i’ve never been more scared to be alone than in Seattle. It was unsettling that sooo many young people my age were begging. And they didn’t just stand on the corner, they walked with you for several blocks, pushing.
I was there for a couple of months and when at a new friend’s party, everyone had a tale of a crazy person that broke into their aparments…now, many were funny stories, but they acted like it was normal to just have random homeless people walking into their homes at all hours…i’d be terrified!
on another note – i LOVE alaskan king salmon; eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and time I’m there – Seattle has wayyyy better seafood….

She sounds like the people who move to the south and then complain about how it’s not like New York City.  Please, if you don’t like the place, why did you come and why don’t you go home?

 Went to Seattle to visit a friend in l987 and found it lovely (April).Saw the original Starbucks and had coffee there never dreaming it would expand world-wide. It was a little “hole in the wall” the.
Loved the Pike Market and food in Washington in general and
as for the grey haired ladies, you should visit Vermont to see the long and short of it.
However, I did not MOVE TO  Seattle so am no judge of the “friendliness” or warmth of the people.

A friend of mine tells me that a person can go walking in the woods without being eaten up with mosquitoes (listen to the previous hour) and ticks.  The climate stays in a temperature range that I like.  Those things make it three-quarters of the way to perfection without doing anything else.

My impressions of Seattle were defined by Tom Robbins – lush, water-logged, and gray.

And mushrooms – lots of mushrooms.

I visited to Seattle twice and just love the place!
Can’t wait to go back again.
Let me just write some pro and cons from my visits to downtown Seattle.

Pros:
1. nice waterfront with plenty of places to enjoy the views of the sounds. If it is a sunny day can see hill and mountains surrounding the city.
2. Nice street art/public art that is throughout the city.
3. In my opinion, there is alot of great/varied cuisine although the city.
4. If you look for it, there plenty of free/low cost things to do.
5. Cool public market to buy all sorts of fresh produce/food products.
6. Able to catch nice ferry rides to Bremerton and Bainbridge. These towns also have there own charm and things to do.
7. The older part of town has some interesting architecture.
8. The space needle….always cool to visit.

Cons:
1. Though fairly easy to walk the waterfront. The town where I was at was fairly hilly. So walking from the waterfront to your hotel or to other parts of the city not at/near the water front can be tiring.
2. From what I saw. Driving can be challenging and parking seems a nightmare in the city. Of course one could say that about most city.
3. Some of the “Tourist Traps” can be expensive.
4. There seems to be a lot of panhandlers that aren’t shy about bothering you for money. Granted I seen alot worse in Newark and Elizabeth NJ.
5. People say the weather is typically rainy and gray. But to be honest. It was sunny pretty much everyday each time I went (May and July).

Now I know that this show is only about Seattle. But I would like to mention that I have also very much enjoyed the national parks and the pacific coast that are “around” Seattle. Mt Rainier was totally awesome and so was Olympic national park. And since I am an ocean person I loved visiting Ruby beach of the pacific.

Again I had a wonderful time and can wait to go back.

I’ve been to Seattle 5 times. Fremont, Lighthouse tea (had coffee with Dave Matthews here), Gas Works, Hurricane Ridge, Starbucks first shop, Pikes place, Bumbershoot, Deception Pass, snowboarding in the Olympic mountains, kayaking on Union Bay. So lucky to have friends that live there. If I were to move to the west coast…it’d be Seattle. I just loved the vibe.

My wife and I visited Portland and Seattle earlier this month on our vacation to the Pacific northwest. Maybe it’s because we went to Seattle second, but we found it to be a huge disappointment. Aside from Fremont, there’s nothing quirky about the place. It’s all department stores and people with way too much money showing off. It’s like the whole city wants to be Manhattan Jr. “Corporate” is an overused adjective, but it’s the first one I think of. Corporate and sterile. The people were nice enough but no nicer or more outgoing than anywhere else.

Maybe there are little hole in the wall places to be found, but we couldn’t get anywhere quickly on the abysmal public transit. How sad is it that the best run part of their transit system is the monorail? 

As for panhandlers/crime, I’m from a city, I’m not a country mouse or anything. But the sheer number of homeless people was startling. And they do menace, these aren’t the “can I have a dollar thank you god bless” kind of homeless. Waiting for the underground tour in Pioneer Square was off-putting, with all the lurking vagrants staring. And that was a tourist attraction! I didn’t see any police cruisers or bikes – just one security guard from the tour company.

We did go see Dan Savage’s “Miracle” while in town. And that was fabulous. 

I’ll pass on the author’s book. Next time I want to listen to someone talk about how weird and quirky a town is, I’ll watch Portlandia, since Portland has actual charm and quirk. 

I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been to a lot of US cities.  Seattle is not at all unique in having long-time residents who are smug and clique-ish about that.

In fact, I cannot think of even one place that doesn’t exhibit that smugness, including a lot of places that make you wonder what the hell is wrong with these people?

As Seattle native let me say that this woman knows nothing of Seattle. Microsoft? Grunge? Starbucks? Is she living in the same present I am. It sounds like she’s writing about the 90s.

I moved to Seattle from NYC in 1991, and lived there until 2003 when I moved to New England. I experienced the Califorication of Seattle. (Not enough New Yorkers there to create influence.)
Pacific Northwesterners are cold, aloof, unfriendly, and have a very simplistic sense of humor. Pacific Northwesterners don’t understand sarcasm.
I also experienced the insincerity that Maria described long before she was there; people saying “Let’s have dinner together,” etc. but it never happens. I had a very difficult time making friends, and Pacific Northwesterners tended to socialize with their high school friends well into adulthood. The people I developed friendships with were transplants from elsewhere.
I called Seattle the Land of the Passive-Aggressive. People were superficially pleasant to my face, they’d tell me what they knew I wanted to hear, and then they’d call me an a-hole behind my back or turn around and do/say the exact opposite of what they told me. New Yorkers are direct; if they like you, they let you know right away, if they don’t like you, they let you know right away. No BS. Seattleites are adept at manipulating other people into doing what they want simply by not dealing with something.�
In business, nobody was even close to on time. People show up whenever they want to, blow deadlines for no reason, and everyone accepts it. The lack of professionalism never ceased to amaze me. It drove me crazy.
People were very provincial. I experienced clueless and quiet anti-Semitism often. It shocked me and was very ugly.
And people walk around in pajamas. It’s as if people refuse to dress nicely for any reason. Seattleites actually have “dress sweatshirts.” I was horrified when I attended a wedding reception at a church on a Saturday night and saw people in sweatshirts and jeans; I felt overdressed in a velvet dress.
But it’s a beautiful piece of real estate. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about living there. The people were not one of them.