Car2Go

Although a subway/light rail network is basically non-existent in Seattle, the bus service is pretty good, and we can walk or bike to most places we need to go. But there are times when we both could benefit from a car. After selling my deteriorating money-pit of a vehicle, I thought it would be interesting to try out Car2Go as a supplement to our transportation needs.

It’s a car-sharing service, part of a growing collaborative consumption movement, reshaping the attitude of how consumers own and use things: Where people share things that they use on occasion, as opposed to owning them outright. Paying for access to a product, not ownership of the product.

Car2Go is also a growing part of city transportation, made possible by the internet and cheap modern technology: key-card access, on-board GPS, online integration, and a Smartphone app. It is currently in a bunch of cities.

The Smart Cars feel a bit like driving a clown car. They apparently have the same accelerators as bumper-cars: the first 45 degrees of the pedal is non-responsive, and the next 5 degrees is 0 to 60! But you can park in the smallest of spaces. And since they have a deal with Seattle, all parking is FREE!

The perks are the simplicity.  You just find one, hop in, and go! Then ditch it.

Free: Gas, Parking, Insurance, maintenance, cleaning, etc, including all those hidden-costs of car-ownership. “Free” meaning they are already included, so you never have to worry about it.

One-way trips! It’s like having a fleet of disposable one-time-use cars. Just bus-it home! No more retrieving your car.

The downsides are freedom. Of course having the freedom to go wherever, whenever, on a whim is the very reason people own cars. Car2Go is not ideal for some trips, but it’s not a bad alternative for most trips. There is an "in-bounds", and a few rules.

Seattle's current boundaries.

The cost is 41 cents a minute (capped at $15 an hour), which seems steep, but when actually add up the full cost of owning and operating a car, it is apparently cheaper! [AAA report: “How much are you really paying to drive?”]. And of course we don't use it that often, so its working out pretty good so far.

Finalizing the trip on our 1st Car2Go.

Here is a TED Talk on Collaborative Consumption for more information on the idea. (it’s a little dated, but it conveys the idea).

oh, and a  bike-share is coming to Seattle in 2014!

Rat City Rollergirls

Tess and I have been able to make it to see the Rat City Rollergirls play a few bouts.

The Rat City Rollergirls is kind of a collective which consists of four home roller derby teams and one all-star team. They play each other, or other traveling teams. The all-star team plays teams from all over the world. Rat City has maintained a ranking among the nation’s top 10 best derby teams!

It’s a fun event to go to.  It’s a very interesting scene, attracts a strange crowd, and has its own style/fashion that goes along with it which is hard to define. Wikipedia says the aesthetic is “inspired by rockabilly or burlesque fashions". I'll buy that.

Nehi Nightmare  - she is unstoppably small! And a total badass!

The Rat City teams are the Throttle Rockets,  Derby Liberation Front, Grave Danger, and the Socket Wenches. The girls are all total badasses and each has a fun pseudonym. The names are usually a pun or a play-on-words and are often sexualized. Some of my favorite Rat City names: Slutnik,  Devilynne Syde, Moe Yadown, Ophelia Melons, Rawkhell Sqwelch, Kutta Betch, Muffstache, Tempura Tantrum, and Yoko Onoudi’nt !  I love puns and find them to be the best part of the sport. 

Roller Derby 
The sport is initially confusing to follow, but is easy to pick up. There are penalty technicalities which aren't as easy to understand, but also aren't that important to know at the start.

I’ll let the Wikipedia article describe the sport of roller derby's history, revival, and game play.

This video gives the basics of game play.

Other resources:

Rat City Rollergirls History

Why Rat City?

International Registry of Derby Names - This is fun to peruse through.

Composting makes me Happy. Seattle makes me Proud!

My food scraps and yard waste sold back to me! 

This year we are adding some compost to our garden to help the plants live to their full potential. The compost we chose is from Cedar Grove, one of the massive-scale compost facilities that handle Seattle’s municipal food and yard waste recycling, which I think is very cool. 

I can’t yet attest to how good this compost is, but from the tar-black color, mild earthy smell, and dense crumbly texture, I have a feeling that things are going to flourish.

Look at the stark contrast between the compost to the normal soil!

I have great respect and admiration for the biological cycles that govern the world, such as nutrient and growth- decay cycles. I love incorporating those cycles into my life to harness their potential. I love the possibility that my very-own banana peels and coffee filters are making their way back to my garden. I relish that the weeds of yesterday are the soil amendments of today. 

Composting: a nutrient cycle.   (picture compliments of the Cedar Grove website)

I truly appreciate the ease of Seattle’s composting program. If the city didn't take my scraps away and turn them into soil-gold, I would have my own compost pile in the yard. It’s funny that I pay the city to haul away my organic material, and then buy it right back, but I’m proud to have the opportunity to do just that. It's just too easy.

