The Seattle Freeze is, according to widely held belief, a difficulty with making new friends in the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington, particularly for transplants from other areas. A 2005 article in The Seattle Times appears to be the first known use of the term, although the phenomenon was documented during rapid population increases in the early 1920s, World War II, and the 1980s. The phenomenon is sometimes found/associated with Portland, Oregon, Denver, Colorado and Vancouver, Canada as well.
Newcomers to the area have described Seattleites as socioculturally apathetic, standoffish, cold, distant, and distrustful. [1] People from Seattle tend to mainly interact with their particular clique in social settings such as bars and parties. [2] One author described the aversion to strangers as "people [who] are very polite but not particularly friendly", [3] while some residents dispute any existence of the Seattle Freeze altogether. [4] [5]
Speculation of the origin is the reserved personalities of the city's early Nordic and Asian immigrants, [6] [7] the emotional effects of the climate (such as Seasonal Affective Disorder), or the region's history of independent-minded pioneers. [7] [8] [9]
The Seattle Times reported in April 1920: “Seattle people have been accused of being too cold and distant.” [10] The Seattle Daily Times described similar characteristics as early as the 1940s. [11] [12] Seattle experienced an influx of new residents from California beginning in the 1980s, and a 2005 article in The Seattle Times appears to be the first known use of the term. [7] [13]
A 2008 peer-reviewed study published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found that among all 50 states, Washington residents ranked 48th in the personality trait extraversion. [14] In 2014, a report by a local nonprofit organization ranked the population 48th out of 50 similarly sized cities in "talking with neighbors frequently", [15] and 37th for "giving or receiving favors". [16] The rapid growth of Amazon and its accompanying influx of technology workers who could be considered more introverted than other working professionals may have exacerbated the issue. [17] [18] A 2019 nonscientific poll conducted by Seattle-based PEMCO Insurance found that about 40% of the 1,200 respondents in Washington and Oregon said making new friends was not important. [19] In a similar 2022 poll, about two-thirds of residents agreed, at least somewhat, that giving newcomers the "cold shoulder" was a typical trait from those in the Pacific Northwest. [10]
The Seattle Freeze was discussed in relation to isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred lockdowns due to the region's already engrained propensity for "cultural distancing", [20] along with the Director of the University of Washington's Center for the Science of Social Connection describing it as "you feel outside the group but the group itself is intact". [21]
Seattle Pacific University (SPU) is a private Christian university in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1891 in conjunction with the Oregon and Washington Conference of the Free Methodist Church as the Seattle Seminary. It became the Seattle Seminary and College in 1913, adopting the name Seattle Pacific College two years later, and received its current name in 1977.
Cryobiology is the branch of biology that studies the effects of low temperatures on living things within Earth's cryosphere or in science. The word cryobiology is derived from the Greek words κρῧος [kryos], "cold", βίος [bios], "life", and λόγος [logos], "word". In practice, cryobiology is the study of biological material or systems at temperatures below normal. Materials or systems studied may include proteins, cells, tissues, organs, or whole organisms. Temperatures may range from moderately hypothermic conditions to cryogenic temperatures.
Ballard is a neighborhood in the northwestern area of Seattle, Washington, United States. Formerly an independent city, the City of Seattle's official boundaries define it as bounded to the north by Crown Hill, to the east by Greenwood, Phinney Ridge and Fremont, to the south by the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and to the west by Puget Sound's Shilshole Bay. Other neighborhood or district boundaries existed in the past; these are recognized by various Seattle City Departments, commercial or social organizations, and other Federal, State, and local government agencies.
The Seattle Times is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States and its suburbs. Founded in 1891, it has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. The Seattle Times has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region. The Seattle Times had a longstanding rivalry with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer until the latter ceased publication in 2009.
The Seattle Weekly is an alternative biweekly distributed newspaper in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded by Darrell Oldham and David Brewster as The Weekly. Its first issue was published on March 31, 1976. The newspaper published its final print edition on February 27, 2019 and transitioned to web-only content on March 1, 2019.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, formerly known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and also known as Fred Hutch or The Hutch, is a cancer research institute established in 1975 in Seattle, Washington.
Media in Seattle includes long-established newspapers, television and radio stations, and an evolving panoply of smaller, local art, culture, neighborhood and political publications, filmmaking and, most recently, Internet media. As of the fall of 2009, Seattle has the 20th largest newspaper and the 13th largest radio and television market in the United States. The Seattle media market also serves Puget Sound and Western Washington.
