Last Saturday the 20th we went to Oktoberfest in the Fremont neighborhood (same place where we attended the
Summer Solstice festival back in June). It’s a showcase for many of the microbreweries the Pacific Northwest is known for. There were over thirty breweries pouring more than sixty beers, so the tasting opportunities were quite extensive.
I tried around seven different beers. My favorite, the one I went back for seconds of, was the Seattle-based Laughing Buddha Brewery’s Ginger Pale Ale. Normally, I do not like flavored beer at all. But this ginger-infused brew really worked; the tastes of ginger, malt, and hops all complemented one another, and the ginger flavor was refreshing, not cloying. Thumbs (or rather, bottoms) up!
We were about to leave around 2 p.m. with tasting tokens still in our pockets, feeling rather full of beer and kind of bloated and tired, when we ran into David’s coworker Dominic and his friend Betsy, who is a biostatistician getting her PhD at the University of Washington. We decided to walk a couple of blocks to Café Ladro to refresh ourselves with coffee and tea and get our second wind. That done, we went back to the festival and tasted some more until our tokens were gone.
This festival was pretty much all about beer, period; there wasn't much to do there except drink. But there were some entertainment offerings; local bands played throughout most of the day, there was a BMX stunt bike performance the afternoon we were there (young guys jumping over beer kegs on their bicycles), there was an evening comedy show for an additional charge, and there was a chainsaw pumpkin-carving contest and exhibition. If you have never seen someone carve a pumpkin with a chainsaw, this is your lucky day; here’s a video David shot of the performer who did an exhibition of this little-known art form.
We were hoping that the light rain that was falling when we left home would follow the typical Seattle pattern of stop-and-start passing showers, but it never really did let up all day. I also assumed that, this being the beginning of fall in a place known for rain, the event would be held in a big indoor space (kind of like the exhibit halls at Fort Mason in San Francisco), or at least under some big tents. Ha! There were a few tables with umbrellas, and the beer-dispensing stations were protected by awnings, but mostly people just stood around in the rain, occasionally remarking on it but never outright complaining about it, which would have been what passes for gauche and unsophisticated behavior in a city where everyone dresses as if they are going camping all the time. And it’s not as if the rain kept people away in droves, either — there were plenty of people in attendance.
So we, too, cheerfully stood around all day in the rain drinking beer, because that’s what we Seattleites do. And so this seems to me a good place to close out this chronicle of our first year in Seattle. We've gone through all the seasons here; spent some time exploring the Cascades, the Olympics, and the San Juans; searched for — and often found — local pleasures to console us for the San Francisco home we left behind. We have learned to love and even crave the dim, gray, shadowless light of the north that yields such wonderful photographs. David even occasionally considers whether or not he would look good in a kilt.*
All this is to say that I’m planning to take a break from posting to this blog for a while, so I can focus on some other writing I’d like to do. The acclimation process that fueled these posts is for the most part complete. The summer season of festivals and outdoor recreation is over. Now it’s hunker-down time in the PNW.
I still reserve the right to post something new here sooner rather than later, so do check back occasionally. For now, I’ll end by telling you what it was like flying back into Seattle after a business trip earlier this summer. Approaching Seattle by air from the east at sunset, I first oriented myself by the bodies of water: Is that Lake Sammamish? No, it’s Lake Washington; I must have been confused because Mercer Island isn't visible from my window. And is that Green Lake? Yes, and there’s the canal, and the Ballard locks, and Magnolia, and Queen Anne Hill with its steep, wooded eastern slope along Dexter Avenue. And there’s the Space Needle and the bright curvy roof of the Experience Music Project; there’s downtown and Elliott Bay; there’s West Seattle. Beyond that, the expanse of Puget Sound, and beyond that the familiar silhouette of the Olympic Range where we had just taken our first real trip into the Northwest outdoors. I don’t really know or possess this place yet as I did San Francisco, but scraps of memory are starting to attach themselves to it. As we were landing I overheard the woman in the seat in front of me ask the young man sitting next to her, “Is Seattle home?” I had to smile, answering silently for myself, “Well...it’s getting to be.”
