Its been about 4 months since I moved to Seattle from San Diego. I thought now is a good time to step back and reflect on my first four months here in Seattle area and write about what is good and bad about this place. Obviously when I first announced my decision to move here from San Diego, everyone thought I was nuts; to leave such a beautiful weather for what they claim to be crappy one. However, apart from that one thing no one came up with any other negative point about Seattle. Anyway, here is my list of good and bad about Seattle.
First lets look at the good:
Small
Even though Seattle is the biggest city in the pacific northwest, it is still small compared to cities in California. Everything is close by in terms of distance. From Redmond to Seattle is 20 mins, so is from airport to downtown. There are 4 major highways I-5, I-405, I-90 and 520. These four highways form the major transport medium from north to south and east to west. If you are in Seattle downtown, you can just walk around. It has one of the highest walk scores I've seen.
Charm
Seattle has its charm everywhere you go. It is artsy; lot of museums, street art, the buildings are old, it is quaint. If you think every part of Seattle is old, break your thoughts right there. It has one of the best "green" buildings ever designed. The experience music program building is just amazing. If you have a wall paper of Seattle Space needle on windows 7, look at the building from where it is taken. Thats EMP building. The view from 520 bridge going into downtown in the evening is just amazing. I loved driving back from work every night.
Environment friendly
Seattle is very environment friendly city. It is the first city I saw which has trash bins for recyclable and solar compactors on the streets. The city has mandated that the taxis that go to airport be hybrids. People in general are very conscious of environment. If you are planning to do any business on the "green" side, you should consider Seattle.
Green
Seattle is green. You would see high rise buildings and not a couple of blocks later, you would see awesome greenery. Some places appear as if the city just popped up in a national park. Eastside is mostly like a national park. A few evenings when the fog sets in, it gives you an impression you are in a hill resort. There are trees everywhere, and not just some plants that were uprooted from somewhere and put in your streets like in San Diego. These are native plants that are here for a long long time. And they are beautiful.
Estuaries
On the west side of Seattle is Puget Sound. A Sound is a sea/ocean inlet surrounded by two land bodies. Puget sound has many fresh water sources flowing into it making it a very rich ecological place. Marine life thrives here and ecosystem that mainly depends on marine life. These estuaries combined with mild temperature make it one of the best places for human race to develop. And of course the sound and the lakes around add to the scenery.
Transit
Seattle has one of the best transits I've seen. You can take bus to any part of the city. And they are pretty frequent. Oh, most of the companies provide you with ORCA card, which makes it free to ride the bus. And if you are in downtown area, you dont need ORCA card either; it is just free to ride in downtown.
No income tax
This is one of the best things of Washington. No personal income tax. Zero; zilch; nada. Thats about 8% better than what you will make in CA :). And before I boost this, the sales taxes are at 9.75%. Slightly more than CA, but still not too bad.
Entrepreneur spirit
God knows why Boeing and Microsoft decided to set up their headquarters here, but ever since entrepreneur spirit in Seattlelites is just climbing. Microsoft, Amazon, Nordstorm, Eddie Bauver, Expedia, Boeing, Nintendo, Costco are just few of the companies to name. Ever since Amazon made the cloud computing famous, Seattle has become hub for cloud computing. Google just opened its office here to attract more Amazonians to work on its cloud computing. Apart from these, there are a lot of small companies and the number of meetups for entrepreneurs are limitless.
Friendly people
People here are very friendly. They are open, welcome you, smile at you and are generally pleasant to talk to. For a place that gets has bad reputation of being gloomy, its the people that light up the place.
Fresh food
As I said earlier, Seattle is big in being environment friendly and green. Most of the food that comes here is locally grown. This is not to say there are no corporate giants; but most people still prefer farmers market. Almost at every corner you would see locally grown produce. They are also big into being healthy. You would see notices posted everywhere about being healthy and asking you to eat better nutritious food. I've been to only one farmers market so far; it was great.
Soccer
Soccer seems to be running in Seattlelites blood. I was told that there are about 300 soccer teams in Seattle. They have indoor soccer/outdoor soccer, co-rec, mens, womens, kids. We've a soccer field at office and thats one of the reasons I love to go to work. We play during lunch hour. Many people play in leagues with games all around the city. Marymoor park has about 16 soccer fields. It is a great place to be if you are a soccer fan.
Now coming to the bad part:
Weather
Yes it is true, weather is not great in Seattle. You must've heard that it rains a lot in Seattle. I would like to modify that statement and rephrase it as : "It drizzles a lot" or "it is cloudy a lot". The rain is not pouring down most of the time, it is just like the spray drifting from your lawn sprinklers. It doesnt snow here much, except for one or two days, but when it does the city pretty much closes down. Yay! free day to stay at home :). I've been fortunate enough (pun intended) to be in one of the worst snow storms of Seattle during second week of January 2012. But it was not devastating or anything. Just stayed at home, watched TV and lazed.
Traffic
Traffic is bad especially if you are with in the rectangle connected by I-5, I-405, I-90 and 520. The intersections are usually really bad. And since Seattle is horizontally challenged due to Puget sound on one side and lake washington on the other, there isn't much scope for improving it either. There are car pool lanes to mitigate the problem. And transit frequency is good enough that most people can take the bus and read something. If you are on the eastside and dont have to go to Seattle, you are fine. The new areas in suburbs are not affected by these traffic issues. Unfortunately my wife works at Amazon in Seattle and I work at Nintendo in Redmond, which makes it difficult for one of us to avoid traffic.
Parking
Parking is an issue in Seattle. Since the city is so small and cant really expand, it has to cut down on parking. There are parking garages, but expensive. Most of the apartment complexes dont provide parking unless you pay extra for them. A parking spot runs anywhere between $125-$200 per month.
So there it is. Overall I would say there are a lot of good things than bad things about Seattle and you shouldn't hesitate to move up here just because you heard about bad weather only. Good things happen to those who dare and explore new horizons; be the one to explore and reap the benefits.
