Seattle is probably one of my favourite cities in the US. The landscape around it is beautiful and the people here seem to have found a great way to mix a relaxed lifestyle with a positive can-do attitude. Not to mention that this is the city that gave birth to some of my favourite bands (IMHO, Seattle Museum of Pop Culture is also way better than the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland 😉 ).
As I have already been here last year though, my stop was pretty quick and mostly focused on seeing the friends living in the area before heading up to Canada to spend the last few days of this trip checking out Vancouver.
While a couple of the meetings were planned in advance (like the good fish lunch with a side of Orca spotting with my old colleague and good friend Chris, and the one with James at GoDaddy’s office in Kirkland), I also enjoyed the touch of serendipity that made me cross path with Mariah outside a Starbucks where I sponging off some free wifi, and then later with Jon (who missed me in Washington DC, but somehow managed to catch me in Washington State after all). Jon invited me to hang out in Bellevue with a few other friendly familiar faces from the domain industry, and I had a lovely evening there in spite of all the domain-related talk 😀 .
In between, I also managed to squeeze in a quick visit to the Seattle Art Museum. Sadly, I missed by just one day the exhibition featuring the impressive collection of Paul G. Allen.
The SAM does however still have a very nice permanent collection that make a visit here worthwhile, including quite a few impressive Native American artefacts from the surrounding Pacific Northwest area.
Another of Seattle’s “offspring” with which I have historically had a troubled relationship is Starbucks. While I appreciate their generosity with wifi, I am not a big fan of the hint of “burned carpet” that characterizes their espresso (so I typically just order tea there, which is a lot harder to fuck up 🙂 ).
On my way to town I however stumbled upon their Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room , a gorgeous space which – as it turned out – is clearly the place where they keep the good coffee for themselves. Funny enough, I ended up sitting next to a girl called Heather who works in Starbucks’ social media department, and I had a nice chat with her about coffee culture, touching for instance on the difference in taste between Italy and Sweden, and the positive role played by “hipsters” in spreading good coffee around the world.
In my view one of the big issues with Starbucks is that in order to standardize and offer the same experience and products across the globe they have lost touch with the original goal of “just making good coffee”: often the staff doesn’t really know or care much about quality coffee, as they anyway spend most of their time churning frappuccinos and other weird, barely coffee-based crap. While admitting that that is definitely a challenge for the company, Heather’s also shared her own story to highlight that for those that can see beyond the “simple job at a cafe” and have a genuine interest in the product Starbucks is actually a great place to work: like many other young people she started working in one of Starbucks’ cafes 11 years ago, and had then the opportunity of growing professionally within the company, where she currently manages photography and imagery to share through social media.
While I think I will still steer clear of Starbucks’ espressos, the Roastery was actually and incredibly nice experience (too bad it’s a bit too far to just pop by every now and then…).
