Micah

Walnut Castle = best hospitality and tacos!

Arguably the best coffee in the U-District, but also has an amazing chai selection that will titillate anyone’s taste buds (though maybe slightly offend traditionalists). I’ve got the best drinks from the morning baristas, one of whom was ranked #2 in all of Seattle in a recent contest.

The crowd is a mix of students, computer geeks (UW’s tech building is nearby), artists, and musicians, usually aged 18-30. The music is usually a combination of electronica, indie, and some obscure [to me] hip-hop.

There’s an open mic on Monday night where a lot of the performers know each other. Poetry is often ignored by the mostly college-age audience but music with alternative/indie/rock influences or a high amount of novelty is very much appreciated. Performers play on Friday and Saturday nights and many have monthly gigs.

I landed here a few hours late on a Saturday night after a storm in NYC and found myself stuck in this airport for the next 8 hours due to the delay. Not wanting to spend any money on a hotel, I found an uncomfortable set of benches and got a few hours of sleep here and there under the harsh lights and the ridiculously frenetic jazz emanating from the airport speakers.

Between harsh but quickly forgotten dreams, I watched CNN as the pope died. It also happened to be time for daylight savings, so I got to watch the clock jump from 2:00am to 3:00am in a second. I was so happy to leave in the morning, but whenever I find myself at O’Hare, it still makes me smile a bit, especially the ridiculous neon-ceiling’d passageway with sci-fi background music. This is an absurd place where absurd things happen.

So I finally visited, and the place seems cool enough, but so many people have told me so many great things about the place that I felt kind of let down. I mean, it’s just another coffee shop. Sure, the books and spacious environment are cool, and the baristas seemed a bit more than competent, but I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to visit it. Seems like it’d be a cool place to frequent if you lived really nearby, though.

Only spent a few hours here and I really, really want to go back! Feels like an expensive town to have fun in, though.

There are definitely a few nice things about this town, and it certainly beats the surrounding locales (Palm Bay, anyone?), but I don’t know if it’s done enough to merit itself as a destination for those outside of the area. If you’re in town, drop by the cafes, like the Sun Cafe, and hit up the beach and the pizzeria by it. Then get back on the road to where you were really headed.

This beautiful and absurd locale is a huge museum that people just happen to live in, pining for another time but looking awful pretty while doing so. It was nice to visit but I don’t know if I’d want to stay there.

A collosal resort towers over this tiny island capital while the old fort that is now a symbol of Bahamian independence only sports a couple peddlers and trash. Never in my life have I seen so much wealth and so much poverty in the same place.

Just another little Florida town.

I can’t find this place’s hours anywhere! I’ve heard that it’s sorta “noon to 7” but it’d be nice to have a more concrete answer. Anyone know?