Top Ten

“If you're down and confused

And you don't remember who you're talking to

Concentration slips away

Because your baby is so far away

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Don't be angry, don't be sad

Don't sit crying talking good times you've had

Well there's a girl sitting right next to you

And she's just waiting for something to do

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Oh yea oh yea, yea

Lord, love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Why don't you love?

Turn your heartache right into joy

She's a girl and you're a boy

Did you get it together and make it nice?

When you ain't gonna need anymore advice

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

Sometimes you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love, oh love

You gotta love, oh love

You gotta love, love the one you're with”

-Crosby, Stills, and Nash

It is hard to write publicly that Seattle wanted you gone and then a year and a half later, you wind up writing that you will be coming back to Seattle, but I have heard Julie sing this Crosby Stills and Nash song every morning for years. “If you can’t love the one you want, love the one you’re with.” In my self imposed exile, there are things I have missed about Seattle. Here are my top ten.

10. Rainier Cherries
If you think I am being frivolous by listing a piece of fruit on this list, then you have never tried a Rainier Cherry. Rainier Cherries are so good that other cherries ought to be embarrassed to call themselves cherries. Grown only in Washington state, there is a small window of time when these little nuggets of perfection are available, but they can be found just about everywhere from grocery stores to roadside vendors.

9. Mountains
Everywhere I have lived, with the exception of Chicago and Melbourne, have been surrounded by mountains. I miss looking at them, especially on a Spring day when the sky is blue and the mountains are still covered with snow. If you like looking at mountains, you can do a lot worse than sweeping views of the Olympics and Cascades.

8. Good Beer
Australians pride themselves on their beer drinking. Unfortunately, the beer sucks. I will admit that I have never seen an Australian drink a Foster’s, but I have seen plenty drink Victoria’s Bitter or Carlton Draught. Both are awful. The Northwest is known for its microbrews and any grocery store can offer more choice and quality than I have seen in a long time. However, my favorite beer in the world is made in Redmond, WA and nothing beats a cold Mac and Jack’s - anytime of the year

7. Red Robin
What the hell is Red Robin doing on this list? Occasionally, I like mediocre food at outrageously low prices. For the last year and a half, taking my family of four out to dinner has set me back $80. I have literally sat in restaurants trying, unsuccessfully, to send telepathic messages to my children. “Don’t order juice. Don’t order juice!” They order juice and I just took $8 out of my wallet and lit it on fire. Going to Red Robin, I can get in and out of there for $35 including a 20% tip for the server. Additionally, I know the minute I walk in the door my kids will be given a coloring book and crayons, the service will be prompt and courteous, and FREE drink refills. I plan on taking the family here and drinking about six or seven sodas in one sitting.

6. Marymoor Summer Concert Series
It might have started out small, but so far I have managed to see Sublime with Rome, Flight of the Conchords, and Slightly Stoopid in my own backyard. Every year, the acts seem to get better and it is a real festival atmosphere - it’s good enough to bring the people from Seattle over to the Eastside. I haven’t seen a concert since Marymoor and I am looking forward to seeing many top notch acts over the coming years.

5. Traffic
By now you might be thinking that I have lost my mind, how can I possibly look forward to Seattle traffic? Well, there are two things I have missed - sensible speed limits and right turns on red. I recently got a speeding ticket for doing 53 kmh in a 50 kmh zone. Americans, imagine getting a ticket for doing 36.5 mph in a 35 zone? It would never happen! I have driven down vast four lane highways doing less than 50 mph. It turns out the US has the second highest speed limits in the world. Sadly, we will probably never beat the Germans in this category, but we’re number two! We’re number two!

4.The Seahawks
Yep, I’m a sucker for punishment. Growing up a Phoenix Suns fan has brought me a lifetime’s worth of sports pain. After the debacle that was Super Bowl XL, there is no reason to think that the Seahawks will end my suffering any time soon and that’s just how I like it.

3. Night Snowboarding/Day Snowboarding
I have had the pleasure of leaving work at 5:30, arriving at Alpental at 6:15, putting plenty of runs in, grabbing a beer, and getting home before 11:00 on a work night. That’s pretty cool.

