Hidden Seattle: How to Visit Like a Local

Image via Complex Original

Don’t fall into the tourist trap that is the Pike Place Starbucks—it’s not really the first store (the original location was at 2000 Western Ave a couple blocks down), and as any local will tell you, going to a Starbucks while visiting Seattle is like Michael Scott getting his favorite slice of New York pizza at a Sbarro. At least check out a local chain like Café Vita or Victrola, or get original at an independently-owned place like Bedlam in Belltown, which is everything you would expect from a hip, edgy Seattle coffee house: original art on the walls, local indie station KEXP FM playing on the speakers, weird ’70s cartoons or Miyazaki films looping on the TV, a cozy, exposed-brick and leather-bound-books upstairs area, and of course, really good espresso. 

As one of the biggest port cities on the Pacific Coast, Seattle and its Chinatown/International District have an abundance of great Asian restaurants. Everything is good here—Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Japanese—but Chinese dim sum is one of the quickest, cheapest, and easiest ways to get down on some of these offerings (plus it’s served from late breakfast through dinnertime). New Hong Kong and Four Seas are great in a pinch thanks to their coveted parking lots, but Harbor City, Jade Garden, Honey Court, and Green Leaf are all worth finding parking for. 

Aside from having great food, the Chinatown/International District is one of the city’s more historic areas, with plenty of rewards for more explorative types to find. You can kick it old school at a place like the Panama Hotel, a 100-year-old hotel and bathhouse that still serves tea and coffee in its lobby. Or just spend time walking around the giant Uwajimaya supermarket and its connected Kinokuniya bookstore.

Dick’s Drive-In is a marquee local staple. Open since 1956, there are several locations scattered around the city (the only one you can actually sit down and eat in is the one on First Ave—they’re all park-your-car/walk-up-and-order situations otherwise), but the Broadway one (115 Broadway E) is the most famous, the fabled place that’s “the cool hang out” according to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1988 hit single “Posse On Broadway,” more recently seen in Macklemore’s “White Walls” video. It’s standard fast food fare with a severely limited menu—four burger options, fries, sodas, shakes, and ice cream—but cheap prices (the most expensive item is the Deluxe burger at $2.90) and real ingredients. Get a bagful of burgers and fries, and chow down at the outside counters while you chat it up with the always-colorful area locals. Just don’t ask for a special order unless you’re a fan of public ridicule.

Staying true to its status as one of the most literate cities in America, Seattle has an awesome library. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and former Seattlite Joshua Ramus, the angular, glass-paned building has 10 floors of explorable terrain complete with observation decks, crazy red and highlighter-yellow foyers, and even a coffee and gift shop on one of the main floors. While you do still have to keep it low-key and quiet, it’s one of the coolest free sights to see in the city, and it provides a perfect background for an impromptu photo shoot.

As anyone who lives in Seattle proper can tell you, the city is growing at a pace too fast for its infrastructure to handle. Combined with constant construction and lane closures, getting from point A to point B in traffic is more or less impossible by traditional means. Renting a car for your vacation could turn out ugly, especially if you’re staying in the downtown area. But thankfully, the city has huge, fairly well-organized bike lanes on most main roads, a citywide bike-share system called Pronto that offers $8 24-hour rentals, and $16 three-day passes on cruiser bikes, along with some awesome bike trails (The Burke-Gilman Trail and Lake Washington/Seward Park Loop) that make getting around without a car way easier.

Seattle has a ton of venues for all sorts of music. Check out Club Q or Kremwerk. Punk and metal? The Highline. Big-name indie bands and rap groups? Neumos or The Showbox. But The Crocodile was one of the main fixtures of the city’s thriving grunge scene in the ’90s, with seminal bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains all performing there regularly during the club’s heyday. After closing for a couple of years, it reopened with a renovated new look in 2009, and now has a back bar area with tasty wood-fired pizza and giant photos from the club’s grunge days hanging on the walls.

There are a ton of great craft cocktails and craft breweries and vegan cider (or whatever) available around Seattle, but one of the regional staples when it comes to alcoholic beverages comes in a white can emblazoned with a big red cursive ‘R’. Named after the 14,000-foot tall mountain visible looking south on clear days, Rainier Beer used to be brewed right off the I-5 freeway (the old brewery space is part warehouse, part work lofts now). Though the beer is now made in California, it’s still offered in most local bars as an alternative to Pabst or other cheap tall-can lagers, and is actually pretty drinkable for a budget brew.

Real Seattlites know that one of the biggest advantages of this city over other thriving American metropolises is that you can get out of it rather quickly. Fairly unspoiled nature is as short as a 30-minute drive away from the city, and most of the state outside of the oasis of Seattle is a mountainous forest land. There are two mountain ranges nearby (the Cascades to the east, the Olympics to the west) and tons of day-trip-worthy lakes and camping and hiking trails, but Seattle’s location between the Puget Sound ocean inlet and Lake Washington makes the city its own escape sometimes. Public parks like Gasworks, Alki, Madison Beach, or Golden Gardens provide grass, trees, beaches, and beautiful views to be enjoyed right within city limits.