All aboard our 18-foot craft. We push off from the dock in the Leschi neighborhood of Seattle, named for a Salish Indian leader who was hanged by the city's founding pilgrims. Up the lake we go, gin and tonics all around, in the tradition of old Seattle wealth, which is where the tour begins. We are approaching the site of the mid-1990s Seattle celebrity triangle. But first, something nutritious. To the left of the gargantuan beige home, you can almost see the outlines of tiny Tudors, split-levels, and ranch houses of midlevel waterfront money, circa 1950.
Nothing too gaudy or overstated, the architectural equivalent of plaid shirts before CEOs discovered them as a way to look normal. Seattle architecture has been through three phases. One borrowed from the East Coast, grafting Cape Cod-, Colonial-, and Craftsman-style dwellings to the steep hills of this city. Then, after World War II, a new generation of designers started to create something more suited to the climate and surroundings. These homes featured enormous windows and skylights to maximize daylight in ever cloudy Seattle, large overhanging eaves to keep the rain away, exposed posts and beams inside, and cedar shakes outside. Northwest Style, to some critics, was a bit too beige and eco-friendly. Now a third phase, sometimes called Cyberbaronial but really a mishmash, has evolved. Mostly, this new look is about using advanced technology throughout the inside of the house, and is much showier on the outside than anything that came before it. The beige home is a Mediterranean-style villa owned by someone who made his money selling air--the cellular variety. Keith McCaw's 27,000-square-foot house has a slate roof, porticoed porch, and palm trees, all of which come in handy during the summer rainy season. Three waterfront homes were torn down to build this manse for the younger brother of Craig McCaw, who lives across the lake. Little-known fact: Just to the left of Keith's 240 feet of waterfront is a dinky little public beach. You can skinny-dip here and drink Rainier beer while singing "This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land." But be discreet.

Behind McCaw's roost are two shrines--er, homes--shrouded by trees and much innuendo. One is a grunge-rock mecca, the other was built on coffee money. The home where Kurt Cobain took his life and the widow Courtney Love took a Vanity Fair reporter to see her new, surgically augmented breasts has been getting enough visitors to rival Lourdes, with fewer miracles. But enough is enough, so Love has recently sold the place for $2.9 million and moved to L.A. Ever the sentimentalist, Love, leader of the rock band Hole, retained the right to remove a young willow tree that was fertilized with Kurt's ashes. That property is connected by a sliver of a park to the home of Howard Schultz, the man who did for fresh-ground coffee what Ray Kroc did for ground beef. The park is called Viretta. After snoopy neighbors found out that some of the limestone driveway owned by the Emperor of Starbucks infringed on public space, a long and ugly fight ensued, complete with overwritten stories by investigative journalists and public hearings attended by people with too much time on their hands. The patch of grass has since been nicknamed Vendetta Park. Schultz is also moving, if he hasn't already.