I went to Seattle and Vancouver once in the same weekend.
Seattle (circa 2002 but I've been there like 15 times):
I'm walking around on broadway in the middle of the day. A guy on a bike ride's by and asked if I want to buy some weed. I get super paranoid, being a new place, and say no, despite really wanting to smoke weed in a different city. I go to Dick's aka an awesome fast food place, and I see this guy screaming at this girl. The girl is holding back her medium sized dog from biting the shit out of the dude, but screaming back. He says he's gonna file a report because she bit him(no, not the dog, her), and she says that she'll file one because he beat her up and points to some supposed bruises on her face that I didn't see. They seem to be a couple despite the fact that she's like 20 and he's around 50. Meanwhile people are walking by normally and ordering Dick's pretending like nothing is happening. They're blocking the sidewalk and people just casually walk around them. Meanwhile I'm sitting there laughing my ass off and eating a delicious cheeseburger. Then a fucking cop comes up and I think I'm gonna see some cool action go down but he JUST WALKS BY casually like everyone else.
I go to a show and everyone has black hair, black pants, and mostly black or white or black/white t shirts or denim jackets. Very tight clothing. Also everyone was extremely pale and emaciated skinny. It seemed like people were wearing makeup to try and make themselves look paler. It seemed slightly contrived but there was a pretty cool community aspect. It was sort of an exclusive club though cause no one wanted to talk to us much. It wasn't uncomfortable at all though. Everyone was set in their ways. They knew the score and since it was obvious we weren't a part of that, we weren't immediately included. What I'm describing sounds really bad, but it was not an unpleasant experience at all. Just sort of foreign.
After the show we walked downtown at night. We went into this mcdonalds where you had to get some key card to go to the bathroom(i've never seen this before). The bathroom was extremely gross and almost made me not want to eat. Somehow I think there was a typo on the menu or something, because I got a 20 piece mcnugget for some ridiculously cheap price, like $2.50 or something. It was such an unfriendly mcdonalds though. Just terrible service and atmosphere.
We walk downtown more and this tall jamaicany looking black guy(or at least he had dreads and was wearing an atypical outfit was walking about a block away and he stopped and stood completely still. As soon as we got up to him he got in my friends face and screamed "EYES!" as loud as he could spraying phlegm and spittle. We started running and he punted the hot dog he was carrying at us. We were running in a sort of hunched over fashion because we were laughing so hard.
The next day I see another fight downtown, between a black dude and his g/f and a white dude who was still in his car but hanging out of the window. It was obviously over drugs. The white guy seemed to be getting the best of the black dude and his girl, although the punches and attacks were so weak that it looked like retards or 8 year olds fighting. Like, nothing was even close to enough to draw blood. Again, no one even looks at what is happening. They just pass by casually. Sensing the relative harmlessness of the altercation, I go up and just stare at what is happening. I'm talking like 2 feet away, almost getting hit by flailing arms. God, whatever. Sometimes when some wild bullshit goes down you have to do something wild as well. Then we went to Vancouver.
Vancouver (circa 2002):
I went to the center island part of vancouver and immediately we were in this weird place that had a lot of tall buildings around, yet it still somehow looked like complete shit, and there were weird crazy looking people all around staring at us creepily. We went into this mall and the place was completely empty, there were like 5 other people in the mall, but it was still open. Again very creepy since we were in a different country. Also I think the mall closed at like 5pm too which was very weird on a saturday. We walked back to our car and guys were mean mugging us. We started driving around and everyone was staring at us and a couple of guys tried to rush the car while it was driving!
We freaked out and got off the island center part(I think) and went somewhere else. We started walking down this strip and there were teens drinking on the street and we talked to a bunch of them and it was pretty cool. Then we went into Hooters and this really, really hot waitress was being a huge bitch to us when we were asking her what kind of cool stuff we should do in Vancouver. She said something in a really snotty tone about going down to the beach and smoking weed and getting laid. From her tone I'm guessing that the beach is not a good place to go at night. Fuck it, I was just staring at her tits the whole time, I didn't give a fuck. They looked absolutely incredible.
We continued walking down the strip, and there were currency exchange places on every single corner. Some weird but sort of hot girl asked us "who changed the gravity?". The weird thing was that it actually felt different that night. My body felt completely different when walking, so it kind of made sense. We weren't on drugs or drinking. We wanted to go to this dance club called the Roxy, but then some dude warned us that they pick fights with Americans there. Then we said fuck it, this is fucking weird, and went home.
Seattle: less strange since it's in the same country and things are more recognizable. Seatlle has better downtown and is less scary.
Vancouver: more strange but probably more interesting as a result.
