by Peter Millar
For my main course I’ve ordered a starter-sized portion – always a safe option at lunch, American main course dishes can be humongous – Dungeness crab with Chilean bay shrimp, globe peppers and Japanese ‘puko-style’ breadcrumbs with a Thai sweet chilli sauce. I don’t often let the menu speak for itself but this is every bit as good as that sounds, even if I still haven’t a clue what ‘puko-style’ means. Pure heaven. As I bite into it, my faith in the small god of incidental music, breaking free from the confines of my iPod now to the restaurant’s sound system, contributes an old song by Bryan Ferry: ‘More than this, there is nothing!’ A bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but right now it would seem churlish to disagree.
Odd circumstances, then, in which to think of the challenge of industrial espionage. That, however, is the thought that automatically comes into my mind as I involuntarily catch snatches of conversation wafting over me from the two other men eating at the bar. It’s easy enough to ignore the bit about property prices, a global staple though high-employment Seattle has remained relatively sheltered from the sub-prime collapse. But after a few minutes I can’t help hitting on a whole series of archetypal Seattle buzzwords: ‘system backup’, ‘soft viruses’, ‘overly proprietorial hookups’ and similar. Computer geek-speak obviously, but then Seattle is home to Microsoft, the world’s biggest corporation. This is the city that prides itself on having made ‘geeks’ chic.
Such is the pulling power of the United States most northerly and most westerly metropolis – despite its famously dreary weather – that a recent issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine boasted of ‘50 ways in which Seattle will change the world’. And what makes otherwise dodgy bar-room eavesdropping so tempting is that they just might be right. Amid such questionable boons to humanity as the enhancement of the world bestselling Halo 3 ‘shoot me up’ computer game, the magazine’s list included dozens of serious scientific projects under development in the greater Seattle area from a potential cure for cot death, to a handheld machine for diagnosing tropical diseases to a hyper-effective wave energy generator (Washington State gets the biggest waves of any stretch of US coastline outside Alaska). In other words if you’re worried about child health care, Third World development or alternative energy, Seattle is a good place to start looking for answers. Greater Seattle is taking over from California as the place where America designs tomorrow for the rest of us.
That doesn’t mean we have to like it. Amongst the other plans being drawn up locally are a few that sound like escapees from science-fiction plots: spaceships that can take off from airport runways (including an intercontinental bomber capable of 10 times the speed of sound, ref: Dr Strangelove, Starship Troopers), a Pentagon-commissioned ultrasound instant blood coagulator that could stop bleeding straight away (ref: Star Trek’s Dr McCoy), micro-implants in the human body to grant keyless access to your home, office or car (I, Robot, The Fifth Element), ‘brain-fingerprinting’ that could prove innocence or guilt by automatically detecting reactions to a crime scene (Minority Report). Just to prove this last one isn’t necessarily negative, the magazine cites an early version used in Iowa in 2003 to help clear a man who had served 25 years for a murder he didn’t commit.
Then there’s the sky elevator made of nano-strips of super-tough carbon that will extend 62,000 miles to a geo-stationary satellite, be held taut by the earth’s rotation and be ascended with minimal energy by a robot the size of a Boeing 747 to transfer cargo to spacecraft (Arthur C. Clarke passim) That one might sound the most fantastic, but they actually have a delivery date, albeit not exactly imminent: October 2031.
Time therefore to get a satellite’s eye view of the man who not so much inspired the white heat of the technological revolution as the white rage of fury most of his customers feel when faced with the blue screen of death on a computer running Microsoft Windows: Bill Gates himself. Actually, it’s easy enough to get a satellite view of the Gates’ estate – just go to Google Earth – but it’s a good excuse for trying what I had been tipped was the best way to fully appreciate Seattle’s extraordinary geographical location: from above.
As it happens in Seattle, nothing could be easier. What is still called Lake Union is actually now a bay on the Lake Washington Ship Canal that cuts across the north of the peninsula on which Seattle sits, separating the commercial heart of the city from the student-dominated university district. It not only hosts a marina of pleasure craft – Seattle has enough berths to provide two spaces for every three citizens – and some expensive little waterfront homes, virtually built out onto the lake, but also a couple of small seaplane companies.
