Seattle! How is it now? Are there jobs? Should I move there?

a) where do you score your weed?
b) you work at Tully's, Laddro, or Vivace?
c) how many records have you pressed this week?
d) what web programming languages do you use?

I'm not sure what support from Microsoft could have done to change the opinion of some fucking Aberdeen-area Democrat fuckhead. (forgive me for being angry right now.)

However, the passing of this bill would have effectively forced more homophobe-run businesses in rural Washington to abide by the same standards... so this basically means that if you're gay and you live in a small crazily homophobic Washington state town, you'll still be denied a job or lease or house purchase by homophobic owners or employers, if they happen to care about that type of thing. Aside from maybe Hoquiam or Chehalis, I can't think of any town in western Washington that would discriminate against non-straights. Eastern Washington is a whole different bag, but I don't know too many gay friends of mine who would want to move to eastern Washington anyway.
And then again, loonies exist in their own creepy oases in the most liberal strongholds, too.

Ah shit, oh well, at least we didn't pass a law that bans gay couples from being able to be foster parents like Texas just did.

I'm seriously thinking of the move. Talked to the family tonight and couldn't quite bring myself to tell them! Perhaps the next step is to snag a cheap ticket from Southwest and scope it out. I also am kind of interested to hear that Cantwell's Senate race looks to be highly competitive in 06, and there's a big Seattle contingent with some fairly shrewd activists over at the Daily Kos (the dKos play by play on the battle over the governor's race was extraordinary - and I read about the Micro$oft thing over there too). So I could volunteer on some political campaigns when I'm not busy obsessing about music.

Til then, uh, stuck inside of RI with the DC blues again..

But Seattle has tons of lefty organizations, if that's what you feel comfortable doing. It's a potpourri of "commie" groups here. \

FEEL TEH LENIN!

(You can feel the statue, literally, if you visit Fremont)

..so perhaps you could come in and kick some ass in a similar group.. maybe in relation to the Cantwell reelection effort in '06. Washington state Democratic politicians really need to wake the fuck up and realize that they can't assume they'll get elected because "Seattle is big enough to elect me, so I don't need to try that hard."

haha i'm in DC and haven't had a job for six months

Donut's right, though, that for a long time there has been a sense of apathy in Seattle, a tendency taking things for granted. Traditionally, it's just not been a very "political" state. But that's changing out of neccesity, so it's an interesting time to be here.

As for the chances of the election getting overturned shrinking, well, the trial starts in May. We'll see what happens, but I'm not sure that time passing is making it any less likely; it just means I worry about it less.

Late to the thread here, but it's 74 and sunny here today, and there is NO BETTER PLACE TO BE.

Well, just because some spineless asshat manager at MS caves in to some local freaky preacher man, doesn't make Microsoft more "liberal" than Coors, necessarily. It's The Stranger's M.O. to make really shocking sensational headlines, and then have the story be far more detailed and less shocking than the headline.

I don't know how liberal or not Coors is.. but Microsoft hasn't stopped supporting same-sex/domestic partner benefits for its gay and lesbian full-time employees here. Microsoft basically did what any corporation these days would do when confronted by an angry mob of wacky fundamentalists: "OK, we'll pretend we're giving in to these wackos just to shut them up, even if it makes a few liberal wackos mad... the less trouble, the better". Capitalism has always bred this "neutral to the outside/progressive on the inside" standard in major corporations in western Washington state. It's been the M.O. for years. Had Washington Mutual been the target instead of Microsoft, they would have done the same thing, probably. Just wait a few months, now that the fundies "got their wish" and the gay civils right bill didn't pass, and all of this will be forgotten. Business as usual. :/

Trust me.. I thought it was an especially stupid thing for Smith to do myself -- especially, now that the Stranger has narrowed in on the large carcass to exploit it and give MS shit about it... and MS deserves it.

(p.s. Donut: I couldn't send you them akwid tracks I promised last night; will do sometime this weekend).

Grad school in the humanities: DONT GO. SERIOUSLY DONT GO. EVERYONE. IS. MISERABLE. & has Stockholm Syndrome.

