I Hate Seattle

If anyone peruses this who has not yet lived in Seattle, try this experiment to see if you would like the winters here:

Put a thick layer of translucent gray plastic over all of your windows in your house. At 4:15 pm (or at least no later than 5:30, given that 4:15 is about the earliest sundown in the middle of winter) close all of your blinds and draw your curtains, do not open them until about 8:30am the next day (no, we don't do this in Seattle, but it's to give you an idea of how little sunlight you'll see)
Get a humidifier and run that sucker until the house gets really dank and musty, but keep the heat low (or, if it's summer, turn the AC to about 65).
Watch the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey at least once a day (for some reason, Seattle reminds me of that movie, dim light, slow pace, very little dialog).

Try that for 2 weeks and then imagine living like that for about 5 months of the year.

Notice how, for a city that boasts about its political liberality and being "so far ahead" they've failed to have any impact even within their own state.

Name one President of the U.S. or notable political figure from Washington. Someone might point to cabinet members from WA who were appointed, but, come on, we're not talking Secretary of State here, drug Czar is about as high up as it gets for them.

Sure, WA has the usual reps they send to congress, just like every state. All I've ever heard from them in the media is their muttering about a few local interests that most of the rest of the country couldn't give a shit about.

Locally, all the WA politicians seem to do is point fingers among the "Seattle" and "rest of the state" delegation and ensuring that they strike the type of compromises that make the least amount of people happy, yet that cost the most to implement.

I hear and read inane, self-inflated statements about how, according to some of the provincial Pro-Seattle goobers, Seattle is supposed to be a "role model" for other cities, including NY and DC. The deluded Seattle snobs will point to something stupid like "Seattle started its recycling program before DC did, so [ipso facto in Seattle logic] DC was copying Seattle when they implemented theirs."

I read that last example in an article; someone actually wrote that opinion and it was published in a Seattle paper.

Here's the example:
http://crosscut.com/2010/02/15/seattle/19594/
Of course, this could be satire, hard to say. The guy does shoot back a little criticism Seattle's way at the end.

Aside from that, notice how myopic it is: "psychological challenge" of moving away from Seattle -- trading "microbrews for Michelob" -- every city in the U.S. has hundreds of microbrews available, DC being no exception -- this guy obviously didn't go out much on his trip to the nation's capitol. And the kicker "the Seattleization of DC" Here's a clue: DC has a bigger "center of the universe" complex than just about any city in America. They barely even regard Seattle.

Even if the author was being satirical, it still reflects the attitudes a lot of people in Seattle have about themselves and the rest of the country.

Why must the people in Seattle always find something shitty to say about other places in the U.S. (or even internationally)?

Particularly places that they've never visited or maybe visited once?

They seem to think that everywhere but Seattle is a backward hayseed city, with crumbling infrastructure and out of control crime. They will be quick to point out where it rains more or which city has worse traffic congestion.

This is usually manifest as a straw-man argument:
Observant person: Seattle's traffic sure sucks
Seattleite: Oh yeah? (snort, sniff) Well, I once visited Los Angeles and thought I was going to get run off the road!

or

You mention a recent trip to another city like Denver or Phoenix.
Seattleite makes a face and starts to go on about how Phoenix is a crime-ridden hellhole baking in the heat or how Denver is "too dusty," too cold, or at too high of an altitude; meanwhile mentioning that they think the Cascades are so much more scenic than the Rockies.
Trivia that I didn't care about but now know due to Seattleites: statistically, DC and NYC get more rain (in inches) than Seattle per year. Umm, yeah, but NYC and DC also don't sit under 7 layers of dreary cloud cover for 5 months out of the year.

For people who live in a city of proverbial glass houses, Seatteites throw a lot of stones.

Have you ever gone to a Seattle area store where a sales clerk comes up and asks if they can help you, then, when you tell them what you're looking for, they pretend they have no idea what you're talking about?

One example: in a store that sells appliances, I asked where the food processors were; the response: "food processor?"(blinks in confusion). Turns out, what I was looking for was a few aisles over from where we were standing.

When I first moved here, I had a lot of traveler's checks because I needed to change banks (my old bank didn't have a branch up here). I went shopping at a chain department store, buying household stuff. The lady at the cash register acted like she had never seen or even heard of a traveler's check. She asked: "What's this? Where did you get this? I don't know what to do with this." She even looked at a stamped signature (if you're not familiar with them, traveler's checks have an embossed signature of the bank's president someone like that, on part of it; this is distinct from your own signature line and is obviously printed as part of the traveler's check) and asked "do you know that person?" pointing at it.

This is tantamount to looking at a dollar bill and asking the person if they know the secretary of treasury because his or her signature is on it.

Eventually, I got the manager, who was able to help me. According to her, her store had no issues with accepting traveler's checks and their policy was to process them just like any other transaction, but she could not explain her employee's ignorance. In no way did she apologize or even attempt to address the issue with her employee -- if anything she acted like she was doing me a favor by accepting my traveler's check.

This could conceivably happen anywhere because stupidity is ubiquitous, but I don't think I've encountered it elsewhere to quite the degree as I have here.

Who else thought they'd gotten a flat tire when they first started driving here?

A slow cadence of "Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud"

All the while either stuck in traffic or behind behind some yahoos going 58 in the right and left lanes simultaneously in a 60mph zone?

Some of it, I guess, goes back to poor work ethic. Under other circumstances, I'd sympathize with the city planners for not having much to work with but, most likely, they spend their days standing around with a cup of coffee, studying survey charts, looking simultaneously studious and confused.