Can you tell me about Bellingham, Washington?

October 11, 2007 7:20 PM

What can you tell me about Bellingham, Washington?

I'll be moving there next summer. Anything you can share, I'd love to know. Within reason.

posted by Capri to Grab Bag (25 answers total)

I can't tell you much, other than it's about an hour so north of Seattle, close to the Canadian border. I've just driven through it, and it has a homey, small-town feel. Some Seattle friends of mine had high praise for Bellingham, but sorry, don't remember details! Looks like a cozy place to live. And it's midway between Vancouver and Seattle; I believe you can hop on a train to either place.
posted by zardoz at 7:32 PM on October 11, 2007

You may never escape.

I'm actually going up this Saturday to visit a couple of friends who live in Sudden Valley. It doesn't seem like there's a ton of stuff to do there, but I like visiting. A lot of college students and retirees (it's one of the top-rated retirement cities in the country).
posted by kindall at 7:35 PM on October 11, 2007 [3 favorites]

I just moved there three weeks ago for grad school, and so far I think it's great. It's small enough to feel homey, but big enough to have a Target and a Costco (there's quite a bit of shopping out at Bellis Fair, actually). There's all kinds of great little artsy, music things to explore, the place is a really liberal-thinking progressive-type town, and it's right on the water. The downside is that every week the forecast calls for rain, almost every day. It doesn't pour rain, but it stays gray almost all the time. It's hard not to want to stay in bed all day watching movies, but you acclimate. There's also a fair amount of hills (esp. around the university and downtown), so winter driving could be a little iffy. There is a GREAT public transportation system (a href="http://www.ridewta.com/">WTA), that is well used by most in the area, in that instance.
posted by messylissa at 8:00 PM on October 11, 2007

Oh, what a noob: WTA link. Should've previewed.
posted by messylissa at 8:01 PM on October 11, 2007

Fairhaven is a pretty cool little spot.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:13 PM on October 11, 2007

A very nice little downtown with some good restaurants and pubs. However, nothing seems to stay open late, so be warned.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:14 PM on October 11, 2007

As a born-and-raised Seattleite, I always thought that when I got tired of living in the big city, I'd move to Bellingham. It's got enough of the good city-stuff to keep me interested (good bars, decent restaurants), and it's close enough to both Seattle and Vancouver to satisfy the itch when I need to be in a big city.
posted by pdb at 8:18 PM on October 11, 2007

It's way up there. the brewpub is nice. also it is the home of the American Radio Museum, if you're into that sort of thing.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 9:12 PM on October 11, 2007

I've never been, but a dear friend moved there about a decade ago from Wisconsin. She swears that she will never leave.

I guess it's crazy beautiful. (Though if you are not familiar with mountain roads, it can be a bit scary to drive with a local.)
posted by quin at 9:23 PM on October 11, 2007

There is an Indian casino nearby, and a relative of mine was a pit boss there. Hang out with the casino people if you want to know about everything you can do late at night. Usually seems to involve gambling (perfectly legal) and drinking.

Other than that, it's beautiful country up there. My dad lives not too far away and loves it. I definitely get the natural beauty, but I'm a city guy and so I get bored after a few days. Dad on the other hand is an accomplished gardener and (apparently) kayaker.
posted by lackutrol at 9:43 PM on October 11, 2007

Do you ski or snowboard? If not, this might be the winter to learn. Mt. Baker is a quick drive from Bellingham, and it's a great place for the ol' winter hillsports. Not too built up, a homey feel, and lots of snow.

