reading seattle

Mark and I left the UDistrict in his car originally intending to go somewhere in Capitol Hill, thought maybe the IDistrict would be interesting, and then just ended up somehow driving downtown and situated ourselves in the Starbucks on 4th and Pine, right in the middle of the commercial shopping district. Since our umbrella issue has to do with public transportation we thought it would be interesting to watch a few bus stops and see if we could learn anything from them (how they are used, who uses them, what do people do around them?)

One thing I thought was particularly interesting that I also think could be important to our study in Amsterdam was the fact that when we were sitting in the coffee shop which seemed like a good idea because we could stay there comfortably for a while and just watch the very first notation I made was ‘no benches’ which seemed weird because most bus stops in downtown have benches. We both made a bunch of observations from this viewpoint including how interesting it was that people did indeed situate themselves the way Prof. Ryan said they did by trying to get up on some higher ground and lean their back against things. We even noticed that we in fact had done that exact thing, from our viewpoint we could see over the whole little square that our bus stop was situated in.

Then Mark and I decided to move closer to the actual stop and I realized that there was a whole sea of benches back there, they were just blocked from our original view. So a simple change in position, a different angle of perception completely changed my view of the stop and how it was planned. With all the benches it fit right into the atmosphere of the square that the stop was located in. We had in fact blocked off from our view the exact place where some of the most interesting interactions were going on. We wanted to see who was riding the buses, what they did while they waited, what did they do in the space they were in, did they really interact with it? Or was it such a standard to them to be there that they just ignored it and delved into their own world of music from their ipod and tetris on their cell phone? But we couldn’t even do this until we had moved in really close. I think this would definitely have to be implemented into our research in Amsterdam, if we are going to observe a place it is definitely going to have to be done from various angles.

I found it interesting that people always seemed to need to occupy themselves. Even when waiting for the bus they just couldn’t sit and stare, and if they were it had to be at an interesting building or sign, or more likely another person. Even during our observations Mark and I found ourselves watching the people walk by in front of us and watched what and how they were doing whatever they were doing. It is as though if you have no other way of distracting yourself the next thing to do is to just occupy your time by watching other people. Even if you are going down to the square just to relax or ‘hang out’ with friends, no one really seems to be able to just sit somewhere. There has to be a book, or you have to be napping, or you have to have someone you are talking to.

I noticed that although the buildings down there are pretty impressive that most people just didn’t pay attention to them at all. It was as though all they saw was whatever destination they were headed for. Which I suppose the point of this assignment was for us to slow down and stop doing that exact thing. No one really takes in their environment anymore, we create our own spaces wherever we are and that is what we believe the environment is. I’ve been to that exact place before, had coffee at that same Starbucks a million times and had never even noticed the arch in the square or all the potted plants, or really the intersection of classy hip young Seattleites with the homeless.

As for applying what we learned to study in Amsterdam, we’re really going to have to go to a place with a clear idea of what we want to observe because Mark and I easily spent at least three hours on our trip and felt like we didn’t even get that much information, it was easy to get distracted and not actually pay much attention to what was going on. But also the idea of slowing down and really watching, and even if we have a certain focus to still make sure to notice other things because for all we know we could be ignoring some of the most interesting interactions around. This assignment was surprisingly hard, I wasn’t sure about what we were observing…and what exactly to write about it, but it’s definitely something I would like to do again.