Microbrews and Microsoft. Soundgarden and Sub Pop. Starbucks and the Sonics. Those are just some of the things I remember. 

It's been romanticised like Paris in the Twenties, but it was actually Seattle in the Nineties. And I was part of it. I lived there from 1985 to 1996, working first as a schoolteacher and basketball coach and then as a writer/performer for a sketch comedy show called Almost Live! 

Although I'm living thousands of miles away and have been for fifteen or so years, that time in Seattle is as much as part of me as the Mariners' tattoo on my leg. 

These memories come flooding back because on September 24th, it will be twenty years since the release of Nirvana's groundbreaking Nevermind album. You know the one. Baby on the cover, swimming underwater and chasing a dollar bill? 

The record that made grunge a household word, with its flannel-tinged mega-hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit?" It sold 25 million copies and created global superstars out of a band that had its roots in the depressed logging town of Aberdeen, Washington. 

It made Seattle a music mecca for much of the 1990s and helped the world discover Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Mudhoney, not to mention a hundred other forgettable bands that got record contracts simply because they were from the Puget Sound region. 

Whenever you read about a "music scene" - whether it was Liverpool in the Sixties or Athens, Georgia in the Eighties - the big question is were the locals aware of it at the time? 

In Seattle in the early Nineties, I can assure you we were. Everyone knew someone in a band. A bartender would serve you a Red Hook Ale one week and be cutting an album in LA the next. You could wander into the Nightlight or the Frontier and buy a drink for Tad or the Conner Brothers of Screaming Trees. One of my best friends once worked on the Gray's Harbor county road crew with Buzz Osbourne of The Melvins. The mother of Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic cut his hair. 

What we didn't realise was how big it was going to get. We didn't know that designers would create grunge fashion. We had no idea that the New York Times would try to explain grunge to its hoity-toity readers or that Cameron Crowe would make a movie about it - Singles - in 1992. We also didn't realise just how many people would move to Seattle looking to be part of something special. 

What those outsiders failed to realise at the time was that it was more than the music. Much more. Something organic was happening in Seattle and it cut across a broad social and cultural demographic. 

Microsoft, which released Windows and Office in 1992, was rapidly moving from a Jolt Cola and Cheetohs-fueled geek factory into the planet's dominant software company. 

Starbucks - now viewed as the McDonald's of coffee - was a hip local business on the rise.  When the company went public in 1992 there were 164 Starbucks stores. Now there are more than 17,000. 

And then there was sport. It played a big part. Pearl Jam in fact, was originally called Mookie Blaylock, after the diminutive NBA point guard. 

Unlike today's depressing scene (Seattle has been voted America's worst sports city three years running), Seattle in the early Nineties was in the nascent stages of what would be an unprecedented period of success. 

The University of Washington football team was #1 in the nation in 1991-92, finishing a perfect 12-0 season with a rout of Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Led by a cadre of local products like Steve Emtman (from Cheney, Washington), Billy Joe Hobert (from Puyallup) and Mark Breuner (from Aberdeen) the Huskies were like gold-helmeted storm troopers who wiped out everything in their path. 

Basketball's Sonics - currently residing in Oklahoma City - were putting the pieces in place for what would become a mid-Nineties powerhouse. 

Feisty George Karl was hired as coach and the team drafted two players who would become faces of the franchise: Shawn Kemp a raw, super athletic big man from an Indiana junior college and Gary Payton, from Oregon State University, who had been voted the nation's best college basketball player in his senior year. 

"The Reign Man" and "The Glove" respectively, were the foundation of what would become one of Seattle's most beloved teams. With Detlef Schrempf (a talented German national who played at Centralia High School ninety minutes south of Seattle), Hersey Hawkins, Sam Perkins and Ervin "Not Magic" Johnson, the Sonics captured the imagination of the city, and only added to the hype surrounding Seattle. 

The Sonics would eventually play for the NBA title in 1996, losing to - like everyone else - Michael Jordan's Bulls. 

Even baseball's usually laughable Mariners - a picture of futility for so many years - were acquiring the pieces that would lead to an unthinkable spot in the 1995 American League Championship Series. 

Randy Johnson, nicknamed "Big Unit," was a hard-throwing 6'10" lefthander who won five Cy Young awards as baseball's best pitcher. Edgar Martinez was a seven time All Star and a lifetime .311 hitter. Ken Griffey Jr was one of the greatest players of the modern era - maybe the best I've ever seen - and a certain first ballot Hall of Famer. 

Only the Seahawks were bad, and boy did they stink. Somehow I've eradicated that from my memory. 

I had a front row seat for all of this because I was part of another Nineties phenomenon, Almost Live!, a sketch comedy show that aired on KING-TV, the local NBC affiliate.

Almost Live! was a low budget show that had grown - along with the city - and become a bit of an institution. Ratings soared and NBC even granted KING permission to move the legendary Saturday Night Live back a half hour to accommodate our 11:30 pm start. 

Joel McHale of the current hit show Community was a cast member. So was Bill Nye the Science Guy, a kids' TV presenter who pops up on Fox News every now and then. 

What made Almost Live! work so well is that we were part of the community. We knew that something extraordinary was happening in Seattle, but we also knew it was temporal and we were happy to take the piss out of it. 

The rest of the world may have kissed the ground Dave Grohl walked on but we were using him in comedy routines. While overhyped bands like Seaweed and Green Apple Quickstep were getting national attention, we were airing sketches where music biz bigwigs pretended to hand out record deals to homeless guys on the street. 

Now of course, it's all changed. Time has a way of doing that. 

People lead grunge tours for out-of-towners, and while the music scene is still solid, it's bands like quirky folkies Fleet Foxes and hip hop outfit Shabazz Palaces leading the way. 

Microsoft is spawning billionaires who retire at 30 and live in gated communities. 

The Mariners are bad again, the Washington Huskies are rebuilding what became a forlorn football program and after a few great seasons, the Seahawks are on another downward spiral. 

And the most telling thing of all - with apologies to those who nominate hearing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in an elevator - is the saga of Howard Schultz and Starbucks. 

Schultz, the CEO, helped make Starbucks what it is today. In 2001, he bought the Sonics, creating a synergy of two great Seattle icons. In 2006, he sold the team to Clay Bennett, an Oklahoma City businessman who wasted little time in moving them to his hometown. 

It was a bitter pill (cup?) for Seattleites to swallow and to this day many of my friends refuse to patronize Starbucks. They'll cross the street to get their lattes from a place called Tully's.