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Seattleites are sometimes scorned for their fashion sense (polar fleece, sport sandals, and socks—oh my!), but as the city has grown and enough money has percolated through the ranks of retail, the city's style barometer has made a steady creep upward. Bibliophiles, foodies, wine aficionados, and design-centrists will also find plenty of shopping opportunities—Seattle is a hotbed of unique, independent shops stocking one-of-a-kind treasures.
Shopping in Seattle is something best done gradually. Don't expect to find it all in one or two days worth of blitz shopping tours. Downtown is the only area that allows for easy daylong shopping excursions. Within a few blocks along 4th and 5th Avenues, you'll find the standard chains (The Gap, Urban Outfitters, H&M, Anthropologie, Sephora, Old Navy), along with Nike's flagship store, and a few more glamorous high-end stores, some featuring well-known designers like Gucci . Downtown is also where you'll find department stores like Nordstrom, Macy's, and Barneys New York. Belltown and Pioneer Square are also easy areas to patrol—most stores of note are within a few blocks.
To find many of the stores that are truly special to Seattle—such as boutiques featuring handmade frocks from local designers, independent record stores run by encyclopedic-minded music geeks, cozy used-book shops that smell of paper and worn wood shelves—you'll have to branch out to Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, and northern neighborhoods like Ballard. Shopping these areas will give you a better feel for the character of the city and its quirky inhabitants, all while you score that new dress or nab gifts for your friends.
And don’t forget about Seattle’s culinary bounty, which includes the stalls at Pike Place Market; the flagship Sur La Table, which stocks every kitchen gadget known to man; and the city’s various weekly farmers' markets, where you’ll find enough locally made, artisanal offerings to fill a suitcase or two.
An independent record store that is just the kind of place you would want to find on a Seattle street corner: clean, helpful, and organized, but just a little bit time-worn and too cool. You can count on them to have music from the latest indie darlings alongside the classics, on vinyl, CD, or even cassette tape. If they have one of their free in-store events when you're in the neighborhood, stop in for a unique musical experience.
Few things have made a bigger comeback in recent years than vinyl records. Daybreak Records, a small, stylishly outfitted shop with a roll-up door for warm days, stocks a great, varied selection of mint used vinyl, including deep-catalog albums, plus a lot of 45s. Local audiophiles adore this place.
A Seattle institution since 1979, Dusty Strings has long been delighting folk and roots music lovers with beautifully crafted hammered dulcimers, harps, guitars of all stripes, banjos, ukuleles, and mandolins. The relaxed shop invites hands-on browsing, and the lilting strains of traditional melodies often fill the space.
Opened in 1988 and still thriving, this record store will make you feel cool enough to wander the aisles and browse the new and used vinyl, even if you've never dropped a needle in your life. A staple of Seattle's music scene, it hosts free in-store performances by bands you've probably heard of (Pearl Jam has played here), along with selling records, CDs, cassettes, and DVDs. Listening stations let you preview albums before purchasing, and the attached café offers the kind of breakfast you'd want after a night of rocking out.
If punk rock is more to you than anarchy symbols sewn on Target sweatshirts, then stop here. Punk and its myriad subgenres on CD and vinyl are specialties, though they also stock rockabilly, indie rock, and hip-hop. It's a nice foil to the city's indie-rock-dominated record shops, and a good reminder that Belltown is still more eclectic than its rising rents may indicate.
If you're on the hunt for Japanese avant-rock on LP, antiwar spoken word, spiritual reggae with Afro-jazz undertones, or old screen-printed show posters, you've found the place. Obscure, experimental, adventurous, and good? Wall of Sound probably has it.
If you're on the hunt for Japanese avant-rock on LP, antiwar spoken word, spiritual reggae with Afro-jazz undertones, or old screen-printed show posters, you've found the place. They carry new and used CDs and LPs of all sorts, specializing in the kinds of things you probably won't find anywhere else.
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