The town itself always struck me as a classic college town/hippie refuge. Laid back, just hip enough, weird but not too weird. Nice place.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:18 PM on October 11, 2007

I love Bellingham. Boundary Bay brewery is cool. It is a rather earthy environmentally friendly place and kind of a big town or very little city size. Yes, it rains all the time. But, I think that they rarely if ever get snow so I doubt the hilly roads are a concern. crazy beautiful. kayaking would be a great hobby to get into up there--and I know that there is awesome hiking and beach walking to be had nearby. Congrats on moving to a great place--and starting grad school.
posted by fieldtrip at 10:23 PM on October 11, 2007

Apparently they stopped Starbucks from moving in. Here's a song about it. Which is another way of saying that Robert Blake (who now goes by Robert Sarazin Blake, it appears, because he's not THAT Robert Blake) is from there, and he is great. And from his website it looks like he plays there all the time, which means you are lucky in ways that I am not.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:45 PM on October 11, 2007

wemayfreeze, there are not one but TWO starbucks at exit 252: a drive-through near the REI and a in-house Starbucks at the Haagen food store.

Bellingham is lovely. Lots of art, galleries, nice homes, views of Vancouver Lower Mainland mountains (I had to put that in). Not as crazy expensive as Seattle, but the buildup in Fairhaven is getting up there.

If you don't like the weather, then drive up to Mt Baker to ski (55 miles East of the I-5 on highway 542) or drive SR20 to Mazama to hike (milepost 170) where it's much drier than the coast in the summer.

If you love the outdoors, Bellingham is a paradise. There are park trails (for example, the interurban trail), places to run, places to bike, places to swim (there are several lakes nearby - Samish, Padden and a few others). Puget Sound is right there, a paddling paradise. Nearby Chuckanut and Blanshard mountain are lovely for dayhikes - or mountainbiking (some of it quite advanced)

Others have already mentioned the food, the brews, and the lovely people. There are some great bookstores, and used bookstores too (check out Henderson's - and Village books too!)
posted by seawallrunner at 11:08 PM on October 11, 2007

Nice bookstore. Close to Vancouver. That's all I know.
posted by timeistight at 11:19 PM on October 11, 2007

Well, probably they stopped one one time. 'Cause dang that song says so!
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:24 PM on October 11, 2007

My in-laws live in Bellingham, and it is one of my favorite places on the face of the planet...i would move there in a HEARTBEAT if i could find work there (which, is near impossible, with the aformentioned student population)

Boundary Bay Brewery amazing. GREAT beer. The Food Coop is also awesome. Farmers markets in B'ham are mind blowing. There is incredible food in the Skagit (county just south of Bellingham).

while there, you should take the time to explore the islands of the sound as much as you can...i highly reccomend visiting Anacortes, (home of the Department of Safety, often great shows there, as well as art exhibits). Anacortes will also lead you to many of the islands...taking a bicycle onto the ferry is advised: ferry tickets with cars to certain islands can be effing expensive, but with a bicycle it's not very much.

Get a bike. the B'ham is incredibly bicycle friendly....and riding Chuckanut Drive is one of the prettiest rides in the whole world (though if you are out of shape like me, it will kill you).

You will want to learn how to sail, be forwarned.

it's the prettiest town in the entire world. ENTIRE WORLD.
posted by furnace.heart at 12:11 AM on October 12, 2007

I live here and have for 25-odd years. It's pretty okay.

The weather is generally mild, although we seem to have skipped Autumn this year.

There are lots of hippy types here -- apparently B'ham used to be known as "Berkeley of the North" and there are still plenty of remnants of that around. This drops off sharply as you head out into the surrounding rural areas.

It's a college town (both a university and a community college, where my wife teaches) so there are often things going on. Gallery walks. Live music, up on campus and downtown. There's a nice independent movie theater and a couple of live performance theaters as well as the beautiful Mt. Baker Theater, where we saw Streb last night.

Seattle and Vancouver are each about an hour and a half away (depending on the border traffic, for the latter).

There are tons of coffeeshops and almost as many tattoo parlors.

It sort of is what you make of it. If you sit back and expect to be entertained -- that's not going to happen. It's known as "The City of Subdued Excitement" but many people feel there is too much emphasis on the "Subdued."

