…they’re dead. I had a day off today and about 10 hours to kill before my flight back to Seattle, so I decided to walk around Manhattan.

I started at 63rd and Lex, at my hotel (the Melrose), and walked over to 5th avenue. Then I started walking down 5th ave. My intention was to walk along the ave for a few blocks then take a cab down to 33rd st, the Empire State Building, and walk to the Flatiron building. Well I ended up walking the entire way to Flatiron. I took a small detour at 34th and walked over to Herald Square and Macy’s. Then I started walking down Broadway towards Union square and ended up at Washington square. I wanted to see the Village Vanguard and the Blue Note Cafe, so I walked over towards Greenwich Village. Found both of the clubs. At this point it started getting hot and muggy so I walked back over to 6th and caught a cab up to 42nd st. I wanted to see the Nintendo store. It was pretty unimpressive. Now my feet were hurting, so I caught a cab back to 63rd and Lex, showered, checked out, and now I’m killing time in the hotel lobby until about 2:30 or so.

Over a hundred pictures are in my gallery of this trip.

Random Access 3.0: Well, I can Say I’ve been to Central Park now.

I’ve been to Central Park too. The last time I was in NYC a group of us decided to have dinner over at the boat basin cafe. After dinner three of us decided to just walk cross-town through the park since they lived uptown and I was staying at the Metropolitan hotel at 51st and Lexington.

The impressive thing about Central Park isn’t that it’s a big ass park in a big ass city. It’s that the park is entirely MAN MADE. The rivers and waterfalls have shut off valves. Before they landscaped the park that area was all rock, scrub brush, and swampland.

Given how old the park, and the city in general is, it has a lot of history. (dErF!). It was interesting to walk past people waiting in line to see Shakespeare in the park and realize that was the location of the original Shakespeare in the park.

Living somewhere that isn’t NYC, like Seattle, it’s hard to realize that Central Park may be the only place some people EVER see more than 10 sq feet of grass. Except for all of the people, which seem to be EVERYWHERE in NYC, it’s easy to forget you’re in the middle of a big ass city when you’re there.

While we were in Houston we drove out to visit some property we own out near Lake Livingston. While we were there, we saw this mailbox and I had to take a picture of it.

Rachel Ray was just on the Food network, her show “$40 a day” was in Santa Fe. I thought I’d post my thoughts about where she went since if we can’t be self-absorbed and indulgent on our blogs where else can we?

Cafe Pasquals is overrated, the Atomic cafe is pretty good and it’s right next door to Cafe Pasqual. A better breakfast on the plaza is Tia Sophias.

The Coyote Cantina is great. Great place to go for happy hour in the summer. You can buy their green and red chile salsa out on San Juan Island at the firey food store there.

You don’t go to The Shed for dessert. You go there for the chiles. The Chocolate Maven Bakery is much better.

I blabbed at length about some of my favorite places in Santa Fe before when Dave Winer went through there.

Kim and I are back from Houston. The Meetings went great. Had a lot of fun hanging out with the in-laws. Got my cajun and BBQ fix. Pictures exist somewhere. No iPod shuffles in Houston either.

How to use Japanese style toilet
Information you NEED to know.

Via the old school, gap wearing, hippie hater himself.

Yahoo! News – Ski For $15 At Angel Fire

They are already skiing down there. I’m waiting for this slush they call snow up here to build up.

Oh well, Angel Fire is where Kim broke her leg on her very first ski trip ever. I bet I couldn’t have gotten her to go there again.

Any of you New Mexicans reading this, please regale me with tales of how good the snow is in Taos/Angel Fire and Red River this year. Make me jealous hehe

Moving
Ponzi’s Schemes :: Moving

Well, we have officially decided we will be in Seattle for Christmas this year. After some heavy negotiations on a rental in Leschi (a neigborhood in Seattle, WA) I must say I’m finally comfortable with the outcome.

Looks like We’ve snagged another techie for the Emerald city. I’m sure they’ll love Leschi. It’s not too far from the Madison Park area, Kim and I almost bought a house in that area. Lots of great places to eat, shop, and relax. Close to Lake Washington and great views of the air show and boat races during SeaFair.

