Don’t say “excuse me” when what you really mean is “excuse YOU!”

I find it hilarious that we can me passive-aggressive with strangers in millisecond confrontations, but it’s sadly true. The situation is always one where an “excuse me” is not called for: You’re walking blithely down the street and someone briskly pushes past you and says “Excuse me!” even though there’s plenty of room to walk around you without any physical or verbal contact. The message is “you’re walking to slowly,” not “I’m politely pushing past you.”

People always say “excuse me” when they mean “excuse YOU!” in lines, like checkout lines, as a means of saying “I was here first!” so you don’t cut them. There’s usually no way you were going to cut anyway. The “excuse me” is always uttered in a distracted, neutral tone, as if the person were just refexively dropping a token nicety because they’re polite, instead of fiercely staking their claim to one square foot of real estate in the universe.

“Excuse YOU!” is, of course, outright rude, but it gets the message across. People say this when they think you’ve just done something that required an “excuse me”: They’re pointing out what a heathen you are. A misused “excuse me” comes off as haughty, brusque — it’s a offense play against a clueless stranger.

Obviously, “excuse me” should be invoked when you truly want to excuse yourself. Come to think of it, I think I used the passive-aggressive form of “‘excuse me’ when I meant ‘excuse YOU!’” the other day. I was in a long taxi line at LaGuardia, and the guy behind me kept creeping up so close that he’d trip over my luggage. After the fifth time, I smiled sweetly and said “Excuse me.” (So bitchy! But I was tired! I was home! Forgive me, dear reader!) He, however, handled my maneuver quite deftly, “That’s okay, ma’am” he said, taking me at face value instead of giving me what I was unconciously desiring — an apology. He took the fangs right out of my passive-aggressiveness.

I’ve said it before: Good manners are a tool that can be used for good for evil. Having good manners does not give you the right or the responsibility to educate the ruffians in your midst.
Good manners should be used to make other people feel more comfortable, to grease the wheels of society so we get along better, not to create a caste system in which haplessly rude people are taken to task by their finishing-school-tutored betters.

It’s no secret that I’ve been questioning why on earth I live in New York lately, so I decided that I’m going to make a list every day of the good things, specifically the good things that happen because I live in New York. I will try to post them here when at all interesting. It’s sort of a balance project. If I can’t come up with a decent amoutn of postive things about living here, perhaps I should think about setting my sights elsewhere.

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I got home in the afternoon yesterday and was prepared to go out to dinner but I felt strangely exhausted, what do you know. I, grandma-like, fell asleep on the couch during 60 Minutes. Yes, that’s on at 7pm.

This morning I met Julie for breakfast at my favorite restaurant, Balthazar. I love Balthazar deeply — I mean, I know everyone does, but it’s definitely going on my “good things I experienced in NYC” list today. I love it for breakfast, I love it late at night, I love going there with Julie. I don’t know if she and I have discussed it, but I think we both believe deeply that it’s impossible not to be in a sort of good mood at Balthazar. The space is enormous and it feels like there’s always something about to happen and it’s probably going to be something marvelous. We had lattes and breakfast and caught up on the past few weeks and I thought “I must have breakfast here every day.” Oh, and it was coincidentally Balthazar’s 10th anniversary, so there was free champagne for breakfast. Which seemed a little like fate. So two “Only in NYC” Things: Balthazar Breakfast & Julie.

It was super-sunny and we wandered around (Only in NYC: McNally Robinson Bookstore on Prince Street — I know they have branches elsewhere, but I do deeply love this store) and I got a complimentary “hand treatment” at the new Lush store on Broadway, Julie got a manicure and we tried on makeup at Sephora and it was warm and I tried to forget about my coffee & Caesar salad book-tour acne, which is just really not doing me any favors. I did think at one point, “This is like a girl’s day out” and felt equally corny and lucky.

Hey, here’s something fun: Because a girl can’t have too many blogs, I’m going to begin blogging about entertainment on the Huffington Post at the end of May. Once upon a time, long, long ago, I was the editor of a very cool entertainment website called “Girls On” and we wrote brilliant, funny, scathing, pee-your-chair pop cultural reviews and commentary in the pre-blog era. I’ve been missing it desperately and only wish I could begin today, because I have a lot to say about J. Lo. & Marc Anthony and it will be old news by May.