Feel free to email me (in my profile) or just ask here if you have any specific questions and I'll be glad to try and answer.
posted by Karlos the Jackal at 2:49 AM on October 12, 2007

If you had a desire to visit Columbus, OH, Skybus, which is based there, services Bellingham's airport and offers some very crazy low fares. I'll be during the opposite routing come this December.
posted by mmascolino at 5:29 AM on October 12, 2007

I've known two people who moved to Seattle from Bellingham. They didn't know each other.

They both referred to it as "Boringham".

FWIW.
posted by ImJustRick at 10:13 AM on October 12, 2007

I went to college in Bellingham, for four years. I loved it. Wouldn't have left, if not for the fact that there are no jobs in my field in town.

Bellingham is not for everyone. "The City of subdued excitement" describes it perfectly. There is a ton of interesting, cool things happening, but there is no feeling of bubbling fountain of life, as you would find in a larger city. However, the range of _opportunities_ to do interesting things is not that far off the nearby Seattle (where I currently live). It's all just sort of low-key. You will find out about a lot of things by word of mouth.

Demographics-wise, B'ham has a liberal college-based core (Fairhaven college being way out in the left, the rest of Western Washington University somewhat less so), and a right-minded outskirt population, as you would expect in a blue collar town. The two combine suprisingly well - not without tension, but mostly peacefully - into a populist-type environment. There is a lot of civic participation on the part of city residents, and a lot of civic infrastrucure. A compact city of 50,000 or so, Bellingham has so many parks that I haven't actually been to all of them in 4 years.

As others already mentioned, outdoor opportunities abound. If you have a bone of nature adventure seeker in you, adventure shall find it. If you don't, you will either develop an attraction to it, or will dislike your time there (everyone you know will be going out hiking or biking or kayaking or skiing every weekend, depending on the season).

You said you'd be moving there next summer. Summers are heavenly in Bellingham (as they are elsewhere in Western WA). So be careful - don't let the November month-long rain blues sneak up on you. You will grow to love it, trust me.

If you want to know more, email is in the profile.
posted by blindcarboncopy at 7:50 PM on October 12, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks all. It sounds absolutely perrrrrfect for me (rain loving, outdoorsy, reader, beer drinker, peacenik). Next question will be about what kayak to buy. - Capri
posted by Capri at 9:03 PM on October 12, 2007

So much for the Visitors and Convention bureau slant on things.

The peculiar ambiance of Bham (aka Hamstertown, JellyJam, Hamsterburg and the previously cited City of Subdued Excitement) is due to the unavoidable juxtaposition of superficial niceness and a deep undercurrent of crime, corruption, depravity and sheer ugliness. There are several Bellinghams, only one of which is publicly acknowledged.

The schizoid dualities of B'Burg are generally invisible to the tourist and temporary resident. Try these morsels of historical and contemporary fact:

Bellingham is dominated politically and economically by old and entrenched interests. Some of these date back to Prohibition days when our fair city was a major port of entry for hooch. The bootleg money was laundered through real estate so that one of the major slumlords is a few generations removed from the founder's money-laundering. More recently, real estate fortunes have been rooted in laundering drug money. It's a triangle trade with coke and guns traveling north to Canada and cash and BC bud moving south. This trade has flourished without any meaningful interference from law enforcement. The NW Drug Task Force (an interagency body) is widely regarded as a pitiful joke.

The city's relation to organized crime paid the entire police budget by licensing prostitution until 1947 when the feds stepped in to shut it down. Most recently, the US Attorney's office made scathing comments on the "climate of tolerance" surrounding the Banditos motorcycle gang, headquartered in the fair city on the bay.

A popular entertainment for visitors is the series of tours of Bellingham's less salubrious past: the civic corruption tour highlighting the numerous corrupt real estate deals furthered by the city government; the serial killer tour including the haunts of the Hillside Strangler, Ted Bundy (no murders here, but he enjoyed the ambiance), the Freeway Shooter (ran loose for nine months without a single ballistics test by the cops - the first shootings were passed off as accidents) and most recently, the DC Sniper(s).

