Northwest Passage II

Small Rain

March 19

The rain in Seattle, people have told me, isn’t usually heavy, but comes down like a fine mist. I walked through it yesterday morning on the way to Starbuck’s. A very mild rain, it didn’t even take the creases out of my trousers. 

Western wind, when wilt thou blow;
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again!

(anonymous, 16th century)

[Editor's note: Harry wishes he had written that.]
So far, so good.

Ordering at Starbuck’s is never easy. The names of everything are very long, and you have to run through a list of options. I wanted a cup of coffee. I have to drink coffee in the morning—like a fix—or I suffer caffeine withdrawal symptoms. I had a Pike Place Roast express whatever. The man at the counter said it was made that way only at the Pike Place store. OK. Is it American style coffee? I didn’t want one-ounce shot of espresso. I needed caffeine. No, it’s made in one of those French presses.

It really didn’t take long, and the sun was coming out by the time my coffee was ready.

After exploring the market some more, I started walking south toward Pioneer Square.

Some of the streets are so steep out here that they have parks made of steps.

On the way I found the corner—First Avenue at Madison Street—where the Great Fire started. It was a cabinet maker’s shop in 1889. Now it’s the post office. A small plaque on the wall marks the spot. It was put up by the surviving volunteer firefighters.

Pioneer Square is in the oldest part of Seattle, which isn’t very old, considering that the fire burned it all down.  It’s a dingy park with a couple of totem poles. I read somewhere that an older totem pole once stood there, but it fell or burned and was replaced. It seems the city fathers stole the original from some Indians they were visiting on a good-will tour. How do you steal a totem pole?

Anyhow, the totem poles are the shot of the day.

[Editor’s note: Harry is mistaken. What he stumbled on was Occidental Square. Pioneer Square is the section of town, not an actual plaza. The infamous totem pole stood on a triangular space known as Pioneer Place.]

The waterfall garden sits behind a wall next to Pioneer Square [Ed. correction: Occidental Square]. This is a small park with an artificial waterfall on two walls. It is also the site where United Parcel Service was started. I assume there is a connection.

The Klondike Gold Rush National Park is in a building on a corner in this neighborhood. Seattle, I discovered, was where the gold rush started. The steamship Portland came into the port here in June or July of 1897 carrying about 60 filthy rich prospectors and a ton of gold. 

The news set off a worldwide gold rush. Most of the people who joined the stampede passed through Seattle. The fire had burned the city down and the rebuilding stalled when the economy tanked in the early 90s. The gold rush turned Seattle around. Supply, demand, and making money. You can’t mess with market forces.
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In fact, they sold them stuff like this.

A little way east of the park is Chinatown. It is smaller than New York’s, but then most Chinatowns are.

Having impersonated Santa Claus from time to time, I stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Ho Ho. I can actually read the Han character for “ho.” It combines the symbol “noy” (girl) and “gee” (boy), and means “fine” or even “perfect.” These were not the characters on the sign. So maybe it doesn’t mean “very good” but something else. You are at a disadvantage in understanding a language when you only know two dozen words, and eight of them are numbers.

Originally I was going to have crab with ginger and scallion. Then they showed me the crab. No, no, a smaller one. The man got another out of the tank and took it into the back to weigh it. It was almost two and a half pounds. 

It got a reprieve. Let him live a little longer: I don’t think I eat two and a half pounds of food in a day, let alone at one sitting. I got prawns in black bean sauce instead. Damn, that was good. And weighed less than two and a half pounds.

After lunch I came back to the hotel to run a Google search for craft beer bars in the area. That’s how I learned about the Stumbling Monk. With a name like that Harry’s going to pass that one up, right?

Armed with directions from Google Maps, I set off. Of course I missed one of the turns and climbed an extra half mile or so before I got suspicious and asked for directions.

The street I wanted, Melrose Avenue, doesn’t exactly intersect with the street I was on. It strikes off at an angle half a block away. Once I got there, it was a matter of lugging my ass uphill for another several blocks to the bar, which was closed. It doesn’t open till 6 every day and I was there around 4. So I walked downhill for a change to a place I had passed on the way up. There was no name in sight, but it was a dark dingy bar. My kind of place. 

There was a guy inside setting things up, and I called to him through a door open to a patio, but not to the street. Are you open? Just a minute, he says. He came and unlocked the street door. It’s the first time anybody has opened a bar just for me.

I had a few short glasses. Highlights were the Green Flash IPA, good and hoppy, and Bayern Pilsner, which was made in Montana. Surprisingly flavorful for a pils.

The bartender, David, gave me a sample of the house ginger beer. One of the partners brews it and sells it not only at the bar but also to stores and restaurants. People were coming in to buy growlers of it.

A regular dropped in and told me he was a bartender at the Pine Box on Melrose. It’s at the corner of Pine Street, and used to be a funeral parlor. They run 30 taps there and they have a kitchen. It was dinner time.

[Editor’s note: Harry later looked at his credit card receipt and learned that the name of the bar is Montana.]

The Pine Box serves some brews in pints and others in 12-ounce glasses. And strength doesn’t seem to enter into it. Yeah, I could drink a pint of barley wine, but that would be it for a while. Sixteen ounces at 10 percent alcohol by volume comes almost to two full ounces of pure ethyl. That’s high octane even for me.

I had something called Little Saison. Don’t know exactly what it is, but it was unfiltered and very tasty. A sign on the wall said, “If God had wanted us to filter our beer, he wouldn’t have given us a liver.”

Dinner was spaetzle with arugula and a duck egg over easy. I had that with a Belgian sour ale, something I had never tried before. It went well with food. so I lucked out again.

I had to walk off some of the calories so I headed down toward Pike Place again. Most of the market was packed up and shut when I got there around 7.

I walked over to the Brooklyn for dessert—a half dozen oysters and one more ale. The bartender asked me what kind of oysters I wanted. I like oysters, and they are supposed to be a great source of dietary iron, but I can’t name them. Then he got more practical. How do you like them? Sweet? Ocean flavored? Yes, ocean flavor. 

He brought two each of Treasure Cove, Sunset Beach, and Otter Cove. I have no idea if the names identify the places where they oysters were harvested or if the owner of the bar likes to give his food funny names. But they were delicious.

The bar in the cellar of the hotel was open so I stopped in to see what it was like. I ran into eight or nine regulars of all ages getting loaded. Just like the Hemp in Amsterdam or the Erie in Montclair.

I read a brief screenplay by two young women about a bored and conventional housewife who plugs feminine products and picks up strangers.

I talked to a hophead computer programmer named Byron (I think) who was having a mild feud with an old dude at the other end of the bar. Byron had written a poem criticizing the old dude. I recall that it had “bitch” in the title.

I tried to explain my experience using the headset to direct a computer by brain waves. I suspect Byron thought he was having his leg pulled. 

It was a good day in the Pacific Northwest, gang. Be well and remember, as the Washington State Board of Health will tell you, eating raw food can give you a tummy ache. (Yeah, one of the menus actually put it that way.) So far, though, no tummy aches here. So far, so good.

Harry