In Seattle, the spirit moves

By LAURENCE JOLIDON

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 6, 2001

The city on the sound doesn't need an earthquake to be the place for movers and shakers. By sea or land - or even 520 feet up - visitors can explore all the offerings of this metropolis.

SEATTLE -- Looking for a moving tourist experience? Seattle's rockin'.

Besides the salt air and sourdough kitchen aromas, steep streets, trolley lines and many-masted harbors, a tendency to suddenly tilt and buckle actually may help Seattle evoke an intriguing image: San Francisco on a budget.

At the airport are a few tangible reminders of the 6.8-magnitude tremor that rippled through on the last day of February. A new control tower has replaced the one whose windows popped out during that quake, and metal struts the size of sewer pipe crisscross the baggage and parking areas.

Those big black bars are part of the concerted program of retro-quakeproofing that generated a cottage industry here the past several years, as government officials and residents paid renewed attention to the fact that Seattle's Pacific Rim location makes it prone to unpredictable undulation.

Actually, the fault line that spawned the latest tremor was deep enough (30 miles) to dissipate the massive shock waves. There were no fatalities directly related to the earthquake, and more damage was done in the capital city of Olympia, closer to the epicenter in the south, than in this picturesque metropolis.

In the venerable Pioneer Square section, some artful brick masonry shook loose and a few popular venues closed briefly for repairs. But most places swept up the broken pieces and pioneered on.

Business as usual

So from the famous Pike Place Market, where fish fly through the air on their way to being wrapped, to the funky movie-house lobbies and post-hippie shops of neighborhood enclaves with inviting names such as Capitol Hill, Green Lake, Magnolia Bluff and Queen Anne Hill, Seattle is intact and steady as she goes.

This is a city large and varied enough to satisfy most tourists, whether they be sports fans, sailing enthusiasts, T-shirt and vintage-clothing hounds, coffee connoisseurs, museum maniacs or history buffs.

The only thing you might not be able to find here is a computer geek (sorry, "valued e-commerce associate") who has not been laid off in the past 12 months.

But if you are walking around with credit cards earned the old-fashioned way, honing in on your area of interest can easily determine where to launch your expedition.

For a first-time visitor ready to strike out on land, the spiky Space Needle (built for the 1962 World's Fair) is a highly useful starting point (although modern natives may consider it dated -- that is, not a cool new landmark like the distinctive headquarters of Starbucks Coffee or Amazon.com.)

At the north end of downtown, the Needle offers a comprehensive view from 520 feet up of the city, the waterfront, nearby islands, the locks and lakes that decorate the city's misty hem, even that houseboat where Tom Hanks got no sleep.

And, on clear days, Mount Rainier and other magnificent mountains are visible.

At the foot of the Needle lies Seattle Center, a complex of auditoriums, exhibit halls and green spaces with a slew of family-oriented eating and recreation options, from ice-skating shows and ballet to the Experience Music Project and a skateboard park.

For those who'd rather eat sand than drive a car in a major city, the Center is linked to downtown by a spiffy monorail that offers an above-it-all perspective of the city center and comfortable seats.

The main draw at the complex through this summer is expected to be the Pacific Science Center, where a traveling exhibit of hundreds of artifacts from the doomed liner Titanic is attracting long lines.

The story of a supposedly unsinkable ship -- the ultimate in technology of its day -- loaded with riche and nouveau-riche who went to watery graves after striking a piece of ice nearly as big as Bill Gates' mansion, is a natural for Seattle. On entering, each person is given a pretend "ticket" with the name of an actual passenger. In the last room of the exhibit, the names of everyone aboard is listed on the wall, so visitors can see whether "their" passenger survived.

Because Seattle is one of the busiest and most famous seaports in the United States, another logical place to begin might be with a drive and/or walk along the windy harborfront and then out to West Seattle, along pristine Alki Beach. It is too far to walk there from downtown, but city buses are prevalent and affordable.

Something fishy here

Other water-oriented alternatives are harbor cruises and riding the ferries. On the 20-minute ride to Bainbridge Island, for instance, there's plenty of time to get out of your vehicle and go up top, lean against a rail, get cool under the collar and try to figure out which distant high-rise is your hotel, or whether you really do want a fish-medley dinner three nights in a row.

When you reach the mainland again, it is only a few yards to one of the best aquariums anywhere. Like the Pacific Science Center, the Seattle Aquarium has an Imax movie theater but, even more humbling, it has sea creatures of every description, including some your kids can pick up to feel how gooey they are.

Be sure to walk down every hallway, otherwise you might miss the "Dome," where the fish swim around the outside of what can best be described as a "people bowl." Waling in this chamber makes you think the fish have turned the tables on us -- and do they look bored.

At midday, you can watch volunteers such as Vivian Gross feed Clyde, the resident giant Pacific octopus. He gets a "restaurant-quality" lunch and then turns red, to show his satisfaction.

Another short bus or car ride north of the main downtown area lies the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, a concrete marvel reminiscent of the Panama Canal that leads to the Lake Washington Ship Canal. There, commercial and pleasure boats -- and an incredible number of salmon -- make their way in and out of town.

Seattle has a huge number of above-average restaurants. Bring your appetite. But the true gourmet tourist is one who can still order salmon for dinner after watching those little devils work so hard to get up the fish "ladder" on their way inland.

Between the locks and downtown there's Fisherman's Terminal, a real working marina where you can see working boats, the ones with splayed nets and hand-painted names such as Polar Bear and Arctic Osprey -- reminders that Alaska is the next state to the north, and that a lot of the fish on the menu don't swim here, they're brought by force.

Hold it: We skipped a lake. On the south side of Lake Union (yes, the one where Hanks had his Sleepless houseboat) lies another only-in-Seattle-type sight, the Center for Wooden Boats Museum and Boathouse.

It's a museum where the interactivity is built in, like a cupholder on the captain's chair. Once someone in your party passes a brief sailing test, you may take one of the museum's crafts out on the lake. The museum has everything from American Indian canoes to skiffs, dories, racers, tugboats, speedboats and what appear to be planks lashed together.

In June, there's an annual wooden boat festival, which means more boats, from all over the Northwest, plus music, food, dancing and a boat-building contest.

Next door is a seadog's dream: the Northwest Seaport and Maritime Heritage Center. The feature is the Wawona, a lumber-carrying schooner built in 1897. It sailed as far as Antarctica and the Bering Strait, did duty as a cod-fishing boat and then served as a U.S. Army barge in World War II before hitting the scrap heap. The vessel is being lovingly restored, minus the cod.

Any of these short trips will put you into a seaport mood, taking you away from the crowds, the stoplights and some world-class traffic and letting you see the city from a beach or a boat deck, which is how the first settlers viewed this land when they arrived (from Oregon, without credit cards, in November 1851).

Of course, the skyline stretching along the east side of Elliott Bay has changed a bit. But the view toward Puget Sound, complete with seagulls and cloud cover, is pretty much the way it was back then.

On the city's south side, toward the airport, is the spectacular Museum of Flight, a hangar full of old and new flying machines, from glued crates to space capsules. It is built around the original Boeing factory, a converted red boat barn.

The Boeing Co. caused its own quake when it announced it would be moving its headquarters out of Seattle, but only a heartless corporate giant would cart a museum like this away.

And when, as it eventually must, the big one comes to Seattle, in a boat on the water is definitely the smart place to be.

Dick Wagner, a founding director of the Covered Wooden Boats Museum, said February's significant earthquake did not have much ripple effect there:

"We just sloshed around some."

Former St. Petersburg Times staffer Laurence Jolidon is now a freelance writer living in upstate New York.

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