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I moved to Chicago last December for grad school and I love it. This city is awesome. There is so much to do, so much neighborhood variety, the downtown is gigantic, the diversity is interesting, the accent can be amusing, the public transportation is great, the food is great, and everything about this city is nearly perfect for me. Except the weather.
But I still find myself homesick for Seattle! I'm not a stranger to living various places. I was born and raised in southern California. I went to school in podunk Pullman, WA at WSU, I studied abroad in Paris, and I taught English for a year in Korea. And every time I'm away from Seattle, I have intense nostalgia and homesickness for the beautiful Seattle area. There's no other places in the country like it. I'm not just strictly speaking about the city of Seattle- which is a great city (though it could have a more spiced up nightlife scene). I miss hiking and camping with my friends in the Cascades. I miss the clean air. I miss the wildlife. I miss getting stalked by a cougar in the middle of the night in the Hoh Rainforest in the Olympics. I miss Snoqualmie Falls. I miss the drive-in movie theater in Auburn. I miss driving on the dark creepy but awesome forest-lined roads of the Sammamish Plateau. I miss the steep hills of Seattle. The Puget Sound. Mount Ranier in the distance. I miss the pristine streets of downtown Bellevue. The million-times-better-than-Chicago seafood, especially sushi. I miss Seattle-style TERIYAKI joints that I never realized were unique to Seattle until I moved. I miss Asian people. The natural beauty everywhere. I miss how safe most places are. Even the most "dangerous" parts of Seattle don't hold a candle to some of Chicago's south side and west side neighborhoods. I miss the mild weather, the drizzle. The overcast days. I miss how it's almost never too cold in Seattle, and it's rarely too hot. It's perfect weather to be stylish year around with a good pair of jeans and a thin jacket. A hoodie is a Seattleites most important piece of clothing. I can't wait to visit for a good two weeks in August. My girlfriend still lives there so that doesn't help. Maybe when I'm done with grad school I'll move back with my brand new master's of science.
Ugh. I just made myself even more homesick by typing that ridiculously long paragraph. There's my ode to Seattle. And I'm sure I'm forgetting many aspects of Seattle that I miss.
So here's something fun you can do to help me: let's list things that bug you about Seattle and the Seattle area. Maybe it'll remind me why I wanted a break from the area (although now I really want to go back. But I'm the kind of guy where the grass is always greener... Can't help it!) All in good fun now, I don't mean for a nasty discussion.
I'll start: I really don't like the passive aggressiveness of drivers in the Seattle area. I don't want people cutting me off and being rude, but I also think that hesitation can be more dangerous than aggression. And everyone drives so slow! And despite that, cops seem to give out waaaay more speeding tickets than in Chicago! You gotta be doing something pretty stupid to get pulled over in Chicago.
Last edited by SpikeDurden; 06-10-2011 at 02:41 AM..
I'm someone who has lived in Chicago previously for 2 Years ( back in 2001/02 ) & have over the past couple of Years fell in love with Seattle after visiting on Holiday 4 times, soon to be 5 when i go back to live in Chicago, via Seattle for a week..
You know as well as i do that even though Chicago is a superb City & a great one to live in, especially in the Summer, Seattle is special for so many reasons that you have already mentioned so just think of the positives & not the negatives of a City that i'm sure has negatives, but are nowhere near a City like Chicago in the grand scheme of things..
I currently live in Thailand, your starting " negative " is a prime example of soemthing that actually isn't really a " negatiive " at all as it simply is 10 times, 100 times worse in other places, Chicago included & my goodness, so is Thailand where bad driving is concerned.
I'm a Chicagoan who hasn't lived there since I was 18, since I moved away from college and pretty much just visited each year from then on, so I guess I'm almost more a Seattleite than a Chicagoan now. But I've still got my roots and some of the things that will never stop bugging me about this area.
