It was a perfectly awful weekend here in Memphis, which has the virtue of making me think more seriously about a job opportunity that has presented itself in Seattle. I’ve visited there but only a week at a time, and I’m looking for the sort of information about the city that’s not in guidebooks and such.
So, people who live or have lived in Seattle: tell me the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and the uncommon about your town. See also: Vancouver.
If she doesn’t come through, solicit the opinion of needscoffee!
If you believe you will have a hard time living in a place that is essentially perpetually damp (but rarely actually wet), then Do Not Even Consider Moving To Seattle.
I grew up in a town with a very similar climate (several hundred miles north, but the general climate was similar). It will be some combination of drizzling and overcast for closer to 300 days a year than not. If you’re a sun lover, it’s not a good choice for you.
There are some people who embrace the all-pervasive dampness and some people who go bug nuts along about day 45 of “not having seen any blue sky”. If you think you might fall into category 2, give it a pass.
On the other hand, actual SNOW is fairly uncommon (and generally does not last long when it does fall). Also, serious rain is also fairly uncommon. Mostly, the rainfall, while very, very frequent, tends not to exceed “mild drizzle” in intensity. It is, however, largely what people who come from the South view as “chilly” most of the time. Even in summertime, jeans generally are reasonably comfortable to wear and, unlike my current home in the Southwest, you never actually have to consider whether wearing sleeves and/or pants that cover your knees will make you spontaneously burst into flame.
Full-blooded Seattleite here! I’ve never been to Memphis so I can’t really compare the two, but I love my city and have no problem assuming that it’s better than everywhere else! 
That said, I’ll try to give some relatively unbiased bullet points:
The Good
[ul]
[li]The weather - it doesn’t rain as much as everybody thinks; summers in particular are beautiful and full of sunshine. Also, it never gets very humid – I’ve been to the east coast enough times, and it’s disgusting, I don’t know how anybody lives over there.[/li][li]The city - it’s a very small “big city.” A dense urban core with lots of amenities but not so large as to be confusing or intimidating.[/li][li]The scenery! If you like mountains and forests, we’ve got you covered, with the stately Olympics just across the Sound to the west, and the lush Cascades creeping up in the east.[/li][li]Cost of living: pretty reasonable for a city. A steal compared to New York or San Francisco.[/li][li]Politics: your mileage may vary, of course, but if you lean progressive/socialist/communist/anarchist, you’ll like Seattle. If you’re a diehard conservative, well, there’s always Bellevue.[/li][/ul]
The Bad
[ul]
[li]The weather. It turns out it does rain nearly as much as everybody thinks in the winter. Lots of grey days, and it’s dark by 4:30. On the plus side, it pretty much never snows.[/li][li]Public transit. We seem to still be trying to figure this out. Our metro transit is facing funding cuts and reduced service, with outlying areas being difficult to navigate by bus.[/li][li]Traffic. Related to above. If you plan to drive, be aware that traffic will not be kind to you. We’re not really doing anything to help matters either, unless you count beginning a multi-billion dollar tunnel-boring project and then getting the machine stuck underground forever.[/li][/ul]
The Ugly
[ul]
[li]The pizza. It’s hard to find a good slice downtown. If you’re used to a tradition of high-quality east coast pizza, what passes for it here might horrify you.[/li][li]The hipsters. Despite repeated efforts to get a measure on the ballot, it is not currently legal to punch them.[/li][/ul]
I have family in Collierville and have visited for a week or two several times a year since 2011. Don’t really know Memphis proper.
Have lived in a Seattle for 25 years.
You will be
Right, I guess I should have mentioned this when I said “reasonable cost of living.” I meant primarily renting in the non-downtown-highrise areas, like Fremont, where you can get a reasonably nice 1 or 2 bedroom for under $1200 a month. Actually buying a house anywhere in the city itself is more of a “drop a suitcase full of benjamins for the down payment” affair, and not a slim attache or nothin’, neither. :eek:
I live a good hour south of Seattle, so my general experience of the city is “It’s a really fun place to spend a day or a weekend, but I wouldn’t want to live there”. It’s expensive, traffic is a nightmare, good LUCK finding a parking spot for less than $15, and you can’t even get a bag at the grocery store anymore.
That being said, it’s one of the most culturally rich cities I’ve ever been to, and you can have a lot of fun just walking around downtown Seattle. EMP, the Pacific Science Center, and the Seattle Art Museum are all must-sees, there’s a lively music scene and some really great venues that host both big and small acts, and there are some really great oddball cultural events that happen once in awhile. For example: A few years ago they hauled 30 dump trucks of snow out to Seattle Center so they could break the Guinness record for the world’s biggest snowball fight [which I participated in], and on Cinco de Mayo weekend this year they held a taco truck competition with about two dozen trucks from around the area offering samples and small plates, along with luchadors from the local indie wreastling league competing for the title of “Taco Libre Champion”.
There’s lots of great food to be found, and because I love to write about food I’ll expand thereupon. My personal recommendations, based on places I’ve eaten, would be, in no particular order;
But I digress.
I’ve said this before, because it really shocked me to see how the gloomy weather affected my quality of life. After all, life goes on everywhere, right?–it shouldn’t really matter. You can ride a bike or go jogging any season,…
But in Seattle, the permanent, non-stop grey affects looms over you, all day, every day… and gradually seeps into your mind.
My cite:
There have been thousands of songs written about blue skies, sunshine, and happiness.
There have been zero songs written about gloomy grey skies, chilly drizzle, and happiness.
Of course – I guess there are a lot of things that you just get used to when you live in Seattle; I didn’t even think to mention the bags! :smack: Basically, plastic bags are agin’ th’law here now. You can request paper, but grocery stores are obligated to charge you five shiny cents per bag. It’s stupid and misguided (those “reusable” nylon grocery bags have a huge carbon footprint compared to paper or even plastic), but it’s what we’re stuck with. If you move here, I suggest finding an illicit plastic bag dealer.
Memo’s in the U district saved my life so many times when I was at the UW. When I was slaving away in the basement labs, three in the morning, and I’d been up for thirty hours staring at an FPGA and bashing my head against some branch delay slot bug or other, the need for a burrito could become overwhelming. Or two burritos. They weren’t the best burritos I’ve had in the city since (those come from a little hole in the wall called La Vaca, downtown near Pike Place), but to a hungry and weary engineering student who’d had nothing but Mountain Dew and Snickers bars for two days, they were ambrosia.
Oh, and Dick’s. I forgot to mention that everyone in Seattle loves Dicks. 
Are you sure it was near the Neptune? The Neptune is in the U district, not downtown. Best hole-in-the-wall mediterranean I know of downtown is Falafel King, which is right across from Showgirls. 
It might have been the Moore.