Coffee-Loving Goths

Gum Wall! Click for full gummy effect. You can smell the mint when you walk by it!

Just got back from Seattle. Definitely my favorite city after New York. Or before it. Not sure. 75% of the people are earnestly, unironically, never-stopped-dressing-that-way 90's. Cute Soundgarden dudes, good. Hot Topic goths, very bad.

Not satisfied to have populated the world, including the most coffee fanatical city in the country, Starbucks has a new game. They sent out market researchers to small, independent coffee shops to see what people like. They then designed their own stores around this, specific to each city. But they don't call them Starbucks. The name is just the street that the store is on. I went to one.

The door says 15th Ave Coffee and Tea, Inspired by Starbucks. But... it's more like Starbucks, Inspired by every real coffee place. Yuck. Here's the interior. Basic faux rusticity, things "handwritten" on boards instead of typed, like any Starbucks.
But it doesn't really look like one. Sneaky.

Went to Mario Batali's dad's place, Salumi. He makes all his own cured meats. Molé salami with roasted green peppers. Awesome. You could really taste that spicy, sweet, very mild cocoa flavor.
Oh, Oh! Speaking of molé, some of the best Mexican I have ever had at Carta de Oaxaca in Ballard. Long trip from main Seattle, but so worth it. So if you ever have the chance, take the time to go there and get the piping hot tortilla chips (have you ever actually had fresh tortilla chips right out of the fryer? It's what they're supposed to taste like) and the chicken molé.

While you're there, go to "the Locks". Two sections of the river are at different heights. When a boat comes in from the higher part, its "locked" into this walled off area. The water in that area is lowered and then the boat is let out into the lower water level area. Kind of hard to visualize.
This is also the location of the salmon run. The salmon need help getting back to the bay they were born in, so they made a water ladder for them to, climb? There are also tubes that help the salmon babies get to the ocean. You can go into an underground room with windows looking out into this fish frenzy, which would have been cool if the salmon had actually been there when we were. But there is a display of the eggs in various stages.
So, Seattle is great. And I think people are lying when they say it rains every day. I've been there three times and it's always beautiful. They just don't want New Yorkers to move there.