"I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face." - Langston Hughes
Indeed.
A few weeks back, Nature treated the water-logged denizens of Seattle to their first of taste of spring. When I looked outside and saw that conspicuous yellow orb rising on the Eastern horizon, I had to head out.
I spent my day wandering Capitol Hill and reacquainted myself with those places one hardly notices from behind car glass. If winter is guilty of anything, it is this: it makes mere spectators of us all, for what's more adversative to enjoying a city or interacting with its treasures than a 30-degree day or horizontal rain?
Indeed. Spring kissed me "bang" in the face and gave rise to the observations below, one about human nature more generally and the other about this neighborhood we call home.
Spring fever
I've had the privilege of living in many cities throughout my short life, yet I find the citizens of each share at least one thing in common: when the sun begins to re-emerge from its Southern sojourn and the temperature starts to reach its leave-your-jacket-at-home levels, we head for our doors, often in clothing ill-suited for the season it actually is, and engage in a communal form of will: it will be spring.
Near Boston's Newbury Street, a busy shopping district, my co-workers and I would place bets as to when we'd see the season's first short/skirt-wearer. Given Boston's difficult winters, the second its puddles no longer form their icy top sheen, people break out their summer ware. Dressing appropriately for the weather and the common sense that tells us to do so flies out the window. It will be Spring.
On Capitol Hill, I stood on a street corner and watched a car with a flat stutter-step down the street, its driver seemingly unaware. I turned to the stranger next to me (a woman who on the surface appeared distant from me in terms of culture, upbringing and background) and she turned to me, and we began a random conversation about the driver.
Had an umbrella been shielding me from a torrential downpour or had I been driving my car instead of walking on foot, this conversation would never have taken place. Blame it on spring.
On Broadway, outside Vivace, my latte seemed to taste better than ever before. While still a bit too chilly to lounge on their patio-ware, I did so nonetheless and watched the neighborhood ebb and flow in a seemingly never-ending expansion and contraction of different people, cliques and types. Yet, we all were united in one singular group-think: it will be spring.
I doubt many of you require the following call-to-action yet it bears repeating: come make it spring.
Let's re-discover those places, those people and those memories that make Capitol Hill the neighborhood it is. For it, like all neighborhoods, is neither a mere physical location nor simply a shaded region on a map of Seattle. Instead, it is the collective memories, the shared experiences and the physical meeting points that create a neighborhood.
And just as there is no neighborhood without neighbors, there is no spring without us.
Robin Williams once said, "Springtime is nature's way of saying, 'Let's party." Let this column be your invitation.
Bragging rights
When I moved back to the Northwest from New England more than four years ago, I noticed a significant difference between the mind-sets of the two. Namely, it is déclassé here to pass judgment or to critically weigh a set of possibilities and then favor one over others when the basis of your decision is often mere opinion supported by self-serving criteria.
Nonetheless, I do so all the time and I take pride in it. What my friends call "critical," I call discernment and taste.
As a result of my spring-induced walk-about the Hill, I've come to another value-judgment, nay, a challenge to all the neighborhoods that make up the Emerald City.
I'll put Broadway, 15th, 19th, Pike and Pine next to any five streets of in any other neighborhood, and I dare say Capitol Hill comes out ahead.
Perhaps this type of claim is the stuff of madness that poet Emily Dickinson once correlated to the season when she wrote, ""A little Madness in the spring / Is wholesome even for the King" or perhaps it's merely selfish bravado. Whatever it is, it is.
If you take the time to purposefully walk these five streets all in one day, Capitol Hill readily reveals itself to you, the good and the bad. Taken together, the sum total of this neighborhood with its rich diversity of people, businesses and places make it "pound for pound" the best neighborhood in the city.
That's not to brush aside the challenges the Hill faces. From the ill-served homeless population to the aesthetically-bereft design decisions some businesses make (anyone else notice that fake car perched above a new bar on Broadway? Just what the street needed, right, a little taste of South-Beach-cum-Vegas), the neighborhood is far from deserving the "sh**hole" label The Stranger gave it a few years back.
Indeed, if you add up the positives and subtract the negatives of each neighborhood in Seattle, I dare say the balance beam leans toward us and Capitol Hill.
Mario Paduano's column typically appears in the third issue of each month. Reach him at editor@capitol hilltimes.com.[[In-content Ad]]
