From Los Angeles, the Restaurant Name of the Year: No Tomatoes.
Elegant Union Station in Los Angeles
I flew from Long Beach, California to Seattle, Washington, a distance of exactly 979 miles (1576 km) on JetBlue for $74 including all taxes and one free checked bag. It was a regular flight with a $25 discount that I found on either JLieu’s Travel Deals or frugalasianman.com (Can I get away with calling myself frugalwhitetrash.com?)
I have been to Seattle four or five times, including a house-sit for one month, all of it a long time ago. I’m in the Northwest to see some old friends I hadn’t seen in eons, so I only had one day in Seattle to go walkabout.
Seattle used to have a huge, infamous billboard on the edge of downtown advertising a “gentleman’s club” (love that euphemism) that had a bunch of girls lined up in a row with the sexy come-on “50 GIRLS 100 LEGS!!!” but it’s no longer there. What’s special about that, anyway? More eye-catching would have been “50 GIRLS 98 LEGS!!!”
I checked out the Seattle usuals: Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, Olympic Sculpture Park, the new Rem Koolhaas-designed library, and when I found myself on the edge of Chinatown I asked a young, white security guard at the metro station if there was an Asian supermarket. He knew where one was but spoke as if it was an impenetrable, mysterious den full of secrets from the Orient both right under his nose and yet worlds away. He had an explanation for its existence: “Those people don’t know how to make steak and eggs, so they have their food brought over for them.”
Oh.
Cafe Zum Zum, a Pakistani restaurant in downtown Seattle. Lentils, rice and a chapati/tortilla, $5.
The Green Bay Packers were in Seattle for a football game. Had to get a photo of a couple of Cheeseheads.
I can’t figure out if it was deliberate or not, but Seattle named their newest transit line the South Lake Union Trolley, or S.L.U.T. For t-shirt makers it was an early Christmas present.
Another thing I can’t figure out in Everett, Washington: Drive-thru coffee with “Lingerie sexy baristas”
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So you’re telling me that you DON’T have lingerie barista coffee stands in Cali? I thought it was a trend sweeping the nation, but maybe that’s my Seattlite superiority complex kicking in. They’re all over the western half of the state, some were even busted a year or two ago for having a policy of “you tip, we strip” and offering to let guys reach in and play with the girls, if they could pay.
I think Cheesehead is a proper noun…and I remember the lingerie clad baristas in Bellingham fifteen years ago!
Ha ha those cheeseheads are awesome I want one!!