02/16 — Seattle
I spent February living in Seattle as the first of a few experimental months living and working in cities other than SF.
I loved my time in Seattle. I had always been a fan of the city but the trip let me explore its corners enough to convince me to live there someday. Though not quite today.
I learned a lot about Seattle and myself through the adventure so this post breaks down into two parts covering both: first my read on Seattle, followed by the first set of lessons living outside my normal bubble.
My Seattle lists: Foursquare, Spotify
On Seattle
I covered a whole lot of ground during my four weeks in town, thanks in large part to all my friends in town (special thanks to Boris Jabes for his stewardship through the city.
My plan was to live in Airbnb the entire month, which gave me the flexibility to actually pick Airbnbs in different neighborhood every week.
- Cap Hill (first week) — My favorite neighborhood looking back on the trip. The neighborhood is filled with dive bars, noodle shops, fancy coffee, and a large percentage of my friends in the city. If I wasn’t there, I could get pretty much anywhere easily, walking to downtown or Pioneer Square. The neighborhood even has a direct connection to the airport thanks to the new LINK station. It’s also the expensive hood so compare it to the Mission in SF.
- Fremont (second week) — A little more suburban. There’s pockets of deliciousness scattered around but lower density and harder to get to downtown (a walk is aggressive but doable). It did have my absolute favorite coffee bar though.
- Ballard (third week) — Even further from downtown than Fremont, but as a result feels like it’s got own identity separate from Seattle. It’s got more of a core of its own and feels like its own city. Golden Gardens is one of the best beaches in Seattle and the Ballard Locks are nerdy cool for me.
- South Lake Union (fourth week) — The neighborhood built by Pall Allen and now entirely occupied by Amazon. It’s condos and office buildings for the most part. Not amazing on its own but close to downtown. And the lake features daily seaplane flights and houseboat Airbnbs, how can you stay away?
- Belltown — Right downtown and the original hipster neighborhood. Now kinda clubby/trendy, but dead at night otherwise.
- Queen Anne — Nice main street. Feels a bit more adult and parenty. Magnolia is further out and I didn’t have any reason to go out there other than discovery park.
- Pioneer Square — Nice old brick buildings. It’s the scuzzy part of the city but nothing in comparison to SF’s bad parts.
- International district — Right next to Pioneer Square with a ton of great Asian restaurants
While I wasn’t packing my suitcase to move between apartments, I was getting a read on the city. The Seattle Freeze didn’t seem to be a thing at all. I found everyone I met to be super open and friendly. Weather-wise it wasn’t freeze either. We sat out in the park multiple days in February. It’s rained more in Oakland this month than it did in Seattle.
Seattle is all about its happy hours, lots of them around. They even do after hours happy hours so keep an eye out. But don’t do it on Monday. Everything in Seattle is closed on Monday and I can’t figure out why. Definitely had some frustrating meals at the grocery store as a result of that though.
In addition to friendly, Seattleites are universally outdoorsy (tons of hiking around, skiing is 45min away, 2 hours for the real good stuff) and it was nice to meet a lot of people who didn’t all work in tech. They’re real proud of their coffee and food, and I was impressed with both.
On life outside my comfort zone (sort of)
Seattle was a blast for somewhat surprising reasons. I forgot how many people I knew in the city which gave me a lot of people to catch up with. All the new across the board made me happy. New restaurants, new parks, new views, new quirks, all to be discovered and explored. It made me realize how addicted to novelty I am, though I haven’t decided if that’s a negative addiction or not.
Pragmatically, switching Airbnbs is a pain as most places need a few hours of downtime to do cleanup which means sitting in a coffee shop with your luggage for a few hours. And switching to new neighborhoods every week meant that I needed to re-discover all the necessities again. Ultimately, I didn’t realize my weekly neighborhood was optimizing for exploring, and it hurt my productivity as a result. Next month, I’ll pick a neighborhood and stick to it for the full month.
Unfortunately the work side of my life in Seattle got double-whammied the combination of all the shiny new things to explore, and the fact that I just don’t have the same professional network there. Thanks to those that made introductions, but even getting meetings on my own was harder than expected. It really made me appreciate the value of the community in SF, something I’d been taking for granted until I left to Seattle.
Up next
Oakland is next for me. I’ll be a lot closer to home which will be a double-edged sword. But I should be able to explore and get a handle on Oakland, while staying in more or less one place, and still catching up with all the work in SF. Hopefully it’ll be a bit more of a balance of work and life.
