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January
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SEATTLE – Back home, we’ve been buried by a blizzard. The nation, convinced we abide cheaters, hates us. We’re rightly worried about an ugly stain on the Lombardi Trophy.
And the people here? They’re splashing around in lattes and “flat whites,’’ in a city full of people who look like that cloying art history major who’s working as a barista at your local Starbucks, philosophizing over the scones.
OK, the natural beauty is stunning. Yes, the people are unfailingly polite. I know it may be like putting buckshot into Bambi, but there’s a way to shift that hatred 3,000 miles to the west. Allow me:
Seattle, eager to improbably christen itself Titletown USA, is so caught up with its 12th man mania — which means mania about itself — that white-on-blue “12” flags hang in every barroom window. They fly atop construction cranes. Dave Matthews will hoist one atop the Space Needle on Thursday. The city, whose long history dates as near as I can tell back to the Eisenhower Administration, will spill tears of joy.
Look, I’ve seen this 12th man. Not a pretty sight. He was wearing a hemp sweater and smoking a clove cigarette. I spotted him handing out free granola bars under a bridge Tuesday night, mumbling something about Che Guevara.
And “Sleepless in Seattle’’? I don’t think so. Half the people walking around here the last couple of days look as if they just rolled out of bed.
A nice man from the mayor’s office this week begged me not to mention grunge when writing about his fair city. OK. Let’s not talk about grunge.
But what about this obsession with coffee? Hey, when you count Windows Vista as a tech success story and Jeff Bezos is your idea of a sex symbol, you need to ingest as much caffeine as possible.
“There’s no [bad word] factor here,’’ insisted Tony Williams, a Republican lobbyist, whose wife from Tennessee now runs around in ripped jeans, a flannel shirt, and UGG boots. “[Eff] off is like hello in Boston. Here, it’s just about against the law to honk your horn unless it’s an emergency.’’
Well, it turns out, there’s good reason for this municipal timidity.
It’s been said that when the women and children of the first settlers here arrived in late 1851, they broke down and cried when they surveyed their forlorn new home. They would probably need a hanky or two if they could see what latter-day Seattle is doing to inspire its modern citizenry.
They’ve erected a 7-ton statue to villainous Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin in one city square. Blocks away, signs direct visitors to a startlingly gigantic statue of a troll under the Aurora Bridge, which a local arts council hoped against hope would “build a greater sense of place.’’ I guess you could call that culture. At least someone had the good sense to paint both of Mr. Lenin’s hands in bright blood-red paint.
Last year, the City Council killed the Columbus Day holiday, renaming it Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a move that will surely make the people of Cambridge swoon with jealousy.
There are exceptions to this sea of tranquility. Sonny Sixkiller, a former quarterback at the University of Washington, said he considers Bill Belichick the polar opposite of the Seahawks coach, the ever-smiling Pete Carroll, whom local media portray as a cross between Santa Claus and Mahatma Gandhi.
“Belichick is like a mad scientist on the sidelines,’’ Sixkiller said. Nice one.
When Mayor Ed Murray escorted me into his sunny office the other day, all he wanted to talk about was how Seattle’s population has leapfrogged Boston’s and how he’s snagged former Boston police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole to head Seattle PD.
But Titletown USA, Mr. Mayor? Come on. “We took your status as a larger city,’’ Murray said. “We took your chief of police. And now we’re going to defeat you in the Super Bowl.’’
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Seattleite’s version of a verbal joust. How cute is that?
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