Seattle, Part I: Pike Place Market

From Dave Brigham:

This is the first post in a five-part series about Seattle, a beautiful and fun city I visited with my wife and kids back in April. This series is by no means meant to be an exhaustive survey of the Emerald City. It just features a lot of the stuff I saw while annoying my family by taking so many pictures.

I must not be paying my in-house monkeys enough in bananas, because I find their inability to remind me about my backlog of material to be quite un-a-peel-ing.

Sorry, that was terrible.

I have a lot of stuff in the hopper, and meant to get to this feature sooner.

This post features photos and information about Pike Place Market. The other posts will cover a hike in Discovery Park, which is on a former Army base; an extremely cool underground tour; the fabulous and drool-inducing Pioneer Square; and the Lower Queen Anne area where we stayed.

I'm going to keep these posts as basic as possible. OK, let's get to it.

(The iconic sign for the world-famous market, which opened in August 1907. Filled with small shops, artist exhibits, street musicians, restaurants and the well-known fish throwers, Pike Place is a total tourist trap but that was totally ok with me.)

(Located right near the main entrance, this building went up in 1910 and was constructed by Ben Silver, who traded in oakum (which he spelled "okum"), which is "loose fiber obtained by untwisting old rope, used especially in caulking wooden ships," per the OED. There are now shops on the ground floor.)

(Open since 2003, Beecher's Handmade Cheese is a place where cheese is made from stinky milk, right before your eyes. Like anybody would want to eat that!)

(What I believe is the original sign for the Athenian Seafood Restaurant, which was opened by three Greek brothers in 1909, per the eatery's web site. Well, this isn't the original sign, but it evidently dates back pretty far.)

(I wanted to watch this guy carve a totem pole for a while, but my family kept moving along so I had to catch up.)

(Why didn't I buy the Bruce Lee piece? Or the Joey Ramone one I saw? I have no good answer.)

(Painted by Anna-Lisa Notter, this mural is called "Waxie Moon," and tips its cap to the city's "bustling burlesque" scene. It is painted on the side of the Pink Door restaurant, which regularly features aerialists as entertainment, per the eatery's web site.)

(Fresh produce abounds at the market.)

(Top-notch musicians add flavor and personality to the market experience.)

("Opened in 1910, the Sanitary Public Market [the stretch along First Ave] was thus branded because it didn’t allow live animals like chickens and oysters inside. Meaning, yup, other parts did," per the SeattleMet web site.)

(I spy with my little eye....)

(I was thoroughly confused by this "road fish," as I called it. "How did somebody get onto the highway to paint that thing?" I wondered. Then I realized there was no traffic. Eventually I learned that this stretch of road was part of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was closed in early 2019 and was being torn down by massive jackhammer machines when we were in town. I spied this from a terrace at the market.)

(Located a few blocks from the market, the State Hotel was built in 1904 and is known as the Eitel Building. The fantastic four-story mural was done by well-known artist Shepard Fairey, best known for the "HOPE" poster he did for Barack Obama in 2008.)

(Another great mural I spied on the walk from the monorail station to the market, this one memorializing comedian Kevin Barnett, who died earlier this year at way too young an age. To see how the mural was created, check out the video below.)

(Close by Pike Place is this wonderful old theater, the Showbox. Opened in 1939, this place is still going strong. I briefly considered seeing Eric B & Rakim there but didn't go.)

(Last, but certainly not least, is the first active Scientology building I've seen in person. If Tom Cruise threw an e-meter as hard as he could from here, he could probably hit Pike Place Market. The only other building owned by the loony followers of L. Ron Hubbard that I've seen was in Boston, but I don't believe the Church of Scientology ever actually used it: see April 8, 2018, "Tom Cruise Slept Here...Well, Maybe".)

The next installment in my series about Seattle will focus on Discovery Park, a massive recreation area on the former home of the Fort Lawton Army base.