It feels like in the last week, the vibe has shifted dramatically nationwide. People are optimistic about the future in a way I haven't really seen since maybe 2020 until COVID smashed everyone's dreams. I stayed up extremely late on election night and have been basically riding the high of a future where the government actually does something all week.
What I've Been Up To
Tuesday was quite a day. Being election day nationwide, there was a sort of electric energy from the very start, but as the day moved into the evening, things really started to heat up. Girlgoose, some friends, and I had planned to do trivia at Hopvine Pub. I was watching the election results until around 6, when I had to pull myself away from my computer to try to reserve seats at the bar for my friends, who weren't coming until later. Much to my chagrin, the bar was already super full at like 6:20!! I waited in line to get a drink and snack, with my eyes locked on the only remaining table at the bar, only for the person in front of me in line to get his drink and then take the table, so I sat at the bar instead to wait and look around1. Unfortunately no more tables opened up, so my friends and I ended up heading to Linda's Tavern instead, and forsaking our trivial ambitions. I was really impressed to see this huge line to vote! Unfortunately, the horrible genital inspection initiative does seem likely to pass, but I am hopeful that we can get it thrown out as unconstitutional, and voters did vote down the other two nasty ballot initiatives.
Wednesday, girlgoose had the day off and we spent some time at Atulea, where we happened to arrive as the baristas were freaking out because of a 19 drink online order. Check out this massive receipt!
After enjoying our drinks, we headed down to the theater to watch Wildwood, which everyone has been telling me is incredible. I will say I thought the animation and general vibe of the movie was really impressive, but I wasn't really that into the writing. Obviously Wildwood is a children's book, and that kind of shows in what I felt were sort of shallow characters and a lot of time and effort spent on just battling rather than developing the lore of this magical forest. Nonetheless, certainly a masterpiece of animation, and every behind-the-scenes clip I have seen of them making this movie totally blew my mind. Certainly made me excited for my trip to Portland this weekend! Also, we were blessed by an excellent slew of very important pharmaceutical ads before the movie, just in case any doctors in the audience happened to be looking for oral GLP-1 drugs to prescribe their patients.
On the way out, we noticed there are some pretty fun looking holiday events in Pacific Place, like fake snow and this funny soda shop.
On Thursday, I went on a bike round around town to do some errands and get lunch. It was surprisingly nice for November, which is probably not good for the environment, but made for a nice adventure. I got a loaf of bread and lunch at Macrina2.
Friday I mostly spent the day in waiting mode for my trip to Portland on Saturday, and I spent some time packing and preparing.
NW Stationery Festival
Over the weekend, Girlgoose and I headed down to our lovely sister city of Portland, Oregon. We got up at like 8am and zoomed over to the 8:55 train, where we were disappointed we didn't get to ride on the new trains that Amtrak just made such a big deal about unveiling. Nonetheless, it was a pretty nice train ride.
The first place we went when we got to Portland was Stumptown Coffee Roasters on third, at the suggestion of my friend Michelle, who told me they were doing some sort of Wildwood themed event, which despite my criticisms, I thought was still a pretty cool movie. The event was nice, nothing too crazy, but they had stills from the movie up on the walls and a REALLY tasty special drink, with blackberry and bergamot.
We then rushed to a taco place right next to the stationery fest, as we started running out of time before our shift. The place was pretty okay, the people there were really nice and it had some fun design choices, but also a pretty heinous AI slop menu (not pictured) and for some reason they preferred to work in extreme heat so the main seating area was absurdly hot.
The volunteer shift was fun, we were tasked with running the merch shop, which is something I'm pretty familiar with from my time volunteering at the JCCCW, so I told girlgoose she could go enjoy the festival while I ran the shop for most of the time. I met lots of people and sold a frankly shocking amount of tote bags. I think they were largely so popular because of the free calligraphy station that people were going to to get their bags customized. The shift really started to feel like it was dragging on around 5, when less people started coming, and I saw all the vendors getting up and walking around. After dissociating for the remaining hour3, I was excited to clock out and go check into our hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Grand Stark nearby, which is actually a super nice hotel. Unfortunately, it's across the street from a local shelter, and the windows aren't especially sound resistant, so all night was pretty noisy and we got woken up in the morning by two people having a super loud argument. For dinner our first day, we got recommended this Thai place called Hat Yai. It was pretty good! I intentionally avoided fried chicken, worried it would upset my stomach, but I think that was a mistake, because pretty much all the food was extremely spicy, including the pickles, which we reached for hoping for a reprieve from spice. The lamb curry was really good, and so were the Hokkien noodles. For me, I would say the Pineapple Salad wasn't that great, but it was a special so maybe they were just trying it out.
That night we were clicking through channels on our TV and stumbled upon the city council channel or something, where I was shocked to see one of the city councilors with a super tricked out prop wall behind him, including full size reconstructions of a storm trooper and c3po.