It looks like our plan to complain about the weather and keep out the tourists and Californians has failed again. Curses!

I’m going to repost a link to my Survival Guide for Dave Winer for them to enjoy.

Hmmmm, why do I get the feeling that we’ll soon be seeing the title “Microsoft Evangelist” after Chris’s name?

Michael J. Totten: A Photo Tour of Libya

Amazing photos of Libya.

via:

n.b. I originally wrote this article back in June when we returned from San Francisco, but I had some issues with the image gallery

Last week Kim and I went to San Francisco for her old college friend Elizabeths (sing sing) wedding. We stayed in Milbrae, CA about a block from a BART station. We didn’t know it was that close to a station when we arrived at the airport. Kim couldn’t remember if we were staying at a Quality Inn or Quality Suites. So we tried to find their hotel shuttle, couldn’t find it. So she called “Quality Inn at the airport” and apparently got the Quality Inn down by Union Square or something who told her “We don’t have a shuttle, just grab one of the downtown SF shuttles.” We tried to find one of those, but the helpers by the shuttle bay kept telling us different places to go. Sheesh, so I finally just said “ok, where can we catch a cab?” “Downstairs”. Great, fine. A cab will take us right where we need to go. We get a cab and tell him “Quality Inn here at the airport” He says in a thick russian accent, “yeah, yeah sure Quality Inn.” . We get in his cab and off we go.

Ten minutes he pulls into the Holiday Inn by the airport. We explain that we wanted to go to QUALITY Inn and off we go again. Meter going “tick tick tick” the whole time. We get to Quality Inn and they tell us that we don’t have a reservation there. They call the other Quality Inn and Quality Inn Suites hotels in the area and find out we are at the Quality Inn Suites in Milbrae. Great, where’s that at? They end up sending over a limo to pick us up and take us there. Great, then we notice the BART station a block away and remember the BART station at the airport. We were only ten minutes by BART from our hotel and didn’t know it.

We get to the hotel and I decide that I want to take the BART to downtown SF and have a look around. We got out on Powell street and wandered around, Kim was on the cell phone trying to find us a ride out to the wedding in Belmont. Finally I decided I’d like to sample the local cusine and beer. We went into Lefty O’Douls and I ordered and Anchor Steam and got perhaps the best roast beef sandwich I’ve ever had. We ate, drank, listened to the piano player and his audience belt out some songs and then headed back to our room.

The wedding was nice. It was a catholic wedding so we were popping up and down like a whack-a-mole game. The funniest part for us was how everyone just jumped right into the ceremony with their cameras and video cameras. No shame, “with the ring, I thee wed.” “{clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick}”. Afterwards we went to a Chinese restaurant they had booked and had a nine course chinese dinner. They just kept bringing out food.

Scripting News: 9/21/2004

If Dave had gotten here in the summer, he could have taken the water taxi from downtown over to Alki for his morning walk. Whoops, looks like he can until Oct 1st.

