Sleepless in Seattle (Well Close)

What a great little big city they have here. It wasn’t anything amazingly fun packed like the rest of the trip but a good part of the trip nonetheless. Pops and I flew in on a Friday and we stayed outside of the city near the airport in a podunk ass town pretty much like South City here. The flight up was quite cool. The pilot got the OK to take the scenic tour out of town. We went all around the bay being able to see The City with a birds eye view. Would have gotten some better pics but the windows were disgusting. I did get some decent ones though. They also gave us a complimentary beer on the flight to our transfer in Portland. I thought that only happened on your way to Europe. We got up to Seattle and jumped right back into trip mode. Going to the hotel bar and grabbing a quick bite and drink, before we go get ready and go head out to see the town and get some good food. The city was about 15 min out but not too bad of a drive in. A little traffic and apparently getting worse by the year from what the locals say. We went to a steak house in downtown Seattle named Metropolitan. The Lakers – Celtics game 7 was on so it was pretty well packed. Apparently Bostonians aren’t only in SF they are in Seattle also. Why don’t they just stay in Boston??!! We of course had some good steak and drinks. The bartender was helpful, telling us which places I had picked out were good to go to. So we headed around town. Unfortunately it is quite hard to get my dad’s walker around in this town. There are a lot of steps and no elevator and not much room in these places to put his gear. So I had a chauffer for the night. We first headed to a place called Zig-Zag Café. They had some really cool drinks in there and it was more like a restaurant than a speakeasy where you would expect to find really nice drinks. The only problem with that is that more people are around and more people want drinks, which means that 10 min cocktail turns into a 20 min cocktail. This wasn’t as bad as that, but I kinda get scared walking into places like that, but just assume you are gonna have to wait a while for a drink. I had a few drinks, mixing it up between Bourbon and Tequila. The bartender bought me the drinks cause he is coming into SF soon and was hoping for some places to go. I dropped a 20 which is cheaper than 2 drinks and a tip. I’m gonna take this time to instruct people… If a bartender buys you a drink it’s not cuase he doesn’t want a tip. Well for the ladies he might want to give you a tip, but as a good rule whatever the drink would have cost you drop him half maybe 40%. $10 drink means $4 or $5. I jumped in the car feeling very good. We headed to the Bathtub Gin and Co. This is a 2 level spot but still only holds like 40 people. Nice little place very good drinks but not a huge drink list. I go with whatever the bartender wants to make in situations I find I don’t really like the drinks on the list. At this point I’m sloshed, hammered, fucked up. I have to get out of here. Jump in the car and pops drives us back to the hotel. I’m barely able to move. Its nice having someone there with you, you can kinda relax even more.
The next day is a rough one. I need water, water, water!!!! We head to the ballpark to get tickets and we see people already sitting in front of the stadium for a 7:05 game. We find out its Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro bobble head day, so the game is almost sold out. The Pyramid Brewery which is right across the street from the stadium with parking looks like a good stop for lunch and to wait for the game to start. I need Pepsi and can’t think about having a beer just yet. Sugar seems to help in this situation. I’m chugging water and soda. Finally I get the courage to have a beer and things start to get normal. Pretty decent food and the beer is the same as it is everywhere else I’ve had it. The smell of brewery isn’t the best for someone very hung over. About 5 hours before the game the line is getting very long and I figure I’m this close I might as well stand in line and get the bobble head. But I find out I didn’t need to. With my dad have his little walker we go straight to the front of the line. But then it’s 3 hours of sitting in the stadium with not much to do and still not feeling that much better. The game looks to be a good one. We get to see Cliff Lee in one of his last starts as a Mariner. And it was a doosey. He pitched very well, a complete game shutout. Very cool to see. It takes us a while to get out of the stadium, and we get to the car and we got a ticket for not paying enough for the parking spot. But we paid what was marked and apparently at some point they changed the sign to $40 instead of $10. Small problem so we get moving and go check out the Space Needle, take a couple pics and then head to the Knee High Stocking Co. It is a really cool spot that you wouldn’t know it was anymore than a broken down house. But you ring the bell and they take your name and number. They don’t allow people to stand at the bar, so they give us a call when they are ready for us. We walk in and it’s a 20 seat place with 6 at the bar. A huge dink menu and a small food menu. The drinks are off the chart, the food on the other hand needs a lot of help. More Mac and Cheese, that needs a lot of help to be even close to below avg. They also have a cheese platter that has cheddar and blue on it and just not well put together at all and not very tasty. Very hard to do with a cheese platter. But it’s about booze there not food. We find out the reason why the place is called Knee High. Apparently the owners went to Asia and one of the bars that they went to was run by people who were knee high (midgets), and I think that place was also called Knee High. They liked it so much they called it that in homage. We finish up close to 2 and head to bed. We head home in the morning. I’ve never ran into the same guy working at the airport before but the bartender coming in was the same as going out. Very small airport in Portland.
Very cool city and would go back. It gave me a lot of business ideas for my next bar. And a lot of ideas for drinks now and later. Very clean city as well. I do have to go down to Pikes place and see all the seafood stuff happen next time though.