For thirty years I was far away, but now I’m back, living again in Seattle. It’s the city where I grew up.

In my 20s and 30s, I lived in half a dozen houses and apartments all over the city — north, south, Queen Anne, south again, the U district, and downtown — but never have I ever lived or worked in Wallingford.

Exploring the city for no particular reason and with no particular plan, I found myself in Wallingford a few days ago. It’s a pleasant, slightly upscale neighborhood, where a few unexpected flashbacks were waiting.

Like, that dim sum place was once Italian, and around 1980 or so, I ate there with a couple of friends after a ball game. Both those friends are dead now.

Down the street is a real estate office that used to be a doughnut shop. Sometimes I’d buy a dozen and take them to the office, offer to share them with co-workers, but eat most of the doughnuts myself.

Wallingford’s real surprise, though, was when I wandered around a corner and saw a grand old building from, I’d guess, the 1920s. It had been a school once, but the kids and teachers were gone by the ’70s, when it became a quaint row of street-level shops, with some apartments above. It’s a classy place.

Of course, all the shops changed names and owners during the decades I was gone, but what’s now a florist was a bookstore back in the 1980s. My then-girlfriend worked in that bookstore, and one fine evening I came to pick her up from work for a date, and she surprised me with a blowjob in the stockroom.

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Several days ago, the landlord sent a text letting everyone know that he’d be working on a leaky pipe on Tuesday, and the water would be turned off for an hour or so.

Today’s the day, but I wasn’t even home, so who cares? At the promised time, riding the bus on an errand, another text came from the landlord, reminding the residents that he’d be turning off the water in five minutes.

About seven minutes later, though, came this text: “Sorry, guys. Water main shutoff snapped, water is all over the basement, so please be patient. Water will be off all day for sure, and probably overnight.”

I have a lifetime’s experience skipping showers, so that’s not a problem, but water is what I drink. Four half-gallon containers are at my recliner/bed/desk at all times. When the containers are dry, I refill them with tap water. Reading the landlord’s text on the bus, I conducted a mental inventory of my four jugs at home, and realized one had about eight ounces of water in it, and the other three were empty. Ah, jeez.

Ding, ding, I rang the bus bell, because we were approaching a supermarket. Figured I’d buy a gallon of water to make it through the night. In a rare moment of neighborliness, I replied to the landlord’s group text, so everyone in the house would get it: “Hey, I’m at Fred Meyer. If anyone needs a gallon of water, let me know in the next few minutes.”

Then I walked into the store, and remembered why I don’t shop at Fred Meyer any more. Just past the entrance, there’s a security station, which is only a pulpit, with a guard standing behind it. “Sir,” he said pleasantly, “you’ll need to check your backpack.”

I’m, uh, kind of an ass about checking my backpack. Inside it is everything I might need while I’m away from home — meds, pens, spare socks, a jar for peeing in when there are no public restrooms (which is always), and much, much more.

On one unpleasant day, I checked my backpack when a security guard told me to, and then forgot to pick it up when I left. Getting my backpack back took only a minute, but the round-trip ride on the bus was an hour and a half.

And also, it’s my damned backpack. Same as my wallet or underwear, I am extremely hesitant to hand it to a stranger. Sometimes I refuse, depending on my mood. My mood today was so-so, so I said, “What’s the chain of custody if I give you my backpack?”

“Huh?” the guard said.

“Do you give me a receipt? Do you lock it away, so it can’t be stolen? Or do you just stash it in that corner” (I pointed at three backpacks, piled behind him) “and keep your back to it, like your back’s turned to those backpacks right now?”

“Uh, you need to check your backpack.”

“You can’t answer the question?”

“Sir, your backpack please.”

I shook my head no, and walked past his pulpit and into the store. “Sir! Sir!” he shouted after me, but after eleven sirs his voice faded away.

At the water aisle, I checked my text messages, and saw that my flatmate Robert had replied “Yes please,” so I bought an extra gallon for him.

Leaving the store, would the security guard scold me, and/or demand to search my backpack? Nope. The guard was gone, and the pile of backpacks behind his pulpit was unattended, just sitting there, waiting to be stolen.

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Knowing I’m not famous or successful, and having no desire to be, I don’t obsess over this site’s tiny traffic stats. Once in a while I glance at the numbers, though, and for the past month I’ve been puzzled to see that Searchers 2.0, and a few more films is the site’s second-most visited page, after just plain itsdougholland.com. What’s weird is, it’s a nothing page, like this one, not particularly interesting or well-written. Yet week after week, that’s the page where crowds gather.

Wondering why, I added a bright red banner, asking anyone who lands on that page to please send an email explaining why they’d come. Left the banner up for a week, and about 1,000 visitors came, but none of them responded.

Next I re-coded the page, diverting all its traffic to my home page instead. For a week, nobody could reach Searchers 2.0, and a few more films, but no complaints were received.

Now I’ve shrugged and restored the page, because someday, someone might desperately need my opinions of Interdimensional Pizza Portal (2023), International House (1933), Intersect (2020), Night and Fog (1954), and Searchers 2.0 (2007). Within hours of restoring that page, it rose again to the top of the charts.

Lacking any tech expertise, my guess is that there’s a faulty bot out there, lost and confused and returning to that page, over and over and over. Which is funny enough, I think, to be worth these few paragraphs, though you might disagree.

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All is forgiven if you’re a football fan, but I don’t give a rip about the game. I’m delighted, though, that the local Seattle Seahawks are going to the Super Bowl.

When I lived in San Francisco, the 49ers played in a Super Bowl, and I didn’t care and don’t remember whether they won, but it was the best day EVAH. The streets and parks were deserted, usually-crowded restaurants were empty, etc. It was delightful, and I’ll be re-inventing that day in Seattle, on Sunday, February 8. The whole city will be nearly empty!

Haven’t decided what I’ll be doing (suggestions welcome) but whatever it is there won’t be a crowd so it’ll be terrific.

Poking around the internet, looking for ideas for that day, I stumbled across this video of fans celebrating after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2014. This is the definition of hell on earth, and exactly what I want to avoid.

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Finally, long-time readers might remember my report on I Luv Teriyaki, destroyed by fire. The restaurant is tentatively scheduled to reopen toward the end of February. Beat the rush — get all excited now!

2/3/2026

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