A Good Night Seattle, We (sorry, I) Love You

I met several cool and quirky people during my single night's stay at the Green Tortoise Hostel in downtown Seattle. I was going to book back into the place up in Ballard, a posh and very pretty suburb to the north - it was cheaper and I had really enjoyed my stay, but thought I might as well check out the city's nightlife before I left. Tuesday meant free dinner in the hostel, so I headed downstairs for my portion of spag-bol and assorted veg when I realised this is a bloody boring read right now. I sat next to a guy who turned out to be exactly as upper-middle class as he appeared to be. Maybe even a bit more. 18 year-old Tom from north London was just starting his travels, yet was already something of a hostel celebrity, fulfilling every bit of the Hollywood-propagated toff stereotype fantasy to one and all. Especially the Japanese. With reason though - he was (and probably still is) a genuine guy, and I happily broke the law buying him some booze from the local convenience store. We sat around drinking with a group of Spring-breakers from Illinois and an Aussie, whose Brisbane accent I picked out almost instantly. At random of course. But it looked impressive. Of the girls from the Mid-West, I sat next to Kinzie, her name phonetically identical to that guy in that film. You know, the one with Liam Neeson. I found her company enjoyably interesting and hilarious, being smart, cutting and cynical (in the most positive of ways of course!). It was a good crowd with good conversation so I decided staying in was a better option than finding a bar in the cold and rain. After everyone else retired, Tom and I stayed up and segwayed (or possibly hijacked) our way into a game of Seattle Monopoly that a couple of southern California-based college girls had just started. O.C-esque in their accents, suntans and attention to hair and makeup, they were very friendly and seemed happy to let us join them. Bizarrely one of them had spent a year studying at Bradford university - my uninspired and uninspiring home (northern) town (actually city). Amazingly she really liked the place, so I can only assume she was off her face the entire time. The game was thoroughly confusing, the developers changed the colours completely - for noticing this and being clearly vexed, I was nicknamed Mr Monopoly - suddenly a Hasbro scholar, apparently knowing everything about every board game ever. Also, is it really a good idea to have two separate properties called almost exactly the same thing? Pike Place Market and Pike Place Fish Market were confusing the shit out of me, and I’d only had four beers! But anyway, Tom was being an unsporting tit by refusing to sell me any of his deeds to complete my sets, and the girls, perhaps ironically for people who lived in gigantic Orange County houses, had no interest in properties at all. So we played for an hour and a half, paying fractions of pittances for rent, the only excitement coming from being ‘stuck in traffic’ - their alternative to jail. It makes even less sense when you’re Just Visiting congestion. Also Big Fun! replaces Chance, and the Go square becomes Rain! All terribly mystifying!

I got up for 9 the next morning for the free pancake breakfast. I’d arranged to head over to the university district with Kinzie some time mid-morning, as my flight to San Francisco wasn’t till 7.30pm. After getting hopelessly lost, we eventually checked out a load of kooky shops and the huge Good Will store. All of the cowboy outfits, although numerous and stylish (in 1865), just weren’t quite right. We ended up getting some food in an excellent vegetarian Thai restaurant, where they asked you which meat you’d like your fake stuff to taste and feel like. That might be totally normal in a veggie place, but it made me laugh just a bit! It was a brief but very enjoyable morning/afternoon, and now I can say I’ve met someone who was at Obama’s inauguration. Woo! Or something.

I had two beers left over from the previous night’s six-pack, so when I arrived at the airport I asked one of the Alaskan Airlines check-in staff if it was possible to drink one of them before heading through security - with no checked baggage and that irritating liquids-in-hand-luggage ban, the alternative was to just throw them away. It wasn’t that I wanted to get tanked up, just it was good, locally-brewed beer and I hate to waste decent booze. After explaining this, he politely informed me it was illegal to drink in a public place, but beckoned me closer and, lowering his voice, suggested I head out to the parking lot across the street and stay hidden. Sod that. So instead of just binning them I had the idea of donating them to the airline. Maybe they’d give me a free upgrade. Or priority boarding. Or a free pen. Or, as it turned out, jack shit. I got a hearty thank you though, which should have been enough. And actually, it was. Despite joking to the guy I asked that I wasn’t an alcoholic, the bar was first port-of-call post security. A US Air Force engineer sat next to me at the bar was a self-proclaimed ‘beer connoisseur’ and informed me I couldn’t leave the North-West without trying Alaskan Amber Ale. Served in a twenty-ounce glass, I was assured it was bigger than a pint. It better had been for $6.50. Plus tip. But it was decent and I thanked the man for his tip. Sorry, beer suggestion. I tried to act sober boarding the plane, and it worked. Like every other flight so far this trip, our takeoff was delayed, but we made up good time and looked as if we would arrive on schedule. It wasn’t to be. We flew around the city for almost an hour waiting for landing clearance. Having already counted all the fibres in my complementary woollen blanket and seen enough of the city to sketch it from memory (blindfolded and unconscious), I was starting to go really nuts. Forty-nine minutes and twenty ounces of medium-strength beer was enough to push me to the brink of a Peter Buck-style air rage meltdown. Thankfully, with seconds to spare, the captain announced we were making our final approach. I rushed off the plane and headed straight to the airport’s Bay Area Rapid Transport station to get to central San Francisco before the bars closed!