Dear Friend and Subscriber,
I had occasion to travel to Seattle last week, about 20 years after I attended a NABCA event there that led me to vow never to return. I’d be happy to go back, although I will say that to a Midwesterner now living on the East Coast, Seattle is a bit of a strange burg.
Let’s start with the positive stuff: Downtown is walkable; I never felt in danger. There’s excellent mass transit — a light rail link from the airport to the downtown hotels, a monorail, buses, etc. The central business district is clean. Food is decent. People are friendly.
But, a poor mattress in the Westin Seattle hotel resulted in me incurring a serious soft tissue injury, and when the pain got to be greater than I could bear, I sought medical treatment. With one exception, all the urgent care facilities within walking distance of either the Westin or the Washington State Convention Center were closed on Sunday. And that one exception was operating by appointment only — and there were no appointments in the Seattle area until Monday.
So I called my insurance company, and they found me an urgent care clinic about 45 minutes from the Westin. The PA in charge was helpful and competent and wrote a prescription for a pain killer. And that led to the discovery of the second strange thing about Seattle: Almost all the pharmacies close at 6 p.m. Saturday, including those downtowns near the major hotels and convention center. You would think that some operator would see opportunity here: The only pharmacy in all of downtown would find an unserved market; one has to wonder if the fact there are almost no pharmacies open after 6 p.m. on Saturday is a legacy of the riots following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The PA was helpful, though, and found me a 24-hour Bartell’s that was perhaps 20 minutes from the Westin.
The other strange thing about Chicago, which I noted on the bus to the urgent care place, is that one block can obviously be well maintained, and an immediately adjacent block could be loaded with homeless people, drug dealers, etc.
I found the toleration for the homeless to be a bit strange; Seattle is known to be a liberal city. During the entire time I was there, the high temperature never exceeded 45, and locals told me that blasts of air from Alaska are fairly common during the winter. One would expect a liberal city to be compassionate, but compassion for street people does not appear to be part of the culture.
Traveling through the airport was a much better experience. It took almost exactly 20 minutes to navigate the TSA checkpoint, which has been largely automated to be able to accommodate a large crowd. I haven’t flown for about 10 years, and I found the TSA operation much more pleasant that that of 10 years ago.
I found a direct flight to Seattle on Alaska Airlines. It was a great experience. Returning to Washington, I flew Delta. Because of the pain from the soft tissue injury, it wasn’t so great, but I am sure that was strictly the result of the injury. The staff accommodated my needs and I would willingly travel Delta again.