An aerial sightseeing tour might seem an extravagant indulgence but here it is nothing of the sort and rates as one of the best value, most exhilarating treats you can give yourself. There is a seaplane taxi service out to the islands, and that probably is an indulgence, but at the time of writing the 20-minute air tour of Seattle cost an affordable and highly worthwhile $67.50 a head (£35). And believe me, the ride is worth it. I mean, how many times do most of us actually get to take off from and land on water?
To book my ride I had called in advance the nice young woman who runs the front desk for Seattle Seaplanes. The aerial side of operations is actually a one-man show run by a genial white-haired pilot in his fifties called Jim Chrysler. He used to call it Chrysler Air, but motor manufacturers can be a bit touchy about their trademarks. It could have led to problems if anyone had assumed Jim’s little business was Mercedes-Benz’s attempt to emulate Rolls-Royce with a leap into the aerospace sector.
In fact, Seattle Seaplanes has just one seaplane, a little, single-engined Cessna that sits at the end of a wooden jetty, along from the neat little shack that serves as an office. It looks more like it should be selling bait and fishing tackle than serving as a check-in for an airline.
I stumble in through the door, somewhat out of breath from the longer-than-expected yomp up from the city – taxis as ever in America proving remarkably thin on the ground – to find Jim talking to three other customers, guys from Chicago in their mid-twenties who’re holidaying in Seattle and taking the flight as a birthday treat for one of them. Jim is a genial but gruff bloke with a big droopy white moustache that just vaguely suggests a minor character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He also has a very droll sense of humour.
‘Have you been doing this long, sir?’ asks one of my three slightly nervous about-to-be fellow travellers in the six-seater seaplane. Jim turned, eyed the young man up and down and said coolly:
‘What’s today’s date?’
‘Uh? The sixth, sir.’
‘Hmmm, not that long then,’ comes the deadpan reply, neatly rounded off with: ‘The regular guy’s not on today.’
I watch the nervous doubt on my fellow passenger’s face turn to scepticism and finally, as Jim grins broadly, the suspicion he’s being teased. Nonetheless, they’re more than happy to let me sit up front, alongside the pilot, with the propeller just inches in front of my nose and a parallel set of controls in front of me. Jim gives flying lessons as well. Then he turns the key in the ignition, with a sound disconcertingly reminiscent of cranking up a Morris Minor and starts the little seaplane taxiing out at the legal limit of seven knots an hour across Lake Union.
Then there’s a shuddering under the floats as we accelerate to what seems breathtaking speed but is, Jim shouts over the roar of the engines, just over 45 mph. And we lift off smoothly from the wake of white waves left on the lake surface and see the city falling away beneath us. There’s a giddy feeling of euphoric freedom in a small plane flying above a big city, exaggerated by the surreal sight of the controls in front of me moving to and fro, echoing Jim’s.
Up and away we soar on a par with, then above the skyscrapers of the downtown area, out over the sound and the lakes, and immediately it is apparent what a blessed situation Seattle has, straddling the peninsula at the heart of a vast oceanic lakeland. How fragile and improbable the two floating bridges look, the longest in the world,
a silver-grey filament a mile and a half long strung across the northern half of Lake Washington, and the world’s second longest linking the city to Mercer Island further south. Then we turn, banking steeply enough to draw sharp intakes of breath from all of us but smiling Jim, out over rugged Bellevue peninsula.
‘That’s the Gates’ place, down there,’ says Jim, nodding with his head to indicate a line of waterfront mansions far below. ‘His is the one with the silver roof.’
