Dateline Seattle: All the world's a fair in the Great Northleft

Left ...

Right ...

... and Center

Art in the Great Northleft. That's the description for this year's Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual showcase music and art festival, that wrapped up on Labor Day, just as it has every year since 1971. Bumbershoot is held on the grounds of the 74-acre Seattle Center, home of the iconic Seattle Space Needle.

Sunday at the Starbucks Stage /
Enjoying the Duke Robillard Band.

At this year's Bumbershoot, over the course of two days, my wife and I and friends enjoyed music by Death Cab For Cutie, Ra Ra Riot, Mates of State and the Duke Robillard Band and stand-up comedy by 30 Rock co-star Judah Friedlander, with whom we later enjoyed a serendipitous, five-minute conversation while walking about the Seattle Center grounds on Monday afternoon.

Also, we gathered for "Nerdprov", which crossed the streams of geek culture with comedic improvisation, as performed by the Seattle Experimental Theater; and we viewed a trio of Seattle International Film Festival Jury Award-winning one-reelers from Australia, Canada and Spain.

Bumbershoot at twilight.

I've visited Seattle nearly every year at this time for the last 20 years, and I never tire of going to Bumbershoot, drinking Seattle's best coffee, or taking photographs of the Space Needle, which was built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. As it happened, this year I could have left my umbrella at home for it stayed dry throughout the four days we visited the Emerald City.

Seattle's given us Starbucks in the seventies, grunge rock in the eighties and Amazon.com in the nineties. It's home to the Elliott Bay Book Company, one of the country's outstanding independent booksellers. There's a certain geeky, caffeinated quality to this northwest city that I enjoy, and it's only a two-hour flight up the Pacific coast from San Francisco.

"To some extent, Seattle remains a frontier metropolis, a place where people can experiment with their lives, and change and grow and make things happen," wrote Tom Robbins, the American author whose best-selling novels are "seriocomedies" that are often wildly poetic and told with strong social and philosophical undercurrents.

Indeed, all the world's a fair in the Great Northleft.

All photographs by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013.

You've Got Starbucks!

A cafe mocha during my lunch at Le Pain Quotidien in Brussels.

Recently, while channel surfing, I caught a few minutes of the movie "You've Got Mail", the 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nora Ephron that stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It's based on the play "Parfumerie" by Miklós László and tells the story of two e-mailing lovers completely unaware that their sweetheart is, indeed, a person with whom they share a degree of animosity.  The adaptation of "You've Got Mail" traces its lineage back to the 1940 film "The Shop Around the Corner" by Ernst Lubitsch.  There's even a bit of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" found in the relationship between the characters portrayed by Hanks and Ryan.

While watching "You've Got Mail", I couldn't help but delight in the scene that illustrated America's growing infatuation for Starbucks coffee in the late 1990s, as voiced over by Hanks' character, Joe Fox, whose family owned a chain of mega-bookstores similar to Barnes & Noble:

The original Starbucks, located
at Pike Place Market in Seattle,
as seen in my 2009 photo.

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.  Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc.  So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."

Perhaps, like Fox Books in the movie, Starbucks has tried hard ~ maybe too hard ~ to promote a sense of self. What they seemingly have created is a pseudo sense of friendliness and hip atmosphere in their stores and cafés, both in America and globally, in countries which they have penetrated the coffee marketplace. Sometimes, it's truly embraced, like I saw last month in Amsterdam on the bustling Leidsestraat near our hotel. There, the number of customers hanging out inside this colorful and particularly busy café, enjoying their cappuccinos in mugs while checking e-mail on their iPhones, far outnumbered those like me, who got their mocha in a to-go cup. To each his own, but I was in a walking mood, with things to see and places to go ~ and, it was lovely spring morning.

Enjoying a cappuccino with my
Saturday morning breakfast at 
Bagels & Beans in Amsterdam.