Then there is the curious dual existence of the city and the embedded Western Washington University. WWU students have little or no attachment to the town, since most of them remained firmly attached to their parental homes in the Greater Seattle region. This is reflected by the sole economic interface between students and town consisting almost entirely of trade in the bars. The downtown (particularly the strip along Railroad Ave) is turned into a combat zone on Friday and Saturday nights. Students have also made a tradition of roving from one party to another making as much noise as possible. The student neighborhoods surrounding the university are red-lined and the police stay out of them entirely after dark.

And as far as the "nice liberal town" aspect, Bellingham was home for a very active Ku Klux Klan, featuring monthly cross burnings on Alabama Hill into the late 1940's. More recently, the FBI took down a group of wannabe domestic terrorists in 1996 when they busted the Washington State Militia in a sting operation at the Haskell Business Park.

The above-mentioned Sudden Valley was briefly home to Jimmy "the weasel" Fratianno while he was in the witness protection program. He blew his cover when cops responded to a domestic violence call and he told them to buzz off because he was protected by the feds. He shortly afterwards was dropped from the witness protection program.

And most recently, the Bellingham mayor's race became extremely entertaining as smear tactics became the prime issue of the race.

I could go on, having only scratched the surface. I haven't mentioned the toxic waste site that is now the focus of a feeding frenzy among the local developers -- and right downtown, too. Or the case of the WWU whistleblower moving towards a court hearing on alleged retaliatiatory firing and coverup of systematic theft of student funds by administrators. But this should be enough. Or the rest of the sordidness that makes life in Hamstertown so hallucinatory. Read the Hairball or just scan the headlines for a taste. It's sort of like Tiajuana North with the gringos on the bad side of the border.

Nice little town -- if you like Carl Hiassen novels. A friend is working on a novel about Bellingham -- with all of the plots, subplots and characters bases on reality. He figures nobody would believe such things could happen in a "nice liberal town" like B'Burg and that if anybody squawked libel, the truth would be a perfect defense.

And now back to our regular programming.
posted by warbaby at 9:09 PM on October 12, 2007 [5 favorites]

I got my belly button pierced in Bellingham when I was 18! I also went to Debate Camp at Western Washington University (which is the public University there) when I was 15.

Oh god. I am a dork. Love the town though. Great hiking, the nature is near unbeatable.
posted by bilabial at 8:24 AM on October 13, 2007

Hehe. Very late to the party. Bellingham is great if you have money (hence the large number of retirees). I came hear 12 months ago to be closer to a relative of mine (he's comfortably retired) and thought I'd give it a go. It's definitely beautiful here, in the objective-outdoorsy sense. Beyond that, this place is truly a mean-spirited shit-hole. Even worse, there are no jobs here other than service or manufacturing. There's a serious mistrust of outsiders as well, despite the friendly veneer mentioned above. God forbid you have a degree from any school other than WWU, especially one with a much lower acceptance rate, because managers and HR personnel will basically look at you as a potential threat to their own job security rather than as a potentially productive employee.

So I'm moving on. It was worth a shot, but the town is basically a version of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street met with a few touches of Twin Peaks strangeness, very little of it amusing. Drugs are rampant here (my co-workers are still shocked by the fact that I've never done hard time in prison), violence is pretty common, and there's a serious homeless problem in the downtown area, exacerbated by the fact that about half the store-fronts are for empty, failed businesses. Oh, and everyone will tell you to try the Old Town Cafe -- I'd stay away. Fake hippies serving fake Mexican food, all of it way overpriced. Kind of a fitting emblem for the whole place.

Rant over now. But yeah, bring your own trust fund. Otherwise, visit for the scenery and then turn around.
posted by bardic at 3:22 PM on August 18, 2008