Scripting News: 9/11/2004

1. The streets ARE a grid, despite evidence to the contrary. The problem is the ground isn’t flat and it’s often interrupted by these large bodies of water nature has strewn about our fine city. It’s kind of like how the sum of a triangles angles can be greater than 180 degrees if it’s on a spherical plane. So when you look at it from above, you see the grid. But when you are driving, you can’t even see the next street or the street one block over let alone a grid. That coupled with the fact that downtown has 3 separate grid systems makes for a confusing jaunt around the city. Just remember that Arthur Denny controlled all of the screwed up streets downtown and ran them according to the grade of the hill instead of North-South like he was supposed to and Doc Maynard did.
2. God hates the eastside. Don’t go there unless you are under threat of death or pain or non-payment. Seattle has everything you need from Northgate to SoDo. There are two other Barnes & Noble that I can think of off the top of my head that are easier to get to than the one in Bellevue.
3. You don’t always have to take I-5 to get north or south in the city. If you want to go to Ballard, take Elliot Ave. If you want to go to SoDo take 1st ave. If you’re just going to Fremont take Westlake. If you are going to the U-district, take Eastlake. If you are going to Cap Hill, take the bus.
4. That heavy Seattle rain? That’s the first heavy Seattle rain we’ve had this summer. Most people around here were glad to see it, especially the gardeners. I’ve never seen it rain harder than that since I’ve been here (one year so far).
5. Since you’re downtown, you HAVE to try one of Tom Douglas’s restaraunts if you haven’t already. It’s required.
6. Salumi is the best Italian deli on the west coast. It’s the closest thing to a NY Italian deli that the west coast has. Granted my experience is limited, but that’s what I’ve been told.
7. The Bagel Oasis spots are the closest thing to a NYC bagel you’re going to find in Seattle.
8. If you really want to see a cross section of what Seattle is about, go to the Mecca
9. Cutters Bay house – In the comments Lance mentions Cutter’s Bay House down on Western Ave.. I’ve been there once and I’d say it was a great dining experience. For a great view at a cheaper price, you can’t beat either the Athenian Inn or Lowell’s in Pike Place Market.
10. If you want to know the normal goings-on for a given weekend, pick up a free copy of The Seattle Weekly. If you want to know the freaky goings-on for a given weekly, pick up The Stranger.
11. It’s Pew-All-Up (Puyallup), Ska-Jet (Skagit), and Yah-Keh-Mah (Yakima). If you are trying to think of the name of a river/mountain/lake/area make up a word with “hom”, “ham”, or “qual” in it and throw an “ish” or “ash” on the end. Chances are you’ll get pretty close to the name of an actual place.

That’s all I can think of right now. I think I’ll keep this running. Maybe some of these entries will make their way onto the Seattle Wiki if I can type them up in a more professional manner.

update
We don’t hate ALL the other cities around us, Just Tacoma and the Eastside. There’s a long history about why Seattle and Tacoma have a rivalry. Take the Underground Tour in Pioneer Square and they’ll tell you about some of it. Oh and we persist that rumor about the weather so the tourists and Californians won’t move here permanantly. We have less rainfall and snowfall per year than Houston, TX.

Bainbridge Island is nice, calm, peaceful. It has great people also. It’s also the gateway, for me, to the Olympic Penensuala. But for sheer relaxation, you can’t beat the San Juan Islands.

I also forgot about Fremont streets. The roads get a little hairy along Fremont ave. When driving in Fremont just remember….. ah heck, forget that. Just park somewhere and walk through Fremont.

edit: fixed the ignorance on display pointed out by paul in the comments. Where’s the ’sheepish’ emoticon?

Alaska. We’ll Pay You To Live Here.

things cost more up there.

king crab the size of a bean bag chair.

moose making you late for work

moose making you late for work.

Salmon fishing in the middle of town

tourists salmon fishing in the middle of YOUR town

no professional sports teams

all the college and high school football and basketball games are night games

Dr. Neil’s Adventures: Icing on the top

While Dr. Neil was off at Mt. Rain-Here, which I have yet to go to despite having lived here for over a year, I took my cousin-in-law from Ks. and my wife up to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. Kim and I went there for our first wedding anniversary last year, but that time we were late and just walked on the ferry. This time we got there early enough to take our car over so we could explore the island.

We circled the island. First we stopped at Lime Kiln Lighthouse to try and see some Orca whales, they were all apparently running errands down at Lopez island and wouldn’t be back until later. We didn’t get to see any whales, but we did see a few seals bobbing up and down.

The next stop was Westcott Bay, Kim and Billy are big oyster fans so they bought some fresh oysters and ate them later that night. After that we stopped at the Pelindaba Lavender Farm. Kim loves lavender and needed to buy some gifts for a friends birthday party. We ended up harvesting some fresh lavender and somehow someone managed to buy her some lavender soap and a wand while she was out cutting the lavender. Our last stop for the night was the San Juan Vineyards for some wine tasting and buying. We spent the night up there on the spur of the moment and got a pretty good rate. It was a great weekend.

Scripting News: 7/18/2004

Looks like Dave Winer is in Santa Fe, NM. I lived there for about 2 years and 2 years in Albuquerque (you know, where Bugs Bunny was supposed to turn left at?). There are lots of good places to eat at in Santa Fe. My Favorties included the Bobcat Bite, it is the place to get a Green Chile cheeseburger at (or just a Green Chile burger if you don’t want the cheese). Best burger in the Southwest. Mark that.

