In no real or specific order, these are probably my favorite local Seattle institutions and places, since we’ve moved out here in 2005.
- Best new bookstore: Elliot Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square. All wood, all creaky floors, all nice helpful stuff. It’s scale is absurd, too, for an independent book store.
- Best used bookstore: Twice Sold Tales (the Capitol Hill one, not the one in the University District, but that one is good too). Inexpensive, great selection, and the place is lined with sleepy, bored, and surly cats.
- Best coffee shop: Seattle Coffee Works at the Market. Their stuff is just the best, sweetest coffee. Runner up: Espresso Vivace’s little sidewalk bar on Broadway.
- Best food shopping: Pike Place Market. Duh.
- Best grocery store: Safeway, hands down.
- Best park: I really like Volunteer Park, but I have to go with Alki Beach in West Seattle. Rocky expanse of water, bitterly cold and windy in the winter–it reminds me of home. And one of the best views of the downtown Seattle skyline. Nail in the coffin: when the sun sets over the Olympic Mountains to the west, around 10pm in the summertime, Alki is hands down the best place to watch it. On a clear day, the sun ignites the whole sky with what I’ve been told (who knows if it’s scientifically accurate?) remaining particulates from the Mount St. Helen’s eruption. It looks like the sky is on fire, and the mountains as if someone ripped a slice out of the sky into blackness. Gorgeous.
View of the Space Needle from Alki Beach.
- Best museum: The Museum of Flight at Boeing Field. Fine arts? Modern art? Sculptures on the waterfront? Yeah, sure. But do you have a stealth fighter docked in your museum? I didn’t think so.
- Best movie theater: Cinerama on 4th Avenue. Fantastic sound system. Fantastic screen. Gigantic, enormous screen, bordering Imax levels. They show old films sometimes–Lawrence of Arabia is a regular there in the off seasons from the big blockbuster releases. Sit in the balcony, dead center, about 4-5 rows up for the magical sweet spot.
- Best comic book store: Golden Age Collectables. It’s a retail Disneyland for geeks and nerds in every way.
- Best way to get around: King County Metro bus service. To be honest, it’s almost like having Boston’s train lines just… everywhere. They even put a lot of their information out in the public, for people to make tools like One Bus Away. This is the reason I do not miss having a car any longer (for a city of our nature, size, and scale, a surprising amount of the population relies heavily on Metro).
- Best cheeseburger: Charlie’s on Broadway. Runner-up: a Dick’s Deluxe, any of their locations. Greasy, vile, perfect.
- Best breakfast: The Athenian Inn at the Market, for their wonderful Hangtown Fry. An omelette with oysters? Yes, please. Even better with liberal hot sauce usage and a Bloody Mary.
- Best place to see a show: The Triple Door, hands down, full stop. Runner up: The Showbox at the Market.
- Best pizza: Pagliacci; Grand Salami Primo. If only a) they delivered before 4pm; b) they weren’t so pricey…
- Best local beer: Pike Place Place Brewery, “Kilt Lifter Ale”.
Nectar of the gods.
It’s true that our reporter, Todd J. Gillman, has been told that there’s no space for him after Saturday. Obama aides told the DMN last Saturday that the paper would lose its seat on the plane on Wednesday. Within a few hours, that moved to Friday. And by midweek, traveling press secretary Jen Psaki had told us that Saturday night’s final flight would be the last leg available. We protested then and continue to do so now, arguing that a paper of the DMN’s size and stature should be on-board.
It looks like the New York Post, Washington Times, and Dallas News were asked to leave Obama’s campaign jet, to make room for documentary film makers. There is only so much room on a plane, obviously. It was pointed out that the three newspapers are second or third tier publications in their markets (New York City, Washington D.C., and Dallas) and none of the three are up for grabs–the NY and DC metro areas are double digits ahead for Obama and have been for some time, and Dallas is McCain’s.
