Olympic Sculpture Park

Today was a perfect Seattle summer day, clear and warm (but not hot), so I walked to the Olympic Sculpture Park and took these photos. There are some really great pics worth checking out (I don't take credit for this...the camera did all the work).

The Olympic Sculpture Park was recently built by the Seattle Art Museum as a place to exhibit some of their large-scale sculptures. It's on a former industrial site on the waterfront in a residential neighborhood called Belltown, approximately 20 minutes on foot from our apartment.

The OSP has become one of my favorite places in Seattle. On clear days it offers spectacular views: west across Puget Sound to the Olympic Mountains, and south past downtown Seattle's skyscrapers to a looming, snow-covered Mount Rainier. The park also has lots of trees, green space, and beautiful wildflower meadows. Oh, and the sculptures are cool too.

The pictures tell the story better than I do; I've captioned each one to provide some context (view the slideshow and click on the big "i" to see these).

Fremont's Summer Solstice Parade

Fremont is a neighborhood in Seattle that is a very artsy kind of place popular with hipsters, hippies, and various non-mainstream types of people. It has a sign that says "Welcome to the People's Republic of Fremont" and there is a prominent statue of Lenin that was moved there after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Every year they have a parade to celebrate the Summer Solstice, and it's a big event in Seattle. I, personally, find parades to be very boring and tedious, but this was quite different from any parade I've ever seen before. Tradition dictates that preceding the actual parade, a large group of people (anyone who wants to join in) can bike down the parade route wearing nothing but body paint. People use a rather liberal definition of "body paint;" some create elaborate "outfits" for themselves while others had no paint at all, obviously preferring to capitalize on the rare opportunity to bike around completely naked in public without getting arrested.

Once all the naked people passed, the actual parade began. Again, this was not a typical parade: no marching bands, no old people riding around in old cars, and no politicians. Instead, you get pretty much what you would expect from a parade in the most liberal neighborhood of one of the most liberal cities in the U.S. Some of the parade was musical (like the group wearing leather, makeup, and tattered old wedding dresses blasting death-metal); some was theatrical (a bunch of 'Egyptian' slaves carrying heavy 'stones' with which to build a pyramid at the end of the route, being whipped along by the pharoah and Cleopatra), and much was political (like Condi, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush chained together as prisoners being herded along by people wearing "Arrest the War Criminals" t-shirts). This last, of course, received a loud cheer from the crowd.

Anyway, words don't really do it justice, so check out the pictures. Pics from Anya's camera (you'll also see a few pics from our friend Alex's birthday party). Our friend Pavel took some even better shots of the parade.

Vancouver pics...

...available here.

Stumptown Coffee

This morning I visited my favorite local coffee shop, Motore Coffee. It's 2 blocks from our apartment I've been frequenting it ever since we moved to Seattle. I've gotten to know the owner a bit; he's just a local guy who loves coffee and decided to start up his own café. I've chatted with him a few times about the coffee industry, which is no small topic in a city like this.

Right now is an interesting time for the specialty coffee business in Seattle. By 'specialty' I don't mean the big guys like Starbucks, Tully's, and Peet's; rather I'm referring to small, local roasters who strive more for quality than quantity. This niche is filled with about a half dozen main players, most of which have been operating since the espresso revolution in Seattle in the 70's & 80's. Almost any non-chain café or restaurant will serve one of these brands, and Motore is no different.

But a shakeup is starting to occur. Eight years ago a Seattle native who grew up working for these Seattle-based roasters moved down to Portland and started Stumptown Coffee. Portland is justifiably renowned for its great beer, but Stumptown put Portland on the coffee map in a big way. In 2005 & 2006 Stumptown was named "Roaster of the Year" by Roast magazine, which is to coffee as Vogue is to fashion. Now, Stumptown is opening a couple coffee shops, a tasting room, and a roasting plant in Seattle. They're in the process of courting café owners to make the switch and start using Stumptown beans, and the owner of Stumptown was in my café today.

I had heard of them before but after having a conversation with Duane, the founder and owner, I understand why Stumptown is different from the rest. Duane and his team regard coffee with the same kind of passion, dedication, and rigor that a oenophile reserves for wine. It's not just "mild, medium, or French roast." Each coffee is named solely from where it came from: country, region, town, and sometimes even the name of the farm. They have estate coffees where 100% of the beans came from the same field. They have daily coffee tastings (called 'cuppings') where you can taste the difference between Brazil Fazenda Serra do Bone, Rwanda Karaba E Lot, and about 20 other varietals.

The one I tasted today was called Finca el Injerto, which, I learned, is made by a guy named Arturo Aguierre in the Huehuetenango region of northern Guatemala. Stumptown works hard to ensure the quality of their product by building exclusive relationships with their farmers. They regularly pay 3 or 4 times the minimum fair trade price; Duane explained that enabling Arturo and his family to live decent lives is not only socially conscious, it's the best way to ensure quality beans in the future. Duane visits all of his farmers in Central & South America, Africa, and Indonesia at least 3 times per year (a Starbucks buyer usually visits once per year).

