Tuesday, August 22, 2023: Is it art? Is it a game?
Info:
Seattle is located in Washington state in the northwestern United States, only about 100 miles (160 km) south of Vancouver in Canada. With 750,000 residents and four million people in the metropolitan area, it is Washington’s largest city. The Port of Seattle primarily handles trade with Asia.
The headquarters of various global corporations are located here, Starbucks for example, Amazon, T-Mobile, Boeing, Adobe and Microsoft.
My opinion:
Try to imagine a big city that is clean and where people treat public space with mindfulness. Where you can sit comfortably on lawn chairs on the dock, eat lunch, and hear a father at the next table say to his five-year-old, “Can you manage to put that away by yourself?” And the child nods and proudly carries the package to the trash can. Not to mention that no one ruins or smears the garden chairs. During the meal, you watch as youngsters and adults have fun with the many games on offer – and then put everything back where they took it.
The city designs public space to provide a great deal of space for creativity, leisure, fun and play. People accept the offers and treat them very mindfully.
Simultaneously with the play opportunities in the public space, art was also considered. Sculptures everywhere in the parks, surprises for the eyes and often for the ears. Where there are no residential buildings nearby, sounds are also incorporated into the art and play experience. It starts at the International Fountain, a huge fountain with jazz music, and ends at a playground with countless sound bodies, where children and adults try out what something sounds like.
When I entered the maze at the Museum of Pop, there were about fifteen of us in it, ages zero to 62 (me), walking, riding scooters, being pushed in strollers, hopping, running – and having fun. And the way the playground looked, I asked myself the question: is it play or is it art? Probably both. And above all: for all ages!
If I felt comfortable in Seattle? Lots of traffic, but other than that: yeah, totally!
Diary:
Even in Seattle, smoke was still visible on the first day, more than 300 km as the crow flies from the Okanagan Valley.
In the guidebook, I read about the City Pass, which saves you a lot of money at the most important sights and also means you don’t have to stand in line anywhere. (Queuing seems to be the American national sport. Patiently queuing, is what is meant). I trusted that advice, paid $105 online, and reserved the times I wanted to enter each attraction. This is something I usually don’t like at all because I prefer to decide what I’m doing on the fly, but I’m not a fan of waiting in lines.
Would not have been necessary, as it turned out. And I also went in at completely different times without anyone caring. So it was pleasant after all.
The most eye-catching attraction in Seattle is the Space Needle at Seattle Center, a huge area with museums and parks. The Space Needle looks like a flying saucer on a pin. It opened in 1962 on the occasion of the World’s Fair in Seattle – and was completed just a week before. From a height of 605 ft (184 m) you have a magnificent 360° panoramic view of the city. You can also see down through the glass bottom … that’s a matter of taste.
Next to the Space Needle is Chihuli Garden and Glass. That was included with the City Pass – fortunately, because otherwise I might not have gone in there at all.
Dale Chihuli, born in Tahoma south of Seattle in 1941, is famous for his glass creations, but also for his paintings and sculptures. The city provided him with a plot of land and had a museum and a glass house built and a garden laid out according to his instructions.
I stood in the museum and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. By the way, the walls have a very specific color: Chihuli gray.
The exhibition alone would have made the visit a unique experience, but it went even further: a glass house. Look at the pictures! Most people were like me, they just stood there and marveled. Despite the many visitors, it was very quiet in the room.
But the highlight was yet to come: the garden. Often it was impossible to tell at first glance what it was, nature or art, plant or glass. Again and again the surprised exclamation was heard: “Oh, it’s glass!”
I then went down to the sea and strolled along the docks. There is the Edgewater Hotel, which was also built for the 1962 World’s Fair, but due to various delays could not be opened until two weeks after it ended – without a single booking. The windows and balconies face the sea. To publicize the hotel, guests were offered the opportunity to fish from their rooms. The publicity stunt was a success, with fishermen and fisherwomen from all over the world wanting to try it out. At the height of Beatle-mania, a paparazzo managed to get the photo of a lifetime by catching all four Beatles fishing from their rooms. However, since the fishing business became rather unhygienic in the long run, the hotel management discarded the idea.
The closer you get to downtown, the livelier the docks become.
The aquarium is a huge facility with seals, sea otters, sea birds, marine invertebrates to jellyfish. Great, of course – but I had already observed all these animals in the wild. Similar to the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward, research and knowledge are also imparted here.
Some data have remained in my memory about the one ocean – because in fact all the oceans are interconnected. I’m torturing you with this now because I think it’s impressive. The one ocean contains 96.5% of all the water that exists on Earth. 94% of all life on our planet is at home in water. The ocean makes up 70% of the Earth’s surface and 99% of its habitat. There are over one million known plants and animals in the oceans, with scientists estimating that there are actually over ten million. A single drop of seawater contains over one million bacteria. The ocean regulates the climate and stores CO2 or releases it into the atmosphere.
The average depth is about 4,000 m. Light can only penetrate about 100 m into the depth, which means that most of the ocean is completely in darkness. The longest mountain range on Earth, at over 55,000 km, runs through the sea, is higher than the Alps, and occupies 23% of the Earth’s surface. So far, about 5% of the ocean has been explored. Or, to put it another way: We know next to nothing about most of our planet.
Back to Seattle. In the sunshine it presented itself in the best light. I sat comfortably at Dock 62 and ate ice cream . Heavenly!
On the second day, I again successfully fought my way through the heavy traffic downtown, parked at Seattle Center, and walked down to the docks. The harbor tour was on the agenda thanks to the City Pass – an interesting hour during which I was able to view the city from the water.
Impressive also the cranes at the port and the speed with which containers are lifted and transported!
On the way back I walked through the Olympic Sculpture Park with its interesting sculptures. Many locals make themselves comfortable there in the shade of the trees and enjoy the view of the sea and the works of art.
Up by Seattle Center is also MoPOP, the Museum of Pop, which explores pop culture from a variety of perspectives. There are a permanent exhibition about Nirvana, a guitar gallery, where the (occasionally smashed) original guitars of famous musicians are exhibited, conversely an exhibition of the most famous types of guitars with lists of musicians who used or use them. Rooms that are about gaming, science fiction and horror, fantasy, hip-hop, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and many other aspects of pop culture.
What I found particularly interesting was the huge sound lab, where people can try out instruments and where there are many (soundproof) rooms for jamming and rehearsing, but also sound play opportunities for children. The museum supports young musicians with various offers. I was there in the afternoon. All the rooms were occupied. No wonder the city is known for its music scene! But it also works hard to keep it that way.
By the way, you can take the monorail directly from the city center to MoPOP – in fact, the monorail has a stop in the museum!
I have never experienced a city that offers so much for the senses. Where every playground is an experience – even for adults. Where in parks you don’t know what to look at first, nature or art. A city that builds a museum for an artist – according to his wishes – and creates a garden to go with it. Which offers space for all people, no matter what their interests and needs. Its goal is to ensure that the nearest park can be reached on foot within ten minutes from any residential building – which has indeed been achieved. Where public transportation is either free or incredibly cheap. Where accessibility is a matter of course.
Yes, there are traffic jams on the ten-lane highways in the city center. And there are areas that don’t look quite so great. There are people who have nothing. Who have to beg. Yes. And some voted for Trump.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t forget all these aspects. But all in all, I was thrilled with the city. As I said, Chihuli Garden and Glass would be worth the visit to Seattle alone, because Seattle is so much more than a business metropolis and port city!