If I have time on the weekend, there is a plethora of mountains to pick from. Snoqualmie and Steven’s Pass are both less than an hour away. Crystal Mountain and Mount Baker are further, but still doable for a day trip.

2. Affordability
Have I mentioned that Australia is fucking expensive? It is. I stood paralyzed in a gas station recently really wanting a soda, but could not rationalize paying $4.50 for a 16 ounce plastic bottle of Coke Zero. Hello 48 ounces for $1.50! Three times the amount at one third the price. No, I am not moving back to the United States for cheap soda. It’s cheaper everything. Cheaper houses. Cheaper cars. Cheaper gas. Cheaper groceries. Cheaper luxuries. We have been fortunate to make better money than we ever did in the US and I have never felt more broke. A friend of mine once said after living and working in four different OECD countries, in two languages, on three continents for a period of at least seven years each, “America is the only country where it is even possible to get ahead in one generation.” He is right.

1. People
What can I say? I missed my fellow Seattleites. There are too many to name, but I can’t believe I’m going to say this publicly, I miss my mother-in-law. I miss Jenny. I miss friends, co-workers, and Julie’s extended family. I miss the degenrati (except Mike Moroney and Steve Lee- I hate you guys for life, you no-good suck-out artists). See you guys soon.

A Heritage Worth Preserving?

Eccentric and brilliant comedian Eddie Izzard does a joke about America’s relative youth. He says that in America, people will point to a building and say with great pride, “This building looks like it's fifty years old!” As if a fifty year old building is an accomplishment. Europe has many buildings that are centuries old and some that even pre-date Christianity.

Australia is even younger than America, and yet… Many of the buildings look much older. America, as a country, is all about building something bigger, newer, and more spectacular. If a building happens to be occupying the space the new building would go, it is out with the old and in with the new. Cities change and evolve over time. For example, the strip in Las Vegas has seen old buildings imploded to make way for newer, crazier hotels on a routine basis for the last thirty years. There is an entire website dedicated to videos of Las Vegas hotel implosions, feel free to check it out here.

A typical house in Garden City.

Australia, on the other hand, wants to preserve its heritage as much as possible. I became familiar with my current neighborhood, Garden City, shortly after moving to Australia. At first, I thought, “OK, this is where the poor people live.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. From the outside, the buildings look, well, old.

The neighborhood itself is modeled after a town in England. The houses themselves are made of bricks and the architecture looks antiquated. Constructed in the 1950’s, it looks like the neighborhood has not aged particularly well. Strangely, at one point, no one wanted to live in Port Melbourne. Then one day, people thought to themselves, “Hey, this neighborhood is right by the beach and 5 kilometers (roughly 3 miles) from the CBD (Central Business District or downtown)!”

Prices went up. Significantly. This part I understand. I like living by the beach and there is a limited supply of land by the city and by the beach. The part I do not understand is the heritage laws that govern an owner’s ability to remodel their own home. I have seen what the houses look like on the inside that have not been remodeled and these homes are going for close to a million dollars. In the States, they would be considered tear downs. However, here that is illegal.

The LEFT HALF of this home just sold for over $900k. This shot contains both halves of the house which are owned by separate people.

As if the outside of the house was not ugly enough, check out the kitchen. Keep in mind this is a professional photo used to market the house and it looks this bad!

Our house - a Garden City home after a remodel. Hardwood floors, modern appliances, granite island, and 270 degrees of glass to view the Westgate bridge and Port Phillip. Hey, even Spiderman dropped in to hang out here.

The remodels that I have seen, I will admit, do their best to preserve the look and feel of the neighborhood. The house we currently live in was recently remodeled. The original façade remains, but an additional level was built on top. The linoleum was ripped out and replaced with hardwood floors. We have a beautiful deck that overlooks Port Phillip Bay. Our stove is new and stainless steel. I love living here and having friends over.
However, this update did not come easily or cheaply. The owner spent over three years creating plans and working with the “heritage committee” to get her plans approved. She spent in excess of $35,000 to hire a “heritage consultant”. During this three year process, she received pushback from the committee on design decisions such as, “Does your closet need to be this big?” Why the committee would give a shit about the size of a closet in a homeowner’s home is beyond me, but I feel like America went to war against England for less than that. Compromises were made.

