— पांच हजार छह सौ नब्बे-तीन —
On Saturday, Laney and I decided to have our weekend "Happy Hour in the Park" at the new
Overlook Walk, a fantastically designed pedestrian bath that switchbacks, both with stairs and ramps, from the Pike Place MarketFront to the waterfront, passing over and doubling as the roof for the new Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion building. Months ago, Laney and I thought we were earmarking this day for a Happy Hour at Volunteer Park, but then when I heard the Overlook Walk would finally be open soon, I noted in the Excel sheet "Laney and Matthew Social Calendar" that I now maintain that we would pivot to the Overlook Walk if it was open by then.
Well, I learned soon enough that the Overlook Walk was set to open Friday, October 4. I had lots of other plans already that weekend, and I decided to wait to go check it out until the Happy Hour day Laney and I had planned.
And I have to tell you:
it is spectacular. It is honestly only fully sinking in, as I write this right now, that it is likely to become a modern icon of the City of Seattle, and certainly a flagship feature of the Seattle Waterfront. And it's mot just a giant slab of white concrete curves; we were all struck by how much greenery has been added to it. (Apparently there are
art installations yet to be added to the space.)
Laney and I had long planned on walking down from Capitol Hill for day drinking on the Overlook Walk Saturday afternoon, and since he did not work until 5:00, Shobhit also joined us. I skipped breakfast, aside from two soft-boiled eggs, in favor of bringing a sandwich that turned out to be quite delicious. Since Shobhit was going to be working, he did not take a cocktail, but Laney and I both did. Shobhit brought his own sandwich, and Laney had chips and dip. We did not sit down to eat and drink at a spot with a spectacular panoramic view of Elliott Bay from the Overlook Walk until we had throughly explored it.
I now have a
57-shot photo album dedicated to this. 38 of them were taken during yesterday's visit. On Friday, while I was at work, Shobhit took a walk downtown to get his daily steps in, and he happened upon the Overlook Walk then. He texted me a bunch of photos then, and I kept 10 of them. I took one photo myself on Friday, after Shobhit picked me up after work and we drove down Elliott Way toward Home Depot (he wanted to compare prices between ordering a replacement water tank on our own or going through the Association's planned orders; predictably, the latter was the better value), which had us driving beneath the Overlook Walk. The other nine photos are earlier, from as far back as 2022, of the structure under construction.
In the early days I saw this thing getting built up over Elliott Way—it turned out to be the Ocean Pavilion under construction as well—and I thought: What the hell is
that? I have long been consulting
this Waterfront Seattle projects website, and had I been paying closer attention all along, I might have guessed it was the
Overlook Walk project. The illustrated renderings there give a broad sense of the structure, but gives no sense of the grandeur felt when there in person.
It's pretty awesome to be finally witnessing the fruits of a broad, Seattle Waterfront revitalization project decades in the making. And this isn't even technically including—but would certainly be in partnership with—the
fantastically reconstructed Colman Dock, the Seattle ferry terminal, finally finished just last year. That is
half a mile south of the Overlook Walk, which alone should really bring a lot more activity down on the Waterfront closer to pre-pandemic levels.
I even went ahead and created
a Flickr collection of albums dedicated to the broader Seattle Waterfront revitalization effort. It already includes eight albums, albeit with five of them dedicated to the demolition of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the opening of the replacement tunnel that is making all this above-ground redesign possible—the Overlook Walk is now roughly at the same height the viaduct used to be. I included other albums dedicated to the MarketFront that opened in 2017 (I did not create an album then, although I should have; I assembled that one in retrospect just this past weekend); the Seattle Aquarium Ocean Pavilion that opened a month and a half ago; and now the Overlook Walk.
