Seattle: Difference between revisions

{{tropeUseful Notes}}

{{quote|''That"Well we werespread the hottestword newthrough thingthe in townunderground''<br />

''A record guy came out to see us one day''<br />

''And just like always, we didn't play''<br />

''And it knocked him out - he said he loved our work''<br />

''He said he loved our work but he wasn't sure if he could sell a record with nothing on it''<br />

''I said, 'Tell him we're from Seattle'''<br />

A city situated on the eastern bank of Puget Sound in the [[The Other Rainforest|state of Washington]], and its surrounding metro area. Named for a 19th century Duwamish tribal chief from the region, who [[Newer Than They Think|did not give an environmental speech often attributed to him.]] Home base of (or at least origin-point for) Microsoft, [[Nintendo]] of America, Starbucks, Boeing, Amazon and several other companies of note, and the birthplace of [[Grunge]] music ([[Nirvana]] in particular, despite not being from here). Its landmarks include Pike Place Market,<ref>widely considered the ''real'' main tourist attraction, the Space Needle being little more than a giant tourist trap</ref>, Pioneer Square (which pre-gentrification was the ''original'' [[Skid Row]]), [[Alien Geometries|The Experience Music Project]], a half-mile Monorail constructed for the 1962 World's Fair which exemplifies [[Zeerust]] to a tee, the [[Beneath the Earth|Seattle Underground]] which was a partial inspiration for [[Discworld|Ankh-Morpork]], and the Space Needle, also constructed for the World's Fair .<ref>which looks a lot bigger on TV than in [[Real Life]], due to the fact that it's usually photographed from Queen Anne Hill, from an angle that makes it look taller than anything in downtown. Oh, and by the way, the Space Needle itself is around a mile north of the rest of downtown.</ref>.

Seen as trendy and bohemian by many thanks to grunge and ''[[Frasier]]''. Often used in fiction as a destination for a character being sent on a very long [[Put Onon a Bus|bus ride]].

Trails only [[Cleveland]] as the [[Butt Monkey]] of the U.S. sports world due to their spotty track record in regards to major league sports. (Three, count 'em, three, championships in the entire city's history.<ref> Two by the women's basketball team, the Seattle Storm, and one by the NBA team that moved. The University of Washington Football team won between two and four national titles depending on how one recons such things. And waaay back in the day, the Rainiers baseball team won a few Pacific Coast League pennants.</ref>. Many local football fans, however, will tell you that the Seahawks were the rightful winners of Superbowl XL, but were cheated out of it by one-sided officiating. This is a subject you should broach carefully, if at all.) In recent years, the situation has been particularly grim, with even the once-powerful University of Washington Huskies NCAA football team [[Seasonal Rot|having the worst single season record in history]], and the Seattle Supersonics NBA team being spirited away to ''Oklahoma City''. Not helping matters is the fact that the city is famous for coffee, computers, grunge music, liberal politics, and rain,<ref> though the rain, to be honest, isn't much worse in the city itself than it is on most the Eastern seaboard on average; the Olympic Peninsula on the other hand, right next door to the west of Seattle, is probably the wettest place in the continental United States</ref>, which are decidedly at odds with the interests of the typical sports fan. The sports fans who ''do'' call the area home responded to the aforementioned pirating of their NBA franchise by latching onto Seattle Sounders FC, the newest [[The Beautiful Game|MLS]] expansion team, and making it one of the few teams in the league to regularly sell out the stadium. Qwest (now [[Century Link]]) Field, the home stadium to the Sounders and Seahawks, was from 2007 to 2010 true to the city's rebellious spirit by being the only stadium in the NFL to serve neither Pepsi ''nor'' Coca-Cola beverages on its grounds, [[Take a Third Option|having instead]] awarded its concession to the locally-based Jones Soda company. The rights have since been granted to Coca-Cola, which definitely makes going to Sounders games a lot less fun.

Home to the authors of the webcomic [[Penny Arcade]], who, as the above paragraph illustrates, [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/2/8/ have difficulty understanding] the [[Team Spirit]] of sports.

