Really? An Immunity to Coupling in Seattle?
SGHolland 2018
www.komonews.com/news/local/seattle-is-americas-worst-city-to-find-love-says-national-dating-podcast
I am reading this morning about my “home town” — well it’s the big city across the lake from my home town.
Seattle’s a great place for those who feel comfortable in their “singularity.” By that I don’t mean exceptionalism. I mean their married status.
Seems that Seattle is a good place for those who choose to stay single. Could it be related to the Seattle Freeze?
How is it that Seattle actually grew, anyway?
I’ll bet the Willow People and the Hunter People were the marrying kind. But they didn’t stay relevant in the area after the Battle of Seattle, so maybe that doesn’t figure into this new news about the chances of being married in Seattle.
The Norwegians and Swedes found or brought mates out when they came out for our forests — the next good reason to speculate after gold mining.
Maybe it’s the weather. Notice in the above link of this story the photo of Pike Place Market and its surrounding land/seascape. (Incidently, one sees significantly fewer umbrellas in Seattle than in other cities — probably because it is just less complicated to live in a raincoat all fall, winter and spring here. We do tend to wear hats, especially in winter. One carries a Smart Phone rather than an umbrella!)
I ask you, looking at that photo, whether it lends an air of romance and nuances of walks in the park? Does it make you want to stay a little longer? (That seems to be what Seattle-ites actually want to avoid, so they LIKE rain and gloom. Then visitors go back to where they came from and leave us alone here with our individualism. And quit trying to flirt with us!
I think, more likely, that the gloom inspires a quick trip to one’s apartment or home shelter, perhaps a switch to turn on the fake fireplace, and/or jump into bed with the electric blanket. If someone else is in that bed, well, okay.. it is likely someone that the jumping-into-bed-person collected on a trip somewhere else and is going to marry one of these days when it suits their schedules. Or maybe a it’s an actual spouse dragged from somewhere else into Seattle because of a job offer the couple couldn’t ignore. (That’s how I got here. As a spouse.)
People who can afford it are moving away from Seattle proper now, I read today. The de-gentrifying is creeping in — those cute Scandinavian style houses are being gradually supplanted by high-rise condominiums because tech jobs are sometimes just jumps to tech jobs in other places and people don’t really get involved in planting serious gardens.
Well, the street people in our Sanctuary City sometimes do “pea patches”, so let’s give them credit for persistence. And the tech nerds find they can enjoy off hours more in the mountains skiing or in the Puget Sound Islands kayaking or fishing which is a completely different world from the jack-knifed* street layout of the city.
(*The odd design of the streets can be explained in another story about two un-daunted forces, Mr. Yesler and Mr. Denny, each bent on designing the city differently. )
Back to the lack-luster love-life in the city. Could it be that zoning-out is pretty much a life-style for the progressives who make Seattle perk? Work your head off to get ahead, and reward yourself with a few laughs at a favorite bar or eatery and turn in for the night. No romancing happens in these routines? I mean, is the lack-lusterlessness for lack of lust??? or what?
Also, there are the cradled cell phones that people smile and laugh and yell at while they are walking around. The phones and the people look as if they are already married, actually, so precious little girl/boy-watching goes on. I have seen way more loving looks on people’s faces looking at the beloved durable plastic rectangular thing in their hands than any fond glances into actual eyes. Even the little toddlers have quit looking in their mother’s faces for some explanation of life. They cannot catch their parents’ eyeballs because they are glued to a wee screen. The kids look around at all the other mommies and daddies glued to their phones. The kids are ready to ask Santa for a cell phone like Mommy’s. At least Santa is looking at them — not his smart phone.
A kid growing up like that could think that marriage is an old fashioned religious tradition that can be tossed out with the bathwater along with Latin I, and Latin II, and Civics in the school curriculum. Who needs that stuff when you have your Smart Phone? And, come to think of it, who needs a spouse when anything you want can be ordered for same-day delivery from Amazon?
Are Seattle residents missing the boat? Oh well, they are used to the idea that there will be another ferry quite soon, God willing and the driftwood don’t rise up ahead of the boat.
I didn’t get married in Seattle. I got married somewhere else and came to Seattle. We found a cheap house in the foothills where some out-of-work Boeing people moved out in the 1970’s. It was a little farm town then. Now it’s a traffic jam — — even in the foothills!!!
I am amazed that my three kids found spouses here! But that was before cell phones, so… go figure. I’m not sure if my grandkids have discovered that there are both girls AND boys at their schools! They have messaging to do as often as possible.
Odd. Kind of eerie, huh? Makes me wonder how Sleepless in Seattle came to be filmed in Seattle? A romance? Surely they jest!
Susan G Holland ©October 2018