Marias, which Dave mentions in his post, has the best collection of sipping tequilla in town as well as the best margaritas. They are legendary around Santa Fe.

The 2nd street brew pub is a great place for microbrews, a friend of mind who is a beer snob says they have the best microbrew in New Mexico, hands down. You’ll never find it though. You go S on Cerrilos, left on 2nd Street, on the right just before the RR tracks. Good luck. It’s a great place to kick back after work with a porter.

Santacafe has the best chocolatte cheesecake I’ve ever had. It’s a little pricey for lunch and dinner but for dessert and coffee it can’t be beat.

The restaurant at the La Fonda hotel is great. Order the guacamole and they make it by hand at your table. The restaurant itself it gorgeous. Draped in stained glass and sunlight. The bell tower bar is a good place to hang out after work.

I can’t recommend the Shed for anyone but NM natives, the green chile there is just too hot for people that aren’t used to it. If you’re not used to it, stick to the chile in the restaurants on or near the Plaza. If you get the real stuff, and you’re not used to it, you’ll be sorry. Tia Sophias is another great place any time of the day, but I’d go there first thing in the morning for their breakfast burritos. These aren’t your east coast/west coasts breakfast burritos. Bring your appetite and your hot mouth. They are “not responsible for too hot chile”. (It’s printed on their menu). The nephew of the owner of Tia Sophias is Alex Marol, one of the best young new blues guitar players in the area. If you get a chance to catch him performing in the area, I’d highly recommend it. He’s usually at El Farrol on Wednesdays and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame on Tuesdays.

There are lots of great places on Canyon road, El Farol comes to mind. There are just too many places in Santa Fe alone to eat. Backwater Bistro, Upper Crust pizza, Il Vincino, even the chains like Gardunos and Blue Corn cafe are great, the Cinema cafe, the Compound (if you have to ask how expensive it is, you can’t afford it), the Chocolatte Maven bakery. I haven’t even thought about up I-25 towards Taos, ther are hundreds of small and large places along the way. That’s the one things I miss about living in Santa Fe, access to some of the best southwest food in the entire southwest. When I think of southwestern food, I don’t think Texas or Arizona or Nevada, only New Mexican food really captures the flavor of the southwest for me.

P.S. I mentoned earlier that Bugs Bunny always forgot to make that left at Albuquerque. Do you know where he was trying to get to? I do. Santa Fe to visit Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones lived near Santa Fe for most of his life, he loved New Mexico and it’s showed in his Road Runner cartoons. Bugs lived in California. Well if you are going to Albuquerque from California, you most likely are taking I-40 east. From I-40 going east, you have to make a left to get onto I-25. So bugs was always missing the left to go north to Santa Fe. If you go down to water street, right next to the Coyote Cafe you can visit the Chuck Jones gallery and pay homage to the man that gave us Bugs, Daffy Duck, the grinch and more.

Lickety Split and other fast moves..

Chas Redmond notes some interesting behavior while navigating from West Seattle over to the U-District.

The trick – scoping out primary routes and then using alternate routes quickly when the primary shows signs of clog. What continues to perplex me is that pretty much everyone knows the alternate routes but insists or is compelled for some reason to stick with the primary route. It’s like the 45th and 50th Street I-5 interchanges in the U-District. Sure, 45th Street is the main drag, but that street and interchange are pretty much always jammed. 50th is a short four blocks away, is a through street and its interchange is NEVER jammed. I can’t believe the other seven-hundred-thousand Seattleites don’t know this and yet they insist on using 45th. The same holds for using I-5 or SR99. They both go pretty much the identical route from south to north and are separated by less than a mile over most of their parallel distance north of SODO. And yet, again, everyone insists on using I-5 and completely ignoring Aurora/SR99. That was true back in DC as well. There were literally a half-dozen ways to get anywhere on the District and Maryland side of the river and yet everyone insisted on using the Beltway. To get to the Virginia side there are a limited number of bridges but the one no one seemed ever to use was Chain Bridge just north of Georgetown. Using that bridge I could get to Falls Church or Vienna and back in less than an hour almost any time of the day, even morning and evening rush hours. I did have to know and use different methods of getting to the bridge because some of the roads leading to and from Chain Bridge become one-way during morning or evening rush hour, but still, with that knowledge I could save fifty-percent of the time it might take to get to Virginia. I’m equally positive the other Washingtonians knew this as well and yet, like the Seattleites, they insisted on staying with the one freeway which went “exactly” where they were going.

