Seattle is somewhere everyone has lived

I like Tao Lin's article in The Stranger about Seattle. All people do in Seattle is talk about Seattle and The Stranger. They don't like either, but everyone has written for the latter and no one wants to move to Portland.

Everyone leaves Seattle, and new people move in every five years. Seattle has 10 permanent residents whose job it is to send reports of Seattle to everyone else and keep track of the new names of bars and restaurants, which also change every five years. The list of new and old bar names is stored on an enormous mildewy scroll, underneath Mount Rainier.

The new library is a secret graveyard for failed Ikea furniture designs. The 10 Permanent Residents of Seattle know that the books are stored at Suzzallo Library (see above) at the University of Washington, which connects to Allen Library (named after Paul) through a secret passageway so you don’t fall on your ass walking from Suzzallo to Allen over wet bricks. These are the only bricks in Seattle.

If you take a plane from Chicago, the Seattle people stand around politely, planning where to move next, while stout Chicago people push to the front and honk. If you lived in one city your whole life, you might honk too.