100 Things in a Seattle Day

Today we had brunch with our friend Julie and Renaud. Renaud is a fancy French baker man and so has weird working hours so it was exciting to finally nail a meeting down.

We went for Tilikum Place Cafe.

I went for the Tilikum fry-up:

house made baked beans (contains pork), bacon, sausage, one fried egg, roasted tomato, grilled toast

I also ordered a Seattle speciality "Dutch baby" for the table. It's kind of like a giant sweet Yorkshire pudding popover type of deal. They can be savory or sweet but this time I got a sweet one with came with lemons to squeeze over it and some maple syrup. A baby a day keeps the doctor away.

We pulled some magic to get ourselves free annual passes to the Museum of Pop Culture, known colloquially as MoPOP, and now we were here to reap the rewards. There's a Heroes and Villains: The Art of the Disney Costume temporary exhibit.

They had all of my favorites. These were the dresses from Halloween classic Hocus Pocus.

They have a fun Indie Game Revolution permanent exhibit where you can play a bunch of indie games, not a single one that I'd ever seen before which was cool.

We made a brief appearance at Tet in Seattle, which was a little Vietnamese flavored Lunar New Year celebration at the Seattle Center, near the Space Needle.

We signed up for library cards at the very cool and futuristic Seattle Public Library-Central Library.

There were words in a bunch of different languages stamped into the wooden floors.

I was just about to buy this amazing moon landing vest, perfect for celebrating Lunar New Year, at the Nike store. Lydia was suddenly overcome with jealousy in an attack that I would describe as a seizure.

I did not buy the vest for the sake of her health, but I think about it from time to time, and wonder how it's doing.

I need to actually enter the Amazon headquarters Spheres one of these days.

Magnuson Park has this old airplane hangar that they incessantly have events in. We checked out the night market. After a few visits to this place I've realized that whatever the theme is that they are claiming to embody, most of the vendors inside are the exact same.

Seattle: Babies, Mountains, and Beers

Seattle was looking bright, sunny, and ready to be adventured.

For breakfast we had a special Washington treat: dutch babies. They are large popovers, kind of like Yorkshire pudding. They come in sweet and savory editions so we ordered one of each.

They are kind of messy so eating them in the car was not ideal but... not my car either so let's eat some babies!

This one had powdered sugar and a lemon wedge for flavoring. Light and delicious. Maple syrup was also in attendance.

It turns out that mountains are perfect places to put national parks, so we aimed the now syrupy car in their direction.

It's funny because Mt. Rainier, which has its own national park that we visited yesterday, is also in the cascade mountains. That may be why this is the "North" Cascades National Park. Mountains so nice they parked them twice.

There were a lot of opportunities for what should have pretty much been St. Louis t-shirt company advertisement photos.

We didn't plan on visiting Glacier Peak Winery but it just happened to present itself on the side of the road on the return trip.

We stopped in for a tasting.

We stopped at Tulalip Resort Casino. I like the casinos around here because I feel like they do a really good job of helping you learn about local indigenous people's culture.

The language was fun. It has a lot of new letters.

Space Needle!

I was very excited to visit Elysian Brewery. During my time working at Anheuser-Busch I had access to a heck of a lot of different kinds of beer and Elysian was one of my favorites in the empire. Elysian's Space Dust IPA was a common offering at work events and it packed quite a punch at 8.2% ABV. The guys used to call having a few of these bad boys "getting dusted".

It just so happened to be Elysian's 25th anniversary and so they were offering a magnificent box full of wonders.

"How do you celebrate 25 years of Elysian? Well, if you're one of us, you build an experience. This thing, "the Box", is as weird and specific a tribute as we could hope to make. Part time capsule, with 23 beers (and some non-beer items) from our past, present, and future. Part trippy throwback grab bag, with as many odds and ends for you as we could manage to fit in one box. Stuff for you to drink, build, solve. You name it. So buy "the Box" if you want and enjoy the chaos, because 25 years is really something, and we're glad you're here for the ride. Boxes are only available for purchase in Washington."

"There may be a virtual game or two. New labels, original art, Elysian history. Beers. Many different beers. Yes. There is a zine. We made a mixtape. A secret puzzle! Inside a box! Do you have a record player?"

Ok so yeah I bought a giant $100 box of beer and prizes that I now have to figure out how to transport back to St. Louis. Whatever, it's awesome. I have no regerts.

I am mesmerized by the amount of posters there are on phone poles around here. Is there some sort of law against taking these things down? They bulge inches thick around lots of surfaces in this neighborhood. It's sort of beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

I think Rachel's Ginger Beer was a place that made me stop and say "wouldn't it be cool if I lived here?" Like, there's a place that all it does is make artisanal ginger beer, and it's full of people. I think most people in St. Louis don't even know what ginger beer is, let alone would patronize such a magnificent place.

Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle and seems to be a favorite son.