Seattle, Washington — Activities
Seattle Culture
Despite the economic downturn, Seattle has more cultural construction projects underway than any other urban area in the USA. The city’s average arts events attendance tops 5 million and it has the highest per-capita dance attendance in the country. The Greater Seattle area boasts 29 professional theater companies, and over 80 fringe theater companies, as well as more than 80 live music clubs, 16 symphony orchestras, 18 major art, cultural and scientific heritage museums and over 200 private art galleries.
Although Seattle’s theater scene is considered one of the most dynamic in the USA, natives notably prefer home-grown culture to that from outside the state and a look through the city’s listing and review tabloids will not, in all likelihood, produce names that most visitors will have heard of. Exceptions are the internationally acclaimed Pacific Northwest Ballet, glass art’s Dale Chihuly, maestro Gerard Schwarz, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love of Hole, sax man Kenny G, actor Tom Skerritt and writers Ann Rule and Tom Robbins. British author Michael Dibdin has made Seattle his home and travel writer Jonathan Raban also lives in the Pacific Northwest.
The Seattle Opera’s season runs from August to May and both the Pacific Northwest Ballet and the Seattle Repertory Theater run from October to May. All three perform at the Seattle Center. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra plays from September to June, at Benaroya Hall.
Ticketmaster (tel: (206) 628 0888; website: www.ticketmaster.com) sells tickets to all cultural events in Seattle, as does Pacific Northwest Ticket Service (tel: (206) 232 0150 or 1 800 281 0753; website: www.nwtix.com), while Ticket Window (tel: (206) 325 6500; website: www.ticketwindowonline.com) sells half-price, day-of-show tickets to theater, music, comedy and dance events. It has three outlets: Sixth and Pine, inside Pacific Place Fourth Level (open Tues-Sun 1200-1800); Broadway Market, 401 Broadway East, on the second level between Urban Outfitters and Gold’s Gym (open Tues-Sat 1200-1900, Sun 1200-1800); and Pike Place Market Information Booth at the main entrance to the Pike Place Market (open Tues-Sun 1200-1800). Entertainment listings can be found in the free tabloids, The Weekly and The Stranger.
Music: Philharmonia Northwest (tel: (206) 675 9727; website: www.philharmonianw.org) performs at its downtown venue, the Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Avenue, as well as St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 4805 NE 45th Street (tel: (206) 522 7144). The Seattle Choral Company (tel: (206) 365 8765 or 1 800 838 3006; website: www.seattlechoralcompany.org) performs seasonal music events in various venues throughout the city, while the Seattle Opera Company (tel: (206) 389 7600/76 or 1 800 426 1619; website: www.seattleopera.org) performs at the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, 305 Harrison in the Seattle Center. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra (tel: (206) 215 4700 or 1 866 833 4747; website: www.seattlesymphony.org) offers a wide range of musical events at Benaroya Hall, 200 University Street, Downtown (tel: (206) 215 4747 or 1 866 833 4747; website: www.benaroyahall.com).
Theater: Performances of popular Broadway hits are on offer at the Paramount Theater, 907 Pine Street (tel: (206) 467 5510; website: www.theparamount.com), all year round. You can catch other classics at the Fifth Avenue Musical Theater, 1308 Fifth Avenue (tel: (206) 625 1900 or 1 888 584 4849; website: www.5thavenuetheater.org). See more contemporary work at Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Avenue (tel: (206) 324 5801; website: www.schmeater.org), and the Intiman Theater, 201 Mercer Street (tel: (206) 269 1900; website: www.intiman.org), at the Seattle Center. The biggest theater company, the Seattle Repertory Theater (tel: (206) 443 2222; website: www.seattlerep.com), plays at the Bagley Wright Theater, 155 Mercer Street, in the Seattle Center. The Seattle Children’s Theater is at Second Avenue North and Thomas Street (tel: (206) 441 3322; website: www.sct.org), in the Charlotte Martin Theater, Seattle Center.
Dance: The Century Ballroom, 915 East Pine Street (tel: (206) 324 7263; website: www.centuryballroom.com), specializes in salsa and swing dancing. The world-renowned Pacific Northwest Ballet (tel: (206) 441 9411 or 2424 (box office); website: www.pnb.org) is based at the Seattle Center Opera House, 301 Mercer Street, in the Seattle Center.
Film: Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Avenue (tel: (206) 441 3080; website: www.cinerama.com), a retro, restored theater with state-of-the-art sound, shows mainstream American films and is also a major venue during the Seattle Film Festival. AMC Pacific Place, Sixth Avenue and Pine Street (tel: (206) 652 2404; website: www.pacificplaceseattle.com), is another mainstream multiplex. You can watch foreign and alternative films at two Capitol Hill Landmark venues (tel: (206) 781 5755; website: http://landmarktheaters.com/Market/Seattle/Seattle_Frameset.htm) - Harvard Exit, 807 East Roy Street and the Egyptian, 801 East Pine Street).
