Yesterday morning, I left the condo at 12:40, and Laney and I reached the East 34th Street Bridge in Tacoma at 3:00. This involved walking six blocks from home to meet Laney waiting for me at the corner of Pine & Broadway; walking with her the next 12 blocks to 9th & Stewart; riding the Sound Transit 594 an hour and 22 minutes to downtown Tacoma; and transferring to the Pierce Transit #1 bus which got us to within a few blocks of the 34th Street Bridge just a few minutes before 3:00. So for me, door-to-bridge, the trek took a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes, one way. And you know what? It was totally worth it!
People who drive by default can't fathom this, taking so much time to get from point A to point B. There's no time! Actually there is, if you just make time. Laney got rid of her van something like a year ago or more, which made her maybe the most ideal person out of everyone in my life to go to our Happy Hour in Tacoma via public transit. Had I driven straight there, it would have taken about 40 minutes—with no traffic. And even on the bus, we encountered pretty thick traffic. I'm certain the drive would have taken, at minimum, a solid hour. And I should note, the actual
ride time on public transit was from 1:17 to about 2:50, so barely more than 90 minutes. I just added 37 minutes with the walking to 9th & Stewart beforehand, and about 10 minutes after getting off the bus at the end. Because not only do Laney and I not mind the time it takes to ride public transit, neither do we mind taking the time to walk places.
We both agreed that, even with the added time, particularly the ride from downtown Seattle to downtown Tacoma was a far more pleasant experience than if we had taken the car. We never had to deal with the traffic, really; we left that entirely to the bus driver. It allowed Laney and me to pass the time, visiting effectively as we always do, with no other concerns on our minds. It was lovely, and having a companion for bus rides makes the time pass even faster. It hardly felt like it had taken that long at all once we reached downtown Tacoma. Then, it was a matter of minutes before a #1 bus arrived to take us up the hill to 34th Street.
In the early stages of planning for this day, we considered just walking up tp 34th Street from the Sound Transit stop at Pacific & 24th. This is about a mile. But, when Laney looked at the satellite images on Google maps and saw that there was a massive bridge over the freeway and it freaked her out, she said she wanted to transfer to a bus. And that was fine—and in retrospect, I'm glad we saved the 25 minutes it would have taken us to walk that distance anyway. We discovered when we got there that it's quite a steep hill.
Laney let me know that Jessica had expressed just yesterday morning an interest in joining us—which of course was totally fine, Jessica is always welcome. Apparently it's easier for her to drive into Tacoma from where she lives with Mike in Bremerton, although it takes a couple of hours, according to Laney. I'm not sure how that's easier than taking the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle, but I didn't press the point; maybe Seattle's harder to navigate, I don't know. (Don't ask Gabriel about this, he'll take every opportunity to talk about how horrible he things Seattle is no matter the context.) In any case, Jessica was already at the bridge when we got there.
Bridges, actually. I had looked up best views of downtown Tacoma, and learned online that there is a great vantage point from the East 34th Street Bridge. We happened to see on Google Maps that there was this restaurant at the west end of the bridge,
Stanley & Seafort's. We checked out their Happy Hour menu and it had good options and good prices, so we decided it was the perfect place to go for our perennial Birth Week Happy Hour. What we did not know, until we got there, was that Stanley & Seafort's is actually in between
two bridges. It's sort of odd topography, the south side of the restaurant level with the ground that just goes further up the hill to the south, but the north side of the restaurant overlooking a steep hill as it goes down to the north. 34th Street, which runs east and west and thus cuts across said hill perpendicularly, has a bridge over a greenspace on the block to the west of the restaurant, and a bridge over Washington State Highway 7 to the east, just south of its interchange with I-5, on the other side of which is the interchange with the short span of I-705 that goes from I-5 into downtown Tacoma. I guess you could say Stanley & Seafort's sits atop a bluff, with steep hill running down on three sides, and bridges across two sides.
Here's the weirdest part. The bridge over Highway 7, the one with the spectacular view of the Tacoma skyline, is called the East 34th Street Bridge. The road as it goes further east is called East 34th Street. You'd think the road to the other direction would be called
West 34th Street, right? Nope! That's actually
South 34th Street. So I suppose maybe the bridge over the greenspace to the west of Stanley & Seafort's would be called the South 34th Street Bridge? It's not identified as such on Google Maps, which merely identifies "S 34th St" at that spot even though it identifies the E 34th St Bridge on the other side—I mean, whatever! I'm calling it the South 34th Street Bridge on the greenspace side. Side note: the street
technically runs southwest and northeast, though not at a strict 45° angle—it's more like west-southwest and east-northwest. Whatever is going on there, I cannot account for the lack of logic among the Tacoma city planners.
