A sense of place

I get asked if I moved to the city for the nightlife.* It seems to many people that nightlife is why you'd want to live in the city.

If nightlife is defined by late-night coffee at one of the coffee shops that this city seems to breed like weeds, yes. 'Getting down' was never my cup of tea. Or coffee.

That's not the reason I moved. I moved because I love the city by day. I love being out at the Pike Place Market on a bright, sunny Saturday, soaking in the crowds, people-watching.

Being  a Seattle vaasi, coffee is, of course, an essential commodity. Coffee to wake you up. Coffee to warm you up. A coffee for the hours of table space you use up at the neighborhood coffee shop. Coffee to make you feel less guilty about using their wi-fi and their fine establishment all this while.

While the promise of city living has been fulfilled, there's more and more I seem to like about it.

Cities have a sense of place. When I'm home, I'm in Seattle. When I walk out (as opposed to drive out, which I'm not required to do all the time anymore), I walk past the Troll. The statue of Lenin. The Fremont Bridge. 

It's unique. There's a sense of being in a place and time that's not like any other, anyplace, anytime. A few years from now, more IT hegemonies will take over real estate everywhere. We'll be making history for all the wrong reasons as traffic in the area is already at clusterf#*k proportions. But what I have now is great.

Quirky is good. And Fremont has loads of quirky. They practically invented the term. I'm still not conformist enough to dislike quirky. So, some time more of this doesn't look too bad.

*I moved from the suburbs - a 10 min commute to office,  to live in the fair city of Seattle 15 miles away. In rush hour it can take me upto an hour by bus or car to get to office or to get home.