Seattle

10 Quirky Facts about the Space Needle

I’m not much of a sports fan, but I did grow up in Washington State, so I can’t help but feel excited that the Seattle Seahawks made it to the Superbowl this year. That’s why, for this week’s world travel post, I’m posting a photo of the Space Needle along with ten unusual facts about the Emerald City’s famous icon. I hope you enjoy it:

Ten Quirky Facts about the Space Needle

The Space Needle was originally called the Space Cage
During the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, the Space Needle was topped with a 40-foot high flame which burned natural gas.
The city of Fife, Washington once offered Seattle a million dollars to put the Space Needle in its town center.
When the Beatles visited Seattle in 1964, they were too afraid of heights to go up in the Space Needle.
Speaking of acrophobia, the Space Needle’s first manager, Hoge Sullivan, was also afraid of heights.
Iwao Takamoto, one of the design artists for the The Jetsons cartoon took inspiration from the Space Needle when creating that futuristic family’s skypad apartment.
The Space Needle’s revolving restaurant is the 2nd one ever built. (The first one was in Hawaii’s Ala Moana shopping mall.)
During the 1992 Miss USA Pageant, the Miss Washington contestant (Stina McLynne) wore a hat shaped like the Space Needle. (I want one of those!)
Building designers originally intended for a population of storks to permanently dwell atop the building. This idea was scrapped when they realized storks require warm weather and would not exactly thrive in Seattle’s climate.
According to The Committee Hoping for Extra-Terrestrial Encounters to Save the Earth (CHEESE), the real purpose for the Space Needle is to broadcast messages to extraterrestrials.

Traveler’s Show & Tell – Neon, Fish Tacos & Gentrification

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Space Needle and neon. Photo by Tui Cameron — Space Needle and neon. (photo by Tui Cameron)

Traveler’s Show & Tell – 23rd Edition

Welcome to this week’s Traveler’s Show & Tell blog carnival. This week’s blog carnival runs the gamut from light-hearted photo essays to tales of adventure. Read on to discover:

…how Jaemin Yi ignores his gut feelings and winds up getting mugged

…why Jennifer Miner is impressed by a hum-drum-to-happening transformation in San Francisco

…how Sheila Scarborough hunts up tasty grub like a tech-savvy Daniel Boone

…and much more:

This Week’s Photo

I snapped this week’s photo during happy hour in Seattle with my dear pal, Woofmutt, someone I have known for – gosh – more than 30 years. He’s a delightful chap, creative, smart, witty and with a similar appreciation of the absurd as mine. He’s one of those people I talk to in my head even when we are thousands of miles away – such as now. On this particular evening, however, I could talk to Woofmutt right there in person. It was a very happy, happy hour, I must say.

1. “San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace” by Jennifer Miner

Jennifer Miner presents San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace posted at The Vacation Gals, saying,

“San Francisco hosted this year’s International Pow Wow (a hugely important travel trade show)… One pleasant surprise, for me, was learning about the history and modern functions of San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace.”

As a former small business owner and general cheerleader for mom and pop businesses, I loved this:

My favorite thing about the Ferry Building Marketplace is the abundance of local, independently run niche shops on the ground floor. Sure, there are a couple of larger chains represented, but all in all, it’s a pleasure to stroll the Marketplace and examine (and purchase) locally grown artisanal produce. In fact, marketplace niche shops were sought out by the land lord specifically to highlight and give credence to sustainable, special products. There’s also a fantastic little bookstore!

2. “Transforming Public Spaces in Asia” by AsianUrbanist

AsianUrbanist presents Transforming Public Spaces in Asia posted at Asian Urbanist, saying,

“Returned from a trip in Asia and reflects on how public spaces have evolved in that particular contest. Tokyo Midtown is taken as an example and described with images.”

Since moving to Texas, I could sure relate to this part:

Fact is, in Asia, we do not particularly have a park culture, courtesy of the hot and humid climate in some regions…We prefer to pop in malls to enjoy the air conditioning.

3. “The Great Digital Food Hunt” by Sheila Scarborough

Sheila Scarborough presents The Great Digital Food Hunt posted at Perceptive Travel Blog, saying,

“My smartphone is changing how I find places to eat when I travel. Thank you, Yelp, for leading me to divine fish tacos on North Padre Island, Texas (near Corpus Christi.)”

