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14. Best Y2K hideout
READERS’ COMMENTS“Ted Kaczynsky’s house.” “Steve’s house.” “In bed having sex!” “Safeco Field—BYOB.” “Frontier Room.” “Alaska.” “Orcas.” “Under the Fremont Bridge with the troll.” “Tina Podlodowski’s office.” “Camp River Ranch Girl Scout Lodge.” “My basement.” |
We get it: Home is where the heart, the hearth, and all those rations you’ve been putting away for months are. Your desire to sit out the Big One amidst your creature comforts was overwhelming. We guess it could be kinda cozy—all those familiar posters on the wall, the chime of the family cuckoo clock, the oh-so-portentous whimpering of the family pet, and the squeals of laughter from your kids as they anticipate what you’ve told them is yet another holiday involving presents and costumes. For the more adventurous (and there were enough of you emboldened ones to come in second), various tropical locations swam invitingly before our ballot-counters’ eyes. Hawaii, of course, ranked up there, as well as Caribbean coves and the ever-vague “beach.” Some of you—let it be said that you were the ones with cold, hard greed as a motivating factor—even decided that Microsoft, that glassy, green-backed campus, was the place for you to while away the final hours of the century. After all, it’s where the future has been ticking away for years, right? Either that, or you Microsofties know something we simple folk don’t. Yikes—RedWest or bust?
30. Best place to spend New Year’s Eve
READERS’ COMMENTS“Anywhere not in the air.” “In an altered state.” “With Homer Simpson over at the plant.” “Crystal Mountain.” “Alibi Room—kiss orgies!” “Seventy-five miles southeast of Lincoln, Nebraska.” “My pants.” “Under my bed, hiding from Y2K wackos.” |
C’mon, this is getting kind of old. Home for the holidays, home for the duration, blah, blah, blah. Don’t people get out anymore? Sure, there are drunken drivers to consider, weather reports, traffic in and around the Seattle Center, but gee whiz—it’s the friggin’ New Year! Party on! Those of you who have a tendency to set your spike heels beyond the confines of your thresholds resounded with . . . a second-place thud. The Space Needle, in all its glory, that pinnacle of a pinprick, is where you’ll plop yourself down in time for the fireworks. And don’t even THINK about getting up in the elevator; the Needle has been snagged (reservations were made years ago) for a private party and there’s no telling how much of a mess that’ll make things. If you’re lucky you’ll see the intrepid KING 5 News team huddled together in Day-Glo fleece, reporting live from the millennial afterglow (and with Valerie St. John reporting on power outages from the Satellite Center). We’re curmudgeonly to a point here at the Weekly, and when we tallied the third place location, we instead went all giddy with glee. “In bed,” said many of you—now, that’s more like it! Combining the social with the physical and keeping those home fires of passion burning all the while. Yow! Can we come, too?
45. Best place to have your last meal . . . ever
READERS’ COMMENTS“In a tree overlooking the beach and cliffs on Kauai.” “Kingfish—southern cooking.” “A retirement center in Santa Barbara where I’m 95 and still sharp!” “Obviously, the Last Supper Club!” “Asteroid Caf鮢 “Gorge on salmon cream cheese puff pastries at the Russian bakery in the Pike Place Market.” “Prague—they’ll never find you there.” “Any Tom Douglas restaurant.” “Hospital cafeteria.” “Grazing in the Pike Place Market.” “Heather Graham’s cleavage!” “My mom’s house in Ephrata.” “On Natalie Imbrugilia’s breasts.” |
We might have asked, “What do you want on your tombstone?” Or . . . not. Seems like our readers have incisors that could tear this town asunder, what with all the carnivorous answers that flooded this category. “Let us eat steak!” you exclaimed, all the while hankering for a thick, juicy flank from the Metropolitan Grill. If it’s not for the sizzling flesh, then maybe the Met is tops for its swanky interior, all that head honcho-esque wood and corporate watering-hole comfort. Valet parking, a few martinis, and a baked potato later, and yee-HAW!! Pat that tummy and hope to die—gest. Many of you felt that if you had to go, going out in Continental style would be the way, say, if chef Thierry Rautureau of Rover’s was the captain of your final flight to your final destination. With the flavors of the Northwest and the delicate and authoritative verve of French cuisine’s finest moments, you surely know how to greet the Grand Finale—and it’s with a petite belch, oui? The third-place votes get you exactly where you started: home. So there. Scrounge around for some graham crackers, nuke some Salisbury steak, and set aside some Tums for the heartburn the afterlife has in store for you. And if you think your mom is going to hang around and make your favorite pie for you at this, The End, you’ve got another think coming: She’s at the Met, sucking down some serious cocktails before her side of beef arrives.
