Seattleites living out their own bad stereotypes
A few stereotypes that are absolutely true in Seattle:
The sticker-decorated Subaru and Volvo wagons. These are for real. No Dubya stickers will be found on these things. Drive 5-10 under the speed limit and haven't a prayer of parking well at all in the Whole Foods parking lot.
Militant bikers. I pulled up to a biker once who had run three consecutive stop signs (blasted through them) in front of me and was like "You just ran that stop sign!". He replied with a barrage of obscenities and proceeded to follow me around a few corners, which ended when I floored my old Volvo turbo (no bumper stickers!) up a hill north of the UW campus. Toned calves are no match for 160 horsepower.
I could go on.
The sticker-decorated Subaru and Volvo wagons. These are for real. No Dubya stickers will be found on these things. Drive 5-10 under the speed limit and haven't a prayer of parking well at all in the Whole Foods parking lot.
Militant bikers. I pulled up to a biker once who had run three consecutive stop signs (blasted through them) in front of me and was like "You just ran that stop sign!". He replied with a barrage of obscenities and proceeded to follow me around a few corners, which ended when I floored my old Volvo turbo (no bumper stickers!) up a hill north of the UW campus. Toned calves are no match for 160 horsepower.
I could go on.
Comments
I realize its their risk and if they want to blow traffic rules, it'll be me picking their teeth out of my radiator, but I don't want to bother with the paperwork...
It astounds me. People who bike in this town must be nuts.
I do most of my riding on the Burke-Gilman & Sammamish River trails away from cars though, so I don't have a lot of personal experience.
Another time some dude decided to clear his nasal passages as I was behind him (five or six feet), spraying me with snot. I was so pissed I almost kicked him of the road as I pulled up beside him to motion as if saying "what the f*#$@ man!" He gives me an irritated look and says "hey didn't know you were on my wheel"
Not to mention some of the things I've seen in traffic. I keep expecting to see a tragic accident one day, but, amazingly, it hasn't happened yet.
That was a great take on the topic.
Considering I bike to work most days (although I do not live in Seattle, but I've ridden in Philly, NY, and other east coast cities), I find it quite equal (proportionately) as far as idiot drivers versus bicyclists. Every day I see drivers blatantly running stop signs and lights - to a frightening degree - and not even aware of it. I could go on ad nauseum about the horrible drivers, but I won't.
Being that I ride more than drive, I am more of a proponent of biking. Besides, my days seem to go better when I ride to work. (Well except for last Wednesday when the tweeker punk pulled out of the driveway without looking and nearly hit me. Or the Saturday before that the poor old senile man was leaving church and driving down the wrong side of the road totally oblivious and came right at me, still on the wrong side of the road like nothing was wrong, as his poor wife sat next to him with this look of terror on her face.)
Fact is, there are just too many cars on the road - by any standard. And it's only going to get worse. </ramble>
I've nothing against cycling and am generally supportive of alternative modes of transportation. I also see plenty of bad driving in this region. Check out drivers in Olympia sometime - it's shocking.
Having said that, much of the crap driving is down to incompetence, which is irritating, but not as irritating as the holier-than-thou arrogance of the bike snobs that believe they're above the law because of the moral superiority of their mode of transport.
While on on the subject, how about biodiesel? I see it as a good thing on the whole, but I'd rather see some of its users tone back the sanctimonious advertising on their vehicles.
E.
I agree with that. As selfish as it sounds, I ride for my health, my sanity, exercise (I hate gyms), and because it feels good. I should care about the environment, pollution, the Middle East crisis, etc., but I really don't.
I think the word militant (used earlier) was very apropos for some of the bikers I see. Especially some of those kamikaze riders I recall seeing back east. And I'm sure they're in Seattle. For the most part I try to be abiding. But I've mellowed a lot since I bought my Custom Cruiser 8)
Biodiesel needs a little work. In it's current form I don't think it is a viable option. I've read if all the crop land was turned to production of BD, it would only supply a fraction of our current needs. And currently it's only a net source of energy (energy outputs barely exceed inputs). Unlike ethanol, whose production is a net user of energy. Again, these are merely subsidies to agribusiness. But that's another rant.
