A Life Changing Time at the Seattle Ballpark

After having a great local culture experience watching the Red Sox play at Fenway Park in Boston, I thought hitting another baseball game in Seattle would also be a good move.

We had pho for lunch.

This ube cheesecake was a new one for me.

The United States is a large country and the different regions have their own history. For example, the Japanese internment during World War II was a few pages in a history book for me maybe in high school, and that was about it. To my knowledge that didn't happen in Illinois or Missouri so I didn't have any local sources of information about the event. It actually took place out here in Seattle, though, so you can see and learn more about how it affected the local neighborhoods. Lewis and Clark are a funny example because they started in St. Louis and they are celebrated with statues and stuff all over the place, but they ended their journey right on the border of present day Washington and Oregon, so that's a sort of regional history that touches both places.

We stopped in at Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar not for oysters but for something way weirder.

A local touristy specialty here is geoduck sashimi. This is what a geoduck looks like. I would have just called it a water weiner. Maybe peepee of the sea?

Oddly pronounced as "gooey-duck", the animal is the largest burrowing clam in the world and can grow to be over six and a half feet long. Wikipedia says it is "also one of the longest-living animals of any type, with a typical lifespan of 140 years; the oldest has been recorded at 168 years old". That makes me feel a bit worse about eating it but... a guy's gotta eat.

Speedy the Geoduck, left, is Evergreen State College's mascot.

I had my Cardinals hat which must have been a signal that I'm an out-of-towner and we got in a big conversation with our server. Anyway he gave me a beer on the house. That's called winning.

I'm not sure you get more post capitalism depressing than an abandoned strip club with people sleeping outside it in tents.

Pike Place Market is like St. Louis' Soulard Market on steroids.

We had some of that hom bow from Mee Sum Pastry.

It was kind of like a pork bao bun filling but the casing is more bread like.

This isn't the first Starbucks but it is the oldest one that exists. I thought the old school logo was pretty cool. This location dates back to 1975.

We stood in line for a while but it was long and slow and we had other things to do. We bailed.

As we neared the ballpark we saw a vendor selling Seattle dogs, which have grilled onions and cream cheese. I've really been hitting the phallic foods hard today folks.

T-Mobile Park! The staff was amused by my Cardinals hat and I got several fun "you're not from around here are ya?" conversations out of them.

They came correct with the beer in this joint. There weren't a bunch of horses around pressuring me to buy Budweisers, that's for sure.

One reason that I was excited about coming to this game was that they were very accommodating to the vaccinated cool kids such as ourselves. There was a large portion of the backstage area that antivax turds couldn't even access, we had special priced seating, food discounts, a free raffle, and...

We even got a free t-shirt!

Lydia is disturbingly good at taking a shirt off under another shirt. I wonder what sort of bad stuff she did before she met me and turned her life around?

At the T-Mobile 'Pen you could have a beer and watch pitchers practice like feet away. I've never heard of something so cool.

The food here was amazing. They had friggin sushi, poke bowls, bao buns, and boba tea! This was real ass Asian food! Back in St. Louis, Busch Stadium's fare seemed so basic in comparison. It's funny how seriously mind blown I was by the amenities, food and drink options, and just the fact that they were doing something special for vaccinated people at all. I hadn't considered that there could possibly be a ballpark that was so high class.

The very creatively named Mariner Moose was in the building.

The company that makes these cartoon bobble head looking figures, Funko, is based in nearby Everett, Washington.

On top of everything else that was awesome about this ballpark, we stepped outside and realized there was an amazing view of the city and ocean as well! The place is like a dream. The actual team, on the other hand, is not so dreamy. The team was formed in 1977 and did not have a winning season until 1991. They are the only team in the MLB that has never even been to the World Series. This is probably the year, though, I can feel it. That may be the beers.

After the game we were going to go to an ice cream shop but where mesmerized by this Amazon Go Grocery store. It's like a normal grocery store but you have to electronically check in at the door. After you've done so you can just pick up whatever you want and walk out with it. The million cameras on the ceiling watching your every move calculate what you picked up and automatically charge you. The future is now! I'm especially impressed by the fact that you can check in as a group and it still knows to charge everything both of us picked up. It's pretty close to friggin magic.

Seattle Oysters and Brews

Seattle generally feels like a safer place than St. Louis, but there did seem to be a larger hobo situation here than back home. 

We had some delicious oysters at the Walrus and the Carpenter. I remember our servers asking which of the EIGHT types fresh oysters I wanted and... I think I was briefly surprised that there was more than one type. I've only had them on a handful of occasions. Anyway I ordered a nice mixture of blue pool, judd cove, and chelsea gem and then ate them having absolutely no idea which was which.

I was impressed by the place's cool decor.

We proceeded to drink beers all over the damn place on a microbrewery crawl.

Lydia was excited that Fair Isle had a fancy beer named after her.

"Lydia is a fall inspired farmhouse ale aged in oak puncheons. Brewed with triticale grown by MJW Grain Inc. in Ritzville, WA, barley grown by Palouse Heritage in Endicott, WA and malted by LINC Malts. Created with ingredients farmed and foraged in the Pacific Northwest. Fermented with our house blend of wild and feral yeasts and bacterias."

I was amused to see that former Seattle Supersonic Shawn Kemp had his name on a weed shop.

There were food trucks all over the place near the breweries and burritos happened.

Tip us and then bus your own table because we're too busy collecting tips.

I guess we wanted the exercise but around this point we went on a very long walk to the last brewery.

Dirty Couch Brewing is the most depressing name for a place that makes beer but that's their right. The beer was decent.

I liked that the empty flight board could give a good paddlin in a pinch.

We ended our day's consumption with some ice cream from Molly Moon's. The building's set up was so weird, it was like a tiny little ice cream closet smushed inside of a laundromat.