The Mendicant Bug

I got to spend much less time in Seattle than I did in Boston, though I did manage to walk around the city a bit.  I visited Pike Street Market, which looked like it would have been awesome if I could have gotten there much earlier.  In the evening when I got there, things were closing down.  I also walked to the Space Needle and kicked in the $16 to ride to the top.  It’s a bit expensive for the ability to ride an elevator and take some pictures, but it was so peaceful at the top (even with the tourists) that I think it was worth it.

I have been told by many people that Seattle in the summer is spectacular and I have to agree.  The temperature was very moderate, the weather was mostly good, and there were people everywhere.  It’s a very clean and vibrant city.  The customer service at most places was consistently the nicest I’ve ever encountered, which was really surprising.  I hadn’t heard anything bad, I just didn’t expect it.  The only drawback I saw was that there were a crapload of homeless people, and they were very forward with asking for money.  There were also a lot of street musicians, and I’m not so sure most of them weren’t homeless.  One guy with no shirt was channeling Kurt Cobain.  It was so stereotypically Northwestern grunge that I wanted to laugh.

I managed to finish two books on the journey:  The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton and Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery, both of which I picked up in Boston.  The Coming Race tells the story of a man who ventures to a strange land and encounters a race of post-humans who have discovered a powerful energy source called vril.  It’s an interesting early commentary on individuality and communism, untainted by the failed Soviet experiment.  I highly recommend it if you like early sci-fi like H.G. Wells or Jules Verne.  Spaceman Blues is the complete opposite.  It’s modern poetry-made-prose.  I’ve always enjoyed experimental sci-fi.  If that’s your thing, too, then you’ll probably like this.  I can see this book being taught in literature classes in the near future.  I picked up Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko for something to read on the flight back.  It was originally in Russian, so of course I’m reading the translation.  There has been a movie made of it, which I’ve seen and is why I picked it up.  The movie rocked, and the book is great so far.

And now for the pictures.