A Sunny Afternoon In Seattle

 Seattle on an 88 degree day, with the hazy Olympic Mountains in the distance.

As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I recently got a smartphone, to replace my trusty flip-phone which no longer works on the local cell systems.

I am not much of a phone person. Never have been. But I've found -- like many people have -- that smart phones are fairly handy. Mine has an FM radio that works reasonably well (although the sound is in mono) and the camera works well.

A couple weeks ago I was out on an errand with my boss, which took us to several places in Downtown Seattle, delivering documents.

The construction crane is a symbol of Seattle's growth since the software boom during the 2010's.

A mural on the wall of a business on the north side of Beacon Hill.

I used to work in Downtown Seattle, but I have to admit I don't go there very often, as it is 15 miles / 20 km from where I live, traffic is always bad, and parking is always expensive. But those times I go there I'm always impressed by the atmosphere -- when I worked downtown in the 1990's and early 2000's Seattle was a burgeoning place. Today it's apparent that software industry money has made it a glass and steel, high tech haven.

One of the minuses is that the City has lost some of its soul.

But I digress. As my boss and I drove through the streets in the afternoon traffic, it was 88 degrees F and a beautiful, sunny day. I reached for my trusty Nikon L32 camera -- I had forgotton to bring it with me. Thdddt.

Looking south on 7th or 8th avenue (can't remember which) in Downtown Seattle.

But then I remembered: I had my new smartphone, which has a camera also! I pulled it out and snapped a few photos. The pictures on this page are the result. Some of the pics came out fair, others came out better than I expected.

They give a feel for what the City is like on a bright summer day.

A look downwards towards I-5 from an office building on the eastern side of Downtown Seattle.

Looking South from an office building in Downtown Seattle. Interstate 5 is in the middle of the picture. To the left is "Pill Hill" -- First Hill, where many of the City's major hospitals are located. SE King County and the Cascade foothills are in the distance.

A view of "Pill Hill" from an office building just west of I-5.

MW DX Conditions Seem To Be Picking Up

On the radio front, I've been DXing the Medium Waves a bit -- using my thrift-store Sony Walkmen, my GE Superadio 1, and my Sangean PR-D5 mini-boombox.

MW Long Distance DX conditions have picked up a little. I logged one new station out of Utah, but I think they were running higher power than normally. While I was working out with weights the other day in my sunny storage room, I heard a station from Yakima, Washington (about 200 km / 150 miles away -- Yakima is on the other side of the Cascade Mountain range), KIT 1280, at one p.m.

Yakima is on the desert side of Washington. Both Yakima and Wenatchee (another city about 200 km east of us) are the shipping centers for Washington's apple industry.

KGRG-1: Classic Alternative Rock and Grunge on the AM band

I also tuned my Sangean mini-boombox to a station out of Enumclaw, a small city maybe 30 km away from me. The station is an interesting one in that it plays classic alternative rock music on the AM dial. KGRG also have an FM (KGRG 89.9), but the FM doesn't reach my house very well. The AM station is KGRG-1, 1330 khz. It comes in well on most of my radios.

Looking up the side of one of the modern, soulless office buildings on the edge of Downtown.

An old building with several Asian shops in it. Asian businesses are all over the Seattle areas, especially in the International District, and in South King County.

They play a lot of Seattle grunge music from the early 1990's, as well as a lot of other alternative rock music from that era. They have an online stream -- but I have no idea if it's available in other areas of the world.

I listen to them a lot while working out. I've heard all kinds of stuff I haven't heard in years: Mudhoney, Temple Of The Dog CD tracks, album cuts off of Soundgarden albums that the local FM rock stations haven't played in years, etc. They also play some alt-pop tracks and rock tracks from 90's to spice up the mix. I heard them even play a track by Tool yesterday.

The building where some of the previous photos were taken.

Today it is 78F out and sunny. It's our "Indian Summer", I guess, and the weather is supposed to hold for a few more days.

Here's hoping you all are having a nice September.