seattle freeze documented on youtube
Everyone’s favorite local social affliction, the Seattle Freeze (a.k.a. Seattle nICE) has been given the documentary treatment by local directors through a UW Extension Independent Filmmaking course. After premiering their short film, co-director Roya Naini posted for your viewing pleasure on YouTube:
In this nicely-made first film, a series of Seattleites and experts place the blame for our standoffish niceness on our latitude and the takeover of Belltown’s artist commune by nerdy IT workers with IKEAized condos. Along the way they warn the audience that the bar and music scene aren’t the solution to our connectivity issues (”we have one polite coffee date, then we jump into bed together, then we douse it with lighter fluid, watch it flame, and wonder where it went”), instead suggesting churches, outdoorsy clubs, recognizing your own inner internet-dependent chill, and maybe getting a pet just in case.
(via logcapture [#])
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i believe that other people experience this, as i’ve heard it said often enough, but i don’t. i find it easy to make new friends here, and i have a circle of friends most of whom i’ve known for years or even decades. i regularly meet new people, some of whom become friends.
C: Were you born here? I was, and my experience matches yours, but I spent a year and a half in Portland, and WOW! Suddenly I knew what everyone was talking about. It’s definitely a PNW thing, not just a Seattle thing, but I think natives are immune to it.
nope. i was born in Connecticut. lived up and down the East Coast for the first few years of my life (and i can actually remember bits of it), then my parents moved to Seattle when i was 5. i’ve lived pretty much everywhere from Everett to Longview, Aberdeen to Tacoma since then, but always in-state.
maybe i’m naturalized enough to be native.
Of course, the “Seattle Freeze” was talked about and documented long before the Internet, or Ikea’s Renton store, or most of Belltown’s condos.
A few good reasons for this phenomenon that don’t lean on a catchy smash-yr-computer angle:
- Nordic heritage of multigeneration locals.
- Distrust of new residents by locals, many of whom still really chafe at the idea that we’re a major city.
- Desire for relative isolation (such as closeness to nature, distance from relatives/bad home situations) that drives many to move here.
I describe the difference to people like this: When you walk into a club or bar in Chicago, everyone at least glances at you; when you walk into a bar in Seattle, people do their best to pretend not to notice you.
The most interesting part is that everyone knows about it.
Michael — sorry if I implied that this film was the first documentation of the phenomenon, it’s just a new adaptation of the things you rightly say that everyone already knows about. I think they did a nice job of highlighting the bar behavior — I’ve even experienced it at large communal tables. But I’m ingrained enough in most of the reasons speculated above that I hardly notice it any more.
C. — I do think that living here since age 5 makes you closer to immune to the “Freeze”!
I agree with C. I’ve lived in the Seattle area all my life, and while I’ve always heard of it. I don’t feel like I’ve personally experienced it. I feel like I’m meeting new people every night I go out and everywhere I go! I’ve made best friends, just cause we met at a bar one night… I think it’s personality types. Maybe there’s a freeze cause everyone’s waiting for someone to come up and approach them..when really, if you do the approaching, most everyone is nice and will get over their initial “frozen” stature.
At least that’s my theory.
Jeanna, that’s a really good point. if there’s a “freeze”, it’s because people aren’t making the effort. since the vast majority of people i meet are transplants arriving in their 20s and 30s, you’d think that they would be meeting each other at least! the “freeze”, if it were really a regional thing (the “Nordic heritage” and “distrust of new residents” theories), should only affect those approaching the natives (who are far outnumbered in these days of tech workers).