The Stranger

Our Favorite Bowls of Hot Soup in Seattle

Julianne Bell — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 16:20:00 -0800

Don’t worry, we’ll start yelling at politicians again soon. by Julianne Bell

It’s cold. Earlier this week we saw a few tiny flurries of snow, even! And while some weather reports suggest we might soon break out of this chilly, mid-40s prison we’ve been locked in, it’ll be by just a few degrees. And probably rainy. It’s the perfect weather for soup. So we took a break from screaming about Trump and City Hall, and switched gears for a minute to appreciate some of our favorite warm and comforting bowls of soup. Don’t worry, we’ll start yelling at politicians again soon.

Isarn’s Chiang Mai

Look, this whole soup is fucked up. The curry noodle soup from Northern Thailand comes out looking like a sculpture, with a nest of fried noodles perched on top of perfectly poached chicken and surrounded by a thick curry broth—creamy and spiced so it feels like it warms you from the inside out. When it’s served, you’ll get three things on the side: raw red onion, chopped pickled veg, and a deep red chili oil. After your first bite, you’ll be tempted to roll up your sleeves and forget about these little treats. Do not be that fool. These bits and bobs are what turn each bite into its own experience. Is your palate feeling a little tired of the richness of the broth? Add a little pickle on top of that spoonful of noodles. Repeat until you see the bottom of the bowl. HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

Situ Tacos’ Soup of the Day

Yes, the Ballard oasis Situ Tacos is primarily known for its fried Lebanese Mexican tacos, but soups are one of owner Lupe Flores’s favorite things to make, and it shows. As the shop’s resident animatronic parrot, Armando, occasionally squawks: “Don’t sleep on the soups…uh, don’t sleep in the soup. Uh, the soup is super!” They rotate weekly, and there’s a meat and veggie option each day, so you might encounter molokhia (Lebanese seven-spice chicken and rice stew), chorizo potato kale, Lebanese veggie stew, fideo con bistec, vegan pozole rojo, zuppa toscana, pumpkin curry, broccoli cheddar, chicken tortilla, or something else altogether. Whatever it is, it’s sure to be soul-soothing and seasoned to perfection—you really can’t go wrong. Get a combo with tangy, crunchy slaw and/or a couple of tacos for dunking. JULIANNE BELL

Halcyon Brewing's Vegan Butternut Bisque

I first happened upon Halcyon Brewing’s vegan butternut bisque by chance. Well, sort of. I was attending Ravenna Brewing Company’s annual “Soup Battle,” where local bars and breweries go head-to-head with their best soups, mostly because my good friend runs the event. Saddled with four delicious soups, I didn’t know where to begin. But Halcyon’s yellow-y orange soup with a swoop of coconut milk and a crack of black pepper on the top beckoned. I finished my bowl. It was sweet, it was savory, and it had a nice kick of spice—the brewery’s homemade chili crisp— that warmed my insides. Something vegan had no right to be so good and so creamy. Everyone at my table agreed that it should take the top prize.The rest of the Soup Battle patrons thought so, too—Halcyon’s vegan butternut bisque won the coveted Golden Ladle. NATHALIE GRAHAM

Pho Than Bros’ Veggie Pho with No Mushrooms and No Cilantro and Extra Broccoli

I’m not about to tell you how to order pho. And I’m not going to try to convince you that Pho Than Bros is the best pho in Seattle, even though every bowl comes with a sweet little custard-stuffed pastry puff. Pho is personal, pho is sacred. How I pho and how you pho can be—and should be!—very different experiences, each one custom-tailored after years of slurping and experimenting and learning the hard way that your sriracha threshold isn’t nearly as high as you thought it’d be. And, at Than Bros, I have perfected my order. I get a small veggie pho with no mushrooms, no cilantro, and extra broccoli, then I load it up with black pepper, a fat ring of hoisin sauce, a delicate squeeze of sriracha, and as many of the bean sprouts that I can manage before my husband says, “Stop taking all the bean sprouts.” I finish it off with a squeeze of lime and dig in.