Finca el Injerto was wonderful. We prepared it in a French Press and unlike most coffees available in the U.S., it was neither bitter nor acidic. I tasted a hint of cherries at the beginning with a chocolate milk-like aftertaste. Only after coming home and doing a little reading did I learn that last year's crop of Finca (because Duane is anal about freshness it's only available during certain times of the year when the beans ripen) was considered by aficionados to be the best coffee in the world.

Because of their uniqueness, Stumptown's beans are a little more expensive than most (around $14/pound), but after meeting the guy responsible for this I'm more than convinced it's worth it.

Vancouver

Anya's friend Sarinya was in town visiting us from Denver this past week. We had a fun time showing her around Seattle and eating copious amounts of sushi (which will probably be a recurring thing with visitors from non-coastal areas).

The three of us also took a weekend trip to Vancouver, BC. It's one of those cities that's kind of like San Francisco: you go there expecting to like it because of all the good things you've heard. It's been named one of the top three cities in the world in which to live by several different sources; when you mention to Seattlites that you're going there the most common response is "Oh, Vancouver is so cool!"

Most of the hype is justified.

First off, Vancouver is in an incredible location. The downtown area is on a peninsula that sits between a bay and two large inlets; except for a narrow strip it's surrounded entirely by water. At the tip of the peninsula is the huge Stanley Park (yes, it's the same Stanley whose Cup all Canadians seem to covet), which has wonderful views and stands of old-growth forest. Directly across the inlet to the north lie towering mountains. To the west across the Strait of Georgia you can see Vancouver Island, which the city of Vancouver is confusingly not on.

Secondly, Vancouver is a very modern city. It's grown tremendously in the last 20 or 30 years, which is evident by its innumerable glass-and-steel office and condo buildings. It's also a very diverse city, not least because of hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Hong Kong that moved there before that city passed from the control of the British. This density, verticality, and diversity has lead to a very walkable city with lots of activity even on the cold, rainy days we were there.

We stayed in Yaletown, a former industrial area now filled with new residential towers. At the heart of Yaletown are about a dozen square blocks of converted old warehouses that are Vancouver's hot spot for restaurants and bars. This is where real Vancouverites hang out; it's fun to see those neighborhoods rather than the typical tourist areas.

And that brings me to my real point: Vancouver's biggest attraction should be the city itself. My sense is that most of the beaten-path tourist areas (the waterfront, the public market, the zoo, the museums) that you read about in travel books are pretty standard. They're the kind of thing you could find in most cities. Vancouver is best enjoyed by avoiding those areas and exploring on your own. Almost all of the downtown peninsula, with the exception of Gastown and Chinatown is a pleasant example of what a modern city can and should be: green, walkable, lively, safe.

You get the sense that Vancouver is probably a better place to live than to visit. Most of its appeal is in the everyday things rather than the flashy sightseeing attractions. I suppose that's why I liked it so much.

Some random facts that I found interesting:
- Vancouver has only 2 million people in the metro area; half the size of Seattle and about the same size as Portland
- Vancouver gets 48" of rain per year compared to Seattle's 34"
- In 2010 Vancouver will become the first coastal city to host the Winter Olympics, and will also be the warmest city ever to host the winter games (it rarely gets cold enough to snow)

Mount Rainier

This weekend Anya and I spent a day at Mount Rainier; check out the pictures here.

Mount Rainier is a 14,410 foot high volcano about 60 miles from Seattle. From any part of the city with a view south on a clear day, it's a prominent feature on the horizon. Even though Seattle has views of mountains on both sides of it (the Cascades in the east and the Olympics in the west), Mt Rainier is so big that people who live here simply call it "The Mountain."

The pictures don't really do it justice; when you're nearby it's so massive that it's difficult to believe it's only one mountain. Its immensity dwarfs any other mountains I've ever seen; there are places where the land rises more than 13,000 vertical feet in a matter of only a few miles.

Since it sticks out far above all the other nearby mountains into the wet wind coming off the Pacific, it (like the other nearby volcanoes: Baker, Hood, Adams, and St Helens) gets clobbered with snow in the winter. We visited on June 2nd and it was sunny and about 70 degrees; check out our pictures for the ones where the snow was still almost 9 feet deep on the side of the road. This ample precipitation means that it's the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states, and it remains snow-capped throughout the summer.

The mountain is in Mount Rainier National Park, one of the oldest and most frequently visited national parks. It's also a historic site because of the prevalence of 1920's & 30's era log buildings known as 'parkitecture.'

During summer weekends (the park is only open from May - October), it gets very crowded with people driving along the highway to enjoy the scenery. The cool thing that we discovered is that it's easy to escape the crowds: since most people never go far from the highway or the main visitors centers, you can take even a short walk into the forest and have a completely different experience from the average visitor.

We walked along a trail (see the pictures at the end of the set) that climbed along the Van Trump Creek; our destination was Comet Falls, a 300 foot waterfall 2 miles distant and 1200 vertical feet up from the trailhead. We were turned back by icy conditions on a steep, exposed slope shortly before the falls, but not before seeing giant trees, raging rapids, and dozens of small waterfalls. We both definitely want to return someday to go all the way to the large falls.

For anyone still reading my ravings: if you're coming to visit us this summer and are even remotely interested in doing something outdoorsy, we'd be happy to take you to Rainier.