The Seattle Freeze

When I first moved to Seattle from Silicon Valley in 2004, I noticed something a little odd about the area right away: It seemed that making friendships and connections was more difficult than I had imagined it would be. Yes, Seattle area people were nice and polite, but being able to strike up a conversation with a stranger wasn't easy. At first, I attributed it to living in a rental neighborhood; after all, renters often move, and there's not a sense of community in these places. Besides, my coworkers seemed friendly enough, so I didn't let the concern bother me much. As time wore on, however, it seemed to be more and more palpable; no longer was it simply odd or frustrating, but it actually seemed to start impacting my quality of life. I was becoming more perplexed by it: Though I'm not exactly an extrovert, you can put me in a bar, or almost any social mingling situation, anyplace in the English speaking world, and I can easily hold my own. I can carry on friendly conversation, and in fact after a few drinks I can be a very charming new acquaintance. Any state in the US, or Amsterdam, or Sydney, or London, it didn't matter, I could at least break the ice with people and create some bond in relatively short order. Seattle, however, even months later was proving to be very different. By this time I had moved out of my rental neighborhood into a community on the Eastside, and even after being there for some time, not a single neighbor had introduced himself/herself, much less made any effort at befriending me. I was starting to discover, however, that I was not the oddball: Other "transplants" seemed to have the same sense of ostracism, and as I Googled the subject, I had no trouble finding numerous articles collaborating my feeling. In fact, as I started to venture into social networking circles, I discovered entire groups formed around Seattle's freeze behavior.

I remember quite well meeting a young woman about half my age from---of all places---New York city. I started to ask her if she perceived the Seattle freeze, and before I could finish my sentence she had emphatically done so for me. New York, as my former community of Silicon Valley, is hardly known as a warm and friendly place, yet we both felt far more welcome, more accepted, in those circles than in the PNW. I recall very well my time in San Leandro (just across the bay from San Francisco), and my neighbors went out of their way to include me, a single male, in any local neighborhood activities (I was never left off the invitation for their children's birthday parties!). In Seattle, however, once the minimal social requirements were met, it was good-bye, please leave us alone.

I'm not going to speculate on why this might be; the article I referenced previously does a very good job listing the possible root causes. I simply would point out to anybody considering a move to Seattle: Research this topic. It's real, it's palpable, and frankly it can have a significantly adverse impact on your quality of life. If you do move here, you'll need to make active, persistent efforts to network and find new friends; it will, in many regards, be as challenging as a new job.