The Seattle Freeze (tales from Columbia Center)

Today, I’m a tourist on top of the Seattle world—higher than Queen Anne, any Amazon building or that tourist trap thing called the Space Needle.

No, I’m at Columbia Center, having paid less for an even more glorious view. The view is 937 feet high, which really isn’t all that high. But between the expansive Sound, the Olympics out west, and all the neighborhoods of Seattle right at my feet, Seattle actually feels pretty big. There’s a lot of land here. A lot of land. A lot of memories.

I try to draw the boundaries of each Seattle neighborhood as I lean in towards the cold glass, my warm face only inches away. They feel distinct, each neighborhood. All of which I’ve at least passed through. Some of which I’ve lived in. A few, have defined my life.

I looked at Fremont, which from here looks tiny, and I can only make it out because I can see a small stretch of Aurora Bridge and Gas Works Park, and know that Fremont is nestled right next to both.

Fremont, is where my Seattle life was born.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” an interviewer asked when I first arrived.

I hate this question. I understand the point—to gauge both your sense of goals and ambition, and your ability to take evidence and make smart, educated guesses—I just find that it’s incredibly easy to answer and manipulate based on the interviewer. Say you’re looking for challenges, new ways to learn, with an explicit goal or two. Never say that you’re only looking for a job, which, has happened when I’ve been on the interviewer side of things.

So I took my own advice and gave him my answer: I’m looking for a challenge. New lessons. So long as I’m always learning and growing, I’m happy.

I did not tell him that Seattle was the seventh place I’d be moving to in four years. It was supposed to be a short-term thing, before moving back to California. I didn’t expect to be in Seattle, in five years.

“That’s, a really good answer,” he nodded with amusement. I don’t know if he faked his impressed look. It didn’t really matter.

I got the job.

I also got the challenge, and the lesson.

Way on the other side of Seattle is a very large stretch of green that sticks out from all of the other buildings in neighboring Beacon Hill. It’s a part of Jefferson Park, which is one of my favorites because it’s big and expansive, but Seattle’s skyscrapers are still in view, reminding you that you’re in a city. I have many good memories of Beacon Hill. I also have some poor ones, including the first time I concretely encountered Seattle’s most infamous phenomenon.

I was in someone’s house, sitting in a circle with some people who I’d met a few times. We weren’t acquaintances, but not really friends—dead center in no man’s land.

Eventually the conversation drifted off towards packing, what to bring, what to do, and how exciting everything was going to be, in a few weeks. Everyone knew what was being discussed. Everyone, except me. I used to be hypersensitive to awkwardness, and I could feel everyone’s sensitivity kicking into overdrive. They clearly wanted to talk about this, but they were being awfully mysterious about it.

I finally broke the ice. “Are you guys going on a trip?”

A few eyes glanced at each other.

“Oh yeah,” one of them said, “it’s a trip we do almost every year.”

At this point, I was hoping for either the invitation to join, or the explanation that this was a close, tight-knit group kind of thing, which I would have been perfectly fine with. Instead, they kept up the mystery about it. Sometimes new people were invited. But there might not be space. But maybe next year.

I wish I could say this was a one-time, isolated experience, but it happened again, and again, and it was always something I couldn’t put my finger on. Until someone told me this phenomenon had a name, a name that everyone seemed to use. Everyone talks about it. Locals hate it. And yet, if a concept crosses from idea and has a name, it’s probably a thing. Language 101.

The Seattle Freeze: where everybody’s friendly, they just don’t want to be your friend.

There are theories about where this comes from. It’s cultural: Many of Seattle’s original European descendants are from Scandinavia, which I naturally can’t prove and don’t understand. It’s incidental: It’s the influx of people in recent years that’s driving this response, like San Francisco in decades past. Or it’s just personalities: Seattle is a city of introverts, and no one really wants to go out anyway.