Education in Seattle is an important part of many Seattleites' lives, particularly due to the high concentration of technology, engineering, and other jobs that require advanced degrees. Of the city's population over the age of 25, 53.8 percent hold a bachelor's degree or higher; 91.9 percent have a high school diploma or equivalent. In fact, the United States Census Bureau surveys indicate that Seattle has one of the highest rates of college graduates among major U.S. cities. In addition to the obvious institutions of education, there are significant adult literacy programs and considerable homeschooling. Seattle is also the most literate city in the United States, based on a study done by Central Connecticut State University.
Ravenna Park and Cowen Park comprise a single contiguous recreation and green space in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle, Washington in the United States. These public parks encompass the ravine with a maximum depth of 115 feet (35 m) through which Ravenna Creek flows.
Emmett Watson was an American newspaper columnist from Seattle, Washington, whose columns ran in a variety of Seattle newspapers over a span of more than fifty years. Initially a sportswriter, he is primarily known for authoring a social commentary column for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) from 1956 until 1982, when he moved to The Seattle Times and continued there as a columnist until shortly before his death in 2001.
The Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI) is a private non-profit biomedical and clinical research institute in the northwest United States, located in Seattle, Washington.
Seattle is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2022 population of 749,256 it is the most populous city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America, and the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The Seattle metropolitan area's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-largest in the United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities.
Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington state to distinguish it from the national capital, both named for George Washington. Washington borders the Pacific Ocean to the west, Oregon to the south, Idaho to the east, and the Canadian province of British Columbia to the north. The state was formed from the western part of the Washington Territory, which was ceded by the British Empire in the Oregon Treaty of 1846. It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Olympia is the state capital, and the most populous city is Seattle.
The United States West Coast cities of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon have a city rivalry going back over a century. According to various authors, the Portland–Seattle city rivalry is comparable to that of Charlotte and Atlanta, Cincinnati and Columbus, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, San Antonio and Austin, St. Louis and Chicago, or San Francisco and Los Angeles. Bases for competition include city sports teams, food and drink, regional economic dominance, and even preference for local volcanoes.
Iowa nice is a cultural label used to describe the stereotypical attitudes and behaviors of residents within the U.S. state of Iowa, particularly in terms of the friendly agreeableness and emotional trust shown by individuals who are otherwise strangers. While the term's precise meaning is difficult to define, 'Iowa nice' as a concept has been touched upon by both national publications such as The Huffington Post and Iowan publications such as The Gazette and The Quad City Times. It can be analogized to the similar notions of Minnesota nice and Southern hospitality.
On August 10, 2018, a Horizon Air De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400 was stolen from Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Sea–Tac) in Seattle, Washington. The perpetrator, 29-year-old Richard Russell, was a Horizon Air ground service agent with no piloting experience. After Russell performed an unauthorized takeoff, two McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle fighters were scrambled to intercept the aircraft. Sea–Tac air traffic control made radio contact with Russell, the sole occupant, who described himself as a "broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess." About 1 hour and 15 minutes after takeoff, Russell crashed the aircraft on lightly populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound, killing himself.
The first confirmed case relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was announced by the state of Washington on January 21, 2020. Washington made the first announcement of a death from the disease in the U.S. on February 29 and later announced that two deaths there on February 26 were also due to COVID-19. Until mid-March, Washington had the highest absolute number of confirmed cases and the highest number per capita of any state in the country, until it was surpassed by New York state on April 10, 2020. Many of the deceased were residents of a nursing home in Kirkland, an Eastside suburb of Seattle in King County.
KHUH-LP is a Freeform and Variety formatted broadcast radio station. The station is licensed to Seattle, Washington and serving the Capitol Hill, Cherry Hill, Downtown, Eastlake, Leschi, Madrona, Mount Baker, Pioneer Square, Queen Anne neighborhoods of Seattle in Washington. KHUH-LP is owned and operated by Hollow Earth Radio.
ʔálʔal Café is a restaurant in Pioneer Square, Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. It opened in 2022.
The March for Science Seattle was a protest held in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. This local protest was part of the March for Science, a series of rallies and marches in Washington, D.C., and over 600 cities across the world on April 22, 2017.