Thank goodness, during my recent travels in Europe, I discovered a world of coffee beyond Starbucks.  I saw this world in both Brussels and Paris ~ even in Amsterdam, too ~ and, over the course of 12 days, I tasted some very wonderful cappuccinos and mochas as they were meant to be enjoyed: in true café settings, and crafted by baristas, who took their time and turned coffee-making into an art form.  And, it was a delight to observe people unhurried, taking their time sipping and savoring their coffee. It added up to a most delicious and enjoyable experience.

All photographs by Michael Dickens. Copyright 2009, 2012. All rights reserved.

Why travel matters

My wife and I just returned from a very satisfying, three-day trip to Seattle.  It was a holiday weekend filled with good food, good music, good film, good books and great conversation with friends.

Never underestimate the importance of great conversation with friends.

Oh, sure, there was a little spring rain spread over each of our days in the Emerald City, and we had to carry an umbrella wherever we went.  Yet, we didn't let the rain dampen our enthusiasm for spending quality time among friends, and in one of our favorite urban destinations.   It was simply Seattle being Seattle during springtime.

Since moving to the West Coast 15 years ago, Seattle has become our favorite weekend travel destination, namely because of its many enjoyable cultural offerings, including sport, food, music and art.  In past visits, we've experienced Major League baseball with Ichiro and the Mariners at Safeco Field; meandered through the funky and lively Pike Place Market (home of the original Starbucks), and enjoyed Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual arts and indie music festival, at the Seattle Center ~ often, all in the same weekend.

Also, there's the physical beauty of the Puget Sound and views of the Cascade and Olympic mountains, whether experienced while walking through the colorful Olympic Sculpture Park or from the tranquil bluffs of Discovery Park (at 534 acres, it's the largest city park in Seattle) in the Magnolia neighborhood, that is both vibrant and breathtaking ~ and must not be missed.

Just as important, visiting Seattle also connects us with our friends.

Our long-time friends have resided in Seattle for as long as we've been in the Bay Area and, as they've done before, they very graciously welcomed us into their home this past weekend ~ along with their son and three cats ~ and provided us with comfortable lodging and good company.

Although many of our past visits coincided with Labor Day weekend, this time we decided a trip to Seattle for Memorial Day weekend would be just the right thing to do.

Rain or shine.

After all, we had never been to the Northwest Folklife festival at Seattle Center, and one of our hosts, would be performing Saturday evening in a Pete Seeger sing-along as part of a folk group, Tom Colwell and the Southbound Odyssey.  Also, it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to see a dear friend and classmate from college, who lives in Seattle, and to share in great conversation with her against the backdrop of the folk music at Northwest Folklife.

It turned out to be a delightful Saturday evening for all of us ~ new friendships were made ~ and the rain stayed away for a few hours, too.

The highlights of our visit were plentiful ~ they always are when we visit Seattle.  Here's a few worth sharing:

* A Friday adventure to the Capitol Hill neighborhood provided us with a very hip and delicious French-style lunch at Cafe Presse (near Seattle University), which complemented shopping for books at the newly-relocated indie-bookseller, Elliott Bay Book Company, and shopping for CDs at Elliott Bay Book's next-door neighbor, the eclectic Everyday Music.

* We found time for film on Saturday afternoon by seeing "Ride, Rise, Roar," an informative music documentary revealing the creative process behind David Byrne's 2009 tour.  The screening was part of the Seattle International Film Festival.

* Finally, a return visit to Northwest Folklife on Sunday afternoon allowed us to soak up heartfelt music by some of the many buskers dotting the Seattle Center grounds as well as to enjoy the sound of contemporary Scottish fiddle by The McKassons and a fusion of world percussion by Rhythm Planet Teen Rhythm Ensemble.

By the time we boarded our flight home on Sunday evening, our weekend trip to Seattle reminded me why travel matters.  For me, it's an opportunity to absorb another city's culture, experience a change in decor and landscape, and enjoy great conversation with friends.

Yes, never underestimate the importance of great conversation with friends.