The actual meeting was tremendously dull, they were talking about rules for when proposals should be tabled, and it seemed like everyone had a different opinion on which variation of a flow chart should be adopted. did reply to my post though!
Sunday was super hectic, we woke up to the aforementioned argument outside our hotel, where it was basically one one woman talking to herself loudly and another guy who apparently was extremely annoyed by this and was just screaming "SHUT UP" at the top of his lungs over and over, a sort of irony that I am sure was completely lost on him.
First thing we did was head to Literary Arts, a nearby book store with a cafe where I got honestly a really good rosemary latte. There were a lot of incredible books at this store, the space was really cool. I suggested that it might be cooler than Powell's, to which girlgoose rolled her eyes4. We wandered around town a little, mostly killing time before the stationery festival opened at 12pm (we thought). After checking out of our hotel, we walked down to Ladd's Addition, to see firsthand why the map looked like this:
Turns out it was a really pretty area! Clearly an older residential area, with broad streets lined with massive old trees, a stark contrast from the more industrial build out and anemic street trees in the surrounding area. Checked out this menswear store which had some cool handmade clothes that I suspect would last a long time if I could have brought myself to spend hundreds of dollars on them ( alas, I could not ). Once we got back near the stationery fest, it was still a bit before noon, so we went to the Smith Tea factory across the street, where we bought some tea and got a pot to drink outside and doodle.
A bit after 12, we tried to get into the festival, but they told us that 12-1 was actually the VIP hour and volunteers do not qualify as VIPs. Oops. So we waited in the line for a hour. By the time we got into the festival, I think neither of us were quite as excited about it, especially since we walked around a bit on Saturday already (especially girlgoose), and we were rapidly approaching extreme hunger hours. I did get some custom calligraphy done in my new notebook and a free poem from The Traveling Typist, but we left after maybe 40 minutes to get food.
Damn, that poem is like Atmosphere Conf Vancouver all over again...5
Our day was far from done. After gobbling down two jianbing at Bing Mi in downtown, we started checking out all the downtown places we had planned to visit, starting with Chess Club. This place was a bit of a misnomer, because it was in fact, not a Chess Club, but actually a magazine store. It was really impressive, full of shelves of esoteric, graphics-heavy books that you would never find in a normal book store, many of which were sourced from overseas. From here, we went to Powell's as Michelle told me that they also had some Wildwood events going on.
I was not prepared for Powell's Used and New Books. I had been there before on a west coast trip with my family, and it felt somewhat familiar, but what I didn't remember was the sheer scale of the place. Walking in and looking around, I was overcome by a sense of dizziness, floored by the scale of knowledge and organization of the place around me. We walked around a little bit, but didn't find any Wildwood things outside of a few little kitschy products, so I tried to get out quickly. Something about the scale and labyrinthine nature of place filled me with a feeling of dread.
The next place we went was Never coffee, a place I had been recommended numerous times as some of the best in Portland. It was certainly interesting, the way they really committed to the rainbow bit. I got the Midnight Oil and was delighted to see that it came in a black cup, they had different cups for each of the different color drinks. I wish I came here more often to try other things. The midnight oil was good though! Eminently drinkable, though surprisingly mild on the licorice flavor. I had expected it to be a bit punchier. The coffee hit me like a wall of bricks, but not in the way you might expect. I became profoundly sleepy, feeling almost drunk, and we pushed ahead on to our next destination after relaxing at Never for a half hour or so.
Our final stop in Portland was a stationery store called "Oblation"6, which was sort of a funny last stop given how we were just at a stationery festival. The store was pretty nice, had lots of pens and papers and things. I was most impressed by their ink wall, though as I mentioned I was pretty exhausted at this point and just wanted to get on a train home.
Girlgoose and I both spent a bunch of money at Oblation and then, content in our purchases, waddled over to the Amtrak station, which was mercifully nearby. The rest of the night was a blur, but I'm home now!
I Saw the Signs
What's Coming Up
It's winter okay, you need to lower your expectations. In Seattle this is the season where you stay inside and make hang out with your friends. Nonetheless, I will try my best to find events.
Tuesday @ 6pm - Board games night at gearhouse
Wednesday @ 8pm - Drinkers with knitting problems in ballard
Best of the Net
Libposting
The election led to many rather excellent posts, I will collect them here if you are interested
- 5d
WAIT HOLY SHIT WE CAN KILL THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE PA: 19 Wi: 10 AZ: 11 MI: 15 That’s 55 electoral votes. 48 needed to ratify the NPVIC! www.nationalpopularvote.com/state-status
- 4d
Land doesn’t vote. How it differs when we add population variable into visualization
Other nifty things
T_T i swore i saved more stuff
Well well well, would you look at that... A Waddlin' issue published on a regularly scheduled Monday. They said it couldn't be done, but look at me now!! Thanks for reading, hope you have a great week.