“People in Seattle don’t carry umbrellas” is one of those rules made up long ago by some unknown and probably wet person who liked to speak in pronouncements. It’s something that you hear a lot over the years, if you live here, a myth repeated even in this very newspaper; a sort of rite-of-passage macho thing where you’ll be branded as a tourist (horrors!) if you don’t meekly comply. And yet, some people listen to these rules. So here I am, an actual Seattleite, to tell you emphatically that our city is a rich and varied tapestry of humanity, and that some of us — the dry ones, generally — carry umbrellas in the rain. And we love them.

Because if umbrellas didn’t exist, Gene Kelly performing “Singin’ in the Rain” would not exist, and a world without Gene and his soaking-wet bumbershoot is

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