I've read about an algae that grows incredibly fast that could be produced in salt water and something like that would be a more practical source for biodiesel. Something like 50 sq mi (or it could be 50x50 – I can't recall) could produce all of our fuel needs. But this is the direction in which I hope we are heading.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
"NREL's research showed that one quad (7.5 billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles, roughly 500,000 acres), if the remaining challenges are solved (as they will be, with several research groups and companies working towards it, including ours at UNH). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 19 quads (one quad is roughly 7.5 billion gallons of biodiesel). To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 15,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert (note for clarification - I am not advocating putting 15,000 square miles of algae ponds in the Sonora desert. This hypothetical example is used strictly for the purpose of showing the scale of land required). That 15,000 square miles works out to roughly 9.5 million acres - far less than the 450 million acres currently used for crop farming in the US, and the over 500 million acres used as grazing land for farm animals. "
My parents have a 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD (turbodiesel) which they bought with the intention of someday running a lot of biodiesel in. It's had a couple tanks of 20% biodiesel which it ran very well on, but nothing more. Some people run Liberty CRDs and VW Golf/Jetta/Passat TDIs (quite a few people with TDIs) on 100% biodiesel and have had great results with no problems.
But yes, giant biodiesel stickers get a little tacky.
Plenty of people rund B100 up here or I even know a guy from Orcas Island that runs svo in his vehicles. VWs and the old (w123) Mercedes seem to be the most common. Some day I might go diesel/biodiesel, but right now I really don't need to drive that much. Usually filling up once a month or so.
SITKOM = Single Income, Two Kids, Outrageous Mortgage.
Being a DINK, I enjoy the SITKOM folk.
The sad thing is, an ex-girlfriend of mine with a pretty good job a year out of college ($48k/yr) just closed on a 2 br 1.5 bath condo conversion (in a suburb north of Seattle) at $200k-ish. Then she had the kitchen remodeled with: stainless steel appliances and GRANITE COUNTERS!
All I can say is that:
A: The granite counter phenomenon isn't a luxury touch any more. It is mass market.
B: I hope she likes living there. That place is seriously not worth more than $150k -- $175k tops.
50 something
single
long grey hair (hadn't seen a comb/brush in at least a week)
very 'earthy' attire.
crystal pendant (I thought that went out in the 80s)
OK, no problem
Then she and I started talking...
She moved to Bainbridge from S. California. She is now 'finding herself' through some form of art. She slipped in the requisite liberal politics at every chance. She likes Bainbridge Island because of the 'vibe.' Thinks Bush = Hitler. Says she doesn't need cheap oil (nevermind that she was sitting on a 757 burning several tons of Jet-A to bring her sorry ass to the PNW.)
I assume but can not verify:
She is the owner or roommate of several cats.
No hubby or hubby left her when she got whacky.
Does Prozac like supermodels do coke and heroin
Ex flower child
It seems that people like to become a character of what they think the archtype is of what they admire.
Conservatives do it too. Go to freerepublic.com and every other person is
Former Navy SEAL
IQ of 140 (minimum)
Makes 6 figures as a self-made man
Married to ex-beauty queen
will shoot anything that moves if it is on their property
has 2 straight A students attending the best college/prep school
My point is that you go about your business on Bainbridge, or some similar community, and you run into people that are fresh off of a SNL skit that is lampooning the community.
Moving toSeattle from NYC 10 years ago, I thought the exact opposite was true.
In Seattle, in spite of laws giving Peds the right of way, I found Peds were very differential to cars, almost never jay-walked, and seemed to be fine passing through life standing on corners, waiting for malfunctioning walk signs to change.
Drivers of cars, on the other hand, pay little attention to the road, drink their lattes, talk on their phones, and blow through crosswalks without evening looking. The Escalades merge into bikers, driving them into curbs, make right-on-reds while chatting with their yoga instructors, while pedestrians scurry and jump out their way to avoid being crushed to death.