Not only do her photos of fish tacos make my tummy growl, but I’ve picked up a new Texan saying from her post:

While we’re ordering, I always tell the proprietor that, “Hey, we found you through reviews on Yelp (or Gowalla or Foursquare.)” The response is either, “Oh, yes, we get a lot of activity on there. Thank you!” or it’s a blank, quizzical stare – as we say sometimes in Texas – “like a cow looking at a new gate.”

4. “When Karateka Go Hiking, Caribou Mountain NH” by Patty Pittman

Patty Pittman presents When Karateka Go Hiking, Caribou Mountain NH posted at Kihon Wasa, saying,

“Hiking in the White Mountains of NH. Great views and plenty of blueberries at the top.”

I get a kick out of her posed karate photos (get it? har!) and love all the photos of mossy rocks.

5. “Getting Mugged in Colombia” by Jaemin Yi

Jaemin Yi presents Getting Mugged in Colombia posted at Jaemin Yi | Travel, Creativity, and the Pursuit of Awesomeness, saying,

“The full story of how I got mugged by 7 guys at knifepoint in Medellin, Colombia.”

Sure, getting mugged is a scary thing, but Jaemin Yi’s post is fast-paced, fun and full of cultural insights such as:

Fun fact on dating in Colombia: almost every Colombian in their twenties lives at home with their parents. Another fun fact: I was living with a Colombian family and was forbidden to ever bring anyone home. So that’s pretty much how we ended up on Carrera 70 (a big, main street) at 4am looking for a hotel room. Now besides making me feel seedy as hell, there was another problem…

6. “10 Great Canadian Outdoor Summer Adventures” by Boomer

Echo presents 10 Great Canadian Outdoor Summer Adventures posted at Boomer & Echo, saying,

“Tired of hearing about staycations and other frugal ways to travel? Not to worry, there’s still plenty of time to plan your very own epic Canadian adventure this summer.”

From what I can tell, Boomer & Echo are a mother/son blogging duo who write mostly about how to attain financial freedom, but in this post the focus is on travel. Their site has one of those annoying pop-ups asking you to subscribe to their blog before you have even had a chance to check it out (pet peeve!), but I still liked the post, which has interesting suggestions such as:

Drift down an Arctic River, watch a wave of caribou surging across the barrenlands, camp under the midnight sun.

Did you enjoy this week’s Show & Tell?

That’s it for this week’s blog carnival, Traveler’s Show & Tell. As always, if you enjoyed it, let us know in the comments section. Also, please let the author know you liked their piece by leaving a comment at their blog. See you next week! :)

Do you have a travel story to share?

If so, submit your blog article to the next edition of Traveler’s Show and Tell using this carnival submission form. Please include the following two things with your submission: 1. Your email address (because the site has been buggy lately) and 2. Your Twitter handle (even if you had submitted in the past. It really helps me out!) Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Saturday Show & Tell – 7th Edition

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Seattle Space Needle with blossoms. (photo by Tui Cameron)

Welcome to Saturday Show & Tell – the 7th edition. I have set this to post automatically because today, April 9th, I will be at Scarborough Renaissance Festival in Waxahachie, Texas getting married to the fellow I often mention in my blog posts. So if it takes me a few days to respond to comments, I hope you understand!

First up in this week’s blog carnival is Jennifer Miner, who brings us a playful post called, Los Angeles Pillow Fight Day Photos. I had never heard of a public pillow fight before, but apparently:

Los Angeles Pillow Fight Day is held annually to coincide with International Pillow Fight Day — what a fun excuse to head downtown and bop strangers on their heads with feather pillows

Next up, C. in Oz gives us the lowdown on Learning to Surf in Australia. Although it wasn’t easy, C. certainly had the right inner monologue going:

Something about the promise of these shores opened a part of my mind that said: You can learn to stand up on an impossibly skinny wooden stick! You can share the water with teenage boys whose middle name is “Danger.” You can wear a wetsuit in public!

As an aside, I actually met a fellow who had Danger as his middle name. I’m not kidding; I checked out his driver’s license.

Katie Sorene offers a sobering post entitled Why Scuba Diving Could Soon Become Extinct which details the environmental impact humans have on the ocean. The damage is not simply from scuba divers, as she explains:

Changing the way scuba diving is currently conducted is imperative. Yet what may cause the complete demise of the breathtaking coral reefs is what we are doing here on land.

My contribution this week is the Space Needle photo at the top of this post, which I took a couple of years ago while visiting a friend in Seattle. Such a fun trip! And, yes, I am homesick for the Pacific Northwest.

That wraps up this week’s edition of the Saturday Show & Tell blog carnival. Thanks to all who participated this week, either by submitting a post, or by leaving comments below. See you next time!