Let it be known that I just spent an hour dutifully filing my last post from the Spring Tour only to idiotically lose all my “work” when I went to check a link. I will try to recreate the magic, but I can’t promise any miracles. Ugh. So I arrived in Lexington a bit of a mess, having risen at 3:30am to fly from Pittsburgh via Chicago. I dozed on the plane and looked like someone who had dozed in a gutter. I was too early to check into my hotel at 10am, so I had the choice of sitting at the breakfast buffet or going over to the Lexington Center to check out the Bluegrass Festival of Books, where I was expected at 9 to sign books.

Obviously, a breakfast buffet might have sent me ’round the bend to the Dark Place, so I wandered over to the convention center, where I thought I’d anonymously scope out the fest and then hie to the nearest Starbucks. But on seeing a big ol’ table with my name on a giant placard and piles of books waiting to be signed by wandering festival attendees, I decided to stay, in all my greasy, ponytailed, makeupless, Altoid-breath glory. The books don’t sell themselves, people.

I was frankly shocked that anyone stopped to chat with me, all wide-eyed and dead-asleep-smiling, but they did, lots of friendly Kentucky readers, which made it all quite worth the while. I left at around noon to quickly shower and dash back for my panel at 2pm. It wasn’t actually a panel, come to think of it, as I was the only person on the panel, but more like a talk/interview. With the tremendous Cheryl Truman, books editor of the Lexington Herald Leader, who was funny and congenial and told the crowd, much to my delight, how she and I try to one-up one another with our exercise playlists (she has evidently banked some serious street cred with her daughter for my ridiculous-lyric drum-bass-rap running CD that I sent her). She said she felt like she knew me, even though we’d only ever talk on the phone for a story she did on the book, and I felt the same way. She was all the more impressive for a woman who had just wrangled 1200 people through a lunch with Paula Deen. (Yes, that’s right, she’s here, just as I suspected! If you ever want to know where I am, anywhere in the world, just look for Paula D. I think things have gone too far, actually: there was a handwritten banner in the window of the Starbucks that said “We Heart You Paula.” Come on, there are 79 other writers here, some of whom got up at 3:30 to be here. Share the love, Lexington.)

After the panel, during which I chatted somewhat hazily but hopefully charmingly about how to throw a party/how to be a good party guest, I met up with some family that I hadn’t seen in years who drove in from Louisville. It was so great to see them, and so generous of them to come, especially on this, the eve of the Kentucky Derby. I was really excited to see some familiar faces; life has been so filled with the unfamiliar lately, it was joyous to actually know people. I had to dash back to my table and sign books, so they wandered the festival and I think got some good books before heading back to Louisville for fireworks.

I stuck around signing and oh I met this impressively 24-year-old culture writer for the Herald Leader named Jamie whom I just adored chatting with, and the writer David Matthews who wrote the memoir Ace of Spades about growing up black and Jewish in Baltimore, which I can’t wait to read. I also met the cool kids of the Memoirists Collective. I read Josh Kilmer Purcell’s book when it first came out and enjoyed it very much. Devoted readers will recall that Hillary Carlip’s book once saved me from a dark night of the soul in Denver not so long ago. Hillary was just as I expected, bright, funny, outgoing — which I think speaks to the strength of her voice on the page.

The high point of the afternoon was meeting Rachel, who organized the event and therefore must be even more exhausted than I am, and especially Jared, who works at Joseph Beth Booksellers, which sponsored the festival. Oh how I love Joseph Beth. My event was at their Pittsburgh store last night and I marvel at how they manage to be an independent chain that has several locations in the Midwest and South, still managing to be as massive as a Barnes & Noble but with smart displays, millions of little recommendation placards, tons of paper products and soaps and candles that I want desperately but absolutely do not need. Jared is (here comes that word again) hilarious, 22, and has lived the life of someone 10 times his age. I wish I could tell you his story but it’s really not mine to tell. Jared, you really need to write a book.

I went out to dinner with Hillary, Josh, Jared, as well as Maria Dahvana Headley, who lives in my favorite-city-of-the-hour, Seattle, and writers Brad Barkley (he writes YA novels among other stuff) and the very funny Ann Hood, who wrote The Knitting Group. Jared introduced us to some Kentucky delicacies like fried banana peppers and this very bizarre chocolate covered dried cream candy that I think may be called “Blue Mondays” but somehow that doesn’t seem possible. These are some fun cats. I think back to the gray days in Michigan and Kansas and think it was a million years ago. I think, “There is sun here” and “Tomorrow, I go home.”

