An article in Sunday’s New York Times travel section begins:
When summer comes to Seattle, blinking residents emerge from bookstores and coffeehouses, shrug off their rubberized rain jackets, chrysalis-like, and change into cycling shorts, then rock-climbing shoes, and finally strappy sandals for a night on the town. (Call it the Seattle triathlon.) From July through September - the dry months in this notoriously wet city - Seattle hums with a manic energy as residents try to shoehorn as much outdoor fun as possible into those precious, long-lingering summer days.
Have we Seattle residents, and our lovely city, been stereotyped? Yes, it appears that we have. Is said stereotyping accurate? Let’s look at that first sentence, shall we?
When summer comes to Seattle… Yes, summer does come to Seattle, usually sometime just after the 4th of July. (When we moved to Seattle, several people we met pinpointed the beginning of summer as July 10. Most years, it seems that they’re right.) The summer’s not as long as one might hope, but while it’s here, it is just about perfect.
blinking residents emerge… Excuse me? We don’t blink. When the sun comes out, we put on our sunglasses. It’s visitors who have fallen for the “rains all the time” hype whom you’re likely to see blinking… and buying sunglasses because they left theirs at home. (More sunglasses are sold per capita in Seattle than in any other US city.)
from bookstores and coffeehouses… Why, yes, we do spend our winters in coffeehouses and bookstores! In fact, my favorite local (non-chain) coffeehouse and bookstore are right next door to each other. They even have a connecting door, so that you don’t have to go out in the rain to get from one to the other. Truthfully, Seattle residents are less likely to let rain slow them down than people in any other city that I know. They’re outside all through the winter, sporting their…
shrug off their rubberized rain jackets, chrysalis-like… Rain jackets, yes, but Goretex, please. Rubberized raingear doesn’t breathe. We Seattle caterpillars need to breathe if we’re going to transform into whatever comes next…
and change into cycling shorts, then rock-climbing shoes, and finally strappy sandals for a night on the town… Cycling shorts? Rock-climbing shoes? Perhaps this really isn’t about me after all (though I do own a pair or two of semi-strappy sandals). And that next sentence, the one that mentions manic energy? Nope, not about me. Never mind.
(For all of my poking fun, the NYT article does mention a number of nice places to see, eat and sleep in our fair city.)
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This could be me writing all the same things about my own fair, stereotyped city: Vancouver. Canadians who’ve never crossed the rockies stereotype us as New Age flakes, dabbling in tie dye, Eastern mysticism and extreme sports. And in all fairness, the last few springs and summers (not counting this one) have been warm and dry and even this one is about a hundred times better than the heat and humidity my friends in Baltimore and Toronto are enduring right now. Yesterday I was running on nature trails, drinking latte at the mini Starbucks at the aquatic centre and painting a picture of Chinook salmon… and proud of it! Well, okay, so maybe I need to rethink how closely I fit those stereotypes and learn to be more of an individual… :o) Note to self: avoid tourists crossing the border from Seattle pulling on parkas and looking for igloos…
Oh, by all means, please do make fun. My hometown paper has a bad habit of treating every other place on Earth like an interesting anthropological study full of quaint weirdnesses. Hell, they even do this in their own backyard: “Just imagine, Queens is more than the place you have to drive through to get to the airport! There are places to eat, and to see movies! There are actual sculpture gardens! And actual people from the neighborhood visit them!” Sheesh. Shut up. Can you tell that I’ve become a bit, er, bored with this?
It also doesn’t help that poor Seattle really is the butt of unfortunate jokes about the rain. Whenever Lloyd and I used to watch Frasier, and there would be some scene of Frasier and Niles shaking out their raincoats as a clattering storm beat at the windows of Cafe Nervosa, Lloyd would gesture at the screen and holler, “IT DOESN’T RAIN LIKE THAT IN SEATTLE! IT’S NOT THAILAND!”
On a semi-related note, have I told you how much I love that Macrina Bakery book? Thank you again, dear Kimberly.