Seattle On

On culture:

Seattle is a techno city. Its downtown has about it the smoothness of a microchip. All of its defining buildings—the Central Library, the Columbia Tower, the Union Square towers, its stadiums—are new and capture the spirit of 21st century technology and utopianism. On our best days, the air is as clear as the glass. If there is any history here, it is a history of the future. The city’s landmark, the Space Needle, does not point to the past but to tomorrowland. If an impression of the past is what you are after, go to Portland; if you want to feel the future, this is the city to be in.

And one of the best ways to get an excellent view of this city’s bold futurism is to rent a small electric “duffy” boat on Lake Union (The Electric Boat Company) at dusk, head out into the water, cut the engine, and—while drinking wine and listening to the “sonic fiction” of THEESatisfaction or OC Notes—watch the sun set on the towers that rise from South Lake Union and fall at the border between downtown’s civic area and Pioneer Square. A view of the future opens wide when the city’s glass reflects the light of a setting sun.

Charles Mudede

it is the history of the future