In the end, it sort of doesn’t matter. Knowing where it comes from helps if you’re curious like I am, or are an anthropologist. Otherwise it’s honestly not the most practical thing to dwell on. You’re better off trying to work around it. Which, is something you may have to do.

You can argue that—as the newcomer to town—the hosts should be the one to take the initiative and take care of you, to introduce you to the ways of the city. That’s my own operating assumption. That’s also not how things work here.

I’ve found that in Seattle, they first watch and observe. Who are you? What are you about? And if you wait for Seattle to make the first move, the answer to those questions is, well, nothing. You’re just a stranger who doesn’t share any of their interests, waiting to have things handed to you.

This was my mistake: I love to observe people, but I observed to the point where I just sat on the sidelines, waiting, watching what they did and trying to win them over by liking and doing the same things.

It’s the sort of thing people can see right through. I went to large dinner parties in Wallingford’s dense, family-oriented streets, but I didn’t really enjoy it. I went to concerts in Ballard's many music stages, but not for any musicians I was interested in. I went to Safeco field, multiple times, even though I really don’t find baseball all that fun to watch. I just didn’t want to miss out on the few chances I had to make friends.

I eventually found myself in a feedback loop of feeling unwelcome, “observing” but not really doing anything about it, to feeling stuck and bitter about feeling unwelcome. This became incredibly apparent when friends started flying in to visit me and I couldn’t recommend anything to do, to the point where they planned out their trip on their own.

My first hike, a staple Seattle activity, only happened because a visiting friend demanded we go and did the research for me.

I ate at my first Tom Douglas restaurant in bustling South Lake Union, only because a foodie friend came to visit and it was on her list. We always like to look for the best restaurants, Dan, I could almost feel the judgement oozing from her face. What have you been doing?

One friend eventually called me out on this. "You know, I really don't think you've given Seattle a real chance."

I wanted to push back, but the reality was he was right. I was just waiting. I would always be waiting. No one knew what I was about. No one knew what to invite me to.

So I vowed to change this. I realized I needed to do what I wanted to do. Even if I might be alone in doing it.

I started asking people—even if I didn’t know them very well—to come do various activities with me, so long as I knew they were mildly interested in that activity. Like grabbing lunch at a restaurant I really wanted to try. Sometimes this meant I ended up eating alone, sitting at a counter hoping I’d just look like a wandering lone ranger instead of just a loner. But sometimes, I ended up at beer arcades playing games, making new friends and mashing buttons with lots of strangers. It was worth the risk.

I bought tickets in pairs; tickets for special movie showings, music concerts, book readings. I always bought more than one, hoping I could find someone to come with me. Even when this tactic failed, people learned the kinds of things I was into. And more often than not, it did work and I rarely ended up out on my own.

Which isn’t to say it was easy. Persistence, and resilience, aren’t the hallmarks of my personality. For someone social like me, spending lots of time by myself was tough. But I kept at it. I stopped trying to find friends, a community, my tribe. It was the persistence in pursuing my interests, my own self, that revealed who my tribe was.

And slowly, that’s how things changed. I found friends who knew how to sail to take me along in Lake Union, which is a summertime activity you can’t beat in a city with an already unbeatable summer. If I wanted to try a bar or a restaurant, I almost always knew of a friend who would come with me, even if the place served the most mediocre sushi possible. When my housemates and I threw a house party, we actually had to cut the guest list down because we realized that, over optimistically, eighty-odd people was the max number of humans that would fit into our townhouse.

I knew things had finally changed when my friend Joe came to visit me.

“What do you want to do?” I asked when I picked him up from Sea-Tac.

“I don’t know. Whatever.”

“No, really. I really want to make sure you have a good time.”

Joe has one of the friendliest faces you’ll ever see. His smile is big and his cheeks are wide—almost, like a koala. That sounds mean, and you’ll have to assume that beneath the demeaning overtones is an endearing compliment.

So I know when Joe’s being serious when he furrowed his eyebrows and said: “Dan. Please stop worrying. I just want to do what you think is fun.”

