History UsefulNotes / Seattle

A city situated on the Puget Sound's eastern bank in the [[UsefulNotes/TheOtherRainforest state of Washington]] and its surrounding metro area. Named for a 19th-century Duwamish tribal chief from the region who [[NewerThanTheyThink did not give an environmental speech often attributed to him]]. Home base of (or at least the origin-point for) Microsoft, Creator/{{Nintendo}} of America, Creator/{{Valve|Software}}, Starbucks, Boeing, Amazon and several other companies of note. The birthplace of {{Grunge}} music (Music/{{Nirvana}} in particular, despite not being from the city itself). Its landmarks include Pike Place Market (where the very first Starbucks is located), Pioneer Square (which pre-gentrification was the ''original'' Music/SkidRow), [[AlienGeometries the Museum of Pop Culture]] (or whatever [[IHaveManyNames its name is this week]]), a half-mile Monorail constructed for the 1962 World's Fair which exemplifies {{Zeerust}} to a tee, the [[UnderCity Seattle Underground]] (which was a partial inspiration for [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Ankh-Morpork]]), and the Space Needle (which is not nearly as tall as it looks in photos), also constructed for the World's Fair. Navigation and traffic in the area [[TheMaze are notoriously frustrating]], among the top ten worst in the country.

* Appears in an ''[[WesternAnimation/TheItchyAndScratchyShow Itchy & Scratchy]]'' short. Itchy saws the top off the Space Needle, and it gets [[EyeScream stuck in Scratchy's eye]].

* Creator/JoelMcHale [[note]] Born in Italy but spent most of his life in Washington, moved around in the east coast, and then back to washington.[[/note]]
* Creator/JeffreyDeanMorgan

* ''Series/{{Millennium}}'': Filmed in Vancouver.

The city's tumultuous history with hockey should also be mentioned. The Seattle Metropolitans were the very first American team to win the UsefulNotes/StanleyCup in 1915, but the team folded two years later. Various attempts to bring pro hockey back to Seattle were made in the 1970s and the 1990s, but such attempts never left DevelopmentHell due to various issues. After the [=SuperSonics=] left for Oklahoma City, interest began picking up in having an [[UsefulNotes/NationalHockeyLeague NHL]] expansion team. The Phoenix Coyotes almost moved to Seattle, but ultimately stayed where they were. Progress finally began when the Seattle City Council approved renovations to the former home of the [=SuperSonics=], [=KeyArena=], to make it more suitable for hockey (which had been one of the factors in previous attempts floundering). A new ownership group, with Creator/JerryBruckheimer at the helm, is in charge (and is also looking into potentially reviving the [=SuperSonics=]). The name was announced in July 2020... the ''[[AwesomeMcCoolName Seattle]]'' '''[[KrakenAndLeviathan Kraken]]'''! And yes, [[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/release-kraken-seattle-s-new-hockey-team-will-have-catchy-n1234753 they announced it]] [[Film/ClashOfTheTitans1981 exactly the way you'd think they would]]. The name was chosen to honor both Seattle's maritime heritage, and the native [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Pacific_octopus Giant Pacific octopus]]. The team's logo is [[https://cms.nhl.bamgrid.com/images/photos/317603398/1024x576/cut.png suitably badass]], as well.

Not helping matters is the fact that the city is famous for rain, which is decidedly at odds with the interests of the typical sports fan. The sports fans who ''do'' call the area home responded to the aforementioned pirating of their NBA franchise by latching onto Seattle Sounders FC of [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]], and making it one of the few teams in the league to regularly sell out the stadium. Lumen Field (formerly Qwest Field and [=CenturyLink=] Field), the home stadium to the Sounders and Seahawks, was from 2007 to 2010 true to the city's rebellious spirit by being the only stadium in the NFL to serve neither Pepsi ''nor'' Coca-Cola beverages on its grounds, [[TakeAThirdOption having instead]] awarded its concession to the locally-based Jones Soda Company. The rights have since been granted to Coca-Cola, which definitely makes going to Sounders games a lot less fun.

