Seattle’s first big boom was in 1897, when hundreds of thousands of ‘Stampeders’ with their hearts set on finding gold in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory stopped here to purchase supplies and gear up for prospecting trips up North. Since then, the city has fuelled the hopes, dreams, and imaginations of countless others. Some changed the city skyline, the world’s skies, the world of art and music, and even our coffee cups with their ideas and inventions. Others have left us with some unusual, offbeat, and truly odd spaces and places. From a coin-operated attraction filled with some of the world’s largest shoes to the world’s greenest commercial building, urban old growth forests, a haunted staircase and museums dedicated to pinball machines, dialysis machines, and rubber chickens, 111 Places in Seattle That You Must Not Miss is filled with invitations and inspirations for locals and visitors alike to explore the Emerald City’s hidden treasures, overlooked gems, and charming curiosities. Some of the 111 places here you think you know but will discover from a new angle. Others will be surprises that will encourage you to keep exploring. 

The definitive collection of Washington's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things, for Washington residents and anyone else who enjoys local humor and trivia with a twist.

While there are more than 15,000 museums in our country, visitors get to see only about five percent of any institution's collections. Most museums simply don't have room to display everything they've got. However, there are a wide variety of surprising and intriguing reasons that, for example, the Smithsonian Institution doesn't display its collection of condoms, Florida's Lightner Museum locks up all but one of its shrunken heads, and a world-class stash of Japanese erotica (shunga) art was kept in the Honolulu Museum of Art's storage until only recently. Each item or collection included in this volume is described and placed in context with stories and interviews that explore the historical, social, cultural, political, environmental, or other circumstances that led to keeping that object or group of objects out of public view--the ultimate museum buff's voyeuristic experience. Color photographs of the artifacts are included.