Brad at the end of the table, then clockwise: Jared, Ann Hood, Me, Hillary Carlip, Maria Dahvana Headley, Josh Kilmer-Purcell.

Oh, did you know that the Radisson has Sleep Number Beds? I don’t know how I feel about this, but I think I can safely say that having napped on a Sleep Number Bed, I don’t think I really want one. And that I’m a 35, which is softer than I thought, but there it is. 70 is like sleeping on a marble slab.

Is there a White House Correspondents Dinner every night? Wasn’t there one like a week ago? I thought they had one per year. Rich Little??!? Doing impressions? This is so off.

Also, remember how I was traveling down that dangerous road to becoming a dotty old lady who collects mugs? Well, Joseph Beth gave me a JB mug full o’ Crabtree and Evelyn products last night, and today at the festival…another JB mug! So I’ve got a matching pair, I’m well on my way to being a Mug Lady now. This means I don’t have to scour the Lexington airport looking for some strange kitschy vessel tomorrow, which, I think you will agree, is good news.

One more thing: I’ve read some author blogs recently and they seem rather show-offish, like look where I went and look who showed up and I’m pretty glamorous. I don’t think this one comes off like that, but I wonder if I should be doing more bragging. I’m not up to it, but I’ll consider it for another entry. I want to say that this tour has been unbelievable, I’ve met ten trillion people and I can’t keep anything straight except I do know I’ve been having fun. I’ve seen a lot of baggage claims. I’ve claimed a lot of baggage. I’m having a good time. I’m going home.

On my way from the Pittsburgh airport to the hotel, my very enthusiastic cab driver, who was like Fonzie, age 90, and I had a conversation that began like this:

Scene 1
HIM: Where do you come from?
ME: Well, I came from Cincinnati today…
HIM: BUT…?!??!
ME: But, I live in New York.
HIM: You a road warrior?!?!?!
ME: I guess so!
HIM: SOMEbody’s gotta do it!

Scene 2
One Minute Later

HIM: So you from New York City?!?!?!?!
ME: Yes.
HIM: Everybody’s gotta live SOMEwhere!!!!!
ME: I guess that’s true!
HIM: So YOU got an abiding LOVE AFFAIR with the N-Y-C!
ME: I guess I do! [Ed. Note: As is evidenced by previous posts, I do not have a love affair, abiding or otherwise, with the N-Y-C lately.]
HIM: Yep, we hear it all the time.

So we went on to talk about my book and Fonzie bestowed a few jewels from what he called Cab Driver Philosophy, which I think is the specialized sequel to One Man’s Opinion:

“You want my opinion of your age category of girls? They should all go home and have their mothers wash their mouths out with soap. I been doing this 40 years and I understand insecurity and oppression and suppression but they’re damn right vulgar.”

He then held up a plastic shopping bag and said, “You know what this is? It’s the Cab Driver’s Weekend Survival Kit.” I thought he meant he peed in it when he was too busy to stop. “The vast majority of the young ladies use it.” Oh, a barf bag for drunk girls. Lovely.

He also told me about four times that he can’t go around taping girls in the cab, because that would be illegal, but maybe I should do that becaues it would give me some insight into what makes ‘em tick.

He summed up his entire manifesto with “Dis is da ‘Burgh. Best we can do.” I love this. I highly recommend you say this a propos of absolutely nothing, because it’s highly convincing and a good way to justify pretty much anything.

I walked around the waterfrontish area near my hotel in Station Square and sat outside for a while. Then I walked the 2.5 miles or so to the evening’s event at Joseph-Beth, another fantastic, gigantic independent bookseller. I’m here to say that Pittsburgh’s South Side is far hipper than Williamsburg (Dat is da ‘Burg…) and I really liked it. Everyone was young and hip and the restaurants and bars and shops were packed with people who seemed to know how to have a good time. Whatever that means. I mean they were boisterous and young and attractive and seemed in good spirits. Later they will barf in a plastic bag in the back of a taxi, but until then, they were stardust.

