#they are mosly okay to be around and mostly pleasant

[3liza]

i think the thing thats really hard to communicate about Seattle is that it is very much like that Achewood (sorry) strip where Ray goes to England and then comes back and describes it as "everything is just slightly not good enough", and i think in the context of that particular strip he is expressing basic American xenophobia and jingoism, like when i was standing in an Aldi in Berlin and a frazzled German nanny was being harrangued by her spoiled American charge that the child wanted "orange cheese". orange cheese orange cheese and the nanny kept asking, do you mean like fruit and cheese? a cheese plate? is the cheese orange-flavored?? and the child couldnt communicate what she wanted either, which was, as i politely informed the nanny after approaching and quietly introducing myself, basic Kraft singles, artificially colored and flavored. american cheese. that's what Ray was talking about but not what i mean about seattle.

what i mean about seattle is every time you go somewhere like this, the people involved by all accounts have done their very best at presenting their concept and ideas. and you look around, and spot all the cheap flat paint, and the bad table saw cutting, and the flimsy panels and frankly tasteless art, and you realize their Very Best is about 60%. everything in seattle that is a business or franchise or decorated space or art show or theater performance (except the opera and symphony, which are world class for some reason), is about 60% good enough. it's all just slightly crummy. everything looks like a house party people worked sort-of hard on but not really. to visitors, this appears to be a temporary, charming, sort of laissez-faire approach to one or two events or spaces. you dont understand until youve been to dozens of events and businesses and operations etc that actually exerting 80-100% effort in making something is subtly socially penalized

and sometimes this really pays off, like when the empty soundstage for Cthulhu (2007) was converted into a ramshackle speakeasy casino. i have no idea if there's any record of this project anywhere online, probably in Flickr somewhere, but they really went fully 60% and it was excellent. a speakeasy should be 60%, it should be plywood and garbage and halfassing. for example, they bought dozens of $1 suit jackets at the Goodwill outlet and then made anyone who was out of dress code rent one for $5 at the door, deposit returned upon returning the jacket, but of course they made money on this too because drunk people dont remember to return rented jackets.

anyway this is exactly 60%. and it'll be either fully sold at a loss & converted to a normal business or closed in probably 9-20 months

yet another fucking coffee shop has opened near my house that is only open 8am-3pm and this time the theme is, self-reportedly, "science fiction", but actually and observably, "star trek and star wars", which apparently means hanging up bad fan art on a completely normal Gentrification Eggshell wall. and having a couple disney franchise toys lying around. if you were coming up with a gag for a sitcom set in seattle this would get cut in round one for being too generic