The Perception

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.