Space Needle as “an amazing waste of space,” until it suddenly dawned on me that he was doing us all a HUGE favor. If you must go to the top, pack a parachute.
If it does actually snow, it will then turn to ice and you can’t drive in it because of all the hills and the buses go sliding sideways, killing all the pedestrians on the sidewalks. (I heard last year’s pedestrians-hit-by-bus death toll approached 4,000. The mayor’s office suppresses these figures, but I know for a fact there is a watery mass grave of victims under the 520 bridge span that goes through the Arboretum.)
Visitors naively take the elevator to the top of the Space Needle, the only tourist attraction in town, completely unaware that HUNDREDS of people have fallen off of that thing to their untimely deaths while their poor little children look on. (The Space Needle doesn’t report these figures, of course, because it would be bad for business.) I was momentarily upset with a tour guide on a Harbor Tour boat who described the Space Needle as “an amazing waste of space,” until it suddenly dawned on me that he was doing us all a HUGE favor. If you must go to the top, pack a parachute.
And obviously something about the climate and the topography conspire to create maniacs. We have more serial killers per capita than all of the industrialized planets combined. (Read Ann Rule's book about Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, to really freak yourself out.) It has become such a regular pastime of Seattleites that, in addition to the Preschools for the Performing Arts and Massage Therapy that have become popular, there is a new chain of Preschools for the Proliferation of Serial Killing opening up this fall. Nowadays, when you go for a walk in the woods with your dog, you’ll even see dispensers for biodegradable body bags at the trailheads next to the poop sacks.
Seattle is home to corruption and graft and always has been. The streets are filled with the dregs of society. We even coined the term “skid road” to describe our nicest neighborhood. (Reading Skid Road by Murray Morgan right now. It makes me wonder if us non-Native Americans really have any right to be there at all.)
Clinical depression in Seattle is a constant battle for those who move here from out of state. The gloomy weather brings everyone down, and to top it off they all start using drugs to lift their spirits, which just makes matters worse. To quote my old friend, Brian Miller, “Being a heroin addict in Seattle is totally redundant.” Most people have to purchase special Happy Lamps to combat their Seasonal Affective Disorder. And I don’t think they even work, because people still complain about the weather. I mean, if you move to Seattle, don’t complain about the rain! It’s like me moving to the desert and complaining that it’s too hot. Which of course it is, but I knew that coming in!
Finally, if I hear one more out of towner complain that Seattleites aren’t friendly, I’m gonna punch him and his elderly mother right in the nose.
So, for anyone who is considering a move to Seattle and you haven’t actually spent an entire winter there yet, please take this advice from a native: consider San Francisco instead! It’s just as pretty, if not more so, is way more gay, has the bay and the hills and all the fresh seafood and Chinese food you can stand, the traffic is just as bad, has warm sunny days because you are in California, and then the fog rolls in to cool you down so you feel like you are in Seattle without actually having to live there.
There are enough earthquakes to keep you on your toes, just like Seattle, but you don’t have to worry about the volcanoes. They have real beaches where you can surf, not sand spits covered in stinky clams. It’s more cosmopolitan and sophisticated and best of all, it’s even more expensive, so your friends will be doubly impressed.
There are enough earthquakes to keep you on your toes, just like Seattle, but you don’t have to worry about the volcanoes. They have real beaches where you can surf, not sand spits covered in stinky clams. It’s more cosmopolitan and sophisticated and best of all, it’s even more expensive, so your friends will be doubly impressed.
And it that doesn’t float your boat, try Portland.
(Wow! Don't you love how you can find almost everything on Amazon?!)
(Wow! Don't you love how you can find almost everything on Amazon?!)
THIS IS TOTALLY PHOTOSHOPPED. IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE THIS. ASK ANYONE.
This is more like it.
Original material © 2011 betsylolafalanadowling.blogspot.com, Brain Fuzz & Betsy Dowling, All Rights Reserved
Credit for image of Space Needle pending research.
Image of rainy Seattle by Melanie Connor for The New York Times.