The event at Joseph-Beth was a “Girl’s Night Out,” organized by only-two-months-on-the-job Events Coordinator Rich, who put together a truly fun night. (PS Confidential to Rich, I am writing this from the Pittsburgh airport, it’s 5:30, I had a wakeup call at 3:30am, it was brutal, check in later for Melissa: Asleep in Broad Daylight in Kentucky.) I chatted with a group of women who were on average a tad older than my usual crowd, many of them mothers, all wise and enthusiastic. Here are some “I wish I’d known earlier” stuff they shared:

Did I mention that I spoke at Borders in Ann Arbor? Due to my inability to remember what day it is or where I am, there is a good chance I forgot. I need to mention this because Borders is based in Ann Arbor, which is something to think about for one or two seconds and move on. I’ve seen the headquarters for a lot of companies. I know companies have to be based somewhere, but somehow I feel a sense of awe when seeing the Lexis Nexis HQ in Cincinnati, or the Bayer HQ in Pittsburgh.

At Borders in Ann Arbor, there were two men in the audience, one of whom was adorable but a heckler and asked me why I didn’t consult men for the book, had I thought about how I had neglected to get the opinion of half the population. I think he may have been an undergrad at the University of Michigan. I’ve never been heckled before. The problem was I couldn’t satisfy him with what I thought were very witty and concise answers. Such is the problem with hecklers.

Okay, I have milliseconds before I have to go catch a plane to Pittsburgh, but I’ve been living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati WKRP, and I have a few things I must say.

If I were doing terrible stand-up that wasn’t funny, I’d do a bit called “You know you’ve been on a book tour for a long time when…”

-your Sonicare toothbrush is beeping its “my battery is dying” beep and the battery is supposed to last two solid weeks. also camera battery that never dies is waning.

-you can’t face the prospect of another room service meal, even though you love room service

-you have stopped getting excited by the discovery of what brand of products will be in the bathroom of your next hotel

-you wear your least flattering “travel jeans” all day and don’t care

-you have a faceful of acne from living on coffee and Caesar salads and you kind of care but can’t care too much.

-you went from not needing a haircut to needing a haircut desperately

-you arrive in Ohio to find you have weirdly lost a pair of boots somewhere in your travels and you have no idea what city because it could be any of ten you’ve been to in the last five minutes.

-you’ve seen so much Virginia Tech coverage on hotel TV that you’re actually relieved to hear Alec Baldwin’s scary, mean phone message to his daughter on the Today show. And you find yourself actually caring about what Alec Baldwin said to his daughter. Who cares about Alec Baldwin? Why is this “news”? WHAT IS GOING ON WITH NEWS?

I am here to say that I hate Anderson Cooper. That show is bad news. I understand the ratings game (sort of) but come on, the people they’re scraping up as “experts” on the VA Tech shooting. Poor Larry Birkhead. Lucky Don Imus. I read USA Today and watch a lot of cable news.

I had a terrific time in Cincy (that’s CINCINNATI to non-locals) mostly because I had an afternoon to sleep and my hotel room had a jacuzzi. I took three baths. I wept a little at how good it felt to take a bath. I listened to Rilo Kiley in the bath and napped and was reborn.

I would like to point out that my MySpace friend “The Katie” suggested just this remedy for my case of the blues that struck in Detroit, and she was so, so right. Thank you, The Katie.

More from Steel Town later. Do they call Pittsburgh Steel Town? Did I make that up?

You can’t spit without hitting a Barnes & Noble or Borders in the greater Detroit area. Well, I mean, you can’t spit in public without being gross, so don’t, and also don’t spit in China, because they’re trying to get people to stop that madness before the Olympics. Don’t spit. But know that there are a lot of bookstores here in Michigan, and I think I’ve been to every single one of them with Jo, one of the sunniest escorts, not to mention people, I’ve ever met.

I will say that I was not expecting to go straight from the airport to signing books, but heck, I’m in Michigan for another less-than-24-hour situation, so why not. I had a deuce of a time waking up in Kansas City as I went to bed around 12 and then had a wakeup call that caused me to spill a glass of water all over the bedside table and the bed and the world when I went to answer it at 4:30. I slept dead-person-ly on the plane, wrapped in a pashmina, definitely drooling. I am proud to announce I am now back in the eastern time zone, which means not much except I’m on my way out of the woods, and my computer now shows the right time again, and I don’t have to reset my watch anymore, and I lost another hour but heck it feels good to be back so I can set to work on my reprogramming my circadian rhythms.