This isn’t an invitation for you to try what I think is the best pho in Seattle; this is an invitation for you to find your own. But if you’re looking for a place to start, or a change up from your usual, to me, Than Bros is perfect. It’s my happy place. And it comes with a cream puff. MEGAN SELING

Metropolitan Market’s Cioppino

Metropolitan Market’s cioppino has been there for me since I was a child, when my parents would bring home a pint of the hot seafood stew on chilly winter nights when they didn’t feel like cooking. The rich, tomato broth, seasoned with white wine, and filled with a potpourri of shrimp, mussels, salmon, and white fish, will always feel like a luxurious treat, despite coming from a grocery store’s hot food buffet. Considering that cioppino was created as a way for fishermen to use up unsold seafood at the end of the day, I would advise not making it yourself. Not because it’s difficult, but because it will cost you approximately $5 million to buy four types of fresh seafood. Instead, buy a 16-ounce cup from your nearest Metropolitan Market store for a mere $7.39, and buy yourself a nice warm cookie while you're at it. AUDREY VANN

Biang Biang Noodles’ Curry Tofu Dry Mix

Massive Chinese hand-pulled noodles boiled to a perfect chewiness texture, doused in a delectable yellow curry sauce and flavorful broth with chunks of tofu and cabbage, in a bowl so massive you might need two people to finish it. It’s the hearty Asian noodle dish you dream of on a frigid evening. It’s Biang Biang Noodles’ Curry Tofu Dry Mix.

If you’ve been to Biang Biang, you might be thinking, Seriously? This isn’t soup, it’s a quart of hot oil. Well, to that I say: 1) oil is a liquid, and Managing Editor Megan Seling said we could write about “anything served in a bowl that is at least 50 percent liquid,” and (2) this oil is delicious.

Call it soup, call it hot oil, call it a bowl of molten comfort—the Curry Tofu Dry Mix does exactly what the best soups are supposed to. It satisfies your savory tooth and warms you up when the weather’s unforgiving. So if you’re asking me to grab a casual dinner with you on a dreary winter day, gimme those chopsticks and a Chinese soup spoon and find me at Biang Biang. MICAH YIP

Gorditos’ Vegan Pozole

The biggest mistake I’ve made in my life was going to Gorditos for years and only ordering one thing from the menu: A veggie burrito, wet, with a side of chips and salsa. It’s no Veggie Nolasco from Mama’s, but I love it, and I have probably eaten hundreds of them in my 45 years on the planet with zero regrets. Well, zero regrets until one fated day in December. On that day, I was finally turned on to other parts of Gordito’s menu. Did you know they have tacos! And enchiladas! They even serve breakfast! What have I been doing all my life!? And, most importantly on a cold winter’s day such as the ones we’ve been experiencing this week, they have soup. Their current soup is a vegan pozole that is an explosion of flavor in your mouth. A savory red base that tastes not unlike a brothier version of the red sauce they ladle over my beloved burrito is loaded with onions, zucchini, corn, mushrooms, and hominy, which gives each spoonful a toothsome, meaty bite. The broth is salty and rich, in a craveable way, and while eight-ounces with a side of chips is definitely enough to be its own meal, I recommend opting for the four-ounce cup, adding a taco to your order, and then proceeding to use every curved chip in the bag as your spoon. MEGAN SELING

Ooink’s Spicy Vegetarian Miso Ramen

If I am going to pay to eat soup outside of my home, it’s going to be ramen. And the best ramen I’ve found, for a vegetarian such as myself, is from Ooink. There’s a Fremont location, but I can only speak for the Capitol Hill spot—the one in the strip-mall above the lit QFC on Broadway and Pike.

My order is the Spicy Vegetarian Miso Ramen (it can be made vegan, and there’s a version without “spicy” in the title). Not to worry: it has a warm kick, but is not the kind of spice that will make you cough or harsh your tastebuds.

The sturdy buckwheat noodles have just the right amount of tooth, and the miso broth has depth without being too salty or greasy—common traps that many vegetarian broths fall into when trying to overcompensate for something they do not need to overcompensate for. The toppings are correct: a springy pile of kikurage, little heaps of corn and green onions, a few sheets of seaweed, and a handful of happy baby bok choy that are blessedly not soggy and therefore retain a hint of peppery mustard flavor. This ramen also features a pat of melting corn butter, and a subtle sesame dressing drizzled onto the greens. I get mine without the tofu skin, but that’s just a personal preference (or aversion, maybe, that has something to do with its resemblance to, um, the second word there).

