food:
- un bien in ballard, make caribbean sandwiches (#1 sandwich in washington, #2 in the states) if you do nothing else eat here
- teriyaki, spots are a dime a dozen and are all pretty similar but it started here and is pretty delicious. j kenji lopez alt has been running around seattle eating at all of them recording shorts
- bangrak market, sit-down thai in belltown. good eats good ambience good music
(honorable mentions: pink door near pike place market if you like italian / seafood, dickās drive in if youāre sloshed and need something to soak up booze for cheap - dickās is a seattle institution)
parks: weatherās already nice as hell so going to a park with a joint is a go to if you donāt wanna spend any money but wanna kill some time. my top two:
- gasworks. retired gas plant turned into public art display on lake union. best park in seattle imo
- cal anderson. itās on the hill so itās usually active, has a skate park if you wanna watch people do tricks, lot of people bring their dogs off leash, sometimes thereās volleyball or live music, just a real happening spot where a lot of people congregate in when itās warm
(honorable mentions: green lake park, kerry park, volunteer park, jefferson park)
clubs: seattle nightlife is a toss-up sometimes (i tend to prefer events to venues personally) but kremwerk is reliable. i donāt drink so i donāt have a lot for you by way of bars but iāve heard great things about comet tavern, still liquor largely depends on the night but can be cool, six arms is inoffensive, and sugar hill has a second floor bar where they spin a lot of music from the bay area
indie: by far seattleās bread and butter is just cool small businesses. a lot of āem close earlier but my personal favorites:
- bookstores: left bank books in pike place, elliot bay books on the hill
- record stores: alās records and games, neptune records in the udistrict. jive time in fremont, empire records in columbia city
- vintage: late night market on the hill, fremont vintage mall in fremont (for volume; prices are gonna be out the ass bc both places are curators. still fun to pop in and look around)
- coffee: station on beacon hill, coffeeholic in columbia city, espresso vivace, overcast coffee on the hill, armistice in roosevelt
- barcades: jupiter bar in belltown, raygun lounge on the hill. a lot grungier / hometown feeling than say, a dave and busters or something comparable
(a lot of these recs are in / accessible from the city center so theyāre predominantly white neighborhoods - if youāve got time to venture farther out i feel like columbia city is def worth the trip - show some love to geraldineās, island soul, emmaās bbq.)
(also, do tourist-y stuff - skip the space needle and go to columbia center instead, itās cheaper and taller. pike place is dope and has a lot of really old businesses like holy cow records, golden age collectibles which was the first comic book store in the states, and the gum wall)
Related Recs
š²
If youāre into touristy stuff:
ā¢ Pikeās Place Market
ā¢ Seattle Aquarium
ā¢ The gum wall (Thereās a good anarchist book store nearby called Leftbank Books)
If youāre into parks/the outdoors:
ā¢ UW Botanic Gardens and Arboretum - very impressive botanical collection
ā¢ Discovery Park - great hikes
ā¢ Gasworks Park - amazing view of the Seattle Skyline
ā¢ Alki beach - I havenāt actually been here but everyone has good things to say
If youāre into museums:
ā¢ National Nordic Museum in Ballard
ā¢ Frye Art Museum
ā¢ Seattle Art Museum
Food/drinks:
ā¢ JarrBar (downtown) - good cocktails and tinned fish
ā¢ Chop Suey (capitol hill area) - fun late night spot with dive bar vibes
ā¢ Bar Sabine (Ballard) - best brunch place Iāve ever been to probably
ā¢ Cafe Flora (central district) - very yummy vegetarian spot
ā¢ Pho Bac - delicious pho spot, I think thereās two locations
Mar 8, 2025
š²
Vegan food - Plum Bistro & Life on Mars are both in Capitol Hill near good thrifting. Cafe Flora is in Madison Valley which is more of a sleepy neighborhood but Kamp across the street is cute for drinks too. Near the arboretum. These are all kind of bougie - going out to eat in Seattle is $$$ p much no matter where you go sadly!!
Thrifting - we have the biggest Goodwill in the nation (on dearborn) but tbh Iād skip it. Lifelong Thrift & Out of the Closet are the BEST thrift stores.
Parks - The arboretum is free and really beautiful. Volunteer park has a lot of flowers rn and a water tower with skyline views. Seward park is an old growth forest that can give you a lil taste of the PNW woods in the city. Kubota Japanese Garden is free and gorgeous. Volunteer Park Gas Works is made of an old power plant and has views of the lake. Cal Anderson is in the middle of Capitol Hill and isnāt as pretty as the other parks but thereās always a lot of people and dogs around to watch.
Things to do - Kremwerk complex is good for dancing, thereās a lot of good independent movie theaters in Seattle like the Beacon, Northwest Film Forum, and Grand Illusion that play interesting stuff. Itsumono in the international district is my favorite bar, one of the few bars in the city where strangers will actually talk to each other.
Hope you enjoy your time here!!
Jun 4, 2024
š
im from seatown! all depends on what youāre looking for, but as someone said earlier itās a city thatās got a lot of charm vis a vis itās independent shops/bars/etc. iād suggest just walking around Cap Hill, Fremont, or Ballard to get a feel for some different neighborhoods
nightlife is imo pretty sad compared to any other city in the USā¦bUt! the brewery scene is unmatched in the country. there are a ton of breweries across the whole city, but id recommend Fremont Brewing if you want a slightly busier place, or any of the ones over in the Ballard Brewery District - you can basically walk between a handful of them and grab some streetfood in between beers.
for just regular bars, La Dive on Cap Hill and Bar Miriam on QA are also great spots - both are a little on the upscale side. Otherworld Wine is a new-ish place on Cap Hill and they usually have a killer DJ on weekends
also if you can - get out into nature! whether itās Puget Sound or the Cascades, Seattles got it all. WA has the greatest range of different types of nature within the country so itās worth getting out of the city if you can
Apr 3, 2024
Top Recs from @alaiyo
Mar 23, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason itās still standing is bc itās unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isnāt just charting the attention economy but also attempting to āsolveā it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024