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Review content:
It’s probably unfair to rate this business without even having sat down there, but it’s kind of their fault.
Ever since moving to Belltown and passing the Hurricane every day on the way to the freeway, I’ve been inexplicably drawn to it, as if it were someplace famous. My husband and I tried to go there twice. The first time, when we stopped outside to check their hours (24), Chris thought they looked like a place where the destitute would drown in stale coffee bought with change left in coin returns. I, too, was intrigued—but also a little frightened. We drove away, but soon they started calling to me again. After all, we’d lived in Belltown three months and hadn’t even bought crack from the famous park just across from our hotel.
Today Chris stayed outside watching our bikes while, for the first time, I went into the Hurricane, stepping aside as a customer stumbled out and blinked in the overcast light. The main room was large and nearly empty, the four or five servers slouching behind a counter so far from the door they might have built it themselves, to allow as much distance as possible from the customers. ("It’s not too late to leave," they seemed to say.) The video arcade to the right was empty, and the whole place was quiet—no music, no clanking dishes, no buzzing conversation. All was gloomy-dark, the windows shaded as if to protect their clients from the knowledge of an outside world.
I didn’t know what I wanted, and it wasn’t the kind of place that encouraged impulse orders; no smells of coffee wafted across the room, nor did fruit pies beckon from their cases. Stalling, I went to the ATM just inside the door to check my debit balance. When the screen said I’d be charged $2.00 by the ATM’s owners for this transaction—the only time I’d ever heard of a fee for checking your balance—I was glad for the excuse to walk back outside, indignantly cheerful.
The customer who had left as I came in was telling Chris about the operation she needed but couldn’t pay for, and Chris looked as glad to see me as I was to see him. That’s the extent of my own experience with the Hurricane.
But, again, it doesn’t seem fair to rate a business that I know so little about, so I looked them up in a dining guide. (Of course I couldn’t use anything subjective I learned there, but maybe I would discover that the Hurricane hired only the handicapped, or donated profits to charities.) I chose a guide known for its generous and detailed reviews, but this review was only one sentence:
"Like a little greasy food with that shot and a beer?"
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