Join Us. Don't Be Afraid.

[Doktor Howl]

Heh. Where do you think Portland LEARNED this sort of behavior from? The WEIRD runs so deep in Seattle that comparing it to the Triumvirate of Strange Cities is like comparing LOTR (in full with all appendixes) to the Hunger Games trilogy.

And it's not always a good kind of weird up there either, by anybody's definition of "good".

Seattle doesn't strike me as weird, so much as "trying too hard", and add a bunch of failed rockers and horrible thugs in uniform.  It's more like LA with more hippie-ass coffee shops.

On a superficial level you are absolutely correct. But there's a whole lot of ugly, violent, insane shit hanging out in the depths of that town, and the depths there are DEEP.

And that's the beautiful thing about Tucson...Despite its long & gruesome history, it's about 1" deep.

[East Coast Hustle]

I hear that. It took me the better part of ten years to worm my way down into the real nitty-gritty of Seattle. They don't even really think of you as a person there until you've lived there at least five years.

Tucson, on the other hand....I have a feeling I'd be in the thick of that town's shit in about 45 minutes.

[Doktor Howl]

I hear that. It took me the better part of ten years to worm my way down into the real nitty-gritty of Seattle. They don't even really think of you as a person there until you've lived there at least five years.

Tucson, on the other hand....I have a feeling I'd be in the thick of that town's shit in about 45 minutes.

The moment you stop the Ryder truck, you're a native.  There's a feeling that seniority doesn't mean much in the afterlife.  Whether your family was here in 1880, or you got off the bus 10 minutes ago, you've been here forever.

[Freeky]

I hear that. It took me the better part of ten years to worm my way down into the real nitty-gritty of Seattle. They don't even really think of you as a person there until you've lived there at least five years.

Tucson, on the other hand....I have a feeling I'd be in the thick of that town's shit in about 45 minutes.

The moment you stop the Ryder truck, you're a native.  There's a feeling that seniority doesn't mean much in the afterlife.  Whether your family was here in 1880, or you got off the bus 10 minutes ago, you've been here forever.

Oh, oh, ohhhh.  The OP got my Tucson jucies flowing, and this line right here has something starting to percolate.

DAMN YOU CLASSES.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I mean, that's where the term "Skid Row" came from. It's also where America invented the idea of having their government protect them from those damnable scoundrels who would ruin our fine nation with their demands of living wages, health care, and equal treatment.

Check yer history, sailor. While "skid row" originated in the NW, Seattle doesn't get the credit. All logging towns had a "skid road" where the logs were brought in on skids, which inevitably ended up lined with bars and brothels and attendant squalor. In Portland the old Skid Row was Burnside.

[Doktor Howl]

I mean, that's where the term "Skid Row" came from. It's also where America invented the idea of having their government protect them from those damnable scoundrels who would ruin our fine nation with their demands of living wages, health care, and equal treatment.

Check yer history, sailor. While "skid row" originated in the NW, Seattle doesn't get the credit. All logging towns had a "skid road" where the logs were brought in on skids, which inevitably ended up lined with bars and brothels and attendant squalor. In Portland the old Skid Row was Burnside.

Wikipedia has Seattle as "the most probable first" skidrow.

But I don't know where the author of the article lives.   

[navkat]

SKID ROW!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qHWJML0Skg

[East Coast Hustle]

I mean, that's where the term "Skid Row" came from. It's also where America invented the idea of having their government protect them from those damnable scoundrels who would ruin our fine nation with their demands of living wages, health care, and equal treatment.

Check yer history, sailor. While "skid row" originated in the NW, Seattle doesn't get the credit. All logging towns had a "skid road" where the logs were brought in on skids, which inevitably ended up lined with bars and brothels and attendant squalor. In Portland the old Skid Row was Burnside.

I'm pretty sure Seattle's was the first, but nowhere near 100% sure so the best I can give you on this one is a hearty "NO, SEATTLE!"

[Nephew Twiddleton]

I may in my older years be willing to move to the desert when the New England cold is too much on my about to retire bones. But in the meantime, there is more Boston to be known, to be explored, to be understood like a Bostonian is generally unable too, out of fear, out of gruff indifference.

No, Boston has its hooks in me, and I can't see myself living anywhere else in the foreseeable future.