Jo met me at baggage claim, which was very good as I had been sort of feeling untethered after my brief stay in Kansas, and we went to about 16 bookstores and I ferociously signed every book they could scrounge up. I didn’t see downtown Detroit, but I think I saw every suburb. It’s a little chilly and gray here today, and in a parking lot of one mall or another, I got the deep urge to call someone, anyone, from home, to tell them I was alive and in Michigan and tired. My phone rang at that very moment, and it was Cusi, whom I couldn’t talk to for long because I had to go sign books, but I feel that may have the Law of Attraction or something at work. I picked up the phone and “Cus, I’m homesick!” came out of my mouth and I was a little surprised at how ardently I felt that.

Jo and I had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in Ann Arbor that was delicious that I think I went to when I visited Kate here over a decade ago. It was the trip when Wicksy and I drove from Virginia and met Justin here and we discovered a condiment called “Francy’s Fancy.” The rest is a blur.

Let’s face it. It’s possible I’m decompensating slightly. I’m feeling generally grim and odd and I suspected this would happen this week, what with the constant travel and getting up in the dark and feeling disconnected from anything or anyone familiar. I’m hanging in there, but suddenly my mission to have fun seems really an arduous one, and I think it’s not the hotel room that’s tinged with despair but maybe it’s me.

I was in Kansas City for about eight seconds. I left Portland at the very crack, and crossed two time zones, so I arrived at my hotel, felt weird and sad and where-am-I?, then called my dear friend Rebecca to save me from a Willy Loman episode.

Rebecca is fun and hilarious and a former New Yorker, actually she was one of my editors at Citysearch back a million years ago, and she rescued me in her funtime Jeep and took me to Rainy Day Books, where they’d partnered with a neighboring boutique for my event. There was a drawing for prizes, like a massage at a day spa, which Rebecca won, and I even met a MySpace friend, Jenny the Librarian, who came with a friend (Jenny won a dinner at a seafood restaurant in the drawing). Rebecca and I went out for tapas afterwards and I was once again struck by how happily and spaciously relocated New Yorkers are living.

I am left with next to no impression of Kansas City since I was there for mere minutes, but Rebecca pointed out the Hallmark headquarters, the fact that KC holds the record for the second-highest number of fountains in the world, second only to Rome, and I saw some construction for a Sprint building. Also, it was warm, which it’s not in Ann Arbor, where I now find myself.

I feel the need to point out that hotels can be sad. Certain hotels have this sad quality and there’s no getting around it. I find hotels that are in central business districts sad at night when everyone’s gone home. I find any hotel, or anything for that matter, that has the word “Express” appended to it also a little sad. Like “Holiday Inn Express” or “TCBY Express,” which is like a little cart in the rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. I’m very sensitive to spaces and rooms and buildings that are tinged with despair.

I’ve been to Portland a few times before, but this is the first time I found it truly charming. I had next to no time here, so I arrived Sunday afternoon and proceeded to walk around in the breezy sun, staking out my books in Powell’s City of Books, admiring all the adorable cafes and wine bars and people with white teeth.

My hotel, The Heathman, is very cool — I guess it’s the favorite stay for writers. They have a lending library packed with signed books by all the notables who stayed here, and it’s truly baffling. A cursory look evidenced Saul Bellow, Richard Russo, Sarah Vowell (it was very cursory. I was honored when one of the hotel employees knocked on my door with a copy of my book that the hotel had bought and asked me to sign it for their library. If you stay at the Heathman in Portland, Oregon, ask if you can check the Girl’s Guide out of their collection. Or, actually, read Saul Bellow first.

I had the usual slew of television shows and a good radio interview. One of the TV shows interviewed me in the big Powell’s which was very cool. However, during my first TV interview, the news of the Virginia Tech shooting came in and they went directly to a special report. I was sort of sad for the rest of the day as we followed the news in the car while driving from one media appointment to the next.

Tonight I “appeared” at another, more intimate branch of Powell’s on Hawthorne for “Girl’s Night Out,” wherein a group of impressive women and I chatted about friendship, specifically defriending and how to do it. We came to the conclusion that returning emails and phone calls sometimes feels like a chore, as annoying as paying bills, which is rather sad. It seems like you could also lose a friend today if you don’t share the same favored means of communication: she always sends long emails, you never respond because you prefer the phone; you are constantly texting or using MySpace, she wants to see you in person. The technology divide widens, you drift apart, a defriending occurs. Nuts.

These women had brilliant insight into the all-woman workplace and how unfortunately mean we can sometimes be.

 

She was hilarious and had a friend with her who claims she never returns phone calls. Girlfriend, listen to her. Call back.