The best-known Seattle-based film, Sleepless in Seattle (1993), starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, was set in a Lake Union houseboat. Other movies filmed in Seattle include Get Carter (1999) with Sylvester Stallone, The Fugitive TV series (2000) and Life or Something Like It (2001) with Angelina Jolie and Ed Burns.
Literary Notes: As part of the Wild West and the Alaskan Gold Rush and the subsequent lack of intellectual investment, Seattle is not known for its literary history until the Beat generation of the 1950s onwards. Writer Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) lived here briefly, while Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) passed through after a three-month stint as a fire-watcher in the Cascades in 1956. Poet Theodore Roethke taught at the University of Washington, along with native Seattle writer Richard Hugo and the more famous Raymond Carver, who once lived on the Olympic Peninsula.
The best-known Seattle-based popular novelist is Tom Robbins, author of Another Roadside Attraction (1971) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976). British travel writer and novelist Jonathan Raban lives in the Pacific Northwest and has written extensively about the area, as well as Seattle itself, particularly in Passage to Juneau (1999), where he makes wry observations on the ’Scandinavian rectitude’ of the natives.
This Boy’s Life (1989) was Tobias Wolff’s story of his childhood in a small town north of Seattle, which was made into a movie starring Ellen Barkin and Robert De Niro in 1993. David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars (1994) was set in the misty San Juan Islands and was made into a film in 1999. Annie Dillard wrote The Living (1992), a romantic tale of the Pacific Northwest, set in the late 19th century.
There are an increasing number of crime writers using Seattle as a setting. Best known is Native American writer Sherman Alexie, whose book, Indian Killer (1996), concerns the serial murder of scalped white men in the city, contrasted against the trendy coffee bars and misty scenery. Curiously, the Seattle area has also launched internationally known, offbeat contemporary cartoonists, such as Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook’s Comeek), Matt Groening (originator of The Simpsons), and Gary Larson (The Far Side).
Seattle Tours
SeeSeattleWalkingTours (tel: (425) 226 7641; website: www.see-seattle.com) offers half- or full-day tours of the city’s main sights, all year round from Monday to Saturday. Walkers meet at the outdoor seating area of Westlake Plaza, Fourth Avenue and Pine Street, at 0955 for 1000. Underground Seattle (tel: (206) 682 4646; website: www.undergroundtour.com), discovered by chance in the 1960s, is a street of subterranean storefronts dating from the late 19th century, before the Pioneer Square area was elevated above the tide flats. Guides give a racy, three-block walk every day, departing from 608 First Avenue. Tours take an hour and a half.
Bus Tours
Gray Line (tel: (206) 624 5077 or 1 800 426 7532; website: www.graylineseattle.com) offers many different day tours within Seattle, including a full-day (approximately six hours) Grand City Tour and various three-hour tours. Gray Line also offers multi-day tours to the San Juan Islands and Victoria, BC. Seattle City Tours (tel: (206) 768 1234 or 1 888 293 1404; website: www.seattlecitytours.com) offers a variety of city tours and a full-day tour to Mt Rainier.
Other Tours
Argosy Tours (tel: (206) 623 1445 or 1 800 642 7816; website: www.argosycruises.com), at Pier 55, does sightseeing cruises around the harbor, as well as brunch, lunch and dinner cruises.
Show Me Seattle (tel: (206) 633 2489; website: www.showmeseattle.com) does a funky tour that includes the regular ‘must see’ stuff, the Sleepless in Seattle floating home, quirky neighborhoods like Fremont, the Ballard Locks and Chinatown. It also runs a tour to the Boeing plant. BeeLine Tours (tel: (206) 632 5162 or 1 800 959 8387; website: www.beelinetours.com) does custom tours.
Seattle Seaplanes (tel: (206) 329 9638 or 1 800 637 5553; website: www.seattleseaplanes.com) offers 20-minute flights over the city, focusing on its main landmarks and wealthiest homes. Flights depart from 1325 Fairview Avenue East, Lake Union.
Ride the Ducks of Seattle explores city sites on both land and water. This wacky sightseeing craze, a WWII amphibious duck, is a bit silly (visitors get whistles that make quacking sounds) but it covers land attractions and then takes a splash into Lake Union (tel: (206) 441 3825/DUCK or 1 800 817 1116); website: www.ridetheducksofseattle.com).