In NYC, the exact opposite is true. Cars drive with a reckless talent, driving with a consciousness and skill which makes them and all pedestrians, who jaywalk with impunity, much safer.
If drivers paid a little attention, and actually followed to law giving the pedestrians the right of way, it would be a much better city.
For me, adherence to this implicit social contract has become something of a matter of pride in my cultural heritage. With the massive influx of new residents over the past couple of decades, however, the contract has basically been shredded. Too many people moved in too quickly for proper cultural integration to take place. It's a shame, too, because there's not much left that speaks of old Seattle. A handful of Ivar's restaurants, Dick's hamburgers, and that's about it. No more Almost Live!, Ballard's about as Scandinavian as a Subaru, and Boeing's a shadow of it's former self. Ah, well. Maybe they'll at least build a new viaduct instead of a tunnel.
Slow as turtles. My favorite "episode" was when I was driving westbound on the 520...I was in the right lane...traffic was fairly light (not wide open but flowing at 40-50)...the person infront of me actually STOPPED to let someone in at the Montlake entrance before the I-5 split.
ROFL.
I'm amazed on a daily basis at the incompetent driving. The level of "rolling roadblocks" is astounding (driving in the left lane under the speed limit). There's aggressive driving and then there's assertive driving. Seattlites are annoyingly non-assertive - to the point of extreme incompetence.
I'd start one question back from this: why do people take 30 seconds to get over when you've clearly left them tons of room and are signalling for them to do so. So incompetent.
The cars seem almost completely schizo around seattle though. You see the uber timid drivers who can't merge and won't take their turn at a 4-way stop. but if you're a pedestrian you run the risk of being flattened by a car taking a right turn on red, or just getting flattened right in a crosswalk...
What I don't understand is who is this a problem for? Either they are doing something truly dangerous, in which case Darwin will be proven right again, or they are just being efficient or perhaps increasing their own safety.
I was once chased for 10 blocks by a women who was behind me and watched me roll through a stop sign at an empty intersection (much like I, and many others do with a stick-shift). She finally caught me, rolled down her window as if to yell something. I just stopped and looked at her, and we both laughed.
She seemed to realize that her self righteousness had crossed some line of insanity, and she was suddenly embarrassed.
I admit that it my relative youth, commuting downtown most every day for 8 years, I broke many, many laws (and paid my tickets when caught). Generally my indescretions were to actually increase my safety, however. Cars were so unaware of my existence, I often had to force the issue to avoid the possibility of maiming or death. If it meant breaking a law, so be it. A bit of driver frustration was a small price to pay for preservation of life and limb.
I was hit by cars half a dozen times - fortunately never more serious than some scrapes, bruises and a bent tire. Virtually every time, the driver said "sorry, I wasn't paying attention and didn't see you!" So I started making dang sure drivers around me were aware of me, even if it pissed them off and bent a law or two.
Unless you ride downtown every day, you simply wouldn't understand.
Now that I work a bit north, I find it much easier to ride safely and generally obey all the laws (except the silly stop signs every 50 feet on the Burke in LFP).
I am paranoid with the padestrians here, I slow down at crosswalk regardless if it's green or red. They are too full of themselve to realize metal is harder than flesh. See, New Yorkers don't make that mistakes, because a taxi cab will hit your ass, get out and spit at you. *joking*.
I've tried to rescue one person that died and it was traumatic enough, I don't need a bicyclist splattered all over my hood...
Then I read that nationally, Subarus are the preferred brand of lesbians. I haven't actually met a lesbian in Seattle who drives a Subaru, although I do commonly see lesbians in my regular Seattle travels. But I wonder now if everyone, including the hetero men I know, who drives a Subaru secretly craves to be a lesbian.
How is it that one auto manufacturer can add to a lesbian stereotype, yet as far as gay men go, there's no one auto manufacturer here that can add to their stereotype?