[navkat]

Shit I miss about the desert:
1. 118 degrees and the feeling of sun just everywhere. If New York cold can find small cracks in yr coat and freeze yr bones, the Phoenix sun can find its way onto parts of your skin you didn't even realize were exposed to light...like the backs of your thighs, covered by shorts.
2. Driving the small section of road through Papago Park (Galvin pkwy) and the eerie feeling for those several minutes like I just drove into a rift in spacetime. One minute: upscale, gated communities and strip malls. Next minute, 1800s desert scenery...and the sky is so fucking BLUE.
3. Whimsical arrangements of saguaro and how they seemed to wave at me in such a friendly way as I drove to work in the morning. It was like being in a cartoon about the desert but for reals. Leaving PHX felt like leaving my little buddies behind.
4. February.
5. Summer nights in the pool. Grilling outside. Eating chunks of cooked stuff under the misters and jumping right back into the pool, never getting cold.
6. For about a week or so between the end of winter and the begining of spring, there were evenings that felt perfectly still and...idk how to explain except to say tepid outside. Like the air was exactly my own body temperature and I got the surreal feeling of being completely immersed in a bathtub full of my-body-temperature water. I didn't know where my body ended and the air began.
7. Driving up into the hills during the odd lightening...event thingy. Watching the bizarre lightshow in the distance, really, really knowing that just being outside was sort of dangerous.
8. No slugs. Ever. Anywhere. Desert is mineraly. Salt river. I could walk around barefoot at night because fuck you, slugs!
9. Driving the loop 101, moonroof and windows open wide to feel the sun burn the crown of my head, The Pixies blasting, Black Francis shrieking in spanglish about aliens and the A/C gusting into my fayce because it's hot, but not hot enough to shut out the sun.
10. That it often felt like another planet for so many reasons, like the seasons being reversed: shit blooms in the fall, not the spring like everywhere else. The lines and shapes of the scenery felt like a moon landing. The smell of ozone in the air made it smell like what a space ship smells like in my head.
11. Everything's casual. In 118 degree heat, no one expects you to be stuffy or wear suits. That's just stupid.
12. Fruit actually grows on TREES there!
13. Driving out of the immediate city area will inevitably bring you to open scenery and roadside stands where the most gorgeous, intricate hopi pottery you've seen in your life--stuff that belongs in a fucking museum is just laid out on fold up tables next to some silly kokopelli junk and a mexican american indian selling cans of coke out of a cooler for 75 cents. If you're lucky, there'll be a cardboard box full of pummelos there too.
14. The fact that NONE of the things that gave me the most pleasure in AZ cost much money or required materialism of any sort.

If Tucson is anywhere close to that, I'm thinking seriously about the...er...prospect.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I mean, that's where the term "Skid Row" came from. It's also where America invented the idea of having their government protect them from those damnable scoundrels who would ruin our fine nation with their demands of living wages, health care, and equal treatment.

Check yer history, sailor. While "skid row" originated in the NW, Seattle doesn't get the credit. All logging towns had a "skid road" where the logs were brought in on skids, which inevitably ended up lined with bars and brothels and attendant squalor. In Portland the old Skid Row was Burnside.

Wikipedia has Seattle as "the most probable first" skidrow.

But I don't know where the author of the article lives.   

The oldest one is probably Forks. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I mean, that's where the term "Skid Row" came from. It's also where America invented the idea of having their government protect them from those damnable scoundrels who would ruin our fine nation with their demands of living wages, health care, and equal treatment.

Check yer history, sailor. While "skid row" originated in the NW, Seattle doesn't get the credit. All logging towns had a "skid road" where the logs were brought in on skids, which inevitably ended up lined with bars and brothels and attendant squalor. In Portland the old Skid Row was Burnside.

I'm pretty sure Seattle's was the first, but nowhere near 100% sure so the best I can give you on this one is a hearty "NO, SEATTLE!"

Seattlites are always saying that. Funny thing is, Seattlites are always comparing Seattle to Portland. Makes no sense. Isn't it it's own thing? Why do Seattle people always seem to want to define it as "Better than Portland"? Makes as much sense as L.A. defining itself as "Better than Tijuana".


Shit, other than sharing the geographical region known as the PNW, they're two totally different places.

[navkat]

Seattle: Not quite Canadian but not Portland either!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Seattle: Not quite Canadian but not Portland either!

Seattle is quite unique and wonderful in its own right. But I think that when Portland became New York's big crush after it had been so in love with Seattle in the '90's, Seattle got jealous (not that it wanted New York anymore, it just couldn't believe that New York would choose Portland over it) and ever since then, the way Seattle feels better about itself is by putting Portland down. "Oh, well, I'm older, more grown-up, and more sophisticated than Portland!" "Everything Portland does, I do better, and I did it first!".

Seattle, it's about time you let go of this. You're better than that; instead of dancing around trying to divert attention from Portland, highlight what you're good at. It's time to let your little sister off the hook for dating the boy you had a crush on in seventh grade, and instead of trying to upstage her at all of her talents, write your own mythology. You have so much potential, if only you'd quit comparing yourself to your kid sister. It's demeaning.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Shit I miss about the desert:
1. 118 degrees and the feeling of sun just everywhere. If New York cold can find small cracks in yr coat and freeze yr bones, the Phoenix sun can find its way onto parts of your skin you didn't even realize were exposed to light...like the backs of your thighs, covered by shorts.

No, now that I think about it, I will only ever live in Massachusetts, maybe TRONE, or Republic of Ireland.

Twid,
worships a solar deity, hates the sun.



Guess that makes me a fucked up Celtic Satanist. Or a Fomorianist or whatever.