Eat My Shorts

"I don't quite like it here"

These were my first thoughts as I entered the Central branch of the Seattle Public Libraries. The visceral sense of unease overwhelmed me completely as I collected my bearings and began to search for the required sculptures. "Just get this done and go home" I cajoled to my reeling senses, "please don't make me hurl."

I should mention first that I have an INCREDIBLY sensitive stomach, ready to launch its contents at the slightest provocation- be it car ride, IMAX movie or, in the case of this library, overwhelming sensory input. For the moment my stomach obied commands.

My initial search of the building with Mckenzie was... fruitless. In the maze of MODERN ART and COLOR and BIZARRE ANGLES and FUTURISM was buried our assignment. Normally I'd see this as a challenge, a quest! Questing, something I learned to love while indulging my inner nerd playing D&D, requires a certain willingness to peruse the boon. I had no willingness, no drive, no desire to speak of.

Oh, I see that this library is supposed to be cool, new, funky, fresh, perhaps even the way of the Future. I can understand that entirely too fast elevators painted sick neon yellow should distract vandals and make them so uncomfortable that they can't stick around to tag the precious surfaces. I comprehend that print media is a bizarre pet zombie of modern culture; dead but still drug from place to place, loved by few and obligatory to most. However just because I posses the intellectual capacity to grasp why SPL Central is the way it is, I cannot aesthetically get behind the use of such an incredible space. Perhaps I fetishize libraries, giant cemeteries of paper lined neatly in towering shelves. I love oak, cedar, pine, WOOD. I adore the feeling of sifting through stacks in silence. SPL violates all of my conceptions about libraries and leaves me feeling sick and overwhelmed.

But Meredith, you might say, don't you think it's great that we have a space in Seattle that is modern, functional, multi-purpose, highly technological and open to the public?

Yes, I agree with all of those concepts in their theory, but in the practice of this particular example I balk. It's the smell that truly gets me more than anything else. The smell of people and hastily cleaned vomit.

I'll do all my library business on the computer from now on, please and thank you.

Also: Conveyor belts aren't cool. They're silly, bizarre and wasteful.

Did you love the space? I'd love to know why.