Speaking of…

Would you like to highlight your blog on an upcoming Saturday Show & Tell? If so, here are 2 ways to submit your post. Either send the link directly to me via tui [at] mentalmosaic [dot] com, or submit it through the Blog Carnival site via this link. If you have any questions, shoot me an email, or ask in a comment below.

As always, if you enjoyed this week’s post, give us a shout out. If you didn’t, well, just remember what your mama told you about doing when you don’t have anything nice to say.

Silent Sunday (sort of)

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Looks like my blog ate yesterday’s post! All that’s left is this photo, but no text, and it wound up in my drafts folder instead of posting to my site. Come to think of it, this has happened a couple times before in years past. In future, I will double check after hitting publish to make sure that it actually did. Irritating!

Building, bird, moon. Photo by Tui Cameron

In lieu of reconstructing yesterday’s post, which was written on the fly, I will simply end with the caption I have accompanying this photo on my Facebook page:

If this building were a cookie, I could just imagine its texture, and the way it would sound when I bit into it. It’d be lightly crunchy in a very dunkable way. I’d probably coat the lower 2 stories in chocolate, then dunk in a short Americano. I wouldn’t eat the moon or the seagull, of course. I mean, give me a break!

So I guess the title ‘Silent Sunday’ ended up being a little more silent than I originally intended!

Litigious clones make me wanna chunder

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The band Men at Work recently lost a plagiarism suit involving the flute riff in their 80’s hit, ‘Land Down Under.’ Unfortunately, the flute part sounds like, ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,’ a ditty we used to sing at my Girl Scout camp. In fact, the song was written by an Aussie girl guide back in 1934. Although she died in 1988, Larrikin Music (who apparently made a recording of the song) successfully sued the group.

You can listen to clips of both songs and hear the similarities if you read this article – which also explains what the song lyrics mean. So now I finally know what ‘chunder’ means, not that I’ve been pondering ‘chunder’ for the last 2 decades. I do, however, wonder why it took so long for the suit to go through.

While I actually had noticed the similarity to the song’s flute bit and the Kookaburra song, I never felt it was a rip off. The lyrics and main melody of the song are original, and while the flute is a nice adornment, it is not the defining aspect of the song. Rather than being plagiaristic, the flutist’s riff on the Kookaburra song struck me as a cheery nod to Australia, which, after all, is what the ‘Land Down Under’ is all about.

The Australian courts felt differently, so there is going to be a big payout. Makes me curious how the lawyers argued this case. I wonder if they mentioned big hits that truly yanked their melodies from other sources, and got away with it. Elvis did this at least twice. His song “Love Me Tender,” was originally the folk song, “Aura Lee,” and his dramatic “It’s Now or Never,” has the exact same melody as the famous Neapolitan folk song, “O Sole Mio.” Talk about melody-lifting. Rippety-doo-dah-day!

Back to mere riff-stealing, take a listen to Barry Manilow’s song, “Mandy.” If you ever took piano lessons, you’ll realize that Manilow’s intro is a Chopin prelude. And who can forget Vanilla Ice’s, “Ice, Ice Baby,” which completely swiped the bass line from Queen’s “Under Pressure”?

Then there’s the whole “cryptomnesia” aspect. Maybe the flutist wasn’t even thinking of ‘Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,’ when he came up with that part. It could have been accidental. Remember when George Harrison got sued over his song, ‘My Sweet Lord,’ because it was so similar to ‘He’s So Fine’? Harrison used cryptomnesia as his defense, meaning that he was not consciously aware that he was stealing another song’s melody. Although I tend to believe Harrison (after all, he was a Beatle, it’s not like he needed the money), his defense flopped and he had to pay out over that one (after all, he was a Beatle – he was loaded!)

Oddly enough, I’ve even noticed that Men at Work seem to reprise their own riffs. The songs ‘Who Can it Be?’ and ‘Overkill’ have basically the same sax riff. The notes are played in ascending order in one song, and descending order in another. (If you don’t believe me, just listen to the first few seconds of each song, and hear for yourself.) I don’t think they were trying to imitate themselves, but I have noticed that many artists (Sting and Bjork, for instance) have their own signature melodies which pop into their work over and over. It’s rather like the way in which people have pet phrases (i.e. ‘you know what I mean?’) that they fall back on in their speech and writing.

At least you can’t get sued for ripping your own self off. Unless, of course, you have a litigious clone. Now that would really make me want to chunder.