firecat

A friend of mine and her husband are moving to Seattle very soon, and she wrote me with the following questions:

What are likely neighborhoods to rent a house that feel city-like and that are a reasonable commute to Redmond, where her husband will be working? (My friend doesn't drive, so someplace that's within a few blocks of a shopping/eating area would be best.)

A comfy hotel in the $125/night range, preferably within walking distance of a sushi bar.

Info about the East Side: She writes: "I'm wondering if any of the towns over there would be agreeable. (Bellevue, Kirkland, etc.) I don't want to be out in the boonies, since I can't drive to get anywhere, and I'm hoping to avoid suburbs."

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From:

sev

On the Eastside, Kirkland has had some clever & careful downtown city-planning I've read about with interest, but while downtown Kirkland is quite charming (and vaguely reminiscent of the north end of Berkeley, to my ten-years-removed and rather-nostalgic memory), the place is still an eastside suburb.

In Seattle proper, Capitol Hill, the International District, Queen Anne, and the University District are all dense urban areas with good housing. And I've been coming to appreciate West Seattle now that I've got friends there, and Fremont now that I've got friends working there.

Lower Queen Anne is all about mainstream culture -- big theaters, the opera house, the pacific science center. Not familiar with the commute around there, though.

Capitol Hill has been described as "Seattle's Alt Downtown," and that's pretty accurate; it's where you'll find a lot of Seattle's visible queer, punk, and goth population. It's between the U District and Downtown and has great bus service. The eastbound commute is pretty accessible from here. I'm biased; I live in Cap Hill. :)

The ID is much smaller than San Francisco's Chinatown -- there's a cluster of office buildings at the west end of it, near the I-90 onramp. But it's very close to downtown; an easy walk. The housing there is mostly apartments, though. There's houses in nearby Beacon Hill, but that part of the city is not really aging gracefully. I'm not sure what the commute is like from there -- it's near the I-90 onramp, which is often easier for rush-hour traffic than 405, but it doesn't actually seem to be all that predictable and that onramp shares traffic with downtown.

The University District is a pretty typical college neighborhood, right off of I-5.

There are parts of West Seattle -- particularly those around the West Seattle Junction -- that are quite nice. That area's got some good community theater. I-90 is easily accessible once you get across the West Seattle Bridge, but I don't know how hard that is during rush hour.

Fremont has a lot of character; it's been considered The Place To Be for alternative artists, though it's been gentrifying (possibly in part because Adobe has offices there). There's a Sunday Market in Fremont that's got both produce and art. I have no idea what the freeway access is up there, though.

"feel city-like" is an interesting concept around here. When I first moved to Seattle from San Francisco one of the things about the city-feel here that bothered me was that in all but the very-densest of neighborhoods, all the houses were too far apart. I've never lived in a city where I could walk all the way around my house. Nowadays I'm less weirded out by that; I can look at the house my friends just bought and note that actually, it goes nearly right up against the property line on one side...but it took me years to get out of the expectation that a "city" is made up of Edwardian and Victorian houses snuggled up right against each other. I no longer call Seattle a "cute little town."