I love Seattle, don't get me wrong, I actually prefer Seattle to my old hometown for a variety of reasons (no jobs in my field in the Chicago area chief reason among them).
The roads. Oh my dear lord, people here just don't understand the importance of good roads here. Whoever decided that laying down slabs of concrete instead of blacktop or actual concrete roads should be drawn and quartered. The condition of the roads are just terrible.
Snow removal. You shouldn't have to cancel school and avoid the roads out of the fear of dying because of other idiots from California or some other southern area crash their SUVs and clog up the highways or eco-mentalists in their econo-boxes stalling in the snow, causing 35 mile backups. I've become the first snowflake freakout guy because of this (see PEMCO Insurance's Northwest Profiles to see what I mean).
Drivers. Oblivious (or vigilante) drivers who go 45 mph in the fast lane really irritate me. I dart into the HOV lane to get around them.
Coldness of the neighbors. Perhaps this is just the local culture, but I still don't get how you don't know all the neighbors on your block. I don't get how people can live next door to people and not know who they are. I also don't get how there aren't any block parties and things like that.
Now that's not to say people in general are cold, I've made plenty of friends here, but there's just no neighborly feeling amongst your you know ... actual neighbors.
Chicago blues. I miss this with a passion.
Chicago style pizza. I don't care where anyone says I should go, it simply DOES NOT EXIST HERE, PERIOD. The closest thing is a sad approximation in the U Village mall (and they made the cardinal sin that they think everyone from Chicago loves the Cubs ... *shiver*.. go South Side, go Sox). I don't care how tasty the NY style pizza is here, I don't like it. If it isn't thick enough to stop a tank in its tracks, I don't like it. Inability to make actual chicago style pizzas just means you're false advertising.
Seattleites are easygoing, and that's a good thing in general. They're outright lazy in others. The drive of Chicagoans to get it done I miss.
Stupid politicians. Sometimes you need a powerful center. Like the 10 year and ongoing debacle with the viaduct gives me brain aneurysms just thinking about it. Just get it over with! Build the f*cking thing, I don't care which option you choose, JUST DO IT! Noplace should have to force their citizenry to take a rickety dangerous eyesore like Seattle does.
OH YES, just remember we have nasty weather and nasty politicians, but then Chicago politicians are even more nasty and the weather is also more nasty. I'm aching for maybe Honolulu or San Diego right now.
I'm with you on the Chicago pizza. There's not a single other place I've ever been that makes true Chicago pizza besides in Chicago. What they call Chicago-style pizza in most places, including Seattle, is just a pizza with thick crust. THAT'S NOT IT AT ALL!!!! The crust of Chicago style is NOT thick. It's thin, flakey, buttery and pie-like. The cheese is on the bottom. Then the meats/other toppings, and THEN the tangy tomato sauce is on top.
I'm with you on the neighbors. I lived on a suburban street in the Seattle area for a decade, a cul de sac even, and there were no block parties, no friendliness, everyone kept to themselves. It's very odd. And if you were to move in and then go next door and greet your new neighbor they would think you're weird.
I'm with you on the snow too, and the drivers of course. The handling of snow in the PNW is a joke.
One thing though: you're from Chicago and you're complaining about the roads in Seattle??? This is really surprising to me. To me, Seattle's roads are miles better than most places, and on top of that, Chicago and the surrounding area has some of the worst roads I've ever encountered in America. They full of pot holes, cracks and just plain uneven. Ask my bicycle, which has gotten pinch flats from potholes several times while I've been here.
What bugs me about Seattle?
Lack of high quality, low cost Italian food. The east coast is full of them, the plastic checkered tableclothed places that just serves too large portions of incredibly good food for too low a cost?
Seattle has good Italian food. But you're going to pay for it.
Lack of a more extensive rail system. If you want to give people an option to get out of their cars, rail doesn't sit in traffic the way too many buses and cars do.
