100 Reasons to Love Seattle

Photo: Courtesy Elke Van De Velde

38. For a Small City, Our Designers Dream Big

No one believes in Seattle’s viability as a World-Class Fashion City more than designer Francisco Hernandez. (Funny thing is: He’s originally from Miami.) For his collections of textural, world-history-inspired men’s knits, the Cuban American creative director behind Built for Man (builtforman.myshopify.com) employs weavers in remote Peruvian villages and marketing minds—who sometimes double as runway models—from Capitol Hill. Fashion shows and salonlike cocktail parties in his Twelfth Ave studio knit global sustainability issues to handcrafted high-fashion, which you can buy at David Lawrence and Veridis, and soon, maybe, Milan?

14. We Gave the World Duck-Hunter Chic

“The minute you start to say you’re cool, you’re not, so we’re not going there,” says Bill Kulczycki, the man overseeing from its SoDo headquarters the rapid fashion-world ascendancy of the outdoor brand Filson (filson.com). We’ll say it for him: Filson’s cool factor hasn’t been this high since trendsetting gold rushers and Wild West pioneers sported the Seattle company’s first wool coats over a century ago. Not that modern-day moleskin vest–bedecked duck hunters give a hoot that kids from Ballard to Brooklyn pack iPod accessories and fashion mags in Filson field bags, or that the brand debuted an ultramodern shop in Osaka, Japan’s slick shopping district in March. They’re just fired up about the classic cuts, traditional plaids, and tough, durable construction.

42. Our Street Artists Meet with the Mayor

While most street artists keep a low profile—this is a city that spends about $1.75 million a year on graffiti cleanup—Ryan Henry Ward chats up the mayor to find new public venues for his big, bold bonanzas of brushstrokes. Far from a paint-by-numbers tagger, Ward got his start in public art in 2008 by knocking on business doors and asking for permission to paint murals on their walls. (If you’ve driven by Crown Hill’s Value Village, you’ve seen one of his works: dancing elephants decked out in polka-dotted dresses.) And his project for next June may be his master stroke: Ward has lofty plans to complete 100 pieces of collaborative public art.

33. For a Bad-Boy Chef, Michael Hebb Sure Does a Lot of Good

By the time Michael Hebb (onepotblog.blogspot.com) decamped from Portland—amid the grease-fire smoke of abrupt restaurant closings, pissed-off former employees and investors, and a big fat acrimonious divorce—the young chef and smooth-talking raconteur had supersized his bad-boy reputation.

And he brought it along with his chef’s knives when he moved to Seattle four years ago. Sure, the guy Food and Wine dubbed a “food provocateur” is a lightning rod, given to sweeping declarations like “Kill the Restaurant!” (We like your Pike Street Fish Fry restaurant anyway, Michael.) But the truth is, Hebb’s better suited to the role of cultural impresario than restaurateur. This is the philosopher whose One Pot dinner happenings bring poets and thinkers and chefs (and diners!) together, often in the burnished Sorrento Hotel, simply to “find the meaning of the common table.” Is it just us…or is this bad boy doing pretty good stuff?

37. We’ve Got a Field House of Dreams

As a girl during the Great Depression, Nicole Miller’s grandmother took home economics and craftmaking classes at the South Park community center called the Field House. As a reaction to the Great Recession, Miller, who owns Ballard’s hugely influential men’s boutique Blackbird recreated it. The new Field House sells American-made and regionally produced heritage brands (Woolrich, Filson, Pendleton) to enlightened consumers counting fashion miles and cost-per-wear; on Sundays, Miller’s friends and employees give free workshops on knot-tying, mending and sewing, and deboning a chicken. Just like in the old days.

Photo: Courtesy Andrea J. Walker

72. We Have the Best Mobile Food Cart in America

Oh, how the Roach Coach has evolved. Mobile food-service trucks such as Marination Mobile (marinationmobile.com) now purvey curbside cuisine from every part of the world in every neighborhood. From within its tin-can walls come kimchi quesadillas, kalua pork tacos, and other succulent fusings of Korean and Hawaiian food. “Our customers are great,” says co-owner Roz Edison. “They stand in the rain, wind, and cold for our food.” They also stand up for it. In November, Marination’s fans vaulted the little truck to a first-place victory in Good Morning, America’s Best Food Cart in America contest. Not bad for a truck that hadn’t even been rolling for a year.

39. Tim Ellis Tells the Truth About Real Estate

Tim Ellis wasn’t born. He was created—a superhero for the postrecession era assembled from the scraps of our broken real estate–investment dreams. And his power is a built-in housing-bubble BS detector. Back in 2005, before he was the editor of seattlebubble.com , the unapologetically contrarian blog about all things real estate, Ellis was just a guy shopping for a home with his wife. Scared off by the out-of-hand market and sure-to-fail loan programs, they quit searching. But he kept digging for answers to what was driving the insanity.

The product of that research is his blog, a daily analysis of the latest sales stats and market indices that routinely blows the doors off of the housing hype machine. The bubble may have burst, but Ellis is still writing, and for anyone hunting for a home—or just curious about the latest twist in today’s real-estate drama—it’s required reading.

41. Liver Lovers Have Their Very Own List

Anyone can join the Canlis Liver List. You just call the restaurant (canlis.com). But you have to be dedicated. Because on any day, you could receive a call asking you to come eat liver that night.

The list works like this: Every couple of months, butcher Tracy Smaciarz of Heritage Meats in Rochester learns a local farm is going to slaughter some calves. If those calves are young enough, he buys their livers and brings them to Canlis. The restaurant sets aside several reservations and invites a few listers to come partake. The organs are seasoned with salt, pepper, and vermouth, grilled, and served alongside onion rings—the same treatment they received back when liver was a main item on the menu in the ’60s. “It’s basically liver and onions,” says part-owner Mark Canlis, but when listers are presented with the dish, he says, “They’re like cats with catnip.”

45. A Store Isn’t Just a Store

As a retail designer at Callison, Jessica Park had reimagined Nordstrom’s makeup department concept by the time she was 26. In search of a new challenge, she left her day job and opened Coming Soon… (comingsoonconcept.com), a retail pop-up installation space that could also be called a gallery. After all, what’s a gallery if not, as Park points out, a “really, really challenging retail environment”?

Inside a tiny, 180-square-foot space and outside on Fremont Ave N, Park combined consumer research science—they won’t come in if they’re bored or intimidated—with art-world bravado and put it all on a schedule custom made for the short-attention-span generation. Exhibits, each with items for sale—could be handbags, could be fine art photographs, could be coffee. Worried you’ll miss something? An online shop catalogs goods from past shows.

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Published: July 2010