Are negative views on Seattle's (eg:climate and grittiness) due to suburban California transplant bias? (neighborhood, live)

[lifexponential]

Originally Posted by Commonproject

New York has crap weather all year round. The city itself is interesting so people are able to ignore it more easily.

The humidity in NY is enough to drive anyone away.
I'm from Brooklyn, and yes NY is a nice place to visit......
as far as living, I think NY state is more comparable to WA overall.

[Sockeye66]

Originally Posted by 41Willys

Was it really that bad? How many gray days in a row were there without any sun?

Well over a hundred, I recall local media poking a lot of fun at it.

I recall a day in March when their was some daylight after 5:00 PM and no rain. I thought I'd enjoy some after work outside time at the Ballard Locks near my office. I stepped into the grass and water would pool up around my shoes. I slipped and landed on my side and back and it was like falling into a dirty sopping wet sponge. I swear I sank 5 inches into the turf. Was soaked all the way through my clothing.

[Leftseattle]

Originally Posted by Sockeye66

Lifetime Piglet Sounder here and after living through the '16 and '17 winters I started my moving plans. Apparently I was OK with one year of rain & gray (remember 98-99?) but beaten down at two.

My experience, exactly. We moved to Seattle in the summer of 2013 from a New Englandish, upscale New York City suburb. We moved back three years later; the last two Seattle winters were killers. Day after day, something like 79, with absolutely no sun. On the East Coast, the sun lurks behind the clouds on a cloudy day. And in winter there are enough bright,sunny days. In Seattle, there is no hint of sun behind the clouds, just day after day of opaque, leaden or slate sky.

I found Seattle's absence of humidity in summer wonderful and enjoyed sleeping with a summer blanket, windows open. That part is great. I missed other signs of an eastern summer. Seattle's foliage was magnificent but dark. Aesthetically,I knew instantly that the Pacific Northwest wasn't my cup of tea. After a lifetime on the East Coast,I found Washington remote.

Still, I was optimistic. I loved the people in our area. No Seattle Freeze there.I remember asking:How bad can the winters be? I got cryptic answers.
For winters, several took off for sunnier climes.

After three years, we moved back East. Again, it's a trade-off: the first year back, the summer was great. Last summer , 2018, the Northeast was a hot, humid hell. Other than this heat wave, this summer is better. But still too humid. We have little spring and shorter fall, but it' s home and mostly sunny, although this year's deluged of rain and quite a few clouds are nothing to write home about.

On the gritty side, yes. Seattle was an adjustment -- from a leafy NYC as suburb. The homeless own the parks downtown. And the underpasses. There was a knitting and shooting in our neighborhood, which was a good one. And there's was the grooming. I can't tell you how many men I stood or walked behind who had rolled out of bed without chic bombing their hair.

New York is my city. Seattle seemed like a big, accessible town. It was so easy to get to concerts and events. Ten minutes.

It's a trade off. For what it's worth. I still miss the people. And the absence of humidity.

[homesinseattle]

Originally Posted by Leftseattle

My experience, exactly. We moved to Seattle in the summer of 2013 from a New Englandish, upscale New York City suburb. We moved back three years later; the last two Seattle winters were killers. Day after day, something like 79, with absolutely no sun. On the East Coast, the sun lurks behind the clouds on a cloudy day. And in winter there are enough bright,sunny days. In Seattle, there is no hint of sun behind the clouds, just day after day of opaque, leaden or slate sky.

I found Seattle's absence of humidity in summer wonderful and enjoyed sleeping with a summer blanket, windows open. That part is great. I missed other signs of an eastern summer. Seattle's foliage was magnificent but dark. Aesthetically,I knew instantly that the Pacific Northwest wasn't my cup of tea. After a lifetime on the East Coast,I found Washington remote.

Still, I was optimistic. I loved the people in our area. No Seattle Freeze there.I remember asking:How bad can the winters be? I got cryptic answers.
For winters, several took off for sunnier climes.

After three years, we moved back East. Again, it's a trade-off: the first year back, the summer was great. Last summer , 2018, the Northeast was a hot, humid hell. Other than this heat wave, this summer is better. But still too humid. We have little spring and shorter fall, but it' s home and mostly sunny, although this year's deluged of rain and quite a few clouds are nothing to write home about.

On the gritty side, yes. Seattle was an adjustment -- from a leafy NYC as suburb. The homeless own the parks downtown. And the underpasses. There was a knitting and shooting in our neighborhood, which was a good one. And there's was the grooming. I can't tell you how many men I stood or walked behind who had rolled out of bed without chic bombing their hair.

New York is my city. Seattle seemed like a big, accessible town. It was so easy to get to concerts and events. Ten minutes.

It's a trade off. For what it's worth. I still miss the people. And the absence of humidity.

I don't disagree with some of the things you said but I was just in NYC for a long weekend and the humidity seriously kicked my butt, came whimpering quickly back to Seattle.

