I always dread the morning that I need to leave a motel/hotel room. Typically, I feel like I haven't availed myself of all the advantages. I had washed my t-shirts in the bathroom sink and dried them over night. I'd done my writing. I didn't even turn on the TV, but would have if I'd not had so much writing to do (I like the Food Channel, PBS and History Channel). I'd taken a bath and a shower. Yep, that pretty much covered it all.
My friend had also left some money on the room account in case I wanted to eat at "The Bistro" (the restaurant attached to the hotel). Before I checked out, I did go in for breakfast; a delicious scrambled eggs, home fries, sausage and marble rye toast, with (of course) Starbuck's coffee.
I was going to meet someone for lunch, I took some shots while I waited...
Chief Seattle.
Columbia Center Building.
Looking up 3rd Avenue.
Camo Limo--disappears right into the city background... Ha!
Noon arrived and I had my lunch. I got a printout describing the tent city on 145th Street, here in Seattle. It is called TC3 (for "Tent City 3") and was hosted by Seattle Pacific University (SPU), who paid for them to be located right on campus, set up bathrooms and even paid for their permits etc, until March of this year. At that time they had to move again
The tent city was a controversial issue...
Last moving day in December, the city of Seattle forced the homeless camp off an unsanctioned piece of property in the Roosevelt neighborhood a month early.
Source: kirotv.comThey moved to the PCU campus with a 90 day limit, and in March they moved to St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, 722 N 145th St., Shoreline, WA. I will be visiting this camp on Saturday, August 28, with another friend I met online, who generously offered to give me ride around Seattle, and this seemed like the perfect adventure for us.
After I had the rest of the afternoon to explore the city that I'd missed out on the day before. So, I threw myself into it. First, I took a suggestion to visit the Public Market at Pike's Place...
Neat place. It reminded me of Faneuil Hall in Boston. In fact, Seattle reminds me of a grown up Portland, Maine, or a friendlier version of Boston. Puget Sound - seeing the islands and the ferries coming in and out - really seems like Casco Bay; understanding that the Sound is about 20 times larger, but you get the idea.
I continued to walk around the waterfront...
There's always a Wall Street!
I came around a corner and wondered where the Space Needle was. Then, looking up the hill, I saw it...
The Space Needle.
The EMP.
A Mariachi Band with pan flute players.
The same California friend had suggested visiting the EMP Museum (Experience Music Project), near the base of the Space Needle. They had the original costumes from the Star Wars movies on loan from the Smithsonian, and they also had a Jimi Hendrix (once a Seattle native) exhibit, and other stuff. So I did it...
Jimi Hendrix's Martin guitar.
His diary--fascinating!
The mixing board from Jimi's Electric Lady Studios in New York.
Led Zeppelin and several other very famous bands used it too.
What a dream come true for a guitarist to see the actual stuff Jimi used. There will never be another Jimi Hendrix, and there may never be another time for me to view these rare items. This was pretty spectacular too...
My dad had the double neck version of this guitar.
The next door down was devoted to Nirvana...
Kurt Cobain's guitar.
Krist Novoselic's bass, with Dave Grohl's drum set in the background.
There were documentaries running, music playing and many other artifacts. Nirvana opened the door for the other bands that swept through in the 1990's, creating the so-called "grunge rock" scene and genre. I could see why Seattle would practically deify them. No new musical style has really taken over since those grunge days. And, in a way, music has simply returned to its poppiness. At one point grunge rock was considered "alternative". But, now it has mixed in with so many other different styles that it has lost its novelty. Seattle should be very proud though to have had that scene develop here. It makes it doubly tragic that Kurt killed himself. One does wonder though, if all of this celebrating would have happened without him taking his own life? We can't know. But, martyrs have often propelled their projects to respectability and fame. I'm not sure "martyr" is right word in his case, but the same effect was manifested by his life and subsequent violent death, nonetheless.
Next it was on to the Star Wars costumes...
Seeing the actual R2D2 unit was pretty cool. I was brought back to being a ten year old kid again.
And of course, his buddy, C3PO.
A sphere that projects different surfaces from the inside.
From the movie, Aliens.
Terminator.
When I'd scoured every nook and cranny, I left because I needed to find a sleeping spot. A friend who had lived in Seattle for 17 years, suggested the Discovery Park area. So, through a lot of wrong turns and meandering I finally got up into that area, taking these shots along the way...
A couple "tiny" little ship propellers.
It was about 10:00 pm by the time I finally got near Discovery Park. But I found another place along the way called, Ursula Judkins Viewpoint, after making the mistake of taking a bike path to the Elliot Bay Marina--where there was no way up the hill to Galer Street, the road I wanted.
Regardless, it all worked out alright. I checked around the Ursula Park area and found that it was quite dark--which was good. But there was a fence all the way around the perimeter, so I couldn't sneak into the bushes. Thankfully, I found a small utility shed and went behind that. It was good enough, hard ground, but private.
I waited the required few minutes to make sure no surprises were going to spring out. All night I did hear an animal on the steep cliff besides me (the one that was right about the Elliot Marina), but never saw what it was. I was exhausted but couldn't seem to fall asleep for a couple hours. Eventually sleep came around 12:30 am. But it wouldn't last long.
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