So the question I’ve got is “what causes this?” Is it the lack of thinking power? Do car drivers just want to do the same thing over and over again even if it takes forever because it’s easy and they don’t have to think about their route? Is it laziness? Is sitting in a stop-and-go situation on a freeway better than actually having to drive and navigate? Is it actual ignorance? Does everyone actually NOT know of any other way to get somewhere and they’re stuck using the one way they do know? Is it some expression of collective, urban sociology? Do folks actually like sitting adjacent to dozens of other car-bound humans listening to their individual radios or car music systems, staring out at each other staring back? Do people really have such a surplus of time that they feel compelled to spend it in this manner lest it wouldn’t get spent?

I really don’t know. Maybe it’s curiosity. I’ll research a map, talk to other people and experiment at non-busy times of the day to find alternate paths to places I need to get to that are otherwise difficult because of traffic congestion. In a sense it’s somewhat like a map-math problem. It’s a puzzle and a mystery and I would think that the combination would drive other people to experiment as well. Maybe I’ve got an advantage. I use the bus, I use my bike, and I walk a lot of the places where everyone else seems to use a car. I learn about alternate streets, different shortcuts, better paths, by using alternate transportation systems, and then when I am in a car I have advantage of this additional knowledge. So, the Aesop Fable lesson from this is that “those who are stuck inside their cars are forever bound to be stuck.”

I’ve noticed this trend a lot. Now getting over to the east side and West Seattle are a different matter since there are only four ways to get to the east side and really only two ways to get to West Seattle, but why does everyone take 45th to get onto I-5 when they could go five blocks over to 50th? Why does everyone use the Mercer Mess to get onto I-5? Why do people even TRY to drive down Pike street in the market on a weekend? Why is the Northgate way exit always backed up, yet taking Sand Point way north and around is never backed up? Why do the drivers ALWAYS enter University Village at the first driveway after the 45th ramp? Why not go the extra block and enter over by the parking garage or on 25th? They all back up trying to get into U-village on the weekends, which then backs up the 45th ave ramp, which then backs up 45th and eventually the I-5 exit onto 45th starts getting backed up.

I feel like a WA state drivers license test should include an “alternate route” portion if the person lives in Seattle. “Plan out at least two alternate routes to get to downtown.”

Toured the National Mall today

My friend Tom drove his family up the coast, he lives in North Carolina, over Memorial Day weekend and visited most of the national monuments. I’m most interested in his photos of the World War Two national monument. In typical WWII veteran fashion the majority of the funds for the monument came from donations. $179 out of $195 million raised for the monument came from pledges and cash donations.

The site was dedicated by President G.W. Bush on Memorial day, withPresident Clinton, who signed the law that authorized the monument, also in attendance. The ceremony was attended by many WWII veterans including Bob Dole, George McGovern, and Tony Hillerman. One interesting fact that I learned about fmr. Senator McGovern is that he volunteered after his tour of duty, and for that matter the war itself, was over to deliver the leftover Allied rations and medical supplies to the German civilians. Getting a jump on the Marshall Plan.

For Kims birthday we took a short day trip out to Second Beach on the Olympic Peninsula.

World66, the travel guide you write: visitedStates

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

No big surprise given that I grew up in the mid west. Hmmm, looks like it’s time for a ski trip to Montana?

This morning, Kim and I decided to go out to Discovery Park and walk around. I wanted to walk out to the beach, but the signs in the park were less than helpful. So we ended up walking out to the Indian center and looking at the bay. After our walk, we decided to head over to Chinooks for an early dinner/late lunch. I had the blue plate special, a ling cod topped with dill, butter, and sour cream along with a cup of white clam chowder. Kim had the blackened rockfish with mango-pineapple salsa.