Seattle is noteworthy for being going against the norm in this case. As a midwesterner, it definitely surprised me to see so many "contra-parked" cars the first time I visited Seattle. It was one of those things that was just so deeply ingrained that it never occurred to me to park against traffic like that.
Ah yeah. I live in Portland and this is pretty uncommon here now, but I have seen it in Seattle more often on steep hills, which makes some sense. At least in the old days with a manual transmission, parking facing uphill was safer (wheels toward the street, too). The Seattle area is also weird in that it used to be the only place in America where 4-way intersections had no stop signs at all. No one knew if you should stop. No one party had the right of way. This went for most residential streets around there in the '90s... not sure how it is now.
