There is more to Seattle than the Space Needle and flying fish at Pike Place Market. At the end of the SOA conference today I persuaded Robert to embark on a tourist adventure, to brave the Seattle traffic and go to Archie McPhee “Outfitters of Popular Culture” . It should have been a 20 minute drive… hour and half later of nose to tail traffic we arrived.
Now I had come across Archie McPhee years ago when my ex wife had been on the Clarion West SF writers camp, and she came back with the strangest plastic frog in fur white rabbit suit; I always wonder what the person who made it in China think of the west?
The Archie McPhee web site is just full of strange and wonderous things such as the Horrified B-Movie Victims
and the Sky Diving Sigmund Freud
to name but two, so I had made a mental note to pop by if in the area.
Ballard where they are located is different to Bellevue where we have been staying, less empty of people and not so bland, it has some character. When you get to McPhee’s there are now two shops next door to each other, both full of stuff. The problem is what seems a great thingamabob on the web can close up just look a bit cheap and plastically (this is mostly because they are, by there nature, a bit cheap and plastically).
So Robert and myself did not find anything major that we felt would add to the geek office theme for the Black Marble office, though the giant plastic tulips seemed a candidate if they had been practical to move.
So now I can say I have ’experienced the landmark of Seattle'.