[pete98146]

Originally Posted by Leftseattle

And there's was the grooming. I can't tell you how many men I stood or walked behind who had rolled out of bed without chic bombing their hair.

Haha...this is my wife's pet peeve as well and she mentions it constantly. She's convinced most people from Seattle have just rolled out of bed and gone to work...both men and women. Or she'll say, "what would happen if people from Seattle couldn't wear Seahawk, Mariner gear or sweatpants? Half would walk around naked." A few weeks back she turned to me and asked me, "hey Pete, what do you call a good looking woman in Seattle? A tourist." My wife can be a tough cookie....

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by pete98146

Haha...this is my wife's pet peeve as well and she mentions it constantly. She's convinced most people from Seattle have just rolled out of bed and gone to work...both men and women. Or she'll say, "what would happen if people from Seattle couldn't wear Seahawk, Mariner gear or sweatpants? Half would walk around naked." A few weeks back she turned to me and asked me, "hey Pete, what do you call a good looking woman in Seattle? A tourist." My wife can be a tough cookie....

I can't relate to any of these observations. But maybe I existed in a bit of a bubble, when I lived in Seattle. I worked for the UW most of the time. People were well-groomed, staff were not into spectator sports, didn't see any Seahawk or Mariner gear, or sweatpants, even downtown, or around the north end or U District. These sound like stereotypes, but I don't know how they'd get started.

What I noticed, especially around Capitol Hill, was a lot of people wearing hiking gear as everyday (leisure) wear. A lot of people looked like they'd just come back from a weekend camping trip. I wouldn't expect that to have changed much, since people still do a lot of hiking and camping. Someone last week posted a question, asking where to buy women's sweatpants; they couldn't find any in the stores, so I question whether sweatpants are a thing. Haven't leggings, yoga pants, and skinny jeans dominated the market for some time now?

[pete98146]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

I can't relate to any of these observations. But maybe I existed in a bit of a bubble, when I lived in Seattle. I worked for the UW most of the time. People were well-groomed, staff were not into spectator sports, didn't see any Seahawk or Mariner gear, or sweatpants, even downtown, or around the north end or U District. These sound like stereotypes, but I don't know how they'd get started.

What I noticed, especially around Capitol Hill, was a lot of people wearing hiking gear as everyday (leisure) wear. A lot of people looked like they'd just come back from a weekend camping trip. I wouldn't expect that to have changed much, since people still do a lot of hiking and camping. Someone last week posted a question, asking where to buy women's sweatpants; they couldn't find any in the stores, so I question whether sweatpants are a thing. Haven't leggings, yoga pants, and skinny jeans dominated the market for some time now?

Yup, my wife is a clothes horse and Seattle is too informal for her....

[Diana Holbrook]

Originally Posted by Leftseattle

...There was a knitting and shooting in our neighborhood, which was a good one.

Yeah - It's one thing to endure a shooting or two, but too much knitting can really ruin a neighborhood!

[Diana Holbrook]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

I can't relate to any of these observations. But maybe I existed in a bit of a bubble, when I lived in Seattle. I worked for the UW most of the time. People were well-groomed, staff were not into spectator sports, didn't see any Seahawk or Mariner gear, or sweatpants, even downtown, or around the north end or U District. These sound like stereotypes, but I don't know how they'd get started.

What I noticed, especially around Capitol Hill, was a lot of people wearing hiking gear as everyday (leisure) wear. A lot of people looked like they'd just come back from a weekend camping trip. I wouldn't expect that to have changed much, since people still do a lot of hiking and camping. Someone last week posted a question, asking where to buy women's sweatpants; they couldn't find any in the stores, so I question whether sweatpants are a thing. Haven't leggings, yoga pants, and skinny jeans dominated the market for some time now?

Originally Posted by pete98146

Yup, my wife is a clothes horse and Seattle is too informal for her....

I often retell this story so I hope you haven't heard it before.... I used to attend a nationwide conference that was held in Seattle every year. We had colleagues who would come from NYC, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, SF, all over, bigger cities and smaller.

One time we went out for a few drinks after the conference and were having a good time and started talking about where to go to have dinner. We decided on a nice place, and everyone from out of town started quizzing us on what they should wear, that they needed to go up to their rooms and change.

All of us locals said "We can wear what we're wearing now!" We were wearing "conference casual" jeans, sweaters, probably some flannel, it was usually in October. They were adamant that they "needed" to go dress for dinner. We had a really hard time convincing them that there was no restaurant in Seattle that we could think of, where you could not go wearing jeans and flannel.

I really like that but they had packed all their dress-up clothes and they seemed disappointed.

[Agamo]

@OP I am from the King County/ Seattle area and I recently moved to San Francisco. I came here for school but I have been itching to move out of Seattle for decades. The weather is gray, the people are gray, the culture is gray, Everything about the city ate away at my happiness. I am so glad to be finally free of that’s place.