About half an hour to the south is the city of Tacoma (the "Tac" in [=SeaTac=], which is a geographic area as well as the nickname for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport). It used to be a fairly industrial town, infamous for the horrible "Tacoma Aroma" produced by the city's paper mills, but has undergone revitalization in recent years due to increased port traffic, various downtown renewal projects, and an influx of consumer dollars from troops stationed at the burgeoning Joint Base Lewis-[=McChord=], an Army/Air Force facility just to its south. Even the former site of the ASARCO smelting plant is being turned into luxury housing (why anyone would want to live over a former toxic waste site is another question). Its most famous son is arguably the one-eyed glass artist Dale Chihuly, whose works are all over the city (from Seattle's Benaroya Hall to one of the UsefulNotes/McDonalds). Unlike Seattle, Tacoma hosts no major league teams of its own, though the Mariners' triple-A affiliate (the Tacoma Rainiers) is regionally popular, and the Tacoma Dome (in addition to being an occasional Wrestling/{{WWE}} venue) has occasionally hosted Seattle's teams while their home venues were being renovated. The city does have one top-flight pro team, but in the less-mainstream sport of women's soccer (at least, not mainstream as a league; the women's national team is widely popular). OL Reign, playing in the National Women's Soccer League, moved from Seattle after the 2018 season (where it had been ''Seattle'' Reign FC, spending the 2019 season as just Reign FC).[[note]]The "OL" comes from prominent French soccer club Olympique Lyonnais, which bought a majority stake in the team in the 2019–20 offseason.[[/note]] Its other famous piece of architecture is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_High_School Stadium High School]], most famous for being where Film/TenThingsIHateAboutYou was shot, and for looking like a castle. About 10 miles southeast of Tacoma is the smaller city of Puyallup, a local shibboleth (in case you're curious, the correct pronunciation is something like "Pew-AL-up.") The Puyallup Fair was recently renamed the Washington State Fair, to mixed reception, and regularly ranks among the ten largest fairs in the country.

Seattle remains one of the major hubs of video game development in America behind the LA/San Francisco/Silicon Valley region, possessing the aforementioned Nintendo and Valve software along with numerous other developers.

* ''Battle in Seattle'': A film about the fascinating RealLife WTO Riots that engulfed the city in 1999. Filmed mostly in Vancouver. Mixed reactions.

* ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'': The city is never named, but per WordOfGod it's an amalgam of Seattle, UsefulNotes/{{Portland}}, and UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. [[FridgeHorror Arnold's house is underneath]] [[ChaosArchitecture the Alaskan Way Viaduct]].

Home to the authors of the webcomic ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'', who, as the above paragraph illustrates, [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/2/8/ have difficulty understanding]] the TeamSpirit of sports.

* Music/JimiHendrix

Not helping matters is the fact that the city is famous for [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee]], computers, grunge music, liberal or even radical left-wing politics (the Pacific Northwest has long been a socialist stronghold), and rain, which are decidedly at odds with the interests of the typical sports fan. The sports fans who ''do'' call the area home responded to the aforementioned pirating of their NBA franchise by latching onto Seattle Sounders FC of [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]], and making it one of the few teams in the league to regularly sell out the stadium. Lumen Field (formerly Qwest Field and [=CenturyLink=] Field), the home stadium to the Sounders and Seahawks, was from 2007 to 2010 true to the city's rebellious spirit by being the only stadium in the NFL to serve neither Pepsi ''nor'' Coca-Cola beverages on its grounds, [[TakeAThirdOption having instead]] awarded its concession to the locally-based Jones Soda Company. The rights have since been granted to Coca-Cola, which definitely makes going to Sounders games a lot less fun.

* ''Series/TwinPeaks''

* Harvey Danger (best known for "Flagpole Sitta")

* Music/PearlJam

A city situated on the Puget Sound's eastern bank in the [[UsefulNotes/TheOtherRainforest state of Washington]] and its surrounding metro area. Named for a 19th-century Duwamish tribal chief from the region who [[NewerThanTheyThink did not give an environmental speech often attributed to him]]. Home base of (or at least the origin-point for) Microsoft, Creator/{{Nintendo}} of America, Creator/{{Valve|Software}}, Starbucks, Boeing, Amazon and several other companies of note. The birthplace of {{Grunge}} music (Music/{{Nirvana}} in particular, despite not being from the city itself). Its landmarks include Pike Place Market (where the very first Starbucks is located), Pioneer Square (which pre-gentrification was the ''original'' Music/SkidRow), [[AlienGeometries the Museum of Popular Culture]] (or whatever [[IHaveManyNames its name is this week]]), a half-mile Monorail constructed for the 1962 World's Fair which exemplifies {{Zeerust}} to a tee, the [[UnderCity Seattle Underground]] (which was a partial inspiration for [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Ankh-Morpork]]), and the Space Needle (which is not nearly as tall as it looks in photos), also constructed for the World's Fair. Navigation and traffic in the area [[TheMaze are notoriously frustrating]], among the top ten worst in the country.

