Dick’s on Queen Anne and La Marzocco Café

11/8/19 Dick's on Queen Anne Avenue North

Dick’s Drive-in has been a Seattle-area institution for 65 years. When I think of the family-owned chain of burger joints, I think first of the one on Broadway (which I sketched few years ago) with its classic drive-in shape (though in-car dining is no longer an option). The one in lower Queen Anne has a more modern building, but it’s still a neighborhood icon. On a brisk and still-partly-foggy morning, I started the Seattle USk outing with a sketch of Dick’s.

Chilled after standing for more than an hour in the shade, I went back to the meetup location – La Marzocco Café – to warm up. Housing indie radio station KEXP (DJs are visible through a window, and the station’s broadcast is the café’s soundtrack), the café is also a large public space for town hall meetings and other events. There’s also a vinyl record shop and espresso-making equipment shop inside. I didn’t have much more time than a hasty sketch of café patrons in front of me, but I’d enjoy going back to take advantage of the many seating (and therefore composition) options. The coffee and snacks aren’t bad, either!

11/8/19 La Marzocco Cafe

Dicks on Broadway

I took the opportunity at today's sketch outing at the new Capitol Hill Light Rail Station to draw the Seattle landmark Dicks Drive-In on Broadway. My first husband was a manager at this Dicks location circa 1980-81 and I spent many a night sitting in my car in this parking lot. I have not eaten meat for many years and it was sitting in my car in this very lot in 1981 when I ate my last-ever cheese burger. 

Summer on Capitol Hill

4/17/16 Dick's Drive-in

Some say this is climate change. Others say it’s just another El Niño. Seventy-two degrees and a clear blue sky? I don’t care if it’s April – I call it summer! We couldn’t have picked a better day for Urban Sketchers Seattle to initiate outdoor sketching season!

I started heading for Cal Anderson Park, where I had left behind a few ideas for things to sketch when the Friday sketchers were there last week. But as I crossed Broadway, I looked over my shoulder at the Dick’s Drive-in sign and decided to do that first before the lunch crowd got thick. Parking my stool at the edge of Dick’s lot, I had a great view of that familiar orange sign against the blue sky.

Next I wandered over to Seattle Central Community College’s campus, where Charles Smith’s Park Sculpture caught my eye, along with the long, lean shadows of the trees surrounding it.

4/17/16 Park Sculpture by Charles Smith

I had just enough time before the sketchbook sharing for a couple more quick ones of the Broadway Farmers Market. I associate farmers markets with summer, so I was surprised to see that it was open already. Then I remembered that it’s one of few Seattle markets open year-round. Like I said, today it might as well have been summer!

4/17/16 flower vendor

4/17/16 Broadway Farmers Market