LARGE MAN FALLS HILARIOUSLY AND EMBARRASSINGLY OUTSIDE OF CAFE SOLSTICE

You were taller than anyone else in the coffee shop, wearing rugged boots and a ball cap, and after you walked out of Cafe Solstice on Capitol Hill with a 16-ounce Americano, no cream, because that's the kind of rugged guy you are, you crossed 10th Avenue to the sidewalk on the east side of the street and starting walking south, toward Cal Anderson Park. But soon you encountered a puddle it would be hard to step through without getting your boots and pants wet, so you opted to change course and walk back across the street, by way of a pathway through the landscaping. There was a pathway right there: Those wooden slats. The moment you stepped onto these wooden slats, you fell. Hard. You'd think wooden slats would grip a pair of rugged boots, which is probably why you stepped onto them so casually, but anyone who knows the neighborhood knows that those wooden slats, when wet, are slippery as fuck. You must have been somewhere around six-foot-five; the bigger one is, the harder one falls. Your coffee went everywhere—you hadn't even taken your first sip yet, and already all of it was launched into the air. The lid went flying. The coffee sank into the wet soil. Your hands broke your fall. You got up, dazed, in disbelief, looking down at your hands, at the ground and rocks steaming with coffee, and collected your litter (good for you), and your humiliation (we've all been there), and your sadness (just guessing here based on the look on your face), and continued on your walk, either too embarrassed or too out of time to go back to the coffee shop and get another one.

HOT DATE WITH RAW FISH

You were a blond woman sitting at the sushi bar, sitting next to another woman, whose hair was a slightly darker shade of blond. You appeared to be a good match. At first glance, you were looking into her eyes, smiling, and slowly stroking her back. At second glance, a couple of minutes later, you were full-on making out with her. The mediocre sushi was not cramping your style.

GUY ON A BUS IN GREEN LAKE

On a chilly evening, you were riding on the northbound 48 bus toward Greenwood. When the bus pulled over at Green Lake to let some passengers off, the rear doors got stuck and wouldn't close again. The bus driver, an elderly black man, came to the rear of the bus to try to fix the problem. You, a middle-aged white man with a beard, grew irate in the most dickish way possible. As the driver opened a compartment and tried to fix the doors, you complained loudly, "Fuck, man! I'm going to miss my bus!" Everyone else sat patiently and let the driver do his thing. A few minutes later, the doors closed. "Can we fucking go nowwww?" you said loudly, throwing your hands up. The driver ignored you. The doors evidently weren't closed tightly enough for the bus to begin safely moving again. You were still on the bus, still whining like a petulant child, when we got off and walked the rest of the way.

YOU ARE ON INDIGENOUS LAND

You sat in the chair at CORE Gallery, waiting for Nahaan, the artist in residence, to wipe the table clean. Nervous laughter bubbled out of you like steam from a boiling teapot. It was your first tattoo. You decided on two designs he gave you; both of them having to do with saltwater, an element important to your family and your Yucateco ancestors. He prepared the needle and thread. "Does it hurt?" your friend (a good friend) asked. Nahaan said the skin-stitching, a traditional technique, would feel like pinching. He shaved some light fuzz off your wrist and forearm. If a person whines, he said, it's a reflection not on you but on your whole clan—and who wants to whine when the regalia of your people is being stitched on? "No pressure," your friend said, and you laughed. You didn't whine once.

BALLARD SHOUTER

You had your hood pulled low over your eyes as you crossed 17th Avenue near Market Street in Ballard around 9:30 on a rainy Thursday night. You shouted—not sang—to no one in particular, "Baby, I'm a firework!"

CAPITOL HILL TIME MACHINE

Friday night, we pushed through the Pike-Pine hordes, up the rickety wooden stairs of one of the last not-yet-condofied buildings in the neighborhood, the building where the art space the Factory is located, and entered what felt like a time machine. There, in a small room with funny Jackie Collins–related art on the wall, we stood in back and watched a ramshackle roomful of young, beautiful, broke weirdos listened raptly to a brilliant show by Posse, who sounded like the stepchildren of Smog and Galaxie 500, but also new, vital, dreamy. The sound mix was loud enough to drown out the yahoos swarming outside, but not so loud that you couldn't still swoon. If you squinted your eyes just so, you could believe you had stepped through a time door, a small relic of what Capitol Hill used to feel like every night, for so many years. We thought of that line from Fear and Loathing, "With the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back," and felt grateful, glad to be in Seattle, glad to be alive.