 

Darling Portland resident, former New Yorker and old friend Otis met me after the reading and we went out to wine with these two very awesome women who admitted they’d thought my book would be “just another girl’s guide,” the kind I deplore, and were excited to find at the event that it’s actually good (yay!). We went to a wine bar called “Noble Rot” that Kim had recommended to me in Seattle. I had a very good glass of Riesling, though not as good as the last one in Otis’ flight. April, the one on the left, is opening a tea house in Portland, and her friend is starting a business in Tuscany. Very smart, very lovely.

 

I leave for Kansas City in about 10 seconds. I’m in a different city every day from here on out. As a girl who hates rising early, I’m gearing up for a challenging series of pre-dawn flights.

After four days in Seattle I am here to say I like it here. I’ve had more fun here than anyplace else on the tour, things have sort of coalesced, people are nice, the hotel is gorgeous, I’ve actually made/reconnected with friends. Seattle, I have a crush on you

Requisite touristy Grey’s Anatomy shots (for my sister).

Before I plunge full-on into a discussion of why Seattle is much cooler than I remembered, I need to tell you that Radio Shack — a store for which I have a small amount of disdain because it feels irrelevant in this day, a store that arrogantly calls itself “America’s Technology Store” but still sells large full-size cassette recorders like I had in 1980 — is the place where you can find a cable for you digital camera should you have forgotten to pack it. You can get that cable at Radio Shack, so anyway, sorry ‘Shack, I shouldn’t have judged you so harshly.

This, of course, means that I can post my photos from Minneapolis. Which consist of precisely two Minneapolean (Minneapolitan? Minneapolosian?) landmarks:

Mary Tyler Moore statue

 

Murray’s Cocktail Lounge. I have no idea either.

Okay, onward. Seattle.

Thursday
A passel of morning shows, then a cocktail party (for me!) at the W Hotel. This was beyond fun. I was charmed to learn that the advertised “no-host bar” did not, as I had assumed, mean “open bar.” There was indeed a host, a very kind bartender, and I was informed that “no-host” is what we Yankees call a “cash bar,” as in “no one is hosting this bar for you, you pay cash.” Oops. I had a lemon drop (very sweet) and some dry Chardonnay and met two smart women who edit the paper at Seattle University; some wacky radio hosts; the amazing Kim Ricketts and Kirsten Graham, who organized the party; Kim’s daughter Whitney and her friend Drew; the vice-president of W Hotels; and a bunch of other fun, funny women. My old friend Liz Jones, formerly of NYC, now of Seattle, came with her friend Elizabeth.

I was interviewed by the super-cool Maggie Dutton who writes a column called “Search and Distill” for the Seattle Weekly (and has a super blog called The Wine Offensive that you must check out). Many of the questions from the audience had to do with tipping (most vexing to me, still, is do you tip the owner of the salon even though you’re technically not supposed to, but you know everyone else does — comments please). One woman asked if she should take an offered cocktail from a man in a bar she has no intention of sleeping with. All in all, fascinating, and I got to talk about myself, which is never a terrible thing. I mean, it’s easier than trying to come up with a “presentation.” I think I’m rather good at the Q&A format, if I do say so myself (which, Q.E.D., I do).

What was fairly amazing about the event overall was how generous and open everyone was. When they found out I would be in Seattle for the weekend, strangers invited me to join them on various adventures, which was surprising and flattering and made me love Seattle all the more.

Friday
I met Maggie for tea at my hotel, the very gorgeous Sorrento where everything smells like grapefruit. She’s so cool and laid-back and funny, I think if I lived here, which I’ve sort of been dreaming about, we might be pals.

Tea at the Sorrento

After tea, I had another eye-opening Seattle experience. I was invited to go to this wacky “underground restaurant” (more on that) to which I was told to bring $35 cash and a bottle of wine. A bottle of wine, not hard to find, you just go to the nearest liquor store and pick up something tasteful, right? Um, not in Washington. I called the concierge and asked where the nearest liquor store was, was put on hold for a long time, and then told to head for 2nd Avenue and Seneca. Maggie tried to explain to me what I’d find there, but I wasn’t really prepared. Washington’s liquor trade is controlled by the state, and the only places that are allowed to sell spirits are these state-run stores that are terribly depressing and feel like prisons and make you feel slightly dirty and maybe like a criminal. I didn’t know that wine stores are a completely separate entity from liquor stores, that no one buys wine at liquor stores, and when I called the hotel’s taxi to come get me in the rain, the concierge laughed out loud when I told him I was down at the liquor store. I felt like the boozy New Yorker, stocking her room with jugs of bourbon, when really all I wanted was a nice bottle of wine. Which I didn’t really find, I found a wine of debatable niceness and stood at the door of the DMV-esque liquor store, feeling like a felon, waiting for my car. Remember, in Seattle, no-host bar means cash bar, liquor store means sad scary government agency.

