Seattle, 1995
The first time I saw Seattle was on a ferry in Elliott Bay in 1995. It was summer, the sun high in the sky, Mount Rainier was in the distance and the city didn’t just sparkle — it glowed. This was my first trip to the west coast from North Carolina and the city before me felt like no place I had ever visited. At that moment, the thought first entered my mind: I will live here.
In the 90s, for me and many people my age, Seattle wasn’t just a city — it was an idea. It was home to the grunge movement, which gave it an aura of creativity, rebelliousness and attitude. Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and many others put the sleepy northwest factory town on the map for music lovers and a generation of young people seeking something new and different. In my mind there was no cooler place to be. I dreamt of Seattle long before arriving.
In my teens and 20s, Seattle felt impossibly far from small town North Carolina. Unlike anything around me at the time, it seemed to live in the future. Along with music culture, Microsoft and Amazon were building a foundation for Seattle’s reputation in technology. Combined with grunge, I had the impression that everything cool and interesting was originating in the pacific northwest. I can distinctly remember asking myself this question: In the future, do I want to be where things are coming from or going to?
Even as a young person, the answer was easy. I wanted to go where things were emerging. I wanted to find people who were doing today what people in North Carolina would do in three years. I wanted to see what it was like in the future. Who are these people? Are they like me?
The city that greeted me that day on the deck of the ferry was a symbol of what was possible. The glow that I saw wasn’t just the sun reflecting off of skyscrapers—it was a manifestation of all the perceptions and expectations that had slowly grown in my mind over many years. Seattle was finally real and right in front of me.
In many ways, I stepped off the ferry that day and never looked back. A few years later, in 1998, I moved to Seattle without a job and it’s where I’ve lived ever since.
