Seattle alternative

Grunge was the soundtrack of my Gen X college life. We knew every word to Nirvana's 1991 album, Nevermind.

"I'm so happy 'cause today I found my friends." The day we found out Kurt Cobain had died, April 8, 1994, there was a candlelight vigil in the quad.

Twenty years later, I'm feeling nostalgic for the raw alt-rock style that started in Seattle with bands such as Mudhoney, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, many of which were first signed by local record label Sub Pop.

Grunge seems to be making a comeback. Brett Morgen's documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is showing on HBO. Los Angeles girl grunge band L7 is planning a reunion. The Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey has mounted a survey of art from the 1990s titled "Come as You Are," after the Nirvana song.

It seemed like an interesting time to revisit Seattle, ground zero of grunge, so I booked a weekend trip with my husband. What I discovered is that the end-of-the-continent isolation and blue-collar attitude that laid the groundwork for grunge in the 1980s, according to Justin Henderson's 2010 book, Grunge Seattle, are distant memories. For the last 20 years, Seattle has been booming.

The influx of money from Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco and other Seattle-area corporations has led to a proliferation of luxury condos, high-rise office buildings, farm-to-table restaurants and craft cocktail bars. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the sparkling Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, at the foot of the Space Needle, have enhanced the city's sheen.

One of Bon Appetit's best new restaurants of 2014, Westward, is here, as is Canon, the sixth best bar in the world, according to Drinks International's ranking of the top 50. And the Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods rival Brooklyn, N.Y., and Los Angeles' Silver Lake for cool shops and eats. Starbucks has upped its game with a high-end Roastery & Tasting Room, which brews exclusive beans and has a line out the door.

OH GRUNGE,

WHERE ARt THOU?

In search of what's left of the grunge experience, we checked into the boutique Hotel Max, which is in the thick of downtown, and in 2013 opened a floor of rooms dedicated to Sub Pop. The lobby decor is industrial chic with pop art prints by Andy Warhol, John Baldessari and others adding color. There is also free local beer for guests during happy hour.

Upstairs, the Sub Pop floor has cheery, striped carpeting and large-scale black-and-white images on guest room doors, the work of photographer Charles Peterson, who helped define the Sub Pop aesthetic on the label's record covers. The images are action-packed shots of Nirvana, Hole and other bands -- dirty Converse high-tops, crushed Budweiser cans, swinging hair and all -- in the years before they hit it big and were signed by LA-based record labels to multimillion-dollar contracts.

We stayed in a Max King room, which was about 250 square feet. The furnishings were modern and spare, but with fun touches, including a Crosley record player, a collection of vinyl Sub Pop records for listening and a TV channel that plays current and classic Sub Pop videos.

The hotel is a short walk from the famous Pike Place Market. Before hitting food stands, we stopped in Post Alley to take selfies in front of the drips and dots on Gum Wall. (We didn't contribute to the collective artwork, though there is a gum-ball machine in the lobby at Hotel Max with a sign that suggests that visitors do just that.) We snacked on macaroni and cheese from Beecher's Handmade Cheese, sampled cabernet chocolate cherries from Chukar and ginger pepper pickles from Britt's. Then we settled in for happy hour upstairs at Radiator Whiskey, which serves barrel-aged, smoked maple Old Fashioneds.

For dinner, we headed to Canlis, one of Seattle's old-school dining institutions, open since 1950. Located in a Midcentury Modern structure with cavernous rooms and stone walls, it looks like a lair for a James Bond villain. The bar was a draw, with a pianist who can play anything from Cole Porter to Coldplay. The food was nothing special, but the to-die-for views of Lake Union were worth the pricey tab.

On the way back to the hotel, we hit Bathtub Gin & Co., one of Seattle's secret bars. Open since 2009, it's a speak-easy in the basement of what was once an old brick hotel, now the Humphrey Apartments, that you enter through a back alley. Surprisingly, the place was cool without trying too hard, with cozy tables and friendly service.

The next morning, we drove by the house where Cobain died. The lush, green Denny-Blaine neighborhood with views of Lake Washington is one of the most beautiful urban areas I've seen. Cobain's century-old, four-bedroom house looks small compared with most of the other mansions now occupied by tech chief executives and other masters of the universe. Two benches in nearby Viretta Park serve as memorials, with graffiti messages carved into the wood and love notes tucked between the slats.

