Yesterday, insane amounts of snow dumped all over our lovely city of Seattle. This inspires two reactions in me: first, I laugh up my sleeve because in Illinois this is motherfucking bikini weather, and I know I get to watch all the assmittens slide all over the place because no one here has practice driving in two-plus inches of snow. Then, I get really angry, because everything closes and I can’t get anything done.
All was not lost, though. I did a little painting, which I don’t think I’ve really done since I was knocked up. And I cut a snowflake out of some construction paper, which I don’t think I’ve done in years. I hitchhiked for the first time, since my bus was turned sideways at the bottom of Phinney Ridge. I made a little sign with my notebook that said “UW” and stuck my thumb out. I know some people have hitched all over the damn country, but I was very pleased with myself anyhow. Everyone is extra-friendly when it snows here, I think.
When I got to school, I discovered that classes were cancelled and that the computer labs were closing in ten minutes, so I fetched my friend and we got swept away by a bunch of first-year library students to the pub. Hooray for black-and-tans. However, I discovered that consuming two black-and-tans on a delightful snowy day may cause a person to engage in activities that will make your downstairs neighbor come upstairs, knock on your door, and say something like, “This is kind of awkward, but these units really aren’t very soundproofed.”
Ahem.
I give her props and snaps for telling me to keep it down. My companion thinks we need to find her a boyfriend, and then a house, in that order.
The picture I linked is not of my companion, by the way. Although he is a very cool Senator.
Yay for the cool senator, your companion, and assmittens. Oh, and black-and-tans.
What in the wide wide world of sports is wrong with this town. I moved here a year ago from Chicago, and this little dusting wouldn’t have even made the panhandlers in the loop more surly, and EVERYTHING makes them more surly. It took me an hour of driving around to find a goddamn grocery store that was open. Does the city of Seattle own A PLOW? or is it like the mayor’s cousin running around with a snow shovel welded on to the front of his H2? Speaking of which, for a city where 85% of the population wears fleece, hiking shoes, and outdoor gear, and 90% drive some form of sport utility something, they really SUCK when the actuall weather goes to pot, and some of that gear might come in handy. I just don’t understand.
Btw.. I love it up here, and wouldn’t live anywhere else for anything.
ps.. you do some damn good blogin’
he he he he!
I think that Seattle owns ONE plow, but nobody knows how to drive it in the snow!!!!
I like it here, too, but there’s no way you’d get a freaking day off of school, let alone two in my hometown (Denver, CO) with four inches of snow. Shit, we didn’t get snow days until there was a minimum of two feet!
Amen, Sister, and now I live in sunny Phoenix, where a sprinkling of rain causes folks to drive like assmittens.
People from snow states love to lord over Seattleites their hometowns’ toughness in the snow. But few of those cities have as many huge hills and bridges as Seattle, so I say step off. At least we help one another push stuck cars and give lifts to strangers when the weather gets rough. I was in Chicago in a snowstorm, and the locals just honked and yelled at the poor suckers who got stuck. Viva Seattle.
Glad to see you’re posting again, SJ.
Props, Miss Asshole, for sustaining enough noise for enough time for crappe neighbours to complain. Teh r0x0r.
Sea-Town Local is right. The folks here in town are much nicer, and have a much better general attitude about just about everything, but its frustrating when you are hungry and have to drive to 3 different stores before you find a place that is open so you can buy food, and once you get that done and get to work the next morning you have to cover for the 3 other people in your group who live 1/4 the distance from work that you do, but couldn’t get to work, even though they drive big 4×4 SUVs (which I do not) I feel much better now though.
I heard Seattle gots 16 snowplows, yo. Did not see ANY of them the other day, however.
Missouri has no snow…and I think my fair city of 40,000 residents has something like eight hundred snowplows. I thought Seattle had a reputation for being snowful?
Okay, so I’ve lived in Seattle for most of the last 25 years and you know what? It snows here about once every three years. For a couple of days. Then it melts.
And every time it happens eveyone who’s moved here from places where it actually snows is all, “Ha-ha, you guys are such wimps!” And then I’m forced to point out:
A of all, it only happens once every three years. You know how the DMV is alway kind of confusing and upsetting? That’s because you only have to deal with it once every four year. You deal with it over and over again, but generally not very often. Ditto snow.
B of all, most people in Seattle are not from Seattle. In fact, most of them are from California. Me, I’m from Oregon so I figure I have a better claim to localhood than most. But really, when people bitch about Seattle drivers what they’re mostly bitching about is California drivers with Washington plates.
C of all, The Story of Grunge.
Once upon a time there was a third-rate city in the right-side armpit of the United States where it rained all the time and the sun was a distant memory. The natives of this shitty little burg wore boots, jeans, t-shirts, flanel shirts, and denim or canvas jackets because they had to step through a lot of puddles, a lot of them made their living through some form of manual labor, and they could never tell when the weather was going to change so they tended to go for layers that could be stripped off and tied conveniently around their waists. Also, being the natives of a shitty little burg, it didn’t really matter how they dressed; nobody was looking.
