Making Seattle my home
matt-welsh.blogspot.com
matt-welsh.blogspot.com
The neighborhoods are nice, there's a lot of nature - you're close to mountains, parks, and water practically always. The weather is relatively mild (if a little dreary for most of the year), and the politics relatively progressive (well, sort of, all of Washington state except Seattle is pretty much very pro-Republican).
The social scene though, leaves a lot to be desired. Google "Seattle Freeze" for a much more in-depth look at the problem than I can write up. Locals deny it exists, anyone transplanted from another city swears by it. I find myself in the Bay Area now and find people far more approachable, and far more willing to make a new friend, whereas in Seattle one finds a lot more polite-yet-distant interactions, none of which ever seem to go anywhere. Making that worse is the fact that the social scene in Seattle is very much locals vs. transplants - which is to say neither side interact with each other very much. For people on the transplant side (where transplants are mostly tech people) it means your circles get pretty homogenous. Nearly all of my friends from my time in Seattle worked in software (either Amazon, Microsoft, or a smattering of other local companies).
Right now I'm still in that place in life where I enjoy making new friends and meeting varied and interesting people, and Seattle was really not doing it for me. I've had a much easier go at it since moving to California, and I can't say I really miss Seattle.
And then, after a while, this doubt sneaks into your mind: is it me? Do I suck at this socialization thing a lot more than I realized? Oh God it's me isn't it.
I thought the same, then I moved to SF and the number of people I befriended in the first few weeks is staggering compared to the number of people I managed to meet in the two years I was in Seattle. So...
When I lived there most recently I was having a hard time finding places that actually stayed open past 10. Naturally there's a few bars in downtown Seattle and some clubs but on the whole it's a little disappointing if you're in your 20s and looking to have a fun night.
In Seattle, the way to make friends is to join a group activity; whether that is school, work, a social club like Seattle Anti-Freeze, or a social sports club like kickball, hiking or running. Friends of friends is also huge. Seattleites are very insular—whether individually or in a group. They have their friends and don't need any more. That is to say, they already have so much fun with their current friends that they don't have energy for more. So to make friends, you have to already be in the group. You really have to be already "invited" because school or work dictates it. And you really have to be persistent. All my friends are from work, school or friends of friends. You don't meet random people in Seattle.
I recently moved from Seattle to DC and the social scene here is bad for other reasons, namely "what can you do for me?" Everyone is networking and trying to get ahead. No one just wants to hang out.
I wish you would honestly answer this; did you leave cause academia was bullshit? That's why I left. I regularly talk to grad students all torn up about leaving academia, and I keep telling them that "industry" is just as worthwhile an endeavor as research. I feel like reading about your path you've come to the same conclusion.
Having read Matt's account of his actions, I agree with your reading. It feels like he came to believe academia was bullshit, but didn't want to hurt his close friends in academia. (Which is fine! You are using a throwaway account, no?)
Over time, I came to view CS academia as bullshit as well, but I am starting to reverse this view. Academia is inefficient, anachronistic, political, bureaucratic, and doesn't do a very good job measuring its own output. However, that seems to apply to countless other institutions, especially institutions with billions of dollars.
Is it possible that academia is a flawed system that sometimes has good results (e.g., new knowledge, startups, quality engineers) that would not have happened otherwise? Or have new inventions like incubators or online education arrived that make it easier to achieve those good results without the old, flawed system?
Now, I would very much like to move to Seattle. I actually grew up near the Pacific Northwest, so I'm used to the rain, but my wife wouldn't be able to handle it, so it's basically a non-starter.
But now that I'm older, I would very much like to live the lifestyle that Seattle has to offer. It's a genuinely beautiful city, and I would very much like to live there at some point in my life.
My situation exactly. Every time we go back up to WA/OR to visit, everything looks so beautiful and green. On the other hand, after living in California for the past 10 years, I find myself wondering if I'd be able to tolerate the lack of sunshine, even after growing up in Seattle.
It's cloudy from November through June. Let's see how he feels in six months.
If you move to Seattle and complain about the weather, please, shut the fuck up and go back to California. We have enough of you whiners up here already.
Only if you count July, September and October as sunny. By any conventional standard, "summer" in Seattle lasts from August until early September. I lived in Seattle for seven years, and every single year I was wearing a sweater to the fireworks on July 4.
You get used to it, but that's nothing to brag about.
On a side note, I am curious in finding out why do so many high-achieving computer science folks in academia make the jump to work at Google? It takes a lot of effort to reach the point where some of these people are at, so there must be great incentives to make that move. What are those?
Seattle has a great diverse ecosystem for outdoors enthusiasts - drive for an hour or so, and you can go skiing, hiking, swimming, camping and more.
Seattle has a great craft beer culture as well. Some of my favorite bars are: Brouwers, Uber, Naked City, Beveridge Place Pub and Collins Pub.
If you want authentic mexican, check out Oaxaca in Ballard. As for taco truck food, check out El Camion in the parking lot of Home Depot on 135th and I-99 Aurora as well as Taqueria Tequila on 85th.
For Chicago style stuffed pizza, check out Delfino's in University Village and stay far away from Kylie's in Fremont (ugh)...for normal pizza, try Serious Pie, Flying Squirrel and Via Tribunali.