The star of the bowl is the house-made chili crisp. I sometimes wait until I absolutely have to stir it in because it’s such a banger taste all on its own; it’s crunchy and a little smoky and a little sweet, and the sesame seeds and spicy peanuts keep it interesting as you make your way to the bottom. Vegetarian ramens can get weird, and feel half-assed, but Ooink’s well-balanced version is the way to do it. EMILY NOKES

Drag Race Episode Seven: The Rudemption of Myki Meeks

Mike Kohfeld — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 17:01:00 -0800

We’re finally done with Rate-A-Queen! The cast is back to our regularly scheduled programming with parodies of hot-button political issues. In the words of Jane Don’t, “it’s a good day to be a clown.” by Mike Kohfeld

“Y’all are playing chess, I’m playing checkers. Wait, what’s the thing?”

Episode Seven began with the queens still reeling from their two-week Rate-A-Queen ordeal, in which the Miami alliance came out on top.

On Drag Race, queens love to talk too much after winning challenges or getting safe placements. Athena did the same, insisting her play was honest and not at all about strategy while the other queens rolled their eyes. When you’ve just won a challenge, it’s best to keep your mouth shut.

As if this wasn’t enough, the queens were given the Rate-A-Queen receipts. Mia looked stressed to see her ratings exposed… as if the producers were going to let any opportunity for drama to slide. Nini was pissed that everyone had given her mid-ratings for her Mother Mantis bit, and let it get into her head: “Does everybody not like me?”

Kenya was pleased to have avoided the bottom through her alliance-building. “Y’all are playing chess, I’m playing checkers. Wait, what’s the thing?” Bless her.

Myki Meeks was rated in the bottom by the queens despite having a strong talent act, and the receipts nearly brought her to tears. In a T-shirt that said REVENGE, Myki looked ready to prove herself this week. Maybe she’ll go full Arya Stark and start snatching faces.

Emmy-Baiting Drag Politics

If you’re not living under a rock, you know the 2026 midterm elections are going to be crucial for prying at least a little bit of power away from the world’s worst people. Drag Race celebrated the occasion by bringing us “totally twisted political ads that parody today’s most polarizing issues.” RuPaul added: “I deserve a fucking Emmy for that line.”

The queens had a serious moment talking about the difficulty of living in red states with drag bans and the rise of violence against queer people during Trump’s second term. The most visceral account was Discord’s experience with a lifetime friend and roommate. Radicalized by right-wing anti-queer rhetoric seemingly overnight, they destroyed almost all of Discord’s drag and artwork. Discord compared the current conservative movement to a cult. Hear, hear.

Mia balanced out the heaviness of the political discussion with a spontaneous dance party. It was the kind of genuine moment that has been missing in contemporary seasons of Drag Race.

The Future Liberals Want: Foreign Trade and Breastplate Socialism

The Main Challenge began when the queens were given five propositions on draggy subjects like breastplate entitlements, kai kai bans, and adding clowns to the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, paralleling real-world issues like bodily autonomy, trans rights, and immigration. I had to remind myself that this is a reality television show about drag queens acting stupid, but was interested to see how the cast would navigate the line between comedy and critique.

Discord and Nini did a sound job with “Prop Kiki.” Discord adopted a pro-kai kai stance as the sultry, sister-loving Lydia Liquorup. (Queer vocabulary lesson #1: to kiki is to chat, gossip, or tell stories; kai kai refers to sexual relations between drag queens.) Discord’s stage-whispered hook, “date a sister,” is destined to become a queer vocal stim in the manner of Valentina and Naomi Smalls’ “Club 96” (All Stars Season 4) or Alaska’s “your makeup is terrible” (Season 5). Nini struggled while recording the skit, but turned out a conservative church lady arguing against sister-dating, keeping the pair safe.

Darlene and Vita could not have been more dissimilar in their performances for “Prop 4Real.” Vita has struggled in past performance challenges, and this week was no different. She landed in the bottom for her stiff portrayal of a “traditional” drag queen.

In contrast, Darlene’s “bedroom queen bimbo” was hysterical, with the judges calling her performance “really stupid.” So stupid, in fact, that Darlene earned a top placement for the week.

Athena and Myki had fully-realized and memorable characters for “Prop 6969,” which sought to ban foreign trade (Queer vocabulary lesson #2: “trade” is queer slang for a masculine, straight-acting man).

