Seattle Weekend Adventure

SB and I had a fun date night this weekend in Seattle. We had a hotel room and everything. It almost felt like we were on a proper vacation!

The weekend was inspired by the procuring of tickets to The Stranger’s Third Annual Amateur Porn Festival, HUMP. The last two years, it sold out in about five minutes, so a month ago when I found myself online at just the right moment, I just pointed and clicked our way to a crazy little adventure.

It’s a pretty cool event. The 8 minute films created by all different sorts of folks are screened for one weekend and then destroyed onstage after the last show. So theoretically, you could be a porn star for one weekend only. It would never end up on the internet and no one who didn’t attend would ever see it.

SB and I are not “in to” porn. (Is this becoming TMI all of a sudden?) Before Saturday, we’d never even watched any. This just seemed like a fun, crazy thing to do. This kind of thing doesn’t happen everywhere, you know?

We drove up there, found parking and made our way to the theater. We could only get tickets to a matinee showing, so it was broad daylight, a brisk Saturday afternoon. I couldn’t help the silly grin on my face, knowing that I was just strolling down the street, lah di dah, on my way to watch some porn. We had to queue up on the sidewalk with a bunch of other folks, and I couldn’t help giggling. There we were, in line with a bunch of other average looking hipster-types, about to go watch some porn together. Weird!

After watching 20 or so 8 minute shorts, I decided that porn is like violence. You get totally desensitized. Much like when you’re watching Saving Private Ryan and the first guy you see killed makes you wince but then after hundreds you don’t even notice, the first wiener you see is all, ooh! Look at that! By the 50th, you’re not even phased.

It was fascinating watching all different kinds of people having all different kinds of sex. (Welcome disappointed Google searchers!) I think it’s good to try new things and challenge yourself, so thank you HUMP for the education.

Afterwards, we checked into our room at the MarQueen Hotel which was SO NICE. I picked it because it was near the theater and a decent price on hotels.com, but I had no idea it was so fancy! It was such a surprise and a special treat to have such elegant digs. Then we went across the street for drinks and cocktails at Peso’s to discuss the films, (“Remember in that one, where they did that thing? How did they DO that? Dude. I hope that doesn’t do it for you because, No. Way. gigglegigglegiggle) and to plan our next move. I have discovered that I am in desperate need of more work appropriate clothing so we had a good walk downtown for a bit of shopping, which is of course SB’s favorite thing to do. (You realize I am not at all kidding, right? Metrosexual.) I was able to find two pairs of pants and a sweater at a store where they offer you bottled water in the fitting rooms, which blew my mind, but yes please. Shoppin’ in the big city is right nice.

(The sales gal at said store asked us where we were from, assuming we were tourists. When we said Tacoma, she goes, “Oh. Something exploded in Tacoma today.” She had no further details. Awesome.)

We took a cab back to the hotel, which contributed to the feeling of being on vacation, but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to walk all the way back again after such an epic day. The cab driver cleared up the explosion rumor, which was helpful.

We dropped off our bags, then headed out on foot again to find dinner. Ah… the city. We ended up at Moxie, which despite spotty service was quite yummy. Afterwards, we went to Metropolitan Market and got some fancy eclairs to take back to our pretty, pretty room.

In the morning, we had breakfast at the always solid Mecca Cafe, then headed back to T-town. We had such a good time! This outing inspired us to do more quick getaways like this, maximizing the DINK times while they last.

I realized that because we weren’t really tourists, I didn’t take any pictures of the skyline or the Space Needle, or any other landmarks that non-local blog friends might enjoy. Sorry!