I took my rental car back this morning. The plan is to go carless for a week or so, and then get another one. There is still a good number of weeks to go before I get my new car.
It was a pleasant day, and I could walk up, up along Pine Street to get to the other side of Interstate 5, and to Capitol Hill where my house is.
It’s about 30 mins of walking with no stopping, but I took my time, and took some pictures as I went.
This is the Hertz rental car center on the 6th floor of a garage on 8th Ave in downtown. There’s the counter in the distance where I had dropped my car’s keys. These are basically all the cars they have; the five floors below are eerily empty. (Hard to know if all the floors had been filled with cars pre-pandemic, though). There’s definitely a shortage of rental cars right now, with people starting to travel again. In places like Hawaii, the fee for a small sedan is $195/ day. That is crazy, and 4 times or 5 times the ‘normal’ rate.I like the signage in the elevator lobby. I was tempted to stop at every floor to see what 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 looked like, and what colors, then thought, no! just go all the way down.The upscale Grand Hyatt hotel on Pine Street is still closed. Many years ago, I had cocktails with friends in the lobby bar. One of them was from Houston, and he could not stop talking about his Continental Airlines frequent flyer miles. (Continental Airlines is no more. It merged with United Airlines in 2010).Corner of Pine St & 9th Ave, looking northeast. Dough Zone dumpling house Chinese restaurant on the right, Washington State Convention Center expansion construction zone on the left. That’s the No 10 bus from Capitol Hill, coming into downtown.The Paramount Theater is still shuttered as well, of course. ‘Justice for Daunte Wright’ says the sign, the 20-yr-old African-American man that was fatally shot on Apr. 11 by police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop & attempted arrest for an outstanding arrest warrant, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. The US Treasury Department was “taking steps to resume efforts” to put the abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill (left of the picture), but nothing new has been announced of late.Ticket booths at the main entrance of the Paramount Theater. The theater has 2,807 seats for the performing arts, and opened in March 1928 as the Seattle Theatre.Looking back at the Washington State Convention Center expansion, from the Pine Street overpass over Interstate 5. Maybe there is a little money left in the budget to also fix up that rusty lamp post on the far right.The Baltic Room nightclub & bar with its art deco ironwork is still boarded up, but not permanently closed, as far as I can tell.This space at 300 East Pine St houses attorney’s offices now, but some 15 years ago it was called The Chapel, a fancy wine & cocktail bar, filled with beautiful people on a Friday night, and a place for which one would dress up a little (in a city that had made grunge bands and grunge wear famous).The artwork on the alley side of the Sugar Hill eatery & bar at 400 East Pine has been there for a while, but is holding up. Sugar Hill bills itself as a ‘loungey, vinyl-fueled eatery/ bar for craft cocktails, Thai street food & late-night DJs’.I had left Pine St, and made my way to the new apartment buildings on Broadway by the Capitol Hill light rail station. This is the brand new plaza on the inside. I love the pastel colors of the art installation, with the brighter yellow & orange in there as well. I really hope it stays like this for a while: clean and graffiti-free.