Hehehe. I have to say when I left in 1996 I was glad never to have looked back.

In any case, Hutcherson said it wasn't the end of his efforts. Even though the bill failed yesterday, he plans to visit two other companies that endorsed it to express his displeasure. Hutcherson would not name the businesses. Companies that endorsed the bill include Boeing, Nike, Washington Mutual, Vulcan and Hewlett-Packard.

Great.

Another mini-sideshow surrounding the bill involved rumors that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, which has opposed such bills for years, was neutral this year.

Interesting.

Anyway, sorry for polluting Daria's thread with this gar-bahge.

i guess what bugs me is that i feel a church should have more class... a converted retail store doesn't really set the right vibe for eternal salvation. some of these big suburban joints are hard to distinguish from targets or wal-marts, at least from a distance

!!!

I must know who this is

Also, welcome to Seattle!

I wouldn't call anything west of 12th the pit of despair, but you are in highly-overpriced territory. Anything between 13th and 19th is probably a little nicer and cheaper actually.

Also, don't be afraid to go south of Pike St. Some friends of mine are super happy to have found a place around 17th and Union. (They moved from Austin, and apparently they bringing tons of their friends along to move here as well... which isn't surprising, given both are both smallish, centralized, tech-y cities... surely the same is happening with PDX as well.)

If you don't smoke, don't have pets, and don't mind a carpeted pad, your task will be a gazillion times easier to find a one-bedroom rental, speaking from experience.

the advice to walk and look around is the best thing mentioned on this thread. a great apartment next to my house sat open for 6 months because all the (lazy) landlords did was put a sign up on one utility pole.

As for a fap, it'd be fun to have one outside. play ping pong or croquet and drinkdrinkdrink. We must welcome A Lingbert!

Closing the libraries for a month.

Now that there’s less ambiguity than there was a week ago on what the response here would be like, I’m fairly sanguine about how this will all go here in the next few months, at least healthwise. Wrenching for performance groups, will be fatal for an unknown number of restaurants.

Anyway to check in on the questions in the thread title, Seattle is fine tho anyone who has lived here even a little bit longer than I have could justifiably say it sucks now; there’s jobs of certain kinds and low unemployment but as a loathsome computer person my perspective on jobs is irrelevant; and you should move here bc the weather is perfect 400 days a year.

Your weather is crap

The whole west coast needs to grow a couple of seasons like a real biome

We have two seasons! Wet and dry.

Both are good.

The Stranger just laid off a bunch of staff, pausing print distribution.

literally every good reporter who worked there in my 7 years here is long gone at this point and transphobic asswipe K***e H****g is among the laid off and T*m K**k is a big ol piece of shit in general and I shed no tears for this institution

genuinely pleased K H is unemployed

JoeStork and I have a good friend who just got laid off by the Stranger today (not KH, obvs), so maybe cool it with the schadenfreude?

:/ I’m of course sorry for your friend’s circumstances in this troubled time.

Very hard not to take pleasure in KH’s tbh, I’m p vindictive on this score. Though of course she’ll probably end up coming out ahead on the terf lecture circuit. Assuming that’s a thing.

I’m sure she’ll score a gig at Quillette or the Atlantic or something. The Stranger still had some good arts writers and if it goes completely under a big source of promotion for local music/film/art disappears.

anyway sorry, really, for being so blasé about people who are not KH losing their jobs, obviously justice would've been better served by her being fired for being bad

not sure if there’s a more active all-purpose thread about Seattle (there’s about 20,000 user-specific FAP threads in the archives and i didn’t want to create another one) so sorry if this isn’t the best place to ask this BUT:

i will be coming up to Seattle in a couple weeks (the 20th through the 24th). it is my second time visiting, but my first time was for a conference and i didn’t get to do much exploring then. anything fun/cool going on around that time? shows, events, exhibitions, etc? any particular restaurants/food that i absolutely must try? good record stores? ftr i am staying downtown and will not have access to a car.