Tony Seeley Photography

Seattle considers itself a bit of a “hip” arty city and you can see evidence of this everywhere you go.  Along the waterfront there are a number of sculptures in our “sculpture park”, we have a large amount of urban art like the troll under the bridge eating a VW Beetle – I’ll photograph that one one day.  We have weird paintings and murals around the city – we even have a gum wall (that’s a wall covered in chewing gum) and of course the “Hammering Man”, a 60 foot animated sculpture outside the Art Museum that is literally a metal dude with a hammer! (No I don’t get that one either).

So we are progressive, and cool and very arty, as you would expect from the city that gave us Jimmy Hendrix and Grunge music.

What’s unusual is that you tend to encounter the “art” in the most surprising places.  For example, the Seattle Public Library.  This is an amazing building that actually justifies a photograph in itself (an idea for another day).  The building is predominantly glass and is bigger at the top that it is at the bottom – really cool.

Inside the Library they have brightly colored escalators (check out my posting on January 28th) and then they have the “Red Room”.  This room is the subject of today’s posting and it’s quite appropriately named.  Basically the Red Room is a room that is completely red! (Told you it had the right name).  The floor, walls and ceiling are all red.  Why is that, you may ask.  What purpose does it serve?

Well, I have no bloody idea!  I even asked at the Library and they just said “because” and then nodded at me in a knowing way.  So they don’t know either.  The bottom line is Seattle is cool and arty, the Public Library is cool and arty, and the Red Room is cool and “RED”.

Does make an interesting picture though…

Carter and Master Chief had a tough day at work today and needed some love – a bit of a cuddle in fact.

When you say Seattle, people tend to think of two things, rain and coffee.  On the coffee front, Seattle is the home of Starbucks, those incredibly clever people who figured out how to charge you over $3 for a cup of coffee.

Starbucks was founded on March 30, 1971 and got it’s name from the book Moby-Dick (the chief mate was called Starbuck).  For the first five years the store was located in Western Avenue in Seattle, but then relocated to this store in Pike Place Market.  So while they say this is the first Starbucks shop, it isn’t really.

Anyway let’s pretend it is – everybody does.  So the owners started off with this one store, and grew to the point where they now have almost 20,000 in 58 countries around the world.  With nearly 13,000 coffee shops or outlets in the US alone driving around Seattle you’d think half of them were here! Starbucks are everywhere, in fact you find them in the same location on opposite sides of the road, they even have a coffee shop at the top of the Space Needle.  And of course Starbucks coffee is sold in all the Microsoft cafeteria’s on campus.

What really drives the coffee association home is that not only do we have Starbucks, but we also have Tully’s.  As you walk/drive around Seattle, across the road from every Starbucks is a Tully’s and here’s the funny bit – they are both FULL of people.  HOW MUCH COFFEE CAN A CITY DRINK?  Clearly the answer is a lot.  Locals have their favorites too, you either love Tully’s or you love Starbucks.  I have no idea how much money is made in Seattle through coffee sales but I bet it’s a hell of a lot – all because of a little coffee bean.

And it all started here.

I’ve taken pictures of this Starbucks in Pike Place Market before but didn’t really like any of the images when I got home. I don’t know why but this one came out OK.  Maybe I like it because it’s not full of people (normally I’m here on Saturday’s and you can’t move in the store).

The guys got excited today when they found my office fridge.  They seemed really happy when they opened the door.