One of the things I’ve been doing along this trip is thinking of places to live in the future, and Seattle has made the short list so far (Austin keeps it company). We rolled into Seattle and took a look at the Space Needle. Nobody wanted to part ways with 16 dollars so we just looked at it from the outside. Then we met up with our friend Kyle and he took us around the city to see some much cooler things (in my opinion).
We walked towards downtown to Pike’s Place, the road where the open market opens up on. It’s probably one of the coolest markets in the world and the seafood there is legendary. We saw some of the workers tossing the fish back and forth which was pretty cool. Kris and I had an interesting discussion about these guys. They are basically the bottom of the ladder working class guys doing a job that probably none of them want to really keep (they all looked 20’s or younger) yet when people come to Seattle, they come to see them. Despite having a working class status, they have more fame than almost everything and everyone else in the city.
We could also see the shipping port out in the sound. Unlike San Francisco, this port is modernized and wheeling and dealing in the 21st century. After we were done checking out all the gigantic loading cranes from a distance we finished up our tour of the market with a visit to the so-called queen mother of Seattle, Starbucks. The shop looks a little different from the other Starbucks you will see (in that, the mermaid on the front door is an older picture with breasts showing… something you don’t see many other places) but it really operates just about 100% the same as the others. I am totally amazed by how well Seattle has embraced the idea of globalization. Obviously they have natural advantages (such as a large port) and they have helped a company like Starbucks go from a single, tiny coffee shop into the dominating chain that has multiple shops on individual corners at times. Another reason for the success of Starbucks could very well be due to the competition around it. I haven’t looked any further into it, but I imagine that Starbucks was not the only kid in town for coffee and that they had to compete for market share. What this could lead to is a better tasting coffee at a lower price. If this didn’t happen, Starbucks probably would not have been able to go global since nobody would want a low quality coffee shop in town. As a result, Seattle brings high quality coffee around the world quickly and cheaply and Starbucks takes full advantage of that.
After we met up with Katie (our hostess for the night) we went putt-putt. We played some competitive miniature golf with her coworkers at a place where they served beer on the course. It was an… interesting experience involving rap music, tailgating, teams dressed for themes (ours was white trash) and lots of missed shots.