Athena sold us an eerily convincing Republicanesque character named Connie Cumminside against Prop 6969. Her lustful desire to ban trade was giving MAGA backlash to Bad Bunny’s recent Super Bowl LX performance.

Myki was the standout of the week, with a punny performance arguing for steamy relations with foreign trade: “I’m concerned American citizen Stephanie Miller. But you can call me Lollipop!” Her playful irreverence won her the challenge. It felt like a karmic rebalance after Rate-A-Queen.

Meanwhile, Mia and Juicy struggled to write material for “Prop DD,” where Mia argued to require breastplates and padding for all drag queens while Juicy embraced a natural, environmentally-friendly “hog body.” Mia got some laughs, but Juicy floundered.

The pair fell into the bottom three. (If there had been a lip-sync-for-your-life between Mia and Juicy this week after they tied in a lip-sync-for-the-win two episodes ago, my wig would have flown into the troposphere.)

Can Somebody Just Treat My Gonorrhea?

Jane Don’t and Kenya worked together for “Prop C,” naming the pros and cons for adding clowns to the LGBTQIA acronym. Arguing against Prop C, Kenya played a decorated diva concerned about how “drag bars have been held captive by silly-ass drag queens who prioritize jokes and concepts over gowns.” Not in Seattle, surely! *clutches pearls*

Jane Don’t played Daisy Funbuttons, the gonorrhea-ridden Professor of Nose-Honking at Pacoima Community Clown College (this is literally the stupidest sentence I’ve ever written). Her performance was Drag Race comedy perfection, and she was ranked in the top by the judges. We really need to just crown her now. Or at the very least, get her some antibiotics.

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I Can See Right Through Her

These Season 18 girls brought some serious budget to the main stage, and the see-through outfits of Episode Seven did not disappoint.

Nini’s candy-wrapper look was sublime. If winning was solely about runway looks, Nini would be in the number one spot.

Jane’s Leigh Bowery-inspired checkered bodysuit with a short sheer pink dress fit the brief, but wasn’t as spectacular as her past looks. I later learned that she crafted it last-minute because her original designer didn’t deliver this look on time. What is it with late designers for these queens!?

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For her see-through business suit, Myki Meeks expressed, “the quality I cherish most in a workplace is transparency.” Snaps, girl. The judges loved it too, with RuPaul exclaiming, “this is what the whores wear in Seattle!” Maybe Myki can come live here, too.

Vita’s Last Act

Juicy’s Met Gala-worthy tulle fantasy and Vita’s divine water goddess (it was giving Yemayá) were superb, but their performances landed them in the bottom. The rest of the cast reacted with shock. “Vita versus Juicy? Two people I thought were gonna make it to the end!” said Discord. “I don’t even wanna watch this.”

But this was must-see TV. Vita held her own, but there is no stopping the elemental force that is Juicy Love Dion on the mainstage. Set to Dua Lipa’s “Houdini,” Juicy swept the lip-sync with grace, emotion, and jaw-dropping skill, including a handstand that tipped backwards into a split. There was no way RuPaul was going to let Juicy sashay away, and Vita was given the boot. I hope to see her in All Stars!

Next week, it’s the challenge you’ve been waiting for (or dreading): Snatch Game! Either way, this is not one to miss. I’m ready for Jane to earn a second win!

Look, I Didn’t Want to Like Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights

Audrey Vann — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0800

But I Would Absolutely Let Jacob Elordi Be Mean to Me

by Audrey Vann

I think anyone who has read Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights can agree that it’s a challenging read. Perspectives change chapter to chapter, Joseph the servant’s dialogue is basically unreadable, and most of Heathcliff and Cathy’s love story is played out through the next generation after—spoiler alert—Cathy dies during childbirth. In Emerald Fennell’s adaptation, she focuses on the most engaging elements of the book: Heathcliff and Cathy’s love, passion, and mutual destruction.

The film never claimed to be a perfect mirror of the book. Fennell herself said, when explaining the quotes around the title of her adaption: “What I can say is I'm making a version of [the book]. There's a version that I remembered reading that isn't quite real. And there's a version [where] I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is Wuthering Heights, and it isn't.”