What I
can account for is Laney's fear of heights. Jessica tried pretty hard to convince Laney to walk out onto the bridge with us when we got to the East side. She had a hard enough time crossing the "south" bridge, and that one just had greenspace below it—she has a much harder time when something is flowing beneath the bridge, be it traffic or water. She made it
just a few feet into the west end of the East 34th Street Bridge, and then stopped and was like, "Okay, I'll wait here!"
Jessica and I went out to the middle of the bridge, If you like Tacoma (it's all right!), the view is spectacular. I'd love to go back there again at night sometime. I took all of seven photos on the bridge, and then we all headed back toward the restaurant. I commented that I was glad we were going there, instead of going through all that effort just to spend five minutes on the bridge.
Tracy had texted me that she was running a little late, and I'd say she pulled into the restaurant's parking lot, passing right in front of us, about 10 minutes after 3:00. I had struggled a bit to come up with a Birth Week idea for including Tracy, given that most days could only fit one Observation Deck or viewpoint activity, and I had nearly the entire 10 days scheduled pretty early on with other people. I had been saving Sunday May 4 for Lynn and Zephyr, but they turned out to be unavailable. I could have slotted Tracy there in the end, but Laney thought to invite her to our Happy Hour before that became a possibility. Laney knew that Tracy lives in Puyallup, and it seemed logical to invite her since we'd be in Tacoma.
I had initially thought I would have the same approach with Gabriel: he and Lea also live near there, in Federal Way. I was going to just throw it out to him that we were going to be in Tacoma and he and Lea would be welcome to join us. It's just as well that I wound up meeting up with Gabriel in Port Orchard on Saturday instead—he would have wanted to sit on the outdoor patio at Stanley & Seafort's, and it was a bit chilly yesterday. They were not seating on the patio when we got there yesterday, and the Happy Hour menu is only offered in the bar & lounge anyway.
With Jessica joining us, we were a party of four now as it was. We took a wonderful group selfie right outside the entrance, again with the Tacoma skyline behind us—the view there, it turned out, was nearly identical to that from the East 34th Street Bridge. We went inside and to the bar lounge, and found a four-top table right next to the window. It's no Seattle skyline, but I still quite admired the view the entire two hours we were there—for the entirely of their Happy Hour, which lasts Monday through Thursday between 3:00 and 5:00. My being on PTO right now was the only thing that made it possible to go there at that time.
The
Happy Hour menu is quite reasonably priced, and the food was impressive across the board. I shared an order of the panko fried deviled eggs with Laney, which were the best things any of us had—they were hard boiled egg whites deep fried and
then stuffed with the deviled egg yolk filling. Holy fuck, it was delicious. I also had an order of the "warm brie with macadamia nut crust," which was slightly difficult to eat on the small toasted bread slices, but was still very tasty. As for drinks, Jessica and I both had two of the Botanical Berry Mules, which were absolutely delicious and refreshing. (Laney had her regular beer and tequila shot; Tracy doesn't drink and just had a couple of Pepsis.) All three of the others ordered the Hot Crab and Artichoke Dip, which of course I couldn't eat as it had crab in it. I might have liked an artichoke dip dish otherwise, but the only had the crab dip. Oh well; the one and a half Happy Hour food orders I had proved to be more than enough anyway.
It must have been the first time I went to the bathroom that our server—a woman with definite lesbian vibes who Laney said, "She can reach around me any time"—when the table was asked if they were celebrating anything. I was just about to get up to use the bathroom a second time, and I was told to wait just a minute. A birthday dessert was brought out, which the others clearly thought was for me—and it was brought to a table next to us. It was a guy named Mark's birthday. My birthday isn't actually until tomorrow, but moments later, the right one came for me as well, and then I got my second round this week of three people at a restaurant table singing me Happy Birthday. At least this time they weren't obnoxiously loud about it. Laney sang to both me and to Mark.
It was a crème brûlée, and it was fantastic. Maybe the best crème brûlée I have ever had. This is never my first choice of dessert anywhere, but if I ever go back to Stanley & Seafort's, I might order it again.
Jessica had to bow out a bit earlier than the rest of us, as she gets up super early for her job at Washington State Ferries. The rest of us paid our bills and left shortly after, though, and Tracy generously offered Laney and me a ride to our Sound Transit bus top on 24th Street, preventing us from having to catch the Pierce Transit #1 bus down there first. And then, the timing was spectacular: the bus pulled up to the stop right as we were getting out of the car!
Laney and I were slightly less talkative on the bus ride back to downtown Seattle, partly because I had to take several minutes to post my Birth Week post of the day in different ways to four different social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky). Once that was done, we got back to our regular chatting and easily killed the time it took to ride back to Seattle. And even though it was raining slightly by the time we were getting off the bus at 9th and Howell, we walked together back up Capitol Hill from there. And now, with Laney's Birth Week day out of the way, I'm not scheduled to see her again until Tuesday
next week. That's an eight-day gap, what will we ever do with ourselves? Well, I'll continue having a blast every day and she can have fun reading about it as they go along. That'll work!
[posted 7:08am]
