The Land of Amazon

First it was Boeing, then Microsoft and Starbucks, and now Amazon.  They put Seattle on the map.  Besides the fact that I've been an Amazon Prime member for years and Amazon definitely gets plenty of my money, I actually got to experience Amazon first hand with a tour of two of their buildings downtown.  There's no doubt that Amazon has changed Seattle.  I'm now an "old-timer" and it seems that the Amazonians are taking over the town and changing the culture of our beloved city in ways that are unbelievable to me.  There are now 40,000 Amazon employees in Seattle, mostly concentrated at South Lake Union (now called SLU) but they're also taking over the Denny Triangle and slowly moving into the downtown core.  There is definitely a little bit of animosity towards them for sure and we were all so relieved to hear when they announced they were looking for a second headquarter elsewhere.  In 2007, Amazon announced plans to build an 11 office complex at SLU.   Today, Amazon has more than 40 buildings occupied or planning to move into soon.  You can imagine how that has changed the footprint of downtown.  The unique Amazon Spheres are just part of that. 

When our friends came to visit us this past weekend to spend a couple weeks touring the beautiful Pacific Northwest that included the San Juan Islands and Mt. Rainier, Bruce and I had the opportunity to tour the Spheres with them.  

Our friends were meeting up with their friends who were flying in from California to accompany them on their travels and they have a niece who works for Amazon.  Thus, we were able to get a personal tour by her since it's nearly impossible to sign up for one of the public tours.  The public tours are constantly booked-up as soon as the calendar goes on-line. They only offer public tours on two Saturdays per month and security does not allow anyone to enter the Spheres without being on a tour since the Spheres are actually office space for Amazon employees.  Our tour guide, an Amazon employee, is the cute gal with the blue badge on the left below. (All Amazon employees wear blue badges and you see them walking all over SLU.)  Employees can bring people into the Spheres anytime Monday through Friday. 

We had to show a photo I.D. at the desk and then we were all given a guest badge to wear.  The Spheres are a triple-domed structure with botanical gardens inside so when you walk in, it's like you are walking into a terrarium.  There are over 40,000 plants from 30 different countries.

The Living Wall that is a 60-foot wall that contains 200 plant species and can be seen on all the floors.  The wall also includes a ventilation system and several misters that spray the plants every so often. 

The plants are all from cloud forest regions that is a type of high-altitude tropical forest with cooler temperatures on mountain slopes, causing clouds to form which provides moisture to the plants.  

There are markers giving information about the plants on display so you can see their official name and where they were from.

The temperature inside the Spheres range from 68 to 74 degrees with 60 to 65 percent humidity, a little higher than an office environment.  But the Spheres were built to provide employees with a link to nature where they can collaborate and stimulate their creative thinking skills.  There are lots of small gathering areas where employees can meet and discuss projects. 

This is my favorite meeting area, called "the nest".

The bridge that leads to "the nest" is a bouncy, wooden bridge that feels like a rope bridge, like on Tom Sawyer's island at Disneyland.  So fun!

There are four floors in the Spheres containing a lunch cafe and a coffee shop where we stopped for some of their coffee. 

The coffee maker even resembles the Spheres. 

Besides coffee, they also sell doughnuts from General Porpoise doughnut shop, a local cafe created by a James Beard award-winning chef here in Seattle.  They also serve house-made gelato so these treats are reason enough to stop for a coffee break. 

Here is a beautiful fresh water aquarium.  It was constructed to imitate a typical flooded forest from the Amazon. 

There are lots of places to sit down within the whole stucture.  It is estimated that approximately 800 people can be seated in the Spheres. 

There are no offices or cubicles here, just open gathering spaces that include waterfalls and cocoons of creeping vines. It smells like a lush and fragrant forest and you definitely get your "nature fix" when visiting the Spheres. I can see why the public tours fill up so fast and am so appreciative to have gotten an opportunity to see the Amazon Spheres. But we weren't done. Across the street, our lovely tour guide took us to the Amazon Go store. 

If you haven't heard of Amazon Go, it is a convenience store or mini-mart where you don't pay for anything or stand in line.  I mean, you do pay for items, but they are automatically charged on your Amazon account.  How?  I don' t know, they just are.

Amazon doesn't really explain the technology.  But I can tell you what I know.  When you walk in, you swipe your app as you enter.  

So, they know you are there.  When you want something, you just take it off the shelf and put it into your orange shopping bag that they provide and just walk out. 

From what I understand, the technology automatically detects when a product is taken off the shelf or returned to the shelf.  

Then there are sensors in the ceiling that keep track of items so they know who has the item and who to charge.  So, you just walk out.  They keep emphasizing to "just walk out" because it's such a weird concept. 

It was a little weird, for sure.  The store is definitely focused on lunch items for Amazon employees but they also had other items such as instant dinner items and wine and gift items. (A lot of Amazonians also live in the SLU neighborhood.)  I liked the wine color-coded chart to help you buy wine.  

The wine on the shelves had corresponding colored labels to help you choose which one to buy depending on your menu.   

There were Amazon employees who work in the Amazon Go store to help you and answer any questions you have, just like in the Spheres, but nobody checking out your items.  You just walk out.  I wonder if they will convert all the Whole Foods stores to the Amazon Go concept?  I'd love it if they did.  It's just like their on-line shopping, they spoil you by making it so easy.  After experiencing the life of an Amazonian on this day, I changed my thinking a bit of how Amazon has changed Seattle.  I think I might sort of like it.  We ended our Amazon touring day with a wonderful dinner at one of our favorite restaurants downtown called the Wild Ginger.  

They sat us at a large round table where we could all easily talk with one another and assess and process everything that we had just seen and experienced at Amazon.  Cheers to friends together in Seattle and for an amazing time in the land of Amazon.