Gates is America’s richest man and the story of his rise to head of a globe-spanning software empire from origins as a lad tinkering with electronics in his dad’s garage is legendary. What is less known is that although far from a multi-millionaire he wasn’t exactly a poor boy either. The rags to riches story actually belongs to another of Seattle’s most famous sons – Jimi Hendrix (whose body was brought back here to be buried). The Gateses are an old Seattle family and amongst those who always preferred to live out on the islands rather than in the city. So by building his mansion out here he was not so much opting into an exclusive community as continuing a family tradition. In fact, the most striking thing is how densely packed they are, these billionaire’s mansions along the shoreline, each with their private jetty. I suppose I had imagined Bill’s billions would have bought him not just luxury but seclusion. But then the mega-rich are not exactly exceptions to the rule out here. And maybe he just likes to be sociable with the neighbours: for the first (and last) time in my American odyssey the music that springs to mind unbidden hails not from these shores but from Lancashire, an ancient George Formby song: ‘If you could see, what I can see, when I’m cleaning Windows!’
For the next 20 minutes or so, we bank and climb and all but hover just beneath the blanket of cloud that even Seattle’s greatest admirers admit is their city’s habitual cover. Then we wheel down audaciously to loop round the ‘Space Needle’, concrete proof that even in the city where they invent tomorrow today, they still had a pretty daft idea of it yesterday: yet another silly sixties ‘observation tower’. The city fathers who authorised its building for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition no doubt imagined that towards the end of the first decade of that century the Jetsons would be flying round it in their cartoon space bubble cars. Instead it’s still being buzzed by vintage seaplanes.
Then we are coasting down once again onto the surface of the lake, skimming the waves to come to a halt smoother than on many wheeled aircraft I’ve flown on. It occurs to me that maybe ‘landing’ isn’t the right word on a seaplane. The French use ‘amerissage’ for landing on la mer as opposed to ‘aterrissage’ for coming back to terra firma but they also used ‘alunissage’ for the lunar landing, which is either very clever or just plain silly.
Back to earth, as it were, I decide I really must go and take a close-up look at the ‘big spike’ we just flew around. Not because I found it particularly impressive – even though it is Seattle’s most famous landmark – but because I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be as tacky a remnant of the World Fair craze as the crumbling concrete in Spokane. The recommended way to get there, according to Big Jim’s assistant, is by monorail. Involuntarily I cringe: ‘monorail’, like the Jetsons’ bubble hovercars, was one of those concepts of the future that figured heavily back in the sixties. I had an Understanding Science book for boys that depicted twenty-first century people queuing up at platforms in the sky to board monorails. But then they were all wearing what appeared to be Superman suits, something that seemed not just improbable but impossible until the advent of Lycra, and given the evolution of the human shape it will hopefully still be some time before we are all wearing it.
For a long time, however, monorails maintained a strangely magical grip on the human imagination: witness the episode of the Simpsons in which the people of Springfield, encouraged to build this extravagantly expensive piece of technology to get one up on neighbouring Shelbyville, go into a crazed song and dance routine chanting, ‘monorail! monorail!’ In fact, monorails do exist all over the world nowadays but rarely as anything more than short-distance transits; airport terminal shuttle transfers spring to mind. Seattle’s monorail starts on the third floor of a modern downtown shopping mall, which must have replaced one – or at least something of the same height – that was here back in 1962.
The monorail itself is, inevitably, a bit of an embarrassment. It is obviously painfully old, and despite the fact that its total length is not more than a couple of hundred yards at most it still requires a driver, unlike London’s computerised Docklands Light Railway, itself already more than a quarter century old. And the monorail can’t even leave the single rail it straddles.
Unfortunately, because up until now I’ve been impressed with this low-key user-friendly city, the Seattle Center at the other end is not much better: the usual sad, sorry collection of run-down amusement: a rickety roller-coaster, roundabout with flaking paint, tacky ice-cream parlour and cafeteria serving greasy food. I’m dismally reminded of a run-down British seaside pier stubbornly harking back to its Victorian glory while resolutely running to seed. Perhaps there is simply nothing more ephemeral than a purpose-built tourist attraction. And then I think of the Eiffel Tower and even the giant wheel of the London Eye, both of which – the former in particular – have gone on to outlast their creators’ expectations.
