Notes from Seattle

RIP, Seattle Supersonics. RIP.

I have perused the site in darkness since Brandon got drafted. Had to reg for this little gem. Cheers Mate.

If the Blazers had been shipped off to the middle of nowhere the year prior? Most people just pretend they never cared anyway. I always feel like a chump when people ask me if i used to be a Sonics fan (i did.) In retrospect there’s a certain sense that i was simply “wasting my time” watching and caring about the team.

Thankfully i never grew up hating the Blazers and going to college in Portland solidified them as my second favorite. Their play last year made it easy to get excited about the team. I’m probably a rare case though. Most other people i know have just stopped watching basketball period. Maybe once the Timbers joins the MLS we can have more neighborly sports hatred.

Is that little island Vancouver Island with its very English capital, or did you mean something else?

did michael jordan’s hall of fame induction speech/rant inspire this? lol

This seriously reads like a Dave Barry column, well done!

i lived in seatle for about a year and it was pretty fun (now i live in tacoma)…. Hempfest was awesome! i am originally from portland though, and im not sure witch i prefer. it would be nice to be living in portland again cause it makes it easier to go see the games.

You win. At everything.
That is all.

The whole point of this post is that all of these things apply equally to Portland, right? That is the only way it makes sense for a Portland blog to make fun of another city about fair trade coffee and having a lot of bands. I just can’t figure out how the ferry jokes translate.

Dave is trying to relive days which may never return. Where’s good-natured hostility when you need it?

I can’t remember the name of it but it was a little yellow building and the entire exterior was covered in colanders and angel food cake pans.

Next time you go to the Farmers Market, there is a nice Chinese place near the first Starbucks that has good manapua.

That came across as way too snarky, Dave. I’m originally from Portland (18 years) but I’ve lived in the Seattle area for 13 years. While I still prefer Portland, Seattle and the surrounding areas have their charms. I think you should read Things About Portland That Suck and reconsider your post (I mean, the Pearl District, c’mon! What happened to Portland!?!)

And with regard to why you can stroll the streets of Seattle in red & black with impunity, it’s because the Seattle Supersonics no longer exist – the Trailblazers are the only NBA show in town now thanks to David Stern, Clay Bennett and the Antichrist of Mocha, Howard Schultz.

Instead of moving my arse to Seattle…
No it isn’t the hipster Beardos or 800,000 strip and sex clubs. It isn’t the awesome income tax I get to pay every week. No, not the 800,000 bikes. Or that everyone in this city is in three bands too (me included). It isn’t how Portlanders are pretentious about this city. Or that really most people that live here seem to be from someplace else. Rejected by their hometown, and found a place as strange as they are. It isn’t the unemployment rate or the first rate schools. Not the beautiful shores of the Willamette. Nope, not the abundance of PBR flowing like rivers to the drunken public or that we have 4 less Starbucks than Seattle.
I could tell you that it’s because I really love the Blazers, but I can love them from anywhere.
The reason I’m here is because it rains a little less.

I’m reminded of the time when hubby and I were courting. He took me to Seattle on the train for a Seahawks/Patriots game and to the Space Needle restaurant for dinner. In the taxi on the way to the Space Needle our driver smoked a joint the size of a Cuban cigar and very generously offered to share. We declined but it was the only generosity we found that evening. Of course, the menu at the restaurant had no price list but we placed our order with our very snotty waitress who had a very thick NY accent. When she presented us with the bill hubby quietly asked to see a price list and she went ballistic and got really insulting, loudly calling us hicks and stuff. Hubby told her he was from New York too and that he knew when he was being scammed. She finally left and about 15 minutes later the manager came out with a price list and told us the waitress had been fired. She had padded our bill by $40. We ate for free. Good times.

I feel Seattle is very much like us, and is our partner against the evil Empire to the South (California)

For example I felt a sting when the Sonics left, and would very much verbally abuse Clay Bennett is met in person.

You have a lot of credit built up with me so I will assume I am just missing something. The spirit seemed a little counter to what you normally go for. Maybe I am just not in the mood or missing the joke/sentiment…?

wearing green and gold is now illegal in the Emorrhoid City. Not because of any lingering bitterness towards the Sonics going to Okalhoma.

It’s just that in the absense of Sonics basketball—green and gold are now Duck colors.

And a bitter reminder of just how bad the Huskies are at football these days. OSU’s “toilet bowl” team of 1983 or so would have whipped last year’s Dawgs by four touchdowns.

Seattle is Boeing, Microsoft, Nintendo America, and that’s about it. It’s a nice place to visit I guess, but it’s routinely 10 degrees colder than our Hick town, and people seem to be infinitely less friendly (the Seattle Freeze anyone?). I have no beef with them, because ultimately they did give us Sir Mix-A-Lot and Brandon Roy. Based on the strength of those individuals alone, I give them a pass. They can hate us all they want, I’m much happier here.

can you spell J-E-A-L-O-U-S-Y?

