I am both a programmer and a Coca-Cola addict, a combination that could cause me to balloon like a self-inflating life raft at any given moment.
So, in an attempt to stave off the inevitable, I occasionally take a long lunch and run around Seattle’s Lake Union. Here are some of the sights along my route.
Gallery
A Run Around Lake Union
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Seattle fancies itself a highbrow town, with a citizenry more likely to read Proust over a glass of Bordeaux than ogle breasts over a plate of hot wings. So when the first Hooters in Seattle opened here, on the southern end of Lake Union, about a decade ago, it caused something of a kerfuffle, with many bemoaning the coarsening of our erudite, Pacific Northwest culture. The upside to this is that everyone knows where the Hooters is, which makes it easy for me to give people directions to my place of business just up the road.
Me: From I-5 take the Mercer Street exit. As soon as the off ramp ends, you need to rapidly change lanes twice, to get over into the rightmost lane, and then go around the corner, at which point Mercer will become Fairview Avenue North, and then stay in the right-hand lane and take another right—it’s really more of a curve than a turn—onto Fairview Avenue East. Did you follow all that?
Them: Not really.
Me: OK, so you’re taking the Mercer Street exit, right? And when you… oh, forget it. You know where Hooters is, right?
Them: Uhh, well, I’m not really…
Me: Shut up, I know you do. Go like you’re going to Hooters but then go half a mile farther.
Them: Got it.
Mileage: 0.5 of 6.0
Condominium accent marks are the new heavy-metal umlauts!
Mileage: 0.7 of 6.0
The Seattle Space Needle was built during the 1962 World’s Fair, the theme of which was “Century 21.” Apparently our houses were supposed to be 600 feet in the air by now, perhaps on account of the flying cars. Wow, what a disappointment we turned out to be. Although, to be fair, we’re still got 94 years left in the 21st century, so we still have plenty of time to move into space condos and trade in our Jettas for jetpacks. And besides, if a time traveler visited from 1962, I sure we could just take him to the aforementioned Hooters and demonstrate that our society has grown mind-bogglingly advanced in other ways.
Mileage: 1.0 of 6.0
When I was growing up in the ‘80s, the Moral Majority warned that films like Porky’s and Hot Dog…The Movie would have a permanent, corrupting effect on the psyche of the nation’s youth. They must have been right, because I can’t run past this sign without snickering.
Mileage: 1.2 of 6.0
Ducks and geese peacefully coexist along this stretch of trail for nine months of the year, but when spring injects ducklings and goslings into the equation, they become abruptly territorial.
I like to imagine them engaged in a turf war à la West Side Story. I can almost hear the mallards singing:
When you’re a duck
You’re a duck all the way
From the day you get hatched
Till you wind up pâté…
Mileage: 1.5 of 6.0
These mailboxes are squirreled away in an island of foliage about a third of the way through my route.
Mileage: 2.0 of 6.0
Seattle resides in one of the bluest counties in the nation. Folks here took Bush’s re-election hard.
Mileage: 2.1 of 6.0
Some took it harder than others.
Mileage: 2.1 of 6.0
The neighborhood of Fremont calls itself “Seattle’s Left Bank,” and its official slogan is “Delibertus Quirkus”—”The Freedom to be Peculiar.” The summer solstice parade is an annual source of mirth, mayhem, and controversy, featuring hippies, samba dancers, mimes, people in salmon costumes, belly dancers, drag queens, Utilikiltarians, puppets, giant inflatable penises, superheroes, potheads, marching bands, police officers, hundreds of families, and the ever-popular naked bicyclists.
Mileage: 2.3 of 6.0
Attention Irish Catholics: If you crash your boat here and die, you will NOT receive a memorial service!
Mileage: 2.3 of 6.0
The folks on the corner of 34th and Fremont Avenue have been “Waiting for the Interurban” since 1979. The sculpture was created by Richard Beyer and placed here over the objection of Fremont Arts Council member Armen Stepanian, who denounced it as ugly and inappropriate. Beyer got the last laugh, though—not only did his art get installed, but he also put Stepanian’s face on the dog.
The residents of Fremont almost always keep the “Waiting for the Interurban” folks clad in clothes, though they were in a state of undress when this photo was taken. Oh, well—as I mentioned before, Fremont doesn’t have a problem with nudity.
Mileage: 2.4 of 6.0
I love how profoundly unpleasant tasks have been rebranded as “team building” exercises. The Vikings had to raid villages and enslave entire populations to get rowers for their boats; now, they could just wander onto a tech company’s corporate campus, introduce themselves as “synergistic team-building promotion consultants,” and return to their ships with 70 volunteers from middle management in tow.
Mileage: 3.0 of 6.0
The Fremont Troll lives under the Aurora Bridge and—to give you a sense of scale, here—clutches an actual VW bug in his left mitt. He’s part of the triumvirate of Screwy Fremont Art, along with the aforementioned “Waiting for the Interurban” sculpture and the 16-foot bronze statue of Lenin (yes, that Lenin) residing five blocks away.