The drizzle put us in the mood for something warm, so we headed to Ba Bar, a Vietnamese noodle shop and bakery. The oxtail pho, chicken wings and Vietnamese coffee fortified us. Before we turned to sightseeing at Seattle Center, we wanted to check out one of the newly legal recreational "pot" shops -- merely for research purposes. Washington state legalized marijuana in 2012, and since July 2014, a handful of licensed shops have opened, each with a different vibe. Uncle Ike's, in the Central District, is the most slickly merchandised, with a security guard and velvet rope out front, and TV monitors inside displaying the day's flavors. There's even an Uncle Ike's goods-and-glass store next door that sells knockoff Starbucks-themed vapes and "pot" leaf socks. It was quite an operation, with a clientele that was upscale and a variety of ages.

It was a strange leap from Uncle Ike's to the new visitor center at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2000 by Microsoft co-founder and his wife, and reporting an endowment of more than $42 billion, the organization aims to reduce poverty and improve heath care, education and access to information technology globally.

The visitor center explains the foundation's work through a series of interactive exhibitions that delve into its history and explore the partnerships and innovations its funds support. There are heavy buckets to lift, so visitors can get a sense of how hard it is for people in developing countries to walk miles every day for clean water, and new inventions to explore, such as coolers that keep vaccines cold for 30 days.

Afterward, we walked to the nearby Chihuly Garden and Glass, which showcases to spectacular effect the colorful glass sculptures of Northwest artist Dale Chihuly. I'm so glad we saw it after dark. Walking through the electric-looking installations, inspired by American Indian blankets, hothouse flowers and the ocean, was like falling down the rabbit hole. The views of the Space Needle through the suspended sculpture in the greenhouse-style Glass House space were unforgettable.

We went to dinner at Westward, chef Zoi Antonitsas' Mediterranean seafood restaurant. It is on the north shore of Lake Union, with a dock and outdoor seating and campy seafaring-themed decor. The oysters, all from Washington, were delicious, as were the wood-fired trout and Greek white wine.

We skipped the olive oil cake in favor of liquid dessert at Canon on Capitol Hill. The sixth best bar in the world must be one of the most exacting, too. But it was worth the 45-minute wait for the Milk N' Cookies cocktail in a ceramic milk carton. It was served in a Betty Boop lunch box, with a straw, a cookie and a comic book.

NEIGHBORHOODS

The next day, I wanted to check out the Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods. Ballard, once the center of Seattle's Norwegian seafaring community, is now hipster central. Strolling along Ballard Avenue, we stepped into the Anchored Ship Coffee Bar for locally brewed Herkimer coffee and salted crispy rice treats. Women's boutique Horseshoe has clothing and accessories with a nod to Americana style (dresses by Prairie Underground, earmuffs by Pendleton, boots by Frye). Lucca Great Finds has just that (ceramics by Astier de Villatte; embroidered pillows and accessories by Brooklyn's Coral & Tusk). Prism has modern arty jewelry, clothing and items such as marble necklaces by Rill Rill, Herbivore Botanicals beard tonic and the like.

A wedge-shaped building on Leary Way in Ballard once was home to music producer Jack Endino's Reciprocal Recording studio, where he recorded Nirvana's first demos and Bleach, the band's debut album on Sub Pop. Fremont used to be the center of Seattle's counterculture but now is filled with vintage stores and high-end boutiques.

I wished I'd had more time to explore Ballard, Fremont and the rest of Seattle. I had a flight to catch, but not before visiting the Sub Pop store at Sea-Tac Airport. It's one part record store, one part upscale Northwest gift shop. Not only are there albums for sale by Sub Pop's indie bands of old (Nirvana, Soundgarden) and new (Sleater-Kinney, the Shins), there are also cool Sub Pop T-shirts, knit caps, Lighthouse Roasters Sub Pop coffee beans and more.

I left with a sweatshirt -- and memories of a Seattle that's about grunge and so much more.

Travel on 05/10/2015