Space Needle

It cost seven or eight bucks to go up the Space Needle. I waited in a DisneyWorld-like line for a while, and there was a Space Needle employee who walked around asking people when their birthday was, and then they would look in this book and tell you some famous people who were born on your birthday. (On a side note, people born on my birthday: Tom Hanks, Courtney Love, Fred Savage, Richard Roundtree, O.J. Simpson, John Tesh, Jimmy Smits, Kevin Nash (Big Daddy Cool), Kelly McGillis, Anjelica Huston, Dean Koontz, Brian Dennehy, and about 10 or 11 million other people).

Anyway, there's not much to do inside the needle, except for the revolving restaurant, but there's an awesome view from the observation deck. I threw a yellow Sour Patch Kid off the observation deck and watched it accelerate towards Earth at almost 10 meters per second per second. It didn't hit anyone, though. It just landed harmlessly in the grass. Later on, after I went back down the ear-popping elevator and through the spacious gift center, I looked for my Sour Patch Kid in the general vicinity of where it landed. No luck. So I went past what looks like a giant steel elephant carcass to the Seattle Monorail... which incidentally, has only one stop.

As noted above, the Space Needle looks like a flying saucer on stilts. Actually, several years after it was built a "lower level" was added about 1/3 of the way up, so it now looks like a flying saucer on stilts with knobby knees.

The cool thing about it is the view when driving towards town from the north on Aurora Avenue, Old Route 99. From about the Woodland Park Zoo south, the road is a long downslope, with the Space Needle peeking over Queen Anne Hill in the foreground.

As you move down the slope, the Needle seems to sink towards earth, finally making its landing behind the hill.

Thus far, the Seattle Center where the Needle is located has seen lots of people with green hair, but no little green men themselves. At least, not that anyone has told us.

The Space Needle is the site for spectacular New Year's fireworks and occasionally has interesting decorations, like a giant crab crawling over its top. It is known for Warren Beatty also crawling over its top in The Parallax View and for Elvis Presley singing under it.