For breakfast, try Beth's Cafe and CJ's (my favorite eggs benedict)
For italian, try Cafe Lago. Great pasta.
For sandwiches - my 2 favorite places are Salumi's where you should try the Mole & Mozz. Salumi's is a few blocks away from where the Seahawks play. Second place is Tat's where they have the town's best philly cheese steak sandwich.
For ice cream, Molly Moon's wins hands down. They are in Wallingford as well as Capitol Hill.
Enjoy!
The first rule of Cafe Lago is you don't talk about Cafe Lago. They run out of lasagna at 7 PM as it is. :(
Google managed to very effectively be an acceptable reason to quit academia or not pursue a PhD. Good on them, working in the Plex is better than going through the bullshit that Matt dealt with. Doesn't change the fact that if you work at Google you're getting paid at a discount, and probably are a lot more unhappy than that retard who can't figure out how his Google plus account works.
I'm from Oregon, and to make a long story short, I think I much preferred the winter in Innsbruck, Austria, where we spent a couple of years. It's cold, but relatively dry. You can go out and do stuff in the snow, whereas with 5 C and rain... the only good option is to simply stay indoors.
- Food courts in the malls. Seriously, Parker Place if you like it "almost a bit too real" and Yaohan Centre if you and the family want to get a mish-mash of dishes.
- Dim Sum Restaurants. They're a little further south on No. 3 Road, closer to the Nordstrom's, but they're big, clean, fresh, and always packed.
- Hot Pot. Seriously, having tried in NY, Chicago, SF, etc. I've never had reasonable Cantonese-style hot pot until there.
- Buddhist Vegetarian. The hours require some planning, but the Internation Buddhist Temple has stunningly amazing vegetarian food. And it's a great site, even for non-Buddhists.
- Tofu dessert! Yes, at least as of a couple of years ago, there's even a late-night tofu dessert shop (better than it sounds, trust me) in the strip mall area buried about a block south of the Yahoan Centre.
My wife's originally from HK and I lived in Seattle for 6 years, so this food knowledge was crucial to a happy marriage...
Yes, I get that the Victorian houses are nice, but come on, this city has the most ridiculous housing supply situation I've seen anywhere. It desperately needs a huge injection of housing supply.
But of course, the city is loathe to allow any high density construction except for a few ultra-luxe towers by the waterfront, which solves none of our supply problems.
Silicon Valley has similar weather, so that would be easy, but I don't know if I could handle gloomy weather a big portion of the year.
Google's Santa Monica office is 6 blocks from the beach, same as ours.
Hate to burst your bubble, but as someone who lived in the Valley for 10 years, then San Diego, no, the weather in the Valley is not nearly as nice as SoCal!
San Francisco gets the ocean breeze, though it's more like a freezing cold foggy rain. (We used to have this ongoing joke in SF: "How do you know that person is a tourist? Because he's wearing shorts!") I lived in Pacifica, which was beautiful, and right on the coast, but it was never warm and breezy like SoCal.
The rest of the Valley is a 1-hour+ drive from the coast, and it gets that "inland hot" weather. Not like the IE, but like a mini-IE. You don't want to live in San Jose without air conditioning.
I don't really miss the weather in the Valley!
Better get used to it. Seattle has many cool, overcast days (although, surprisingly less precipitation than Chicago or NYC) and is definitely known for its dreary weather. If you had a few sunny days in the Summer it was a damned good Summer.
As a former Seattleite (I was born there and lived there for many years) I understand where you're coming from, apropos the weather: but in all seriousness, learn to love it (or at least how to deal with it) because it's definitely a primary feature of life there. The good news is most of the time the weather is fairly mild, including the Winters. There generally isn't a lot of snow. But it will get cool (even cold) and you will have to deal with the weather never actually being insanely nice for most of the year.
Let's hope you will still like in couple of years the mostly cloudy, rainy, dreary, no sun weather of Seattle. It is depressing weather 10 months a year, IMO.
Wallingford area has some nice eateries on 45th from Dick's to Tilth. We typically just walk down street for dinner weather permitting. Some of our favorites on 45th are Joule's, Tilth, Issian, Kabul, Chutney, Sutra. You most probably also not far from Tutta Bella on Stone Way or student style eateries on University Ave. Pam's Kitchen and Chilli's are our favorite on Univ Ave.
I'll be posting it to HN early next week, but if you RSVP now you'll have a much better chance (I'm capping it at 200 RSVPs).
As 1 of 2 negatives, he lists "everyone in Seattle appears to be white".
Consider the economic conditions of American cities in which Whites are a minority. Virtually all are economically depressed. Think Detroit, Newark, East St. Louis, East LA, Miami’s Little Haiti, South Dallas, etc.
Unfortunately, most white people would do anything to avoid being called a racist. This includes doing things that go against their group interests at all costs. Most white people are proud of themselves for "not noticing" race unless it's to point out whites behaving badly. I get so exasperated with the whole situation that I don’t know what to do.
Are you saying there aren't poor white communities in the US? What about around the world, like Eastern Europe, or even Greece?