A tribute to the movie Singles

Today is the 32nd anniversary of the release of the movie Singles. Directed by Cameron Crowe, the movie is a coming-of-age bit that takes place in Seattle around 1991 or so. It's the time when the rise of grunge music happened, Gen-X was officially a generation and I was a sophomore in college. Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon were the leads. There were cameos by members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, and sadly the only singer who made it to today is Eddie Vedder. The soundtrack was fucking epic, and remains one of my favorite rock albums of all time. Also, the cameos... Paul Giamatti, Eric Stoltz, Jeremy Piven, Tom Skerritt, Tim Burton, Victor Garber, and of course, the bands.

I don't have to tell you what college is like, even if you didn't go. It's a super weird time when you've been thrust into an adult-ish environment and you're not a kid anymore. Crowe's movies are almost all coming-of-age, and to this day I'm obsessed with the idea because most of life is about that, figuring it out. At that time I still had a very naive and idealistic view of what relationships were supposed to be (which may account for my perpetual single-ness), and this romanticized version of hooking up was deep in my mind. Also, while obsessed with Sedgwick's amazing curls, I was totally into Fonda's dorky, redheaded Janet. Clearly I've always had a preference for redheads, which in retrospect makes it seem inevitable that I'd end up with one.

What I could not have predicted was that, 17 years later, I would actually live in Seattle. Before Simon was born, and with me living in a place that wasn't Ohio for the first time in my life, I thought it might be interesting to try and find some of the locations from the movie. We did find the Virginia Inn near Pike Place, where Steve and Linda meet for water and Giamatti makes out with that woman, and the spot where Debbie gets a flat on her bicycle is also Virginia St. We went to the city center area just before we moved away, which is where Linda rides the roller coaster with the bad date (the amusement rides had recently been removed). We never got to the apartments themselves, but saw the Gas Works from afar, and did go to Showbox Sodo to see Garbage, which was not where the movie saw Alice In Chains, but it was the area.

College wasn't easy for me, but it was a mix of positive and negative experiences. Singles represents a point where I realized how much I loved music and film, which supersedes any issues that I had with that era. To this day, I find myself quoting it, too.

"What took you so long?"

"I was stuck in traffic."