Breaking Dawn Releases Near Forks
Lines for Breaking Dawn at Issaquah Barnes and Noble, courtesy of Jenny Griffee
Okay, so Forks is a pretty long drive (and ferry ride) from Seattle, but the young adult book series by Stephenie Meyer, including Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and now Breaking Dawn is still a pretty big deal in Seattle.
Like a literary version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a less mature version of the Anita Blake novels, the Twilight series throw together Bella Swan, a rather ordinary, clumsy teenager, and Edward Cullen, a thrillingly gorgeous “teenage” vampire. Toss in Bella’s friend Jacob, a member of the Quileute Tribe, who might just have hidden feelings for Bella, and you’ve got a full-fledged literary phenomena, set in the Pacific Northwest.
Both the U-Village Barnes and Noble and the University Bookstore were holding release parties tonight for the final installment in the Twilight series. At U-Village, hordes of pre-teen girls wearing “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob” shirts were drawing their favorite characters, while older fans came bedecked in velvet cloaks, fishnets and combat boots. U-Village hired a band to play at a “prom,” which fits the demographic fairly well. At the University Bookstore, lines were forming to pick up the books, while similarly styled teens played Twilight trivia and got to take a ‘tour’ of the book’s landmarks.
Which brings us back to Forks. Meyer’s book allows vampires to roam in the daylight, as long as it is overcast, so Meyer had to choose somewhere with lots of cloudy, rainy days. According to her website, Forks was smack in the middle of the rainiest area of the country, so Forks it was. The small town on the Olympic Peninsula has slowly been catching up to the teen tourism boom that has accompanied the books- in fact, the city has even launched a “Twilight Points of Interest” page on their site, and former Olympic National Park rangers are now loading up vans for tours, according to the Seattle Times.
In fact, the books were interesting enough, that on my own whirlwind tour of the Peninsula, I made sure to stop and eat in Forks earlier this summer. Having seen how many of my friends (and their kids) were into the books, I expected Forks to have latched onto the vampiric books, and was prepared to see something like Salem, Massachusetts, which has someone selling witch paraphernalia on nearly every corner. Forks, though, was shockingly free of vampire gear; and in fact, seemed not to have noticed that the books even existed. Breaking Dawn may change that, and I suspect that the upcoming Twilight movie (December 12 release date, according to the video running at Barnes and Noble) will spike the tourism traffic in Forks significantly. If nothing else, at least the eateries now have Bella Burgers and Bellasagna. I look forward to visiting Forks again sometime in the future, and hope next time I’ll get something a little more vampiric for my time!
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And, if for some reason, you’re curious about why I don’t have photos fo the release parties, there’s an story for that, too…
Awww.. that sucks about not having any pictures! But awesome story. :)
Where did you eat in Forks? It’s become notorious among my friends as the place to avoid on the Olympic Peninsula after an especially ill-fated stopover there during a weekend road trip.
Some pizza parlor on 101, I think on the south side of town? All I really remember is that their pizza was kind of greasy… but we didn’t have any ill-fated stopovers ;)