The one future album I expect to add to this collection will be dedicated to the
Park Promenade & Bike Path, which currently seems likely to be open early next year. I'm pretty eager to ride the path on my bike as soon as I can, but will also look forward to exploring by foot. Shobhit left earlier than Laney and me so he could be home in plenty of time to get ready for work, and then Laney suggested we take the bus home, and we walked over to Madison to catch the RapidRide G line, taking the waterfront path to get there. We passed by the gender neutral bathroom still under construction that she is very excited about, and we also happened upon
these public swings that we immediately decided should be the location of a future Day Drinking Weekend Happy Hour sometime next spring after they open. Or hell, we could just bundle up and go on a dry day sometime in the winter or early spring. We could take hot drinks! That's an idea.
— पांच हजार छह सौ नब्बे-तीन —
— पांच हजार छह सौ नब्बे-तीन —
The rest of my weekend was, as you no doubt could have predicted, pretty movie-centric. I had to get back to the condo by about 4:30 on Saturday myself, as Alexia was coming over for, finally, the last movie of our Harrison Ford-athon: I reserved the Braeburn theater so we could watch
Blade Runner 2049.
We had both seen it before: Alexia just once, but I had seen it four times already, this making it my fifth. Alexia's first observation when it ended was something I had kind of forgotten about: "That was really long." It did not seem so the first time I saw it, but the more times you watch, the more times you feel it—that movie is two hours and 44 minutes long. It turns out, the more you watch that movie, the more its imperfections come into sharper focus. The degree to which women are objectified and treated as sex objects in that movie gets particularly tedious. Alexia said: "Could we at least get a couple of nude men?"
I still find the movie compelling, but this was the longest break I had taken yet between viewings—I had not watched it since 2020, after seeing it twice in theaters in 2017 and watching at home one other time in 2018. Seven years now since its release, it's pretty clear the movie won't remain as enduring a pop culture artifact as the first one was.
Shobhit had made a couscous dish that I was able to share with Alexia for dinner; I feel bad about previous movies where we made no food plan and Alexia was left starving. Shobhit had an extra bag of potato chips he got on sale at Total Wine and so he told me to eat it. I went to Trader Joe's and got some pimento cheese dip to have with it, so we basically had that a snacking side with the couscous during the movie. It was all too much food, really. My weight inched up over the weekend, after several days of barely going down each day.
— पांच हजार छह सौ नब्बे-तीन —
I hung out with both Laney and Alexia on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, I hung out with them separately, but yesterday it was together: we all went to see the movie
Saturday Night together. It was a really good time at the movies, although both of them had so much more direct a connection to
Saturday Night Live, having watched its first season when it first aired, they both were clearly more moved by the film than I was.
I thought the movie was fine. It was fun, but also I will probably have virtually no memory of its content in just a few months. You can ready my review for more detail on how I liked it a lot but still can't quite call it anything special. I'm glad I went, though.
The three of us walked downtown to the movie, and then back, together. Alexia drove over from Issaquah, found parking on Capitol Hill, and met at my place at 11:30. We walked the six blocks down to meet up with Laney, with whom we walked down from Broadway, then back to it after.
Once I was back home, I spent the requisite hour or so writing my review, which took me to somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30. I later made macaroni and cheese that I combined with some of Shobhit's leftover vegetables. Those proved so spicy that I had to put some of the small portion I took for myself back. It was just as well, after I already had an Ellenos yogurt and the last two slices of the Schwarz Brothers Cinnamon Croissant Loaf bread shortly after I got home, and I also made chai. And I wonder why I can't consistently shed some pounds. Not that there's any urgent need for it, really, aside from my pathological desire to look "better" even though I also can't stop eating delicious foods and treats.
Anyway, I spent other time over the weekend working on these photos. I really need to start refocusing on this year's calendars. Shobhit got home from work around 9:30 and I closed out my day by watching this week's episode of
The Penguin on Max (HBO). It was another excellent episode; the show has consistently been getting better as it goes along.
— पांच हजार छह सौ नब्बे-तीन —
[posted 12:33 pm]