I was recently lucky enough to tour a facility similar to Cedar Grove, down near Portland. I was courting this composting company: [I wanted to work for them and they wanted to hire me. But work was too slow to hire a new employee. Things are still in limbo with that]. Composting is something that greatly interests me and I would love to work in the compost industry. Anyway, I ended up getting to visit this facility, which I really enjoyed as a biological systems engineer nerd.

A large-scale composting facility I visited, similar to Cedar Grove, Seattle's food and yard waste facility.

Seattle and Recycling

  

In the tradition of the west-coast green mentality, Seattle has been a national leader in recycling and composting programs for decades. 

Seattleites collectively diverted 53.7% of our waste from landfills into recycling and compost in 2010!   That statistic makes me very proud of the city.
Seattle’s full 2010 Recycling Report.

It's nice that we can recycle quite a few things.

A brief timeline of Seattle’s progressive waste reduction history:

• Curb-side recycling program began in 1988.

• Yard waste collection program began in 2000.

• Food scraps were accepted in 2005.

• Plastic bags were banned in 2012. They are no longer a choice at grocery stores.

Anyway, in summary I love living in a city with a progressive, all-encompassing, simple, and successful recycling and composting program. Thanks Seattle!  I hope to report back on the results of the compost. 

Jason and Harrigan Visit

My brother Jason and sister in-law Harrigan came out for an extended weekend visit. I would say they managed to cram in the full Seattle experience in that weekend. 

The Bowmans

All of us.

Picnic on the beach.

Brothers.

At Gasworks Park.

Random cool artwork.

Jason and Harrigan

We were all over the map, experiencing samples of the things that make Seattle…Seattle. Such as:

‘Green’ Living

We stopped by Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair which is where a lot like minded people converge to share/educate/and benefit from: urban farming, composting, green building, organic produce, CSAs,   pesticide-free zones, urban beekeeping, collaborative consumption, and locavorism. You know… the kind of common sense things that we would all get behind, if wasn't for the looming fear of being labeled a hippie.  Luckily for us all, there is more contemporary term: ‘Granola’ – has the values of hippie but with the amenities and financial means of the average, modern, middle-class, family. This was definitely a Granola-lifestyle type of event, although a few hippies and yuppies may have infiltrated.  :)

Art

We saw Samsara, a film for which I have been waiting to be finalized, for years. It is a fantastic look at the contrast of how fascinating and bizarre civilization/society is. I absolutely recommend it to everyone.  I think it is a bit edgier than Ron Fricke's previous work (which is all also spectacular).

We checked out were the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Olympic Sculpture Park. Both have been on my to-see list and each had some very interesting pieces.

Inopportune: Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang. He directed the visual and special effects for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics! 

I really like these masks.

"We all wear masks, metaphorically speaking."

The Porcelain Room of SAM

Split by Roxy Paine. 2003.  Stainless Steel 

Eagle by Alexander Calder. 1971

Unfortunately, Jason and Harrigan had already seen several of the installations before, either in Central Park (in the case of the sculpture), or in some museum called the “Guggenheim”. Maybe you have heard of it, but frankly…it sounds made up. So if we can’t impress them with Seattle’s art scene, maybe we can appeal to some other interests that Seattle is better known for:  food, coffee, and music!

Food

Jason and Harrigan are what you might call ‘Foodies’, so we directed some time into eating a lot of delicious food. When I say delicious, I mean DELICIOUS. The places we ate spanned many neighborhoods and cuisines, but had one common theme… it was all really stellar food. But don't take my word for it, ask Yelp!

Some of the places we ate included Paseo, Bitterroot BBQ, Honore Artisan Bakery, Pike Place Chowder, Beechers Handmade Cheese ,and OddFellows Cafe. When we weren’t dining out, we were cooking up our own dishes: several fantastic breakfasts and one evening we bought mussels and cooked them down at the beach! Gourmet even at the beach!

Coffee

We did our fair share of consuming coffee throughout the weekend as well. Not that we necessary were seeking out great coffee, but great coffee kind of finds you in Seattle. Some of the coffee shops we sampled included Caffé Fiore, Honore, Fonte, Chocolati, and of course Starbucks! [wow, what a pretentious sounding list of coffee shop names... but they can back it up].    : )

Music

A band we know from Blacksburg, Wild Nothing, who subsequently have made it big in the indie music world, was touring through Seattle, so we all went to check it out. It was fun evening, and a good show, but I wouldn’t call it a great show…. The keyboardist had a recently broken arm, along with a few technical snafus, contributed to a lack-luster performance. But a fun night, none-the-less.

