Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Seattle, a city with a collective identity

constantly in flux, always changing,

but what it's always been and continues to be

is a magnet for creators to come experiment

and to make their own.

Whoa, and weed is legal here.

Seattle has always been a place

where you can go to reinvent yourself.

It's a place that, on the surface,

would seem to require commitment.

Famously gray, rainy, not particularly friendly,

and all the way up there

in the far corner of the country,

a place where you could get work in the aircraft industry

or make music or, rather notoriously,

become a serial killer.

Whether outfitting prospectors during the Alaskan gold rush

or looking for some kind of cred from the music scene...

it's always boom or bust.

Now, it's a new kind of boom.

Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Expedia, and Amazon

are the big dogs in town.

A flood of them, tech industry workers,

mostly male,

derisively referred to as tech boys or tech bros,

rapidly changing the DNA of the city,

rewiring it to satisfy their own newly empowered

nerdly appetites.

Meet our new apple martini-drinking overlords.

- Tech boys - Tech boys

Tech boys Tech boys - Tech boys - Tech boys

- Tech boys - Tech boys

With your mustache and your paycheck

And your blue badge And your limp dick

With your mouth full of the party line

And your weekends working overtime

Overtime, overtime, overtime, overtime

Fish and chips is the thing, right?

- That's the thing. - Yeah.

Astra Elane and Dustin Patterson

are members of the local band The Gods Themselves.

They wrote a song about the new kids in town.

Okay.

Pacific Inn Pub is a holdout,

a place that has, so far,

managed to resist the temptation

to appease the invaders.

For lunch, fish and chips.

Tech boys

You know, bitter old... like me, of course,

are gonna complain any time we hear about, you know,

a lot of high-fiving white guys coming to town.

And yet, you've created this sort of iconic hate anthem

Can you tell the tech people from the non-tech people?

Yeah, they have the badges.

Tech boys Neutral-colored clothing.

Tech boys

They're kind of easy to spot. They have a walk.

- They have a walk? - Yeah.

They're just all the same.

There's nothing that really stands out about them.

They're so dull.

Feel that rhythm that algorithm

You gotta feel that rhythm

That algorithm tech boys

You know, dating apps are really big here.

I have a few girlfriends... That's right.

Who have dated a couple of tech boys.

Is their personal hygiene an issue?

Like, the nerdier tech boys will have that smell,

that mildewy smell. Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about?

Wow, you really have a low opinion of these people.

Well, we're generalizing now, Tony.

No, I'm all for that.

Everybody in Seattle is a musician,

a serial killer, or a chef as far as I'm concerned so...

In a lot of ways, I mean, this was always a company town.

You know, Boeing, before Boeing, it was a logging town.

And the new company is tech,

and it is flooding money into the place.

I looked out my hotel window and, I mean,

it's cranes as far as the eye can see.

You realize, like, okay, all those cranes out there,

they're for high-rise condos.

They're for a certain type of person.

They're envisioning a certain type of future for the city

and it's tech people.

Or, you know, somebody who likes to drive around

and pick up hitchhikers and dismember them.

Yeah.

Capitol Hill is Seattle's established gay-borhood

going back to the mid-1960s,

old-school cool, but with every passing day,

change.

The Hill has become the new weekend stomping ground

of breeders from the tech companies,

and the locals are displeased.

John Criscitello, street artist,

is waging a one-man war against the rent hikes

that are pushing people like him out of the neighborhood.

Are we talking about an infestation of tech bros?

Is this...

What, ten years ago, would this be a gay neighborhood?

It was sort of unclaimed for artists

and for queer people.

And so what's happening now?

Big tech corporations that have moved into the city

and people needed someplace to live, so a lot of

development companies bought up every corner.

If they keep this sort of facade, they can build taller.

- Ah. - So this was just this

and then they plunked this down in the center of it.

So they're keeping the character of the neighborhood

sort of kind of. They call it facadomy.

I've heard it termed facadomy.

The problem, of course, is that rents double.

- Right. - So you used to be able

to get a studio apartment for $700.

Now, all of a sudden the entry point is $1,500,

which is considerable for artists, anybody.

You know, that's the sort of lament now is,

where are you gonna go? Where are you gonna go?

- Yeah. - Where are you gonna go?

Right.

So all these outsiders coming in

are renting expensive apartments.

What kind of businesses are opening to accommodate

these new arrivals? Well, in this neighborhood,

that construction over on that side is a Whole Foods.

Oh, no, that's a sign of the apocalypse.

- That is the end. - That... that's the official

indicator that this neighborhood is...

That is the end. That's it right there.

Because of the boom

and everything that's been happening,

you do have that kind of have and have nots here.

And I think there's an identity crisis

where people are starting to really question

what is Seattle and who is it?

But historically, you go back to the '90s,

I mean, it was the city of grunge.

And now, I would say it's the city of geeks.

It's... it's... it's boom town right now.

And yeah, this kind of boom does happen in other places,

but then again, it doesn't.

John Cook and Todd Bishop of GeekWire,

an industry-leading news site

that started covering the tech industry

back in 2011.

Lunch is at Revel right down the street from their offices.

The chef is Rachel Yang and the food is Korean.

To eat, cilantro noodles,

yu choy, and thinly sliced flat iron steak...

Kimchi pancakes with braised pork belly

and bean sprouts...

Marinated short rib rice bowl

with house sambal daikon, kimchi, and egg.

And short rib dumplings topped with

pickled shallot and scallion salad.

Of course, I'm hearing from a lot of people

who are bemoaning the loss of the old Seattle...

Right.

This invasion of outsiders.

Certainly the community is going through

a lot of growing pains

and there's an element of the city here

that is rebelling against the progress,

especially as we talk about a company like Amazon

that controls massive amounts

of the downtown real estate footprint now.

And that's what scares a lot of people here,

including myself.

Because I see how the trends of history change,

especially in technology,

that one day Microsoft's hot, the next day Apple's hot,

now Amazon's hot.

They go through these cycles

and they don't always live through them,

and we're left with a city

that's totally transformed because of it.

What percentage of the total dollar-generating space

on the Internet is occupied by porn?

Well, you know,

this is Todd's expertise so I'll defer to him.

Historically the adult industry,

even if it's not completely dominating the economics

all the time, it is the... The leader of technology.

It... it's the first with HD.

It's the first to try out a new wave of 3-D technology.

Virtual reality, augmented reality,

and then you see it over and over again,

the latest is VR now.

Yeah. Do you know the...

Do you know the number one search term on porn websites

for the Seattle area?

Stepmom.

Who wants to... their stepmom?

Jesus.

Jen McEwen and Jesse Adams are two nice people