Also, the phrase “we in Portland” should be reserved for people who you know, LIVE in Portland.

Just sayin’ :P

Where can i get me some Blazersedge.com SHIRTS???

That doesn’t happen in other posts. Maybe I should reboot.

Have you ever tried leaving Lynnwood at about 4 in the afternoon to come back to Portland? Real scenic.

Two things Seattle does have are a really nice baseball stadium and Jazz Alley.

where are they?

Wow…that does sound snarky. Seattle is a wonderful city. Portland is more my style however. You should stick to critiquing the NBA.

I do love to visit, however.

another former Seattleite, too, so maybe it’s that.

I know at least some of the point was to lament the loss of the rivalry, but in that case, why add insult to their injury?

I was offended on Puget Sound’s behalf. Last year I took the scenic route from Seattle to Olympia, along the Sound. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and the only smell for most of the way is the smell of the ocean.

As for most of the rest, you might as well have been describing Portland.

Oh, well, your blog.

I happen to really like Seattle. I like it because it has so many different things to offer than Portland, yet at the same time, the two cities share a lot of the same values. Portland & Seattle reminds me of Me & My Sister. You’d be hard pressed to find two more distinct people — how could we possibly be from the same family?! — yet we can finish each others’ sentences.

I was startled by how much it hurt that the NBA killed the Sonics. Yeah, we were were rivals (just like my sis, I suppose) but I miss the rivalry. It was a a deep throbbing kind of hurt, and it’s still there. All that history, gone. Just like that.

P.S. Some of my fondest Seattle memories take place in West Seattle, where there’s a pretty decent beach if you want to stroll along the water or watch beach volleyball.

You are missing the point that Seattle and Portland are equally laughable in these ways in which he points out (with a sense of humor) of course some of these things are disgraceful such as $60 elevator rides. Nonetheless, the sad thing is that the rivalry between the two is dead.

oh, this was supposed to be funny….FAIL

Gotta love when someone comes into a town, does all the tourist stuff (way to experience the true culture Dave!), and then disrespects the community under the guise of being from a better place.

Laughed out loud literally several times! Thanks for the birthday gift (yep, mine is today).

It was New Year’s Eve. They were at a rather large party, and struck up a discussion about how difficult it was to be prejudicial because, you know, hating an entire group of people is hurtful and offensive. Yet having a whole class of people to be prejudicial against is incredibly liberating. You get to resolve all the complicated problems of life by foisting blame on this alien Other that is the scapegoat for all your pain and suffering. So they conspired to find one group that they could freely hate, bash on and insult that could never, ever, possibly catch wind of their transgressions. It would be a completely hypothetical bias against a nearly imaginary foe.

Eventually they settled on Belgians, and spent the first couple of hours of 1993 explaining to anyone who would listen that Belgians were simply worthless cretins who were too stuffy to be French, to foppish to be English, and too short to be Norwegian. They put a tremendous level of effort in singling out Belgians for ridicule. Of course, everyone thought this was all funny as hell… except for the one very quiet, very drunk guy who finally had a complete breakdown over how my friends were humiliating his girlfriend who, although not present at the party, was most certainly Belgian and wasn’t anything at all like they were presenting Belgians to be.

End of joke. End of party.

You can push your tongue through your cheek until it comes out your head like some kind of new-fangled piercing, and people will still take offense. Comedy is a dangerous business. As Robert Heinlein (in the guise of one Valentine Michael Smith) so aptly pointed out, the foundation of humor is pain, and laughter is for the most part a coping mechanism. Worse yet, our dear Dave has engaged in the very riskiest form of comedy, deadpan satire. Indeed, Andy Kauffman was so good at the straight-faced put on that when he was actually dying of cancer, just about nobody believed him.

I really enjoyed this post, but years from now, after almost all of us have forgotten this ever happened, there will be a handful of Seattleites who claim to know “the truth” about what a spiteful guy Dave Deckard really is.

Nonetheless Dave, don’t let that stop you. Rec.

I’ve been following bedge for less than a year after having the Green and Gold ripped away from me and I haven’t seen this side of Dave. Were it not for the comments and Dave’s sympathy for former Sonics fans that I’ve seen in reading his work I would have taken this as an out of character attack. So I guess bravo?

The city or the team (past tense). Sure, it has it’s charms. It has a beautiful location between water and mountains and there’s always something to do, but the bad out weighs the good…too many people and too overpriced. But the worse thing by far is the traffic. It doesn’t matter what time of day or what day it is, you will run into traffic. It’s enough to make one wonder how anyone in Seattle gets anywhere. And why is it that whenever I drive thru Seattle in either direction the express lane never goes in the direction I’m going in?? Never.