Nurse the Hate: Hate Seattle

This weekend I went to Seattle for no particular reason except never having been there (except for a brutal 16 hours when the band played the Crocodile Cafe with a band on a major label called The Grays. As I recall they were dismissive of us and kinda sucked. Their album stiffed and I think they got dropped. Not everyone got to be Soundgarden in Seattle in the early 1990s.).

Here's pretty much everything you need to know about Seattle...

There are 9368 coffee shops listed on Google Maps in Seattle. I have no idea how a city of this size supports that many coffee shops. Of course, there is a Starbucks roughly every 15 feet. On top of that there are other chains like Tullys, Peets, and Seattle's Best. Then there are little local spots that range from Internet cafes w/ coffee to drive up sheds cranking out high powered joe. You can stand on any street corner and see 3 coffee places in any direction. With all of this coffee, you would think everyone is pretty jacked up, when in fact...

Seattle residents are really mellow. Most everyone I met had that white collar hippie vibe that is usually found exclusively on private college campuses. Sample exchange from a used CD store:

Clerk (that looked like the funny one of those guys from "Flight of the Concords"): Hey man, did you find everything you were looking for?

Me: I guess so.

Clerk: (way too excited) Hey man, that's fantastic!

Everybody has that buzzed, in-no-hurry shuffle and dresses like they just emerged from a used North Face outlet store. Lots of multi purpose sports/action/hiking/sandal/hybrid/shoe/boots on people's feet. "Hey man...we can go hiking. That's cool. Let's stop over to the coffee shop first though. OK man?"

There's lots of guys that look like Matt Dillon's character in "Singles". You would have thought that part time lumberjack meets bike messenger look would have flown the coop, but not so! Lots of skinny guys with long hair, multiple shirts, and tight pants with work boots unironically walking in and out of coffee joints. None of these guys appeared to have jobs.

Everyone has a beard.

All the girls look like they have cats and journals. A single guy probably spends a lot of time trolling coffee shops looking for girls. I think the girls go to the coffee shops to write their journal entries. "Today I met a nice guy that had a beard." That sort of thing... If these guys are lucky enough to trick her into letting them into her overpriced apartment, I suspect they will discover a Siamese cat named "Ching", lots of Eastern pseudo religious articles that hold candles and incense, and her star tattoo placed tastefully on her left hip. If the relationship takes hold, they will spend their days walking in their action sport sandal boots while holding a Tully's "to go" cup trying to avoid...

...the shifty characters downtown. Like most upper class hippies, Seattle's best intentions can be their undoing. While priding themselves in a progressive urban attitude, the City of Seattle has let the homeless problem get away from them a little bit. "Hey man, they have rights too. We're all equal, you know?"

In Cleveland (and other sensible East Coast/Midwestern cities) , when the homeless, drug addicts, and mentally ill show up to panhandle outside prime downtown real estate, the cops are dispatched to bust in a few heads, and direct them to whatever backwater sanctioned area the city has designated as the off site dumping ground. Is this the "right" thing to do? Probably not, but it sure is nice not to get shaken down for change every 15 steps.

Seattle has decided the homeless can be near all the areas tourists want to check out, like the market where those fucking guys throw the fish in front of the gleeful picture taking rube tourists. The Buffalo Greyhound station has a more attractive group of people in it right now than then Pike Market at 8:00am. Then again, there was a pretty good sized crowd starting to come together to mingle with the shivering goth heroin chicks, filthy dumpster diving crazies, and well scrubbed camera armed Japanese. Maybe Buffalo should drop a Starbucks next to the bus station and have a stand where workers throw chicken wings across the room into Styrofoam containers.

There's lots of good microbrew. Pike's may be touristy, but the beer there is terrific. I highly recommend the IPA. I can also recommend Hale's Ales. The Hale's Pale and El Jefe were my favorites.

Every crazy homeless person has headphones on. How are these people "managing their itunes"? Who is providing all of these personal listening devices? What exactly are they listening to? The Grays?

Random notes: The early part of the season can be tricky. The linesmakers aren't sure of the lines yet, and we aren't sure how good the teams are yet. With that in mind, here's a couple shots in the dark...I like Oregon State +16.5. Something seems off at Penn State this year, and that spread is a little too big for my liking...Georgia -24 A lot of people are thinking the MAC team can hang since they were so tough last year. I think the speed of Georgia is too much here. Hopefully we'll avoid a back door cover when the underclassmen come in for the 4th qtr...Ohio University +35 I don't see OSU blowing these guys out like that. Tressel usually doesn't lay the wood onto the state schools that come in for these glorified scrimmages. Is OU horrible? Probably, but what the hell...Dallas -5.5 Maybe it's the hype of Hard Knocks on HBO, but I've bought in to the Cowboys in 2008. I think Romo rips apart an injury ravaged CLE secondary for an easy cover...New Orleans -3 over Tampa I think the Saints are the class of the South. They finished strong last year after a horrible start. I think this team remembers that, and gets down to business early at home. Green Bay/Minnesota under 38 The Vikings defense is supposed to be hot shit on a biscuit, and they have no QB. This should be a low scoring game decided in the fourth qtr by a field goal. Get on the under.