I’ll be heading to Vegas tomorrow, so I want to sort of wrap up the Seattle trip before I leave. You know, to get some closure. This week has been a blur of busyness and confusion, I hadn’t realized how close together my trips were, and how stressful unpacking, packing, preparing can be while trying to have a job and life. 

 Along with the guys from the hostel, we participated in some clandestine “midnight crabbing” hence why we were constantly joking that Hostel Seattle gave us crabs. 

Our leader, General Lee preparing the crab cages. Or maybe about to shove a misbehaving international guest in there? 

I’m trying to climb over the fence without falling into the water, and Lee is all “look this way, look over here, smile, look here!” Good times, good times…

Calling out to the crab.  But on a serious note, this is why it’s freaking awesome to stay at a hostel. We wouldn’t have gotten to do cool, of-the-beaten-path stuff like this if why had stayed in a normal hotel. 

How ominous looking is that? Loves it. 

Looks like a great place to sit and think

Moving on the music part of the trip. On our last night, Christina was game enough to come along with me to an Oasis concert at the WaMu Theater. This was a good thing because I don’t think I would’ve felt my trip was complete unless there had been some live music!

Unfortunate things: obviously having no press pass, I had to settle with crappy shots from our seats with my point-and-shoot. Not ideal to say the least, but I was kind a peeved when I saw some dude seating behind us with his SLR. WTF? I’ve always thought SLRs were banned from concerts unless you had a press pass or some sort of access pass, neither of which I saw on this guy. 

The guys were preceded by Matt Costas, who had a pretty awesome acoustic set. I totally googled that shit when I got home. Also, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals. I was very ‘eh’ about them, they had some good guitar solos, but otherwise very blah. Ryan Adams looked and sounded sort of inebriated. Not that I’m judging or anything, just an observation…

Oasis was pretty good. I was surprised that the venue looked sold out… never thought they were that popular in the States. Obviously everyone was eating it up during their older songs. I’m not too familiar with their newer stuff either, but overall the entire show was pretty electric. 

Surprisingly clear considering my lil camera was zooming in digitally at this point. A big no-no, and I’m ashamed to admit I did it.  The best review of the show came from Christina, who doesn’t really know anything about Oasis, when she said “I thought the singer with the guitar (Noel) was a much better singer.” Somewhere backstage Liam was having an inexplicable surge of rage…

I can’t say enough about this trip. It was an amazing time, and the fact that we got a good mixture of experiences, from illegal crabbing to live music, and we managed to still do the usual touristic stuff. When I travel, part of me wants to feel like a local, if that makes any sense. I think we totally accomplished that! 

I have to run. Shooting a Hall and Oates concert tonight at the U.S. Airways center, which I have never shot anything at. I rented a wicked 15mm lens from Tempe Camera, so we’ll see how that goes. For now, I’ll leave you with some photos from last night’s First Fridays, and a band called The Hooves.

Show’s over. Be back next week!