Sometimes, I just need to be told to relax. And with Joe’s permission, that’s what I did; I just thought of all of my favorite things to do and brought him along.

I took him to my favorite food spot, Red Mill Burgers. I took him on Seattle’s premiere, introductory hike that is Rattlesnake Ledge. I made him try the coffee shop next to my house, Milstead.

I grabbed a few friends, and made Joe come spend one, long night out on Capitol Hill.

We started off just catching up over drinks at a fancy cocktail bar.

“Take me to space,” Joe told the bartender after we dared him to be obnoxious. The bartender didn’t flinch. I was proud of my city’s cocktail scene.

We then went entirely in the other direction, and I made Joe try the once in a lifetime “unicorn jizz.” He wasn’t impressed, but who is? It, at the very least, made for some good foundation for political discussion. By then we weren’t really sober, which was perfect for going to an older dive bar to discuss our diverse experiences with religion and the ultimate state of the universe. And when that wasn’t enough, we even went dancing at a gay club.

Joe was a little nervous about it, telling cliff notes of past experiences in San Francisco. But we went as a group, and whenever you go dancing with a group, I find most people leave you alone. Seattle is also a much more chill place than San Francisco.

And so even as you’re stuck in a large room with pulsing lights, too many bodies sweating just inches away from you, and a bass that vibrates through your every bone—when you’re with a group, it almost feels, comfortable.

At some point, Joe leaned over and yelled into my ear: “I’m having fun. Everyone’s chill here. You don’t have to worry about me.”

I laughed. I’m not sure I was protecting him but I’m glad that’s how I came across.

And then added: “Go be among your people.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What the hell does that mean?”

He just smiled at me in that fun, slightly drunk koala smile of his.

I grinned back at him, shook my head and went back to bouncing around on my feet. I didn’t tell him that in that moment, with my friends after a long good night, I already was with my people.

We groaned when the club announced it was closing, but we refused to let things end there. We drifted outside, enjoying the cool midnight air, and finally getting more than a few inches of space between me and the next human being.

“Hey you know what we should get?” my friend Matt piped up. “A Seattle dog.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“It’s amazing,” he laughed.

I don’t know if I actually like cream cheese on a hot dog, but on this night, a Seattle dog truly was amazing. Maybe it’s the caramelized onions. Maybe it’s because it’s comfort food after drinks and dancing. But more than anything, it’s a way for us to stay out longer than we really ought to. We didn’t want things to end. I certainly didn’t.

This is how I knew I had fallen in love with the city: that when friends came to visit, I had places I wanted to show them; experiences I wanted them to have; and that I had friends I could ask to come along for the ride. And when the night, like all nights, eventually comes to a close, I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to have to.

But I do have to. That’s why I’m here, at Columbia Center, finally going to the place I’d heard much about, had told other friends to visit, but never went myself.

It’s beautiful, at 937 feet high, looking back at Fremont, nearly six years after I was asked “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

I never expected to be here. To still be here. But I am because I learned persistence: that there are the times when you must pursue what you want, even if you must pursue it alone. And as you do that, your friends, your community, your tribe, they'll come find you.

Change, is hard. Sacrifice, is hard. It’s tough, trusting your convictions when giving one thing up for another. You always want to look back. Was it the right choice? You can't truly ever know, but I’ve found that a helpful answer is to know both the value of what you’re giving up, and what you’re hoping to attain. Sacrifice, after all, is most meaningful when you really don’t want to make the sacrifice—to have to let something to go.

And I don’t want to have to let Seattle go. All of it. The friends, experiences, the city.

But that’s how I knew I was sure I had to leave. That I knew that my family, after six years, was so paramount to me that I was willing to give this up. This, the beautiful view, 937 feet above the ground. The mix of green, concrete and all the deep blue lakes in between. The misty, forever cloudy grey skies. The silly needle thing jetting out in the distance.

And I think to myself: This, this is my city.