"SEATTLE - NO WAITING" a Seattle Travel Page by JohnnySpangles

Seattle is way up north; in fact it’s probably about as far north as you can go in the USA without getting your bum bitten by a polar bear.

It’s a groovy enough city but it’s nowhere near as big as New York or LA, although it does have a nice little clutch of skyscrapers. However they form more of a token gesture towards appearing like a proper American city rather than being anything a big monkey would feel comfortable climbing up. The rest of Seattle is based around the water and to prove it there are boats, ferries, piers, docks and probably lots of fish swimming around somewhere.

There are also trains carrying containers around. I know about this because I had to wait at a crossing for one to pass by whilst I was on my way to the hotel. For the fun of it I began to count the trucks. After ten minutes, three engines and one hundred and forty six trucks I finally got to cross the tracks. That’s a lot of train. The front of the train had probably only travelled about ten feet to reach its destination.

The Edgewater Hotel is one of the best hotels I’ve ever stayed in, indeed maybe the absolute best ever. It was good enough for the Beatles to have stayed in, or so says the brass plate under the framed sheet in reception that features Ringo’s bed-stain. The only disconcerting thing about the hotel was the sign on the front door informing clients that; ‘Concealed weapons are not allowed in this hotel’. This is reassuring in one sense, because they don’t allow them, however on the other hand it makes no mention of there being such a ban on unconcealed weapons.

The hotel extends outwards over Pugit Sound on stilts. Consequently there was a sheer drop from my window to the water. On my first evening a seal swam by my window, which I thought was a rather nice touch. According to the barman it’s not unknown for whales to be buggering about out there as well. Thereafter I made sure I had an ample supply of clubs and harpoons in my room, all of which were readily available from the hotel shop.

The chap I was meeting in Seattle was in the process if applying for a ‘Green Card’. This allows a body to live and work in the USA without messing about with all the visa nonsense, but the authorities are very picky about who they hand these things out to. Known fruit smugglers and drug users go to the end of the queue, likewise anybody who’s had any run-ins with the law. So far he’d been very good. He’d kept himself clear of any citrus shenanigans and there hadn’t been anything up his nose apart from his finger. Therefore his application was looking promising. Well it was, until he took me out in Seattle.

In hindsight we picked the wrong restaurant. This wasn’t immediately apparent at the beginning of the evening as the barman was very friendly. Indeed every time our glasses were drained, another martini appeared. This generosity on his behalf was greatly appreciated and we supped long into the evening. Therefore it should have come as no surprise to the management when we started to fall over, shriek and urinate on our bar stools.

Furthermore if they had any real concerns about the safety of their staff, perhaps they should have thought twice about offering us a restaurant table. Putting a menu in front of us was nothing but outrageous provocation, bringing food an act of war and asking us if we were enjoying it was nothing short of professional suicide. So the net result was that we upset the waiter with our high spirited fun and games. Indeed we upset him to the point that he refused to serve us any more. It took us some time to work out that he was serious and that we weren’t going to get any pudding. Instead he theatrically sought out the only clean spot he could find in the melange of spilled drinks and food-fight fallout then placed our bill down with some contempt.

I decided that such surly and unreasonable behaviour on the part of the waiter was worthy of reporting to the management. I made my feelings known to both the manager and the waiter at the same time. It was at this point that things started to turn decidedly sour. The extension of hostilities may have been due to my liberal use of several graphic swear words, that I mistakenly thought they wouldn’t know of in America, or the fact that my friend was now unconscious with his face down in has pasta. The manager, a highly disrespectful fellow, suggested that unless we vacated his establishment forthwith it was very likely that the Seattle Police Department would put in an appearance. So it was that we were forced to stumble hurriedly from the restaurant, lest we spent the night locked up with drunkards.

This wasn’t to be my only tangling with waiters in Seattle, and I am reasonably convinced that they’re all a bunch of miserable scrotes. Take this as fair warning. Waiting staff in America have attitudes. In Seattle they have perfected the art of the attitude to the point that they get the hump if you make any suggestion whatsoever that they are there to serve you. They are your equal and if you want to avoid any trouble I suggest you buy your waiter a drink, tell him to take it easy and go sort your own food out with the chef. Just make sure you do like I did and give the surly sod a swift kick on the way out, to remind him of what’s what, then run like buggery before the police get there.