Seattle’s ‘Space Needle’ must indeed offer fine views of the city, I concede, though having just experienced an overview vastly more impressive – and exciting – than anything it can offer, I’m far from tempted to join the queue. I have the recent memory of my Sears Building experience in Chicago engrained in my brain like an acid scar. But looking up at this extraordinary and essentially useless concrete spire I realise that if there is any merit in these curious mid-twentieth-century failed visions of the future, it is as grandiose follies, a more modern version of Victorian mock-Gothic turreted towers. To me it looks faintly embarrassing, like a 1970s hairstyle. But then I know people who say I’ve still got one of those. In any case Seattle is not quickly going to be rid of it: what else would they put on the T-shirts?
Unless of course, it’s The Japanese Gourmet, or probably any one of several dozen other excellent eating houses. I make no excuses for describing another meal in Seattle, if only because it was probably the best sushi I have ever had. The Japanese Gourmet is a relatively small, mid-priced eating house back down near Pike Place, but, I reason, anything that serves raw fish next to one of the world’s outstanding fish markets can’t be all bad. And it’s not. In fact, it’s wonderful.
Never have I tasted better, fresher, more melt-in-your mouth tuna – tonbo, fresh albacore, not easy to get at all in most places. Then hunks of juicy cooked snow crab leg meat, bound on to the sushi rice by strips of seaweed. A succulent piece of tai snapper is marred – for me – only slightly by a more than usually nostril-searing dose of wasabi.
But then ‘heating up’ sushi is the chef’s speciality here, as he demonstrates by offering me his latest creation, a maki roll he nicknames ‘Ring of Fire’. I’m not at all sure I really see Johnny Cash as having been a big sushi fan, but hey, if it was meant to challenge the Man in Black, I can take a stab at it.
‘Hot hot hot,’ he warns, describing it, less helpfully than I’m sure he intended, as ‘Nagi Hama topped with red tuna served around siracha pit’.
This turns out to be a variation on what is loosely known in the sushi world as an ‘inside out’ roll. The core is, the chef explains, hamachi – yellowtail – with chilli seeds and sliced spring onion, wrapped in nori seaweed, with the sushi rice outside and the whole wrapped with a slice of red tuna held in place with a little wasabi. Then just to add that extra bit of spice: a heap of fiery red chilli sauce, delicately served on the side on top of a half lemon so you could use as much – or as little – as you wished.
Little turns out to be the right choice; to have used none at all would have been to turn down the challenge. The Man in Black would have considered me little better than a Bee Ge
es fan. So adding just the merest drop of the bright red condiment, I pop the whole thing – as best Japanese tradition dictates – into my mouth. And explode as quietly as possible. The Ring of Fire has to go down as one of the most extraordinary sado-masochistic sensual pleasures of the culinary world: an eye-wateringly spectacular blend of textures, flavours and tongue-tingling titillation. A gastronomic wipe-out in one bite.
It is also the most classic demonstration in my experience that the mastery of a sushi chef’s job lies not just in ensuring the freshness of the fish and the precise firmness of the rice, but in conjuring up combinations that both appeal to the eye in terms of composition and colour while at the same time challenging and expanding the repertoire of the taste buds. I am sure there are simpler and more refined treats on offer in Japan, but as an example of a red-blooded Japanese-American take on tradition, this was a masterpiece.
A masterpiece like that, however, gives you a taste for a cold beer or two. Thankfully Seattle is one of those places where that is not a problem. It is time to check out the nightlife on Pioneer Square, the oldest part of town, down by the railway station as it happens. This is where I came in. It was also, when the railroad was the main means of getting here from California, where most people arriving in Seattle for the first time came in. Hence the name. And it was, when things went wrong, as they often did for gold prospectors, where people often ended up. The usual grid-like street pattern of central Seattle skews as it tilts towards the oldest part of town. It also tips downhill so that the incongruous Venetian clock tower on top of King Street station becomes a useful orientational landmark. In the nineteenth century a lumber merchant called Henry Yesler used to keep his depot down here, and the street today is still called Yesler Street. It didn’t have that name in his day, or any other name. It was the rough and ready road down which labourers rolled their felled timber to the sawmill. If your gold mine had failed to deliver, your ship failed to come in or if for any reason you just couldn’t get another job, your best chance was to hang out on the road where they skidded the lumber down. They called it Skid Road.