So the underground restaurant. It’s a series of dinners called One Pot. I still don’t entirely understand what is going on here, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing like it in NYC. I heard the tale of its origin many times over the evening: This chef, Michael Hebberoy, was a big deal in Portland, OR. He had a bunch of well received restaurants with his wife, whom he left, along with the restaurant empire, and moved to Seattle, where he is determined to reinvent the way people eat, he’s writing a book called Kill the Restaurant.

Michael Hebberoy

 

So he’s got this roving restaurant situation that you get invited to via email. The dinner’s at a different location each time — this time it was in a giant warehouse on the outskirts of town. They built a kitchen (everything is cooked, I think, in one pot), set up a big, very elegant table whose tablecloth was bubble wrap, and served some amazingly delicious dinner: salad with pickled beets, something described as “pockets of pork love,” and cupcakes. Kirsten and Kim (who organized the cocktail party) brought me, along with Whitney, Kim’s daughter, whose girlfriend works for One Pot. I found it all totally fun and whimsical and brilliant.

Kim and cupcakes.

 

I’m not sure if it’s legal or not to operate a restaurant in this way, but Maggie said that lots of people are doing similar things in Seattle now; she wrote a blog post called “Kill the Underground Restaurant” that details her own frustration with the whole phenomenon. As an outsider, I could only marvel at the ingeniousness of it all. I loved the food, I loved talking with Kim, who’s truly a visionary when it comes to getting people to read books. I like that there’s something “underground” anywhere, because I love secret anything, even secret things that aren’t really secret and are written up in Daily Candy.

Saturday
Jogging in the gym at the hotel, I was moved inexplicably to sprint a full extra mile, fueled by the accidental addition of “Rosanna” by Toto on my running playlist. I ask you not to judge me.

I walked to Capitol Hill, where Liz & Anthony, formerly of New York, live. Liz sat next to me at Oxygen during the Final Days, and is now reporter for public radio in Seattle, which is so cool I can hardly stand it. Anthony works on the website for The Stranger, also inestimably cool. We hung out in their lovely condo and talked about cults and Scientology (again with secrets, I love anything secret, but even typing the word Scientology may get me assassinated, which makes me fearful to delve any further into that particular secretive organization). Liz and I went out for wine and snacks and talked about the olden days. It’s amazing how many people/places/websites I’ve forgotten even existed from the early days at Oxygen.

Liz and Anthony seem to belong here, in the very way I imagined they would when they were Seattle transplants living in New York. There is indeed a different mentality on the east coast, people are more easygoing here, there’s space, there’s room to breathe, I don’t get the sense that Liz is dying to be someplace else or feeling competitive or squeezed out or less than, which is the sense you get from so many people in New York. Liz and I were work friends in New York, and getting to spend fully social time with her in Seattle was fantastic — another thing about New York, people don’t have time to make friends, or they don’t actively pursue friends, after they’ve lived there a long time.

I was also invited to go dancing and to a Mariners game, which frankly proves that one can have more of a social life in a town where she barely knows anyone than she does in her hometown. I know it’s a circumstantial thing, that I happen to have a long stay in Seattle, that I was lucky enough to meet outgoing, interesting people here who have a lot going on, and that if I lived here I’d probably be just as strangely hermetic, ambivalent/fixated on writing and running in the same way I am in NYC, but I’d have more space, and I might be a person who wears a Patagonia fleece vest to a fancy restaurant. Okay, I’d never be that person. But it bears noting that I have, in both Minneapolis and Seattle, found myself accidentally wearing a jean jacket and jeans (as in dungarees). So I’m walking around in jeans tip-to-toe, kind of like a cowboy, and not really caring.

Is this the beginning of the end?

PS I walked to Maggie’s favorite cafe, Bauhaus, this morning, where I now sit typing this before I have to pack for my 30 second flight to Portland.

It’s very lovely here — there’s even a big photo of Walter Gropius on the wall — except for one thing. My beverage/vessel rule is being violated flagrantly.

Hot beverage cold drinking glass = very sad. Sigh.