Seattle is a Great City
Date notwithstanding
Flying into Seattle is one of the most surreal experiences. Outside your window, you see majestic views of Mount Rainier from a perspective that previous generations could only dream of.
From the airport, you can take the light rail directly into the city, unlike many major US cities. For just $3, you can take the train directly to Pike Place and see the world-renowned fish throwing inside the market. A few more steps outside and you'll hit the beautiful gum wall, which pictures truly cannot capture.
Inspired by the adventurous outdoors, you walk 1 mile to the Space Needle, which is just a unique design and architectural achievement.
After admiring the Space Needle, you venture north to the University of Washington campus. The natural beauty around campus and across greater Seattle is breathtaking due to the persistent rain. You're ecstatic to find a dedicated vista of Mount Rainier from the main square. You're lucky enough to be there during the spring cherry blossom season and take the requisite Instagram photos.
You head down to Dick's Drive-In and order one of their famous burgers. You look through the line to see if Bill Gates is there, but you came on the wrong day. The people in line and the employees are so nice to you, a welcome change from what you're used to in New York.
You viscerally understand what the 12th man embodies: being a part of a community that cares about what's happening in the world. As you become ensouled by the 12th man, you have a revelation.
Before you even touch down in Seattle, you realize this city was built by idiots. Fly from somewhere else on the West Coast and you'll find yourself spending 15% of the flight in Canadian airspace beyond SEA-TAC before turning around to land facing south. Of course there's no secondary airport like every single other major city in the US, so you're stuck being routed to an airport with one of the worst layouts in humanity.
With Seattle traffic being some of the worst in the nation, you're forced to walk 25 minutes through the adjacent parking garage to the light rail station. You buy your ticket from an antiquated machine from the 80s and head up the escalators to the train station. There are a lot of other passengers waiting for the train as well; curiously there was no line at the ticketing machine. You get on the train that comes once every 30 minutes and realize that you are the only schmuck actually paying for the ride. The Seattle government thinks that somehow they're actually in Singapore and that fares can be enforced through an honor system without turnstiles. After reading about the competence of Seattle city officials on the train, you're just thankful that you aren't stabbed on your ride to the city.
You go to Pike Place and realize that the main attraction is two people disrespecting fish by throwing a fish across the room every 15 minutes while yelling and a wall made out of other people's chewed up gum and fermented saliva.
Then you walk over in the rain to the Space Needle. Like any sane person, you use an umbrella to keep yourself dry. You receive dirty looks from the Seattleites who look down on the use of umbrellas and prefer to stay miserable in their Patagonia jackets.
When you finally arrive at the Space Needle, you learn that the Eiffel Tower built over 100 years earlier still clears, and that the free glass exhibit at the Bellagio is better.
It finally dawns on you that this entire city has Stockholm Syndrome from Tom Brady breaking everyone's hearts in Super Bowl 49. All the 12 numbers you see around the city are actually a tribute to Tom Brady, begging for forgiveness.
For too long, it was difficult for me to articulate exactly what's wrong about Seattle. The word that accurately and concisely describes Seattle is dishonest.
Every city curates a myth, which drives downstream culture. New York tells you that you should make more money. Boston tells you that you should be smarter. Los Angeles tells you that you should be more famous. Silicon Valley tells you that you should leverage technology to become more powerful.
Seattle tells you that you should care more. Care more about other people, the environment, and the world. Of course this is a noble message, but Seattle is only concerned with the appearance of caring. Because there is no legible metric for caring, the entire city and culture is constructed around a system where feeling good about yourself is indistinguishable from actually doing good. These poor incentives predictably set a suboptimal cultural equilibrium.
The city's surroundings are objectively beautiful. But if you listen closely to the raindrops, you'll find that Seattle consistently lies to its residents, purporting to be a city of depth, seriousness, and substance. In reality, it's a city that has outsourced its identity to its geography and its virtue to branding.