Mileage: 3.1 of 6.0
Y’gotta love a town so geeky that the computer “power” symbol doubles as a gang sign. NOBODY MESSES WITH THE SOFTWAYR ENGINEERZ!
Mileage: 3.4 of 6.0
An enormous gas refinery once stood on the north end of Lake Union; it was obsolete by the time the city acquired the land in 1962, but they left some of the machinery in situ when they reopened the area as Gasworks Park in 1975.
Fourth of July fireworks are held over Lake Union, and Gasworks Park is generally considered the best spot in the city to see them. And speaking of fireworks…
Mileage: 3.5 of 6.0
When I was a kid, Ivar Johan Haglund was Seattle’s patron saint of terrible puns, goofy commercials, and pyrotechnics. His chain of seafood restaurants issued an annual “fishcal statement,” each outlet had a framed picture of Haglund over the words “Our Flounder,” and his television spots made the “dancing clams” local celebrities. When the city couldn’t afford an Independence Day celebration in 1964, Haglund put one on himself, and the “Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s” fireworks show lives on to this day.
This particular Ivar’s has a take-out window and a great system for ordering: no system whatsoever. Patrons are instructed to go up to the counter and just bellow out what they want rather than queuing up in a line.
Mileage: 3.9 of 6.0
The Wall of Death is tucked away under the University Bridge. Every time I run past it I resolve to search Google and find out its history, but I inevitably forget by the time I return to my office. That’s probably for the best: I suspect that knowing anything about this would make it less interesting than knowing nothing about it.
Mileage: 4.0 of 6.0
Sadako Sasaki was two years old when she survived the Hiroshima bombing and 12 when she finally succumbed to radiation poisoning. She believed that her wish for health would be granted if only she could make enough paper cranes, and she folded more than 1,000 of them near the end of her life. Her perseverance in the face of adversity has made her an international symbol of peace.
This life-sized statue of Sasaki resides in Seattle’s Peace Park, and schoolchildren from across the city adorn it with thousands of paper cranes each year.
Mileage: 4.1 of 6.0
In the heady days of the dot-com bubble, two tiers of online stores bloomed in Seattle. The first were those that tried to sell anything and/or everything to schmoes on the Internet: e-potbelliedpigs.com, onlineoverduelibrarybookfinepay.net, whatever. The second tier catered to Seattleites making a killing off of the customers in the first tier. Kozmo.com would rush Ben & Jerry ice cream and Entertainment Weeklys to the doorstep of Java programmers too lazy to go to the corner store, mylacky.com (not making that up) offered housecleaning services to the nouveau rich, and 1998 saw the advent of the ultimate sign of tech industry affluence: Caviar.com.
When everything went pear-shaped in 1999, the second tier dot-coms were the first to go—except Caviar.com. Even when the first tier began crumbling and respected businesses like Freeinternet.com fell apart, Caviar.com kept on trucking. And even though Seattle is now suffering the same economic malaise that afflicts the rest of the nation, Caviar.com shows no signs of stopping.
My jogging partner and I have a running (ha!) joke: Whenever we reach this point in the course, one of us feigns surprise and exclaims, “Oh my God! Caviar.com is still in business!”
Mileage: 4.3 of 6.0
These “Replacements Needed” fliers are plastered all over Seattle—from the University District in the North all the way to Georgetown in the South—and apparently they’ve all been put up by a single man, a modern-day pamphleteer who updates the posters weekly with the revised casualty count.
No one seems to know who he is, but I actually saw him once. A somewhat disheveled youth carrying a roll of packing tape in one hand and a tote bag in the other passed me on a back street of Capitol Hill. When I looked over my shoulder a few paces later, I saw him pull several of these signs out of his bag, affix them to a lamppost with lightning speed, and continue on down the street as casual as could be.
Mileage: 4.5 of 6.0
The street corners on Eastlake Avenue have tiles honoring primitive forms of life. I don’t know why. Perhaps the Seattle City Council was bullied into doing it by the powerful paramecium lobby.
Man, if my high school mascot had been the Fightin’ Carnivorous Flatworms, I would have had a lot more school spirit.
Mileage: 5.0 of 6.0
I like this tiny park for two reasons: It’s a delightful place to eat lunch, and it signals that my run is almost complete.
Mileage: 5.5 of 6.0
This is a great business. When I killed my neighbor and wanted to pin the crime on the mailman, these are the guys I went to.
Mileage: 5.7 of 6.0
If this were the end of an action movie—rather than the end of this photo essay—here is where the hero and the bad guy would have their big, climactic, final fistfight, which would of course end with the villain getting knocked backward and impaled on this enormous piece of pointy art.
And roll end credits!
Mileage: 6.0 of 6.0
Lake Union connects Puget Sound to Lake Washington, allowing sea travel as far inland as Bellevue. In the winter, it’s something of a maritime parking lot, but on a sunny spring day the lake can become so crowded that, according to locals, you can walk all the way across the water—hopping from boat to boat—without ever getting your feet wet.
Mileage: 0.2 of 6.0