Then one day a band from Aberdeen used a live cat as a percussion instrument and suddenly everybody and their dog wanted to move to this shitty little burg, and their careless blue collar style of dress became the cool thing all over the country. However, when people from places like California moved to the SLB, they quickly discovered that, number one, it’s cold here and, number two, it rains all the time. The natives didn’t seem to mind this; their clothes kept them warm even when they were soaked to the bone. But Californians are not known for their tolerance of cold wet conditions so they invented Gore-Tex and fleece, thus allowing them to be warm and dry in cold wet conditions without getting all hot and uncomfortable when the weather got suddenly warmer, as it is prone to do here.
And Lo. The Californians did migrate here by the fucking boat load. And they did build many ugly houses and many sprawling suburbs and they did drive the cost of living in the SLB up until the natives, who were still mostly unkempt hard-drinking manual laborers, were forced to move to places like Renton and Edmonds. And the Californians did grow their hair out, and invent lightweight fake flanel shirts to wear under their Gore-Tex jackets, and lightweight fake hiking boots that wold barely survive a week on the sidewal, much less a day in a logging camp. And the regional economy exploded and the Californians did look upon their works and were much pleased.
But then Grunge did go the way of the dodo. And a Republican did come back to the White House and the regional economy made a little “splash” noise as it landed in the toilet.
But that’s a tale for another time.
And lo, Joshua Norton did post a comment without the use of a spellchecker.
Odd to see Josh going after worn-out stereotypes with a whiffle bat. Fucking Californians! You ruined our fucking city! That became tired oh, about eight years ago.
People move to Seattle from all over the country (witness the comments above and before).
Squid– People do, indeed, move here from all over the country. But most of the things people bitch about re: Seattle are things that were not true of Seattle before it became Torrence North. Even that annoying “Pacific Northwest style architecture” is basically Northern California architecture with a salmon motif thrown in.
There comes a point where colonizers outnumber locals and I think Seattle’s been there and passed it quite some time ago. But it still irks me to have people talk smack about “Seattle” when what they’re criticizing is really a west coast infection that started in California. What particularly annoys me is when people say things to the effect of, “Oh, people in Seattle act all rugged but really they’re just a bunch of soft yuppies.” It’s like going to the fucking Matterhorn ride in Disneyland and talking shit about how “the Swiss cop all this attitude about what good mountain climbers they are, but look at those pussies in the roller coaster cars!” It’s not the real fucking Matterhorn. It’s the California version.
The thing is, I don’t particularly think the Californians ruined Seattle. As I believe I indicated, Seattle was pretty much a shitty little backwater full of drunken wife-beating loggers and anemic chronically underemployed social democrats before it got popular. There wasn’t much here to ruin. But it was a distinct place with its own identity. Now it’s just another fucking mall on I-5 because that’s what passes for culture on the West Coast. The problem started in California (Los Angeles, in particular), but it’s spread to the whole region. All the same, just to be clear, I didn’t say Californians ruined my city.
What I did say is still an old complaint
I can’t argue with Joshua on any of this, I was in town for nearly 4 months before I met someone that actually is from here.
I don’t claim to know what this burg was all about 12 years ago “when the shit was still real”
nor 8 years ago “when the shit got all f*cked up”
I only know what happened this week, and it was lame.
Joshua: Hee!
Can we be freinds again now?
I promise I will never even look cross-eyed at your mom OR your sister again so help me god.
I can’t think of one city where everyone isn’t from somewhere else, including the ones in California. In light of this, I say boo hoo to everyone.
i like seattle. parts of it smell very nice. :)
you folks are indeed getting all our snow! i’m a missouri girl, by way of chicago, and i definitely won’t talk smack, cuz you got the hills and bridges problem as stated above.
stay warm and have some hot chocolate with miss frenchie-pie. that’s what it’s all about, really. :)
Josh: That’s more like it. Damn, I wish more people had your gift of rhetoric.
My main issue: disappointment in seeing you taking the easy shots at resident Californians. Bitching about them _is_ old, regardless of how much precedent you cite.
You’ll see those same cheap, ugly, mold-gathering housing tracts all over the country. Not the fault of California. We just have (and continue to attract) the most people, so this state has always had more crappy construction than anywhere else. But the trend itself started in New York.
And the pink houses–sorry, that’s the watered down legacy of Miami Vice.
Josh:
Come on down to Miami. There are very few locals. Everyone is from somewhere else. We took a lot of crap during the World Series because nobody goes to the games until they’re in the playoffs but it’s because we’re all from somewhere else and grew up with our own favorite teams. I’ve lived here since ’88 and I consider it MY town but I’m sure somebody has a problem with that. Everyone is pissed about all the New Englanders, New Yorkers, Canadians, Michiganites?, Cubans, Haitians, etc. but that just means nobody likes anybody. It makes for a mean town sometimes. Well, except me. I love it.
I guess the point is that it doesn’t help to bitch about the past just get on with the now.
ahhh that is a golden moment :)