My deck. Notice how the fence is pretty far from the edge. The deck could be much bigger. Thanks heritage committee!

As a parent of young children, I love the glass fencing on our deck. It ensures that we have a good view, but I know my kids are safe playing outside. What I could not understand when we first moved in was why the deck was smaller than it needed to be. The roof extends several more feet and it would seem fairly trivial, from a design perspective, to fence around the boundary of the roof. I found out later that our deck size was dictated by the “heritage committee”. They felt, at the time, that the deck should not be too big because it would make the neighbors feel bad about their own houses if the deck were too big.

So the “heritage committee” is a bloated bureaucracy that makes decisions that affect the lives of citizens as to what they can do their own homes, but at least they preserve the look and feel of the community, right? Wrong! Exhibit A:

One of these houses doesn't look quite like the others. One of these houses doesn't look the same...

Every other house in the community is made of brick and is red. Except this one, and yet somehow the plans got approved by the heritage community. Even worse is this eyesore:

You want a bigger deck? No! You want to put a trailer on top of your house? Um, sure, no problem...

The “heritage committee” looked at plans some bloke drew up that said, more or less, I would like to stick an object that looks like a trailer on the top of my house. Apparently, the “heritage committee” yawned and said, “Sure. Whatever.”

The “heritage committee” makes completely arbitrary decisions about what can and cannot be done to an owner’s own house. They take years to make decisions and the experience is so complicated that most would-be remodelers go out and hire “heritage consultants” to get their plans approved on what they want to do to their own homes. But it gets worse… The members of the “heritage committee” DO NOT EVEN LIVE IN THE COMMUNITIES THEY ARE MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT. Literally everything about them stinks. They do nothing but add massive delays and costs to an already difficult and stressful process of remodeling.
Which brings me to another point, why is it necessary to preserve the heritage in the first place? Immediately adjacent to my somewhat loved Garden City, the ghetto of Port Melbourne, sits the “Bank Houses”. Quickly and shoddily constructed in the 1970’s, these homes were literally owned by the bank. These homes, built of stucco with minimal yards, looked shitty in the 1970’s. Today, they look even shittier. Fifty years from now, they will still look shitty. Yet, they are preserved by “heritage laws”.

The bank houses. For a mile along Williamstown Road, all the houses look exactly like this. Shitty.

Once upon a time, I actually lived in an American community similar to Port Melbourne. It may be hard to believe, but Hermosa Beach was once a rundown little town tucked away in the shadow of Los Angeles. Overnight, many Los Angelinos looked upon my beloved Hermosa Beach and declared, “Hey, there is a rundown little town here that is pretty close to LA. I can buy up a house, remodel it, and still commute to my job!”

And throughout the nineties, that is exactly what happened. Some owners tore down their homes altogether. Some kept just the foundation. Some didn’t change too much about their new property. What was once a town of small, quaint beach cottages was quickly modernized. Only old black and white photos preserve Hermosa’s legacy. As a resident of Hermosa, how did I feel about all of this change? I freaking loved it! People spent a lot of money fixing their homes and making them nice. The money brought in more services, restaurants, and shops. For the home owners, what they did with their own houses was their decision and although there were some planning hoops to jump through back in the States, the process takes a few months, not years.

Old Hermosa Beach

New Hermosa Beach - progress!

To be fair, there are older buildings that I love in Melbourne.

The iconic Flinders Street Train Station.

Yet I feel the “heritage committees” are completely out of control. They make arbitrary decisions over incredibly long periods of time and often times completely fail at preserving the heritage they have decided to protect in the first place. There are neighborhoods that seem burdened by heritage laws, such as the “Bank Houses”, that would be much better off if owners could tear down and start over instead of preserving what was and will always be architecturally horrible homes. Taste cannot be legislated or protected. Taste changes over time. Dictating what an owner can do to their house seems draconian and has proven to be pointless.