"Locals Only" Seattle Insider Tips to Pubs, Live Music, Cafes, Hole in the Walls, Oddities. (White Center: 2015, house)

[homesinseattle]

Yeah, we already know about the Space Needle, the ferris wheel, the museums. What are some other places that are unique, different, off the grid a little that an adventurous tourist or visitor to our fine city might want to see? I'll just start this off with a couple and let you clever people chime in.

-Live music venues the average tourist might not discover, each very good in its own way:

Nectar Lounge in Fremont. http://nectarlounge.com/

Tractor Tavern in Ballard. http://www.tractortavern.com/

The Seamonster in Wallingford. http://seamonsterlounge.com/


-Archie McPhee has been supplying gifts and toys to Seattle since 1983. Located in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood, it’s a one stop shop for party supplies, crafts, costumes, miniatures and the weirdest collection of toys and candy that you’ve ever seen. Widely considered to be a Mecca for connoisseurs of the strange and one of Seattle’s top ten weird destinations, it is truly an attraction without a parallel. Here's the link: http://archiemcpheeseattle.com/

[Sockeye66]

Good subject homes!
Come on down south and browse the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall. Even if you don't a buy a thing it's great place to meet people.

Lot's of excellent vendors, food, breweries, drinks, my favorite- Star Brass Lounge, sit out on the deck people watching or play some shuffleboard. Love their tavern burger "the Loretta".

[homesinseattle]

Originally Posted by Sockeye66

Good subject homes!
Come on down south and browse the Georgetown Trailer Park Mall. Even if you don't a buy a thing it's great place to meet people.

Lot's of excellent vendors, food, breweries, drinks, my favorite- Star Brass Lounge, sit out on the deck people watching or play some shuffleboard. Love their tavern burger "the Loretta".

Love that place Sockeye, got a cool vintage Lee shirt there last year. Wifey and I love that little "Flip Flip Ding Dong" pinball place in Georgetown too: http://www.flipflipdingding.com/

[Gardyloo]

Union Bay Natural Area, Lake Washington. This is a terrific marshland on the edge of Lake Washington near Husky Stadium and the (former) "ramps to nowhere." There are paths and boardwalks from which you can observe umpteen species of birds, beavers, turtles (or are they tortoises?) basking on logs, the occasional deer and coyote. Beautiful, too.





The working waterfront. Prowling around Harbor Island and the Duwamish Waterway is definitely under most visitors' radars, but it can be rewarding and can remind one that Seattle has always been, and remains, an important seaport. You can also see some interesting sights that go against most people's preconceptions.

[Sockeye66]

Originally Posted by homesinseattle

Love that place Sockeye, got a cool vintage Lee shirt there last year. Wifey and I love that little "Flip Flip Ding Dong" pinball place in Georgetown too: http://www.flipflipdingding.com/

Interesting enough that used to be the home of SnoPac Fisheries, it sat empty for a few years. It was good to see a new business move in. I've had a drink or two and thrown some beanbags through the slots there.

[homesinseattle]

Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. Seattle Waterfront. Shrunken heads, mummies, natural oddities, taxidermy treasures and manmade wonders from all over the world into the shop. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop plays host to more than a million visitors a year these days, and many are on a return trip, eager to share the experience with their great-grandchildren. https://yeoldecuriosityshop.com/pages/about-us

The Troll under the bridge in Fremont, just go! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Troll

[Sockeye66]

Seattle Freeway Park
Freeway Park - Parks | seattle.gov
Drove beneath it for years completely ignorant I was driving through such wonderful space.

[Gardyloo]

A couple more...

Kubota Garden. The masterwork of Fujitaro Kubota, now in the custody of the parks department. https://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/kubota-garden

Ravenna Park. A remarkable canyon right in the middle of the city. Walking at the bottom of the gorge next to the little creek makes you feel like you're a million miles away from the action, when in fact you're just yards.

