The only thing I like about football is telling people that I don’t like football, so when the local team earned a berth in the Super Bowl, my thoughts were not of first downs and sweaty jocks. Nah, I wanted a few hours of quiet across the city.
Which usually-crowded place could I go to, and enjoy without the crowd, while everyone else stays home or goes to a bar to watch the steroid-addled athletes bash helmets and jump all over each other?
The zoo, perhaps? Or Seattle’s new Waterfront Park Promenade? No, I went to Pike Place Market. Despite being a tourist attraction, it’s also a real place loaded with honest merchants selling quality stuff at reasonable prices. I’d be a regular there, if not for the crowds. Gently forcing my way through the throngs takes most of the joy out of it, but on a Super Bowl Sunday afternoon, there would be no throngs!
I’m a dummy, though, and Pike Place turned out to be a mistake. See, what makes the Market special is that it’s entirely indie shops — no chains. Chains have regular hours and corporate policies and have to be open, but indie shops might simply close for the day, letting the owners and employees watch the game.
So there I was, at a mostly-shuttered Market. Left Bank Books was open, and full of fascination as always. Golden Age Collectibles was open. The Crumpet Shop was open. Most of the t-shirt and souvenir shops were open. But about 2/3 of the Market was closed, including the famous fish-tossers, and the entire floor of farmers’ vegetable stands. Few customers, plenty of room for walking around, but nothing much to walk around to.
I’d planned to splurge on a meal at Pike Place Chowder, but it’s a long ways down Post Alley, which is cobblestone and far steeper than I’d remembered. Figured I had a 50/50 chance of twisting an ankle on the stones, and also a 50/50 chance they’d be closed after walking that block and a half downhill, so then I’d have to walk a block and a half back uphill and twist my ankle again. Decided against the chowder.
Down a walkway of fifty stalls, of which two were open, was a restaurant with an old neon sign. Old neon is usually, literally, a good sign, so that was my second choice. A few people were inside, eating, but the door was locked and an employee shook his head ‘no’ at me. By their posted hours, it should’ve been open until 8PM. I’d badmouth the place, but I’ve forgotten what the old neon said.
Wandering past a few more open shops and more that weren’t, I came to the brilliantly-named Pike Place Chinese Cuisine. It’s a shoestring-shaped restaurant, odd architecture because the building is a hundred+ years old. A menu was posted in the window, and the prices weren’t unreasonable, but a drama distracted me, in front of the restrooms on the other side of the hallway.
An employee had walked into the men’s room, and locked the door behind him, presumably to clean it. Pike Place Market, lemme mention, has very old restrooms, but they’re the cleanest, nicest public johns in town.
Immediately, a hipster-dressed white man started hollering at the door, which is just a series of metal bars on a hinge, so he was actually hollering at the employee, who looked back at him through the bars, and also hollered. The gist of the hipster’s complaint was Fuck you, this is a public restroom and I’m the public, and the employee’s reply was Fuck you & get outta my face.
The shouting was passionate and profane, the high point of my visit to the Market, and I watched and enjoyed it. My sympathies were with the employee at first, but began shifting when he unlocked the door, came out of the restroom, and re-locked the door behind him, while continuing to argue loudly with the hipster. Dude, you were protected by a heavy, gated door — why would you step outside that protection?
As the hipster continued screaming, the employee said, “You’d better not touch me, fucker.” Of course, testosterone being testosterone, the hipster got right in the employee’s face, and screamed that he hadn’t touched him. And he hadn’t.
The employee pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt and called for Security. The hipster insulted him for this, and said, “Why don’t you just unlock the public restroom so the public can shit?” The employee reminded him that Security was on the way, told him he’d better leave, so the hipster said three more fuck yous and walked away.
But the employee shouted after him, “Yeah, you’d better leave, fucker.” As you’d expect, the hipster turned around and started shouting at the employee again. So, twice the employee had opportunities to let things cool down, and twice he’d escalated the argument instead.
Pike Place Market is a tiny place, only about two city blocks, and Security was there within two minutes. There were six of them, so if you want to rob someone at the Market, arranging a small diversion like this might be a good idea.
I don’t like cops, but the patches on their sleeves said Pike Place Market Security, so this was private enforcement, and they handled it well. One of them squeezed himself between the employee and the hipster, calmly asked what was the beef, then actually listened to both sides. And both sides told the truth, until the employee sweetened his story by saying, “… and he threatened me.”
“That’s a lie,” said some fat guy who’d been watching the whole thing, and yeah, that fat guy was me. The guard who’d been asking questions looked at me and raised his eyebrows, which I took to mean, “Do tell,” so I did.
“Two assholes, but no violence, no threats of violence. The hipster guy started it, then lots of fuck yous from both sides, but the employee was egging him on, and now he’s lying about being threatened.”
This earned a series of fuck yous from the employee, a thank you from the hipster and the guard, and a few yups from the crowd that had, of course, gathered to watch the show. No further questions, your honor, at least none for me, but the guard’s Q&A with the hipster and the employee went on for a few minutes.
My remarks, I think and hope, had taken some of the gusto from the employee’s story, and soon the guard was saying, “Let’s all just calm down and go about our evenings.” The employee walked away, leaving the men’s room locked. A different guard pointed the hipster toward a map on the wall, which lists several other public restrooms in the building, and the hipster walked off in the other direction.
A 20-something couple came out of Pike Place Chinese Cuisine, and I asked if their dinner had been good. “Not really,” said the guy, and the lady nodded, so I took the next bus for home, where dinner was two hot dogs and a salad, no tip.
2/9/2026
itsdougholland.com
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