Seattle, Day One

Kathy and I spent Monday and Tuesday in Seattle. On Monday, we first parked near the Space Needle, $40 for the day. First, we toured the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit recommended by Shannon and Polly. Chihuly is known for fanciful, organic shapes. This exhibit was a lifelong retrospective of his work from the 1960s to the present. Though I have seen his chandeliers before I was not aware of the variety of his work. It is very impressive, fun and amazing. A delightful exhibition. His use of bright colors was especially stunning (kdr). Next we went up the Space Needle and viewed Seattle. We had a very expensive, gourmet lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Needle, but the meal was quite good. In the afternoon, we rode the Emerald City trolley, green line, to Pioneer Square in the oldest part of Seattle. We toured Seattle Underground. Unlike, the underground of Ellinwood, Kansas, the story of the Seattle Underground is about the early history of the building of Seattle. It is an amazing story. Seattle was originally built on the tidal flats at the bottom of a cliff This is late 1800s. City sewage control, e.g., flush toilets were becoming popular. When first installed the city sewage, including the toilets, flushed out to sea, except at high tide when everything flushed backwards. In 1889, Seattle's wooden city center burned to the ground. The city proposed a plan to build hills from the cliffs to the ocean shore. Since this would take several years, the town's people decided to build brick buildings on the tidal flats anyway. And then the city decided to build streets that were hills from the cliffs to the ocean shore. This created, as the guide said, a waffle looking city. The buildings and sidewalks were the indentions. The streets were the high parts surrounding the indentions. Shoppers would walk along the sidewalks along the ground. When they reach the end of the block, they climbed ladders up to the street, crossed the street, then climb back down the ladder to the sidewalk. Later, sidewalks were built on street level. At the street level, the fronts of stores were the second and third stories. So there were stores at the street level and stores below the stores below the streets in the underground. Since, it rains almost every afternoon in the summer, shopping the underground was favored. Eventually, though, the lower level had to be condemned when the rats became so numerous several cases of bubonic plague were reported. The second history we learned about is how the money for licensing prostitution funded the development of Seattle: schools, sidewalks, etc. When the most successful madame of Seattle died, she left $250,000 to Seattle schools. We were shown a picture of this madame, The picture included five of her top earners. Four of them were dressed in white. These were women. The one dressed in black was a guy in drag. His name was Mike. In the picture, the Mike does look like a guy. We were told that dressing in black was “code” all over the West for a cross-dressing guy prostitute.