Uwajimaya. Not exacatly "undiscovered," but worthy of any visitor's time. Play "name that vegetable," enjoy the fun food court, buy weird Japanese snacks for the ballgame or before heading to the airport, find the latest manga at the Kinokuniya Bookstore on the premises. A local treasure.

The interior of Seward Park. Bald eagles, old growth forest... hard to beat.

Breakfasts...

My family and I have set out to sample weekend breakfast places all over town. We pick places that are family-friendly, don't require you to hock your firstborn to pay for your eggs, and which are reasonably accessible by car, since we like to go early in the mornings on Saturdays and Sundays and don't want to walk a mile from the car to the cafe (difficult for yours truly at the moment, anyway.) We've been to 40+ places now; some suggestions to investigate... Google them.

Fat's Chicken and Waffles in the Central District. Try the fried green tomato Benedict. Really.
Baja Bistro on Beacon Hill. Fab Mexican breakfasts, and margaritas too.
Bay Cafe at Fishermen's Terminal. A couple of doors from the pricier Chinook's, this is the real deal.
Hudson Cafe on Marginal Way S. Outrageously good. Next door to the Georgetown Morgue.
Foo Lam on MLK near Othello. Outstanding, cheap dim sum. Get there at opening or wait.
Salvadorean Bakery and Cafe on SW Roxbury in White Center. O.M.G.
Chelan Cafe, in the road-spaghetti beneath the West Seattle Bridge. Basic (big) working-class bacon-and-eggs place, full of locals.
Julia's in Wallingford. Still good after all these years.
Voula's on Northlake under the freeway. Yeah, so Guy Fieri liked it. So what? It rocks.

That should get you started.

[JonasW]

If you're into jazz/live/improvisational/World music then the Royal room. Hidden gem down in Columbia City.



The Royal Room - Live Music / Restaurant / Lounge / Project Room

[homesinseattle]

The Frye Art Museum in the First Hill area of Seattle is very very good, it is amazing how many people don't know about it.

The Frye Art Museum is an art museum located in the First Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, USA. The museum emphasizes painting and sculpture from the nineteenth century to the present. Its holdings originate in the private collection of Charles (1858–1940) and Emma (d. 1934) Frye. Charles, owner of a local meatpacking plant, set aside money in his will for a museum to house the Fryes' collection of over 230 paintings. The Frye Art Museum opened to the public in 1952, and was Seattle's first free art museum. The museum building was originally designed by Paul Thiry, although it has since been considerably altered.

Charles Frye's will required that the majority of the Fryes' own collection continue always to be on view in rooms of a certain size; stipulations were also made about lighting conditions and specifically concrete floors (ultimately elided by placing wood over the concrete). He also required that admission always be free. These conditions were enough to keep the Seattle Art Museum from being interested in his collection.

The Fryes' collection consisted entirely of representational works, with a tendency toward "the dark, the dramatic, and the psychological" rather than "the genteel". The museum's permanent collection reflects Charles Frye's relatively conservative artistic tastes, and (despite the lack of any such stipulation in the will) the museum continued to be dedicated exclusively to representational art, both in its acquisitions and its exhibits.This conservatism reflected the artistic and social values of its first director, Walser Greathouse (d. 1966) and of his even more conservative widow and successor Ida Kay Greathouse, who ran the museum until 1993.

However, exhibits under new, professional management in recent years have been far more venturesome, eliciting comparisons to Seattle's Henry Art Gallery. Exhibits in recent years have included "Wondertoonel," an exhibit of Mark Ryden's often morbid images of childhood. "The Retrofuturistic Universe of NSK" and "Henry Darger: Highlights from the American Folk Art Museum" (2006). The museum has also repeatedly redeployed its permanent collection, experimenting with exhibiting it in different arrangements. In 2007, for the first time, other pieces are sharing the rooms dedicated to the original Frye collection; they are being juxtaposed against pieces from the Henry Art Gallery's founding collection.