Not helping matters is the fact that the city is famous for [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee]], computers, grunge music, liberal or even radical left-wing politics (the Pacific Northwest has long been a socialist stronghold), and rain, which are decidedly at odds with the interests of the typical sports fan. The sports fans who ''do'' call the area home responded to the aforementioned pirating of their NBA franchise by latching onto Seattle Sounders FC of [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueSoccer MLS]], and making it one of the few teams in the league to regularly sell out the stadium. [=CenturyLink=] Field (formerly Qwest Field), the home stadium to the Sounders and Seahawks, was from 2007 to 2010 true to the city's rebellious spirit by being the only stadium in the NFL to serve neither Pepsi ''nor'' Coca-Cola beverages on its grounds, [[TakeAThirdOption having instead]] awarded its concession to the locally-based Jones Soda Company. The rights have since been granted to Coca-Cola, which definitely makes going to Sounders games a lot less fun.

A city situated on the Puget Sound's eastern bank in the [[UsefulNotes/TheOtherRainforest state of Washington]] and its surrounding metro area. Named for a 19th-century Duwamish tribal chief from the region who [[NewerThanTheyThink did not give an environmental speech often attributed to him]]. Home base of (or at least the origin-point for) Microsoft, Creator/{{Nintendo}} of America, Creator/{{Valve|Software}}, Starbucks, Boeing, Amazon and several other companies of note. The birthplace of {{Grunge}} music (Music/{{Nirvana}} in particular, despite not being from the city itself). Its landmarks include Pike Place Market (where the very first Starbucks is located), Pioneer Square (which pre-gentrification was the ''original'' Music/SkidRow), [[AlienGeometries the Experience Music Project]] (or whatever [[IHaveManyNames its name is this week]]), a half-mile Monorail constructed for the 1962 World's Fair which exemplifies {{Zeerust}} to a tee, the [[UnderCity Seattle Underground]] (which was a partial inspiration for [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Ankh-Morpork]]), and the Space Needle (which is not nearly as tall as it looks in photos), also constructed for the World's Fair. Navigation and traffic in the area [[TheMaze are notoriously frustrating]], among the top ten worst in the country.

* In ''VideoGame/ZakMcKracken'', the title character is working on a tabloid article about a two-headed squirrel which lives in Seattle. The [=SeaTac=] airport and Mt. Rainier are also featured.
* ''VideoGame/CoffeeTalk'' takes place in a coffee shop located in a FantasyKitchenSink version of Seattle. The game takes place over the course of two weeks, and every single night the weather is shown to be rainy. One of the characters, Myrtle the orc, is a game developer for a big name studio, and part of her arc is helping an aspiring indie game developer take part in a local video game convention that's an obvious parody of PAX West.

About half an hour to the south is the city of Tacoma (the "Tac" in [=SeaTac=], which is a geographic area as well as the nickname for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport). It used to be a fairly industrial town, infamous for the horrible "Tacoma Aroma" produced by the city's paper mills, but has undergone revitalization in recent years due to increased port traffic, various downtown renewal projects, and an influx of consumer dollars from troops stationed at the burgeoning Joint Base Lewis-[=McChord=], an Army/Air Force facility just to its south. Even the former site of the ASARCO smelting plant is being turned into luxury housing (why anyone would want to live over a former toxic waste site is another question). Its most famous son is arguably the one-eyed glass artist Dale Chihuly, whose works are all over the city (from Seattle's Benaroya Hall to one of the UsefulNotes/McDonalds). Unlike Seattle, Tacoma hosts no major league teams of its own, though the Mariners' triple-A affiliate (the Tacoma Rainiers) is regionally popular, and the Tacoma Dome (in addition to being an occasional Wrestling/{{WWE}} venue) has occasionally hosted Seattle's teams while their home venues were being renovated. The city does have one top-flight pro team, but in the less-mainstream sport of women's soccer (at least, not mainstream as a league; the women's national team is widely popular). Reign FC, playing in the National Women's Soccer League, moved from Seattle after the 2018 season (where it had been ''Seattle'' Reign FC). Its other famous piece of architecture is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_High_School Stadium High School]], most famous for being where Film/TenThingsIHateAboutYou was shot, and for looking like a castle. About 10 miles southeast of Tacoma is the smaller city of Puyallup, a local shibboleth (in case you're curious, the correct pronunciation is something like "Pew-AL-up.") The Puyallup Fair was recently renamed the Washington State Fair, to mixed reception, and regularly ranks among the ten largest fairs in the country.

* ''Film/StayTuned'': The main protagonists reside in Seattle