Wild Nothing

Throughout the visit, all four of us took pictures using the photo sharing app Instagram.  Some of us took more pictures than others and some of us might have an addiction to Instagram…but it paid off.  In an attempt at an experiment in modern technology and social media, I have combined all of the pictures we took into a collage. They are without description or context, and there is no rhyme or reason to the organization to the pictures.  Just 270(!) pics, documenting all of the things we did, the food we ate, and what we collectively experienced. Enjoy!

Another fantastic bunch of visitors! Who is next?!




[Photos courtesy of Harrigan, Jason, and Tess. I would also give some credit to Instagram!]

John and Sarah Visit

Every year Dave Mathews Band plays a 3-day concert at The Gorge Amphitheatre over Labor Day weekend. This annual performance has become the Mecca for Dave Mathews Band fans. Our friends Sarah and John, made the pilgrimage out to Washington for the show (and to visit us!) and treated us to an evening at the absolutely gorgeous Gorge amphitheater. While many fans make it a full weekend event, complete with camping, we only caught the Saturday night show, opened by The Avett Brothers.

At the show

The Gorge Amphitheatre

Dave Mathews Band

It was a fun weekend of doing things around the city including: hanging out at the beach of Golden Gardens Park, going up the Space Needle, venturing into the International District, going to the Asian supermarket Uwajimaya, checking out the Pioneer Square Neighborhood, seeing the Ballard Locks, taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island, and having a fantastic meal at Hitchcock.

At the beach.

Sights and artwork from around the International District and Pioneer Square

Pioneer Square

Ballard Locks 

This very clever sea lion was swimming circles around the entrance to the fish ladder, treating himself to the all-you-can-eat salmon buffet.

A portion of the fish ladder to help the salmon bypass the locks.

After the fish ladder, the salmon swim through this genius viewing area. Cool!

Kayaks entering the locks.

Old friends and Space Age architecture.

The Huddles with a view of Seattle from 600 feet up.

Us as part of the Seattle skyline.

 The weekend proved to be another wonderful, action-packed adventure with friends!


[Photos courtesy of John Huddle and Tess]

Seattle Pride Parade

Gay people: they exist. And like many other prideful people, they celebrate with a parade. Seattle’s Out and Proud Parade gathers an estimated audience of 150,000 people (!), making it Seattle's second-largest parade behind the Seafair Torchlight Parade.

The parade was quite colorful, because let’s face it, the gay community practically has a trademark on the rainbow, which works out great in their favor, because you will not likely find a more colorful parade!

The parade was about as culturally-liberal as parades can get, but not really wild at all, and certainly not lewd, especially in comparison to the Fremont Solstice Parade, which makes the Pride Parade look like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The Pride Parade is the perfect opportunity for other subcultures of society to get out there and show their own pride, like this Goth group . 

Best (random) statistic of the parade: Seattle is home to the 4^th largest Goth community. Haha. 

It was very commercial, as parades tend to be, but maybe even more so, motivated by two things: 1) Companies are garnering support from the large LGBT demographic as well as the parade attendees and 2) Companies are showing their pride while promoting their progressive, LGBT-friendly image.

For example, Microsoft was carrying signs that read "Marriage equality is good for business."  Because as far as tech-savy (gay-friendly) states go, it’s probably WA vs. CA, and there has been heavy competition between Silicon Valley and WA for a long time, with Google starting offices in the Redmond (and the extended Seattle) areas, with the specific intention of siphoning Microsoft employees. Other tech companies like Facebook have followed. Should one state legalize same-sex marriage over the other, there is the potential of talent-flight towards the more progressive state.

LGBT Presidential campaign posters... What's next? ... campaign posters advocating a black president? 

It was quite political as I expected, given the times. You may have noticed that gay rights have been a recent hot button political issue, with several recent occurrences making it the civil rights issue of today: the repeal of Don’t ask Don’t Tell,  the distancing of the Defense of Marriage Act,  the president’s opinion “evolving,” and battles waging  in several states where groups with slightly-confusing names like Preserve Marriage Washington and Washington United for Marriage are battling it out to see which group can deny the most happiness to the other group.

Given the political climate, just about every political group and government affiliation was represented (including republican groups).  Petitions for this and that were everywhere, as there are many interesting items on the Washington ballot this year.

I-502 is another fascinating ballot issue.
If passed Washington State would legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana. They would also be legally bound to distribute it (like liquor at  liquor stores). 

There were many progressive Christian groups.

Obama will be getting all that "Gay Money" but I guess the election will decide if his coming out in support of the gay community will hurt the campaign more than it helps.

Romney's people were represented as well.  : ) 

Politicians of note who were in the parade: many departments of the City of Seattle, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn,  and Seattle City Council members riding Segways.

The parade was marshaled by Washington Governor  Christine Gregoire whose opinion evolved, and who recently signed the bill to allow same-sex marriage in Washington. That bill was petitioned to be put on hold, so same-sex marriage will be on the ballot this year in Washington.

There were even gay Stormtroopers.