Last night Owen came over and he and I and Andreas went to have the ultimate Seattle experience: we drank chi chis served by Naha at the Cha-Cha. It was hilarious. The Cha-Cha is extra funny, since it was THE Seattle indie scenester bar circa ‘99. It was one of those places where you needed to know the secret handshake, and my overly-broad smile and not-black clothes never quite did the trick. My dreadlocks (without betty page bangs) screamed “outsider.” But, like many once-cool epicenters of youth culture, the bar is now ovah for the hipsters, so the rest of us are allowed to go there and admire the aftermath. And the velvet paintings of mexican wrestlers.

Two chi-chis later, we headed just up the street to the Hi Score Arcade for a little vintage pinball. Ah, Seattle. Good to be back.