With this in mind, she was successful. Each character felt like a doll Fennell uses to play out her version of the story—the obsessive childhood bond between Heathcliff and Cathy at Wuthering Heights (Cathy’s family home), Cathy’s eventual choice of social status over love, her early death, and Heathcliff’s lifelong spiral into revenge. A literal doll motif continuously shows up in the film, too, beginning with a young Cathy, who watches a man being hanged while tightly clutching her doll. Again, when Cathy marries the wealthy suitor Linton (Shazad Latif), and her new sister-in-law, Isabella (Alison Oliver), gifts her a handmade doll made using Cathy’s own collected hair. And, most notably, in the large dollhouse replica of Thrushcross Grange, the Linton estate, that stands looming behind the dining-room table. So, who better to play the starring role than Barbie herself, Margot Robbie?

At first, I was highly skeptical of the casting choices. Jacob Elordi was not at all how I imagined the scrappy, tortured, and probably-not-white orphan boy Heathcliff. But the longer I sit with the film, the more I can accept that he’s one of the only actors who could make this complex character work on screen. Brontë’s Heathcliff is cruel, insensitive, and brooding, and throughout the novel, I thought, why in the world are these women lusting after such an unlikable brute? But Elordi as Heathcliff—sweaty, grinning, and aroused—makes it make sense. You, too, would fold under the spell of his dark eyes with his fingers in your mouth. And, although Fennell’s interpretation of Linton is far more likable than Brontë’s, the choice is clear: Heathcliff eats Cathy out and licks the tears from her cheeks. Linton rails her in missionary while she dissociates.

Perhaps the most surprising element (and what I anticipate being the most controversial) is the innocent Isabella’s consent to Heathcliff’s cruel treatment of her. In the film, Heathcliff seduces Isabella (and later asks for her hand in marriage) only to punish Cathy, which he says explicitly. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks, several times, while taking off her nightgown. Isabella shakes her head no. After they marry, Nelly (Cathy’s companion, played by Hong Chau) stops by to see the newlyweds, only to find Isabella sporting a dog collar and chained up on her hands and knees, literally eating out of Heathcliff's hands. Nelly, horrified, attempts to free her, only to realize that the chains are not attached to anything—Isabella is a willing participant in this sadistic relationship. (Believe it or not, this is not how things go in Brontë’s 1847 novel.)

Elordi has managed to become the internet’s boyfriend through playing frightening men (see: Euphoria, Priscilla, Frankenstein). I would absolutely let that man be mean to me, and that’s what makes this film an alluring dollhouse to play inside.

Many people, including myself, were outraged upon the trailer’s release due to the not-period-accurate costumes. How silly I feel about that now! While living at Wuthering Heights, Cathy dresses in tattered cotton skirts and billowing linen blouses. Once she marries Linton, everything turns synthetic—iridescent lamé dresses, tight corsets, gaudy costume jewelry, and rhinestones glued to her cheeks—essentially, the wardrobe I would have dreamed up for myself as a 5-year-old who was obsessed with princesses and pop stars. The costuming plays a larger role in the film to show that Cathy is actually restricted by Linton, despite his wealth and status, and can only breathe in the arms of Heathcliff. To sum it up, the costumes are, as Aretha Franklin once said so eloquently: “great gowns, beautiful gowns.” Fun to look at, but not so fun to be trapped inside of.

This contrast between organic and synthetic is also present in Charli XCX’s soundtrack, which is equal parts epic string score and moody electronic pop. It isn’t as jarring in this period piece as you might imagine it to be.

As other critics have already noted, this is an extremely wet movie, soaked in uncooked egg, blood, spit, tears, snail slime, cooking oil, and rain, which adds a visceral quality to the film. Its lush, tactile visuals evoke whimsical movies of the past like the arthouse pornography of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, surrealist stop-motion master Jan Švankmajer, the later films of Ingmar Bergman (Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander), and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. All things I suggest watching if you find yourself enjoying this decadently horny movie.

Look, I didn’t want to like it. I walked into the theater as a skeptic, but left feeling enraptured by Fennell's vision. I give it four out of five broken eggs (see the movie and you’ll understand).

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie the Mercury Review

Dom Sinacola — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 16:07:00 -0800

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie opens in wide release on Friday, February 13. by Dom Sinacola

This story was originally published by our sister paper, Portland Mercury.

For nearly 20 years, Torontonian best friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have chronicled the everyday existences of Torontonian best friends Matt (Johnson) and Jay (McCarrol) as they attempt to book a show for their band, Nirvanna the Band, at local venue the Rivoli.