The Seattle "process" of getting things done. Very often they're going to do what they were planning to do at the beginning of the process, but want to give everyone a chance to voice their opinion so that they can feel listened to, and it ends up taking years for this process to happen. Former Mayor Nickels was originally a Chicagoan, and had that inclination to steamroll his agenda forward. But the Seattle process is deeply entrenched, yet some things happen, eventually.
Not enough street food. It's getting better in Seattle, but one of the things so great about New York is the availability of food from carts.
Fickle fans. I grew up a NY Met fan, and boy did they suck in those years, so I'm used to rooting for a lousy ballclub. When the Mariners are bad, fans stay away in droves, and that's a bad thing. Loyalty to a team says something about a city.
Hmmm...I am at a loss to help you because I'd miss all the same things. I thought of your post today as I drove down the pretty, pine-lined Sammamish streets. It really is beautiful here. Even the weather today (gray and 60's) I am thankful for when I look at what the rest of the country is enduring.
I do missing being closer to my family in the Midwest, but that's personal to me and not to you!
Someone mentioned Chicago style pizza...I'd agree. You don't have that here! And the museums are way better in Chicago than in Seattle for the most part. That's about all I can add. Pretty happy to be a Seattleite...even though I think Chi-town is a great city.
Hmmm...I am at a loss to help you because I'd miss all the same things. I thought of your post today as I drove down the pretty, pine-lined Sammamish streets. It really is beautiful here. Even the weather today (gray and 60's) I am thankful for when I look at what the rest of the country is enduring.
I do missing being closer to my family in the Midwest, but that's personal to me and not to you!
Someone mentioned Chicago style pizza...I'd agree. You don't have that here! And the museums are way better in Chicago than in Seattle for the most part. That's about all I can add. Pretty happy to be a Seattleite...even though I think Chi-town is a great city.
Awww I grew up in sammamish. I'm 24 now. Went to skyline high school. There's really few places like it. I didn't realize how spoiled I was until I left really. In high school I had a French foreign exchange student live with
Me for 3 weeks and he loved it so much. All the other French students did too. Their only visit and perception of the USA was the Seattle area while staying on he sammamish plateau. How lucky is that? It's cause their city Nantes is seattles sister city. Anyway, imagine if they instead stayed in the middle of Kansas, the desert of Arizona or any of the many other bland locales in the USA? They got lucky. And it was hilarious to hear the French kids say sammamish lol.
I could use a nice walk around yellow lake in klahanie right about now on a drizzly, overcast day.
So we've got so far the lack of real Chicago style Pizza & the low Quality Italian Restaraunts with not a great dela else, i'd say Seattle's doing ok if that's the majority of negatives in two days worth of Posting..
I do however strongly agree with thePoster who said that loyalty to a Sports Team no matter how bad they are, says a lot about the City & it's people.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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It's not just the pizza and Italian American food, it's most restaurant foods. They're too light. They're too healthy ...... there's simply not enough oil, fat, salt, or whatever on anything. A typical Seattle pizza has a thin crust with hint of mild sauce and a few little sprinkles of cheese. In Chicago it's like a pie filled with intensely flavored sauce and massive layer of good stringy mozzarella. The regular pizzas can be either cheese on bottom or on top, very different tastes that way. Intense antipastos. Cannolis with that true heavy filling ..... god I miss those. Rum cakes. Yes, it's mostly about Italian, but it's also about stodgy thick stick to the ribs Polish food like garlicky homemade kielbasa or stuffed cabbage casseroles, it's about cold cuts that for some reason taste better and fresher than in delis anywhere else, jewish delis with real bagels, lox with cream cheese, pickled herring, and smoked whitefish ......... mom-and-pop burger joints with fried buns, German wursts, greecy Greek gyros ..... all of it gives you little mouth orgasms and instant coronary occlusion. You'd have to walk far and long to find some lite Seattle type food.
But unless you're a foodie or are into dressing up for opera and theatre, Seattle's better in most ways.
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