Space Needle Blues

Now for some odd reason I have never heard this come up before in a conversation, and I never thought I would need to but for all of you that don’t know downtown Seattle is built on 45 DEGREE ANGLE! How come nobody ever told me that? The grade of the streets and sidewalks in certain places is incomprehensible. Seriously, at some points in the city you are bending your knees and leaning back, just to walk down the street! I have no idea how the business types in Seattle deal with this on a daily basis. Needless to say this is not a city you want to be driving manual around in. I found myself testing my stick skills to their maximum!

I got a bit lost as I entered the city, nothing new there, and wondered up and down the one way acute angles they call city streets. It was long before I located the hostel and got my self checked in. Since this was just an excursion and hadn’t planned on coming to Seattle in the first place, I only planed on staying for one night, so I was in a rush to see all the usual tourist hot spots. Now I had no rhyme, reason, or method behind my site seeing, but in a city built on angles, it would have helped.

I took off down 1st Ave heading south, not sure what I would encounter. I then decide to go East on Union because I thought I saw the Rock-N-Roll hall of fame building, but it turned out to be the Seattle Library. Now I don’t know why I thought this, but I thought the Rock-N-Roll hall of fame was in Seattle? So then I decided to keep going east on Union until I hit 6th Ave, I then hung a left, taking me north. I took this all the way down Stewart St where I came across a pair of corncob looking buildings that reminded me a Marina Towers back in Chicago. My attention was then diverted to a monorail track, a street west of me, on Westin Ave. I was curious, and once again wondered why nobody ever told me Seattle had a monorail. I followed the tracks to the it’s station and found out it led to the Space Needle, for the low cost of a $1.50. So off I went on the mile long stretch of track to the Needle.

The Monorail drops you off in this square that’s like a carnival. The sidewalks are lined with all sorts of carni like rides and games, as you make your way to the space needle, which for the low cost of $8.00 will get you a lift to the top. I would have rather gone to the top during the daylight hours, but seeing how Washington was already thick with gloomy weather, I didn’t think it would matter when I went up. At least this way I would be able to pick up the city’s lights. Now wanting to get the most of my money worth, I wondered about in continuous circles on the observation deck waiting for what little sun was poking through on the horizon to set. The view of Seattle from the Space Needle is quite impressive, especially at night.  Wondering around in a 360 panoramic of the entire coastline is amazing, and a definite for all who go to Seattle. I could have stayed up there for the whole night.

I then found myself tied into a conversation, once again, with the information girl that worked there. Being up so high, the first thing that came to my mind was if anyone had ever jumped to there doom, to which I got a very quick “no, but a party of three base jumpers tried to jump off in 1996, but there plans were foiled before they could attempt.” Since we were on the subject I had to ask if I tossed a penny over the side, if it would kill any one, to which I got another very quick response “NO, a penny can’t reach a speed from this height to kill someone, but it could leave a lump on your head.” I walked a way for a second and a few more questions popped into my mind that begged to be answered. “Had Itchy ever drawn a giant X on the ground and told Scratchy to stand there wile he dropped little mock Space Needles from the top of the Space Needle? (It’s a Simpson’s joke) She then looked at me rather puzzled and then began to laugh, “NO, that hasn’t happed, but that was a funny episode.” Now I had one more Simpson’s inspired question, “what does a city with an already well established mass transit system for a small centralized population need a one mile stretch of monorail?” She laughed at this question to, but gave me a very concise answer “The monorail was built for the Seattle’s Worlds Fair, it was designed to take people from the downtown, across the then, underdeveloped and crime filled housing projects of upper Seattle to the Space Needle. Thanks to the Monorail, it led the regentrification of the area it once served to provide safe transit through.” It was a good enough answer for me, I also would have excepted “I could tell you, but the only ones in this room that would understand the answer would be you and I.”

I then asked about local things to do and see, and where to eat, and she launched into her life story. Life must be boring at the top of the Needle because she told me all about her triathlon training, her opera signing, her adventures in Italy, and her very wealthy X-fiancé. Now she was working at the top of the tallest needle in the United States, interesting how life works out.