Granted, they've never acknowledged that their band name might be a huge distraction for potential audiences, nor have they ever really contacted Rivoli management to ask about the venue’s scheduling process. In two decades, they’ve never even played a public show. Still, their mission abides; sometimes it means skydiving from the Canadian National (CN) Tower for some good old-fashioned viral marketing.

Nirvanna the Band the Show is that 20-year chronicle—a seemingly never-ending autobiographical narrative, like Karl Ove Knausgård’s six-volume My Struggle—that details their daily, repetitive, and sometimes dangerous schemes to score a show at the Rivoli.

What began as a baby-faced web series in 2007 and eventually graduated into a Viceland sitcom in 2017, is now Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. It's tantamount to their lives’ work. Distributed by Neon, recent Oscar-darlings who brought us The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value, the release of this film is second only to getting a gig at the Rivoli.

The movie is exceptionally funny, especially with an audience. Dopey gags, painful stunts, and mean-mugging abound as our protagonists accidentally transform their RV into a time machine, using Back to the Future as a blueprint to hatch a plan to, of course, get a show at the Rivoli.

Finding themselves in 2008, they’re confronted by achingly specific allusions from the first Obama administration. (Remember the original lyrics to Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started”?) So Matt and Jay must follow Doc Brown rules to get back to their future without changing their past.

Convinced by pop figureheads like Robert Zemeckis and shows like Entourage that the elemental tides of storytelling, fueled by farce and nostalgia, will allow them to accomplish all they put their minds to—which in this case is headlining a show at the Rivoli—Matt and Jay of Nirvanna the Band are slightly fictionalized versions of the real-life Matt and Jay. They’re two normal-ish elder millennials who have siphoned themselves through movie and TV tropes into timeless, innocent weirdos.

Thus, at the heart of Nirvanna the Band, meticulous parody and avoidance of copyright infringement rubs up against the bleak reality of urban life, creating a giddy friction between the bracing stupidity to which Matt and Jay devote themselves and the drudgery experienced by everyone else.

In fact, much of the anxious hilarity of the Nirvanna the Band the Show came from wondering, often aloud, what exactly was real and what was scripted. With cinematographers Jared Raab and Rich Williamson following Matt and Jay everywhere, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie also wavers, like its episodic predecessor, between faux documentary and hidden camera prank extravaganza.

But rather than exploiting cringe humor or just messing with unsuspecting normies, Matt and Jay discover a kind of freedom to be themselves while indulging their deeply cinematic impulses.

Once furnished with a studio budget, these impulses lead to some of the most dumbfounding scenes I’ve had the good fortune of witnessing in a theater. Yet, beneath the shock and awe, the Movie is the careful craft of dedicated artists. When Matt and Jay encounter their 2008 selves, the project doesn’t rely on de-aging CGI, but hundreds of hours of work from editors Robert Upchurch and Curt Lobb, who picked through old footage from the show’s initial web run. Behind Jay and Matt’s mania is a team quietly dedicated to unearthing miraculous material.

Similarly, outside of the thinly veiled facsimile of his life in Nirvanna the Band, Johnson has been a prolific filmmaker. After cutting his teeth on Nirvanna the Band the Show, he followed up his feature debut The Dirties (2011) with Operation Avalanche (2016), a comedy thriller about faking the Moon landing in 1969, which involved Johnson’s crew bluffing their way into NASA offices to surreptitiously film whole scenes on a shoestring budget.

In 2023, Johnson made Blackberry, a partly fabricated “true story” of the founding of the titular company, featuring a squealing, baldpated Glen Howerton. The next year, Johnson starred in Kazik Radwanski’s Matt and Mara, in which he played an over-talkative guy named Matt, likely riffing on himself as much as he is in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Instead of inhabiting a character, he piles on layers of pop cultural patinas.

Whether it’s the aforementioned skydiving incident or sneaking onto a crime scene outside of Drake’s mansion, the hint of reality in the movie’s every moment is more than enough to sustain the spectacle. Even now, I can feel my stomach churn knowing that when Matt is standing on top of the CN Tower, trilby staying on his head by sheer will, there is more of a chance than not that Johnson actually did that.

Laughing, sometimes, is just what happens when your brain doesn’t know what else to do with the information being presented. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a tribute to the unbelievable shit you can pull off with your best friend and a few professional-looking cameras.