Is also the hometown of [[Sir Mix -a -Lot]],<ref> Actually, Tacoma is</ref>, whose song "Posse on Broadway" was based on Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

About half an hour to the south is the city of Tacoma (the "Tac" in SeaTac International Airport). It used to be a fairly industrial town, infamous for the horrible "Tacoma Aroma" produced by the city's paper mills, but has undergone revitalization in recent years due to increased port traffic, various downtown renewal projects, and an influx of consumer dollars from troops stationed at the burgeoning Joint Base Lewis-McChord, an Army/Air Force facility just to its south. Even the former site of the ASARCO smelting plant is being turned into luxury housing (why anyone would want to live over a former toxic waste site is another question). Its most famous son is arguably the one-eyed glass artist Dale Chihuly, whose works are all over the city (even in one of the McDonald's). Unlike Seattle, Tacoma hosts no major league teams of its own, though the Mariners' triple-A affiliate (the Tacoma Rainiers) is regionally popular, and the Tacoma Dome (in addition to being a frequent [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] venue) has occasionally hosted Seattle's teams while their home venues were being renovated.

=== {{examples|Fiction set in or near Seattle: ===}}

* ''[[The Ring]]''. Surprisingly was filmed in Seattle and the surrounding area, in particular a lot of the nature. As a result, there's some major [[Scenery Porn|scenery porn]].

* ''[[Ten10 Things I Hate About You]]'' is supposedly set in Seattle (the opening shots show the Space Needle), but was actually filmed mostly in nearby Tacoma.

* ''Trouble In Mind'': [[The Future Is Noir|Future Noir]].

* [[Rose Red]] was partially filmed in downtown Seattle and partially in Tacoma.

* ''[[Harry and Thethe Hendersons]]''

* ''[[Twilight (Literaturenovel)|Twilight]]'' takes place in Forks, over on our Olympic Peninsula, but Bella does seek visits Seattle.

* [[Wikipedia]] has [[wikipedia:Category:Television shows set in Seattle|a category]] for television shows set in [[Seattle]]. Some of these include:

* ''[[Frasier]]'': Filmed in Los Angeles, except for the 100th episode, which was actually filmed in Seattle. And the episode gets as much mileage out of Seattle landmarks as it can, including Niles getting a fish thrown at him in Pike Place Market and Frasier getting trapped on the Monorail on the way to the Space Needle.

* ''[[GreysGrey's Anatomy]]''

* ''[[I Carly|iCarly]]''

* ''[[Millennium (TV series)|Millennium]]'': Filmed in Vancouver.

* ''[[John Doe]]'', filmed in Vancouver, to the point that the [[Television Without Pity]] recapper just kept calling the city "Seacouver."

** Also [[Bill Nye the Science Guy]] who got his start on the above.

* [[Jimi Hendrix]]-- born—born in Seattle, got famous in [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|Britain first]], buried in Renton.

* [[Nirvana (Music)|Nirvana]] (via Aberdeen and Olympia)

* [[Pearl Jam (Music)|Pearl Jam]]

* Neko Case(Tacoma-- herTacoma—her song "Thrice All American' is about how lovably awful Tacoma is)

* ''[[Genius: The Transgression (Tabletop Game)|Genius: The Transgression]]'' includes a premade setting, the Seattle of Tomorrow.

* ''[[Shadowrun (Tabletop Game)|Shadowrun]]'': Features Seattle and most of south Puget Sound as a walled-off metroplex. Considering its central location between several nations and status as a transportation hub between North America and Asia, it is treated as the setting's "home base".

* ''[[Deus Ex: Invisible War (Video Game)|Deus Ex Invisible War]]''

* In ''[[Mass Effect 3 (Video Game)|Mass Effect 3]]'', the opening levels take place in a Seattle/Vancouver hybrid megacity, where the two grew so large they sprawled into each other.

* ''[[Hey Arnold (Animation)|Hey Arnold!]]'': The city is never named, but according to [[Word of God]] it's an amalgam of Seattle, Portland, and [[Big Applesauce|New York City]]. [[Fridge Horror|Arnold's house is underneath]] the [[Chaos Architecture|Alaskan Way Viaduct.]]

* ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Animation)|Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1]]'' is nominally set in Seattle, although the backdrops are competely unchanged from the earlier seasons when the show was set on the Jersey Shore. One promo refers to the setting as "Seattle and/or New Jersey".

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb (Animation)|Phineas and Ferb]]'' though not set in Seattle, the city is mentioned more than any other U.S. city, and at the end of "The Chronicles of Meap" the credits were played beneath a "promo" for ''Meapless in Seattle'' which was originally not going to be made, but it was and was released.

* ''[[Ozy and Millie (Webcomic)|Ozy and Millie]]''.

* [[PvP (Webcomicwebcomic)|PvP]] - The characters in the comic relocated to Seattle simultaneously as their creator, Scott Kurtz, as he now works out of the Penny Arcade offices.