In my last blog post, I explored the common misconceptions about the land of my birth, the Great Pacific Northwest. I wrote about Seattle's annual rain fall, the laid-back hippie culture, and the commonly held perception of Seattle people being extraordinarily polite. In this post, I plan on engaging and disproving these misconceptions.
Rain, Rain, Go Away
According to several different sites, Seattle does not even rank in the top ten in terms of annual precipitation. That award goes to either New Orleans or Mobile, Alabama, depending on who you ask. How much rain falls on the heads of Crescent City citizens? New Orleans receives, on average, 62.7 inches of rain each year. That's over five feet.
Maybe you're thinking, "Okay, so Seattle doesn't get that much rain. But surely they have the most rainy days." Again, you would be wrong. Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh all have more rainy days per year than Seattle. It rains around 167 days per year in Rochester, and only 149 days per year in Seattle. So, all you Upstate New Yorkers tired of the rain and terrible football teams, go ahead and pack your bags and head west.
Now, Seattle does top the list in terms of days with heavy cloud cover. Current Results defines heavy cloud cover as clouds sweeping over three-quarters of the sky. In Seattle, it is not the rain that will destroy all of your hope for humanity. It is the endless days of gray steel skies.
Work Hard, Play Hard
Seattle has long been known as one of the most liberal cities in the United States. Washington State, along with Seattle, is a Democratic stronghold, and not in the Chicago dead-people-voting sort of way. Part of that liberal history has been a fairly lenient attitude toward drug use, and especially marijuana. Along with Alaska and Oregon, Washington was one of the first states to legalize medical marijuana. Last year, Washington and Colorado legalized recreational marijuana.
This has lead to the misconception that all Seattle people do is smoke weed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Seattle area has the third highest GDP in the nation. Seattle has been one of the key cities in the growing technology arena, and Forbes currently ranks the city as number seven in terms of creating technology jobs.
Some of the most important companies in the nation started in the Seattle area, including Boeing, Microsoft, and Amazon. Bill Gates was born and raised in Seattle. Although there is a "hippie" culture present in Seattle, there is also a climate of technological and manufacturing innovation spurred onward by hard work.
The Seattle Freeze
Last week, I wrote about Seattle's "politeness" factor. We only press down on our car horns when we see someone we know. The first time I visited Chicago, I expected a car accident every six or seven blocks. In Seattle, strangers will stare into your eyes and ask "How are you," and you will get the impression they actually mean it.
However, many people have never heard of "The Seattle Freeze." According to several different sources, transplants form other cities find it remarkably difficult to make friends in the Seattle area. Because I grew up in Seattle, I have an interesting perspective on this situation.
Natives tend to see the Pacific Northwest as the absolute greatest part of the nation, and we have been perfectly content allowing the rest of America to imagine us drowning in rain. The truth is Seattle people love Seattle. And we don't want the secret getting out, lest the heathens from Southern California invade. Our lack of acceptance of outsiders is a defense mechanism. While we will start up a conversation at a coffee shop, we will not invite you over for dinner.
There you have it--the reality of Seattle. Make sure to visit sometime, preferably in August, but don't plan on staying.
Tommy entered my high school, Bellarmine Prep (Go Lions!), at the beginning of our senior year. He moved to Seattle from Florida. He wore his hair in a crew cut, spoke quietly, and wore nothing but black hoodies and gray jeans. Rumor had it he carried brass knuckles in his car.
I saw Tommy at a party in Point Defiance, a massive city park full of forests where high school kids gathered to escape their parents and engage in other, usually illicit, adolescent activities. He sat by himself, and I walked over in an attempt to make him feel welcome. Our conversation was interrupted by a group of ten guys stumbling out of the woods. They reeked of pot. Tommy and I watched them argue about whether they should go to Jack in the Box or McDonald's.
After they sped off, Tommy turned to me and said, "You know what, man? This is exactly how I pictured Seattle before I moved here. A bunch of hippies smoking weed in a forest."
I moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest four years ago, and I have gathered from personal experience that many people share Tommy's preconceived ideas about the Seattle area. We Northwesterners smoke weed while praying to the Tree-Gods. We love coffee the way Kanye West loves riding a motorcycle while rapping. We listen to nothing but angry, Kurt Cobain music and our closets are full of flannel shirts. And, of course, we are always soaked to the bone due to the catastrophic amount of rain.
An elderly woman asked me, and she was being totally serious, if a lot of people in Seattle live in tree houses.
Some of these perceptions have more truth than others. It is true you can't go more than three blocks in Seattle without running into a coffee shop. And, as far as the flannel goes, Seattle ranks as number one in the Hipster World Cup. We tend to dress like a pack of malnourished loggers. I didn't even know there were prints other than flannel until I moved to St. Louis.
However, many of our beloved nation's commonly held ideas about Seattle are fundamentally false. People tend to think of Seattle as nothing but rain, weed, and overly polite people. I am here to give you the real story. First, let's get all of the common misconceptions out of the way.
People from outside the Northwest think it rains in Seattle all of the time. They look at me like I might have moss growing out of my ears. "Does it really rain all the time?" is almost always the first question someone asks me when I tell them I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. And then they proceed to tell me how much they hate rain. I usually respond by telling them how much I hate tornadoes.
Another common ill-conceived perception about the Northwest is that we are all tree-hugging, pot-smoking hippies. We are too laid-back. Instead of contributing to America's greatness, we spend our time staring into the smoky depths of our favorite bongs. The perception is that people do not so much work in Seattle as much as they find some job to pay the bills in between lighting up a joint. This perception has only gained in popularity since Washington State legalized pot.
Many people not from the Northwest believe Seattle people are really, really nice. For example, there is this video of Seattle people "rioting" after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. The video went viral, and the comments frequently bring up how Seattle people are polite. The video going viral shows how many people see Seattle as the Scandinavia of the United States--clean, polite, and efficient. Even in St. Louis, the video made an appearance on the evening news. Also, there is this article from The New York Times about a "polite robber" in the Seattle area, which further exemplifies this issue. Gregory Hess robbed a gas station, but made sure to say "please" and "thank you" as he told the attendant to empty the till.
These are the common perceptions. But are they true? Is Seattle nothing more than a lot of very polite people smoking weed in the rain? Stay tuned.
