Random reflections from sub pop rock city.
I took the bus from Bellevue after a teacher’s conference because it was turning out to be a very beautiful summer in a city I had never been. I came here to write coffee reviews and see what Seattle is all about. I am glad I waited because it was fun to see what Seattle was up to post-grunge (PG).
The scene is bubbling with buzzy drone-pop, sent over from the UK by Stereolab, Spiritualized, and Lush. (I couldn’t get either the new Stereolab or Spiritualized album anywhere on Capitol Hill!)
Attention. Grunge is passe in Seattle, but coffee is not, nor is Heroin. Neither are Vespas and Bandit motorcycles.
Attention. Seattle is a lot like London with Hills now - or is aspiring to be - and has not even tried to be like its cousin San Francisco or its stepmother Los Angeles. It went past New York and pressed its hypo directly into a British vein. Maybe not London, maybe Manchester - a fellow port town.
Funny because we had not a drop of rain.
The feeling of love is everywhere - but a demonic sort of love. It is a love requiring a body blue with tattoos and chiming with piercings. Love in a cage; a love temporary and desperate of open mouths and searching tongues.
The sort of love of groping children. A Samsara love… the love of never never land… the love of people so completely indulging their indulgences that 35 looks like 18 and 45 looks like 28 and the bodies lift and there are breasts and thighs and the buttocks and the movement is sensual and Samsara lives and it is a feeling of permanency of constant risk and constant highs.
With loud music and soft mummers; with willing kisses and smiles yet a desperation that time is passing and the skate rat might lose a knee; the hard-core punk might have a seizure; the junky might not be cool again….
In fact being a junky will never be uncool. Neither will the local espresso stand or the cup of joe. As a way to publicly take the edge off. And the coffee better be good because people meet each other at church in Seattle. NA meeting, AA meeting. Hello my name is C. Hello, my name is C. and I am an addict, I haven’t been to confession in three years.
Coffee is ubiquitous, but a ruse. Yes, people do drink the stuff, but its the least of the addictions permeating the goose-pimpled flesh of the Disco Queens and Liam & Noel wannabe’s. Pot is very strong and from Washington and British Columbia (the good stuff doesn’t come from Mexico but from Canada) and Ecstacy is available, but isn’t pure or very clean so people avoid it. It is China White. It is Tar. It is what makes you forget that your body is hamburger and your city has perma-rain.
This is not to say that the coffee isn’t superb! The coffee from the carts in Seattle is better than any of the coffee here in Washington, DC. It has to be, the clientele is very finicky, spoiled, and the competition is overwhelming. Any cafe with a weak shot or bad pressure or stale beans will quickly know what it is like to be put out of business. When I was asking around about where to go and what was cool I quickly realized that Seattleites are certainly connoisseurs of joe. But not just.
A friend mentioned that in a post university world, the only good place to meet contacts and lovers in a world of rugged individualists is at the NA meeting. Come here often? So, how many chips do you have? I am on my 7th!
Coffee is like Chamomile tea in Seattle. Soothing and non-invasive. It is pressed through an Italian machine and goes down in a hot sweet quickness. There is a perk there, but nothing along the lines of intravenous drug use.
A woman, a goth, said to me: heroin is the devil; heroin is the devil — it is what the devil is about: it consumes you and touches you with a gentle mouth like Sartre’s No Exit and the exit sign entering upon its infinite loop ad infinitum.
And so it goes. She said, I did heroin only once but think of him longingly like my first lover, my first real orgasm. An orgasm without parallel! The little death. It is the devil and it is so common, she says, and what is the most effed up is that is will always be cool: it is the risk: like the tattoos, like the Ducatis, like the single track or the mosh pit; like the late nights driving drunk.
Smack and drunk driving will ALWAYS be popular in the US because we rugged individualists love playing dice with the universe.
Our arms fly up and the larynx strains under the explosive mellow happiness of too many nights in the bar after hours where you and she and he and we descend the stairs with the blue smoke with the Kamel, with Radiohead playing in the skull and every detail noticed.
The feeling of exotica where the kiddies can decide never to grow up. My judgement: Seattle is where skaters; rockers; punks; hipsters; hippies; burnouts; britpoppers; funkies; bunkies and the like go never to grow up for there the supple navel the smooth skin made dark red like blood or the tail of the snake along the soft flesh of the arm under and alongside the smoothness of exposed breast. And the tongue and the thigh and the movement of a body under the influences of the Childish Game. And, you can never underestimate the power of a good cuppa.
– text by Chris Abraham