60. Best place to buy Y2K rations
READERS’ COMMENTS“Gun and ammo supply store (for looting and antilooting).” “7-11.” “Trader Joe’s.” “Butch’s Gun Shop on Aurora.” “Cannibalism.” “Seattle Caviar.” “The Army.” “Safeway—orders anything.” “In your head.” “Foods in Bulk, Tonasket, WA.” “International Market on Military Way.” “Steal from neighbors.” “Toys in Babeland.” “Why buy them when you’re planning to loot Queen Anne instead?” “Dick’s.” |
Survival, if there’s any to be had, will be exactly what Darwin predicted: of the fittest. When the Dawn of the New Age or the Final Epoch or the Sudden Implosion happens, if you’re not of the hardiest stock, you’ll be glad you at least set a few rations aside. Where to begin? Water, of course, batteries, candles, all those storm-proof gadgets, blankets, flares, a radio, floss. . . . If this is really It, perhaps you want to splurge and surround yourself in a pit in the ground with truffles, Veuve Clicquot, and a few hundred Certs. The never-ending search for the place that has everything actually ended years ago, as you all point out in your ballots, with the advent of Costco. Burrow with a big-screen TV! A bag of radishes! Socks! You want to leave the world of light and seasons for an underground cave, right? So park your SUV once and load that cart up with goodies that’ll take you and your kids years to tire of. Go on, buy it! You’ll definitely use it! Trader Joe’s, many of you said, is also the place to go for lining your bunker. (It came in second, in case you were wondering.) Gourmet olives and sauces will also serve as finger paints for the wee ‘uns; empty jars and cans, too, can do double-duty as burglar alarms, percussion instruments, or goblets. Go underground with your head held high—and don’t forget the ice chest, ’cause their frozen foods can’t be beat. And, yes, third-place REI is for gearheads—which we will all be come those final hours. Helmets, flashlights, and Everest-proof jackets come in all styles and colors for those who care about living though this with cooler-looking stuff than everyone else.
60. BONUS QUESTION: Best reason to welcome the new millennium
“After 365 days, I’ll be bored with 1999.”
“Millennium lovin’.”
“We are still alive and able to read and enjoy Jane Austen!”
“Politicians will be older.”
“Another century to open up a can of whoopass in frisbee golf.”
“I’m tired.”
“Possible Spice Girls reunion tour.”
“Maybe the nouveau riche will calm down.”
“Becoming a 21st-century babe!”
“My birthday!”
“Bugs.”
“Women.”
“Jesse Helms just has to be gone by then.”
“So they’ll stop playing that Prince song.”
“It’s the fin de si裬e with the hopes of a new zeitgeist . . . and I get to use all these words!”
“The old millennium sucks ass!”
“It starts January 1, 2001—everyone’s a year early!”
“If the Seattle Public Library’s computer crashes, I won’t have to pay my overdue fines.”
“Falling birth rate and rising vasectomies.”
“I have better things to do with my time than stock up on canned soup.”
“ME.”
“The true beginning of the Age of Aquarius.”
“The Democratic Party!”
“Good chowder and a hell of a story.”
“Because the ’90s are sooooo 20th century.”
“If the end of the world doesn’t come . . . will the Christians implode?
“Because I enjoyed the last one so much.”
“Bill Gates will shut down because of Y2K and we will all realize he’s not a human, but an android.”
“Credit Bureau will blow up.”
“We’ll get rid of ’70s fashions.”
“I need another reason to keep smoking.”
“I’m sick of partying like it’s 1999.”
“Nostradamus was wrong.”
“Pork rendering. It’s all about grease.”
“See how many religious freaks you can stuff into a confession booth.”
“SLAVE LABOR IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER.”
“Team Watson RULES!”
“The dawn of the Age of Peace.”
“The Spice Girls will be too old to dance.”
“You can make faces with the double zeros on your checks.”
Go back to the 1999 Best of Seattle main page >>.
