HOW TO UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE EMERALD CITY

all of the bathrooms in seattle are behind keypad locks. it's inconvenient, but you can't blame the city for wanting to keep its facilities clean after the disaster with the five one-million dollar self-cleaning public toilets that it installed downtown. now seattle's downtown tourists and homless have to buy something in exchange for a four digit code numerical code if they want to fuck or die (not respectively) in a public restroom. it's inconvenient, but it's much less off-putting than when the same food and drink establishments in control of deciding who does and doesn't have the information keypad locks don't include (seattle's astronomical) sales tax on their menus. once you're in, however, you do garner a sense of inclusion and belonging that, before your first embarrassingly naive attempt to go to the bathroom without first getting a code, you thought you could only win with the purchase of a portfolio of elite tech stocks. the first time i had to go, i was lucky enough to have tried to let myself into a women's restroom at the capitol hill building that houses maggie moon's (late night ice cream is a perfect way to break from the bars). the lone woman at the sink inside shared her inside information, which worked for the keypad on the men's restroom door as well, in return for getting out. i'd only been drinking the seasonal pale ale from maritime pacific brewing up to that point (and maybe some whiskey as a chase to my pints), or else i might have just saved myself the time and used one of the stalls behind the door that was already open. i'm glad i spared the group the ignominy. it was, after all, conceived to be a classy party. i don't think the hostess at quinn's was able to gather that when we found ourselves there two stops later, but we didn't do anything illegal, and spared ourselves the even more horrible disgrace of doing something vulgar. but that might have been different had we been drinking more earlier at dinner when that stripper tried to catch the eyes of our table. she couldn't have been of age. the accepted nature of a stag affair is that you don't share the intimate details (even if too many intimate details might have been shared during the affair), so i'll keep myself from letting on about anything else. if you're really desperate for more, you can ask the drag queens outside of linda's. they seemed pretty keen on gossip. and who knows? if you've got something good to share, they might even help you into the bathroom.