A Run Around Lake Union

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Currently: #ToB judge Gutowski ( Wolf Hall vs. Logicomix: http://bit.ly/dfNuUK ) is holding a contest to win his books: http://bit.ly/cX416x
about 2 hours ago

by Kate Bicket · Essay by Matthew Baldwin

Hooters
Seattle fancies itself a highbrow town, with a citizenry more likely to read Proust over a glass of Bordeaux than ogle breasts over a plate of hot wings. So when the first Hooters in Seattle opened here, on the southern end of Lake Union, about a decade ago, it caused something of a kerfuffle, with many bemoaning the coarsening of our erudite, Pacific Northwest culture. The upside to this is that everyone knows where the Hooters is, which makes it easy for me to give people directions to my place of business just up the road.

Me: From I-5 take the Mercer Street exit. As soon as the off ramp ends, you need to rapidly change lanes twice, to get over into the rightmost lane, and then go around the corner, at which point Mercer will become Fairview Avenue North, and then stay in the right-hand lane and take another right—it’s really more of a curve than a turn—onto Fairview Avenue East. Did you follow all that?

Them: Not really.

Me: OK, so you’re taking the Mercer Street exit, right? And when you… oh, forget it. You know where Hooters is, right?

Them: Uhh, well, I’m not really…

Me: Shut up, I know you do. Go like you’re going to Hooters but then go half a mile farther.

Them: Got it.

Mileage: 0.5 of 6.0

A Run Around Lake Union

Essay by Matthew Baldwin

I am both a programmer and a Coca-Cola addict, a combination that could cause me to balloon like a self-inflating life raft at any given moment.

So, in an attempt to stave off the inevitable, I occasionally take a long lunch and run around Seattle’s Lake Union. Here are some of the sights along my route.

—Published May 12, 2005

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TMN Contributing Writer Matthew Baldwin is a programmer from Seattle who lives with the Best Wife Ever and a handful of good-for-nothing cats. He runs the web site defective yeti, loves to play board games, and once convinced 30 sober adults to run the 100-meter dash with their pants around their ankles. Once the patent for his combination Bagpipes/Breathalizer is approved, Matthew Baldwin will become obscenely wealthy and move to Belize.

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

A Run Around Lake Union

A Run Around Lake Union

Essay by Matthew Baldwin

TODAY’S FEATURE

Go Climb a Tree

OUR MAN IN BOSTON

Manguel on Reading

TMN MERCH

If a Bird Can’t Fly It Walks

TMN TALKS

Star Black

The Morning News is an online magazine, published weekdays since 1999