The last time my high school chums got together to throw a
going-away party for one of the members of our former clique,
someone got stuffed in an industrial dryer, there were
strippers, and a short police chase occurred (true story!). When
another member of our ever-
shrinking group recently decided to
pull up roots and move to Eastern Washington, we decided to throw
another epic party.
I’ve already started the night off with the party’s honoree: Each of
us has polished off a six-pack in my living room, expecting to catch a
cab or a bus to the party from my apartment near Northgate.
Then it starts snowing.
We bundle up and decide to walk which, at the time, seems like a
sound plan. “This is the best idea we’ve ever had,” I slur, as
we march toward Ballard, stopping every so often to sled on stray
garbage can lids.
When we hit the two-mile mark, at 85th and Aurora, my feet are
soaked and my buzz is wearing off. We sit at a bus stop for a while,
but nothing ever comes and we trudge on.
After about two and a half hours, we reach our destination. We look
like pissed-off snowmen.
“You guys are fucking idiots,” one of our friends tells us. Then
everyone except for the weird Canadian girl I lost my virginity
to and a few other hangers-on gets up and leaves.
My friend and I turn around and walk back the way we
came—eight miles, all told—dreaming up ways to kill
every single one of our friends over the next few years. Some
fucking party. 
Want The Stranger to walk five miles uphill butt-naked in the
snow to your house party? E-mail the place, time, and party details to
partycrasher@thestranger.com.
As someone that spent 4 years in Montreal and am now in NY, this is probably the number one thing that really sucks about Seattle. How the hell do people have go to ANYTHING 8 miles away?
It’s more likely to happen in NY but NY has an excuse because it has to find room for 8 million people. Seattle has to find room for 550,000. In Montreal, city of 1.8 million, the longest distance two people I knew ever lived apart was maybe 5 miles.
It was weird when I finally looked at a map of Seattle next to one of Montreal at the same scale, because when I moved to what I think of as the Northgate equivalent in MTL, it was actually no farther from downtown than Ballard, which I guess is why the bus seemed so much faster than the ones in Seattle.
What gives, Seattle? Are you LA? Why is everything so goddamn far apart?
There’s oceans and lakes and shit in the way.
That’s 8 miles round trip. In the snow, with the 3 big hills between ballard and northgate, I’m assuming it felt like 20 each way though.
Yes, John, Seattle is a lot like LA, in that it’s a western US city that largely came of age in the 20th century after this invention known as “the automobile”.