43 Things Seattle Is Missing
We love this town. But we'd love it ever-so-much more if it had these things in it. (Budding entrepreneurs, take note.)
1) Soft-serve frozen custard, preferably attached to a good burger joint and with rotating flavors of the day. We've mentioned this before.
2) Thunderstorms. There's nothing like being able to see lightning strikes when you're a mile away.
3) Street food! Carts pushed by immigrants offering a variety of culinary delights. We long for the cart on the corner of 21st and 5th that offered "Chicken over Rice" for $4. Plus a salad and your choice of "white" or "red" sauce. Chicken or Lamb, actually. Yum.
4) Diners, especially of the 24-hour breakfast-all-day variety.
5) Buy-backs. You can drink all night in a Seattle bar and the bartender will never say, "The next one's on me." People who grew up here don't even know what buy-backs are.
6) Nude--or at least partly nude--lap dances.
7) A male strip club that allows unescorted men as patrons.
8) Strip clubs that can serve alcohol. Hell, strip clubs that can serve food.
9) A local noir writer on par with--dare we hope for better than?--D.C.'s George Pelecanos, Boston's Dennis Lehane, New York's Lawrence Block, L.A.'s Michael Connelly, rural Maine's John Connolly, etc.
10) A kick-ass small liberal arts college. Boston has like 30--we can't have one? Even Appleton, Wisconsin, has one!
11) An NHL team (Columbus has one, after all).
12) An MLS team (shit--Columbus has one of those, too).
13) A go-to celebrity for sports--New York has Billy Crystal, Boston has Ben Affleck, Chicago has Jim Belushi--hell, even Pittsburgh has Michael Keaton.
14) Non-stadium major civic projects that actually get done.
15) Interesting suburbs.
16) Bars that stay open late during the week.
17) Related to the early last-call: a good after-hours.
18) An underground bookstore that compares to Portland's Counter Media: comics, niche magazines, geek toys, and 31 flavors of paper-based smut in a bright, clean atmosphere. We've got all those things separately, but we're not aware of one-stop shopping.
19) Danish kringle. Actually, we've got Larsen's in Burien, but they don't offer as many fruit filling options as you can find as you can find in suburban Milwaukee bakeries.
20) Another local Div I college b-ball team. Seattle U was a powerhouse in the 50's (Elgin Baylor went there). There's certainly enough local talent to fill two Div I teams. Chicago has Depaul and UIC, NYC has St. John's and Fordham and LIU-Brooklyn, LA has USC, UCLA, Pepperdine and Loyola Marymount, even Portland has their natural affiliation to UO plus Univ of Portland.
21) Tomatoes with enough flavor to be eaten for their own sake.
22) A central car-free plaza ringed by outdoor cafes.
23) The ability to rent horses at large parks to pursue childhood dream of cowboy fame.
24) Really large parks.
25) Cannoli. A person can't get a good cannoli in this town to save his or her life.
26) Real powder snow. The kind of skiing/boarding snow found in the Utah/Wyoming/Colorado region. Northwest "powder" is nothing like the real stuff.
27) Winter-wonderland-style snow -- the kind that covers the houses and cars and trees in a quilt of white -- at least once a year. We wouldn't even mind if it melted in 36 hours; we'd just like to build snowforts in the front yard once in a while.
28) More than one "choice" of a cable company.
29) Street lamps that make you briefly consider impersonating Gene Kelly during dark winter downpours.
30) Neighborhood outdoor markets (not just of the farmers' variety).
31) Chick-Fil-A.
32) An organized competitive eating circuit.
33) White Castle.
34) Fuddruckers.
35) A system-wide transit map liberally plastered around downtown. Just a system-wide bus map would be nice. If NYC has one, with about 86,000 routes, we don't see why Seattle can't.
36) Bus token machines at or near bus stops (I'm not sure Seattle realizes these have already been invented).
37) Mass transit that both gets locals around the city and burbs and attracts tourists (cough cough regional monorail cough cough).
38) Serious booze sold in grocery stores.
39) Pee-wee golf. Not the little greens at the driving range -- we mean windmills and loop-de-loops
40) Waffle House.
41) Rustic and picturesque dilapidated Baptist churches.
42) A large amusement park with spine-twisting roller coasters within driving distance. Wild Waves is on its way, but it's not in Disneyland's league, or even Great America's.
43) An -ist site that ends in -ist rather than -est and sounds less like cialis
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