Space-Needle

I moved to Seattle a little over two months ago for a new job. I’m quite happy to be living here and I figured I’d share some reasons why.

  1. The rain isn’t that bad — Seattle has a bad rap for being rainy all the time. Most of the time when it rains here, it’s just a drizzly mist. Very rarely does it pour like it does back East. It is overcast a lot, but it was overcast a lot in Providence too. Chalk it up as part of living by the water.

  2. Everything takes credit/debit cards — You can seriously live a cashless existence here. Parking meters, vending machines, transit pass machines; you name it, it takes a credit card. Now when I tell the homeless people that I don’t have any cash on me, more often than not, I’m telling the truth.

  3. Everything is online — Every business here has an online presence. Pizza shops? Check! Restaurants? Check! Hardware store? Check! Picture Framing Shop? Check! It’s the way it should be.

  4. Best Garbage Collection — Here you get three cans: recycling, compostables and garbage. Since I can compost all my food waste, I’m down to making only one half of one kitchen bag of garbage a week. The garbage men are also very neat; there’s never any garbage on the street after garbage day. We do directly pay for garbage collection, as opposed to through property taxes. I think that’s what gets us that level of service.

  5. Awesome public transportation — For first month I was here, my car hadn’t caught up to me yet. I didn’t miss it. Now that it’s here, it sits parked on the street all week. The only thing I use it for is the occasional grocery trip. I’ve used a quarter of a tank of gas in five weeks. I’ll be lucky to put 1000 miles on my car this year.

  6. I’m walking everywhere — This is probably a corollary to the previous item and also a function of where I chose to live, but I’m walking everywhere. Home to the office. Home to the grocery store for small items. Around town to go out for dinner and or drinks. There are a bunch of good restaurants and a couple of decent bars within ten blocks of the house. It rocks to be back in a walkable city.

Ok, that’s six things. I got carried away. Needless to say I’m enjoying the change of venue.

Photo by zoonabar on Flickr, because I haven’t gotten around to taking my own picture of the Space Needle yet.