Do Matt and Jay make it back to the present? They have to, because Nirvanna the Band must go on, and more importantly, must play at the Rivoli. Someday. They have no other choice. For the real-life Johnson and McCarrol, this is Nirvanna the Band the Show the Existence, the stuff of crazed movie magic.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie opens in wide release on Friday, February 13.

Pacific Science Center’s Boeing IMAX Theater to Be Sold to Space Needle

Chase Hutchinson — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:45:00 -0800

The Boeing IMAX theater, the biggest IMAX theatre in the state, has been closed since Feb. 1 and will be sold to a new owner: the Space Needle Corporation, the Pacific Science Center confirmed in an email Tuesday.

“PacSci will not resume operations in that theater,” the spokesperson said. “Once the transaction concludes, we anticipate that the buyer will make some renovations and reopen the theater as an IMAX experience later this spring.”

The question of what that “IMAX experience” entails will now be top of mind for Seattle movie lovers. Many consider the Boeing IMAX to be one of the best places to go see the biggest releases of the year, but staff who spoke to The Stranger are concerned that this new buyer isn’t interested in screening first-run releases of Hollywood films, like Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey. A spokesperson for PacSci said they will be showing Nolan’s film at their smaller theater, the PACCAR, but deferred questions about the future of film programming at the Boeing IMAX to the Space Needle Corporation.

In a statement shared with The Seattle Times, Space Needle CEO Ron Sevart said “we’re excited to partner with Pacific Science Center in continuing the availability of two IMAX theaters on the Seattle Center Campus” and that it will continue to operate as a movie theater following a "brief renovation focused on improving the concessions and arrival experiences, scheduled to end in May." However, he didn’t specify what movies or programming will be shown there, only saying “we haven’t explored any use other than as an IMAX theater.”

“While continued operation of the Boeing IMAX Theater is our short-term focus, we can’t wait to explore other partnership opportunities that support the future of Pacific Science Center and the Seattle Center,” Sevart said in a release.

Also speaking to the Times, PacSci President and CEO Will Daugherty said, “the economics of operating a movie theater have become increasingly challenging. It made sense for PacSci to include the Boeing IMAX Theater in this transaction.”

Can our movie theaters catch a break already? SIFF ended its lease at the Egyptian last year, the Varsity Theatre closed just last month, and the Grand Illusion is still looking for a new home. However, the Boeing IMAX is something different. It’s the region’s “only true IMAX,” as the theater’s website once referred to it, with a 1.42:1 aspect ratio AKA a massive screen. When Ryan Coogler’s stellar vampire horror Sinners swept the nation last year, it was one of only a handful of places in the country where you could see the film as the filmmaker intended. (Having seen the film, I can’t overstate how much of an impact this makes.)

Now, it’s an open question whether they’ll be able to experience anything like that again anytime soon at the Boeing IMAX. As for the impact the sale could have on employees, a spokesperson for PacSci said “we have not yet determined the impact on PacSci staffing.”

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story said that the sale was final. Since publication, the Pacific Science Center has clarified that the sale has not yet gone through, but is expected to.

Beneath the Mask

Amanda Manitach — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

Shapiro’s journey through the art world is a storied one. by Amanda Manitach

Somewhere in Manhattan, sometime in the mid 1980s: a friend invited Ann Leda Shapiro to a clandestine gathering of nameless, faceless women at an artist’s loft. “Come to this meeting,” she was told. “We’re pissed off. We’re going to do something.” It turned out to be the beginning of the Guerrilla Girls.

Shapiro kept the secret of her involvement for 40 years; she will still only say so much. But there is one story about the time The Washington Post was sending people up to conduct a photoshoot. This posed a problem, as one of the primary commitments of the group was anonymity. Shapiro, taking notes for their meeting, was scribbling down ideas as fast as they came, when she committed a misspelling that would make art history: instead of guerrilla, she wrote gorilla. It was an a-ha moment, and their solution—the now-iconic gorilla mask—was born.

Shapiro’s journey through the art world is a storied one, her intersection with the Guerilla Girls just one of many tantalizing threads that could be spun into a volume. As she (selectively) spills the lore, our conversation is lubricated by multiple cups of coffee served in the artist’s Vashon Island living room. It’s a well-loved and lived-in house just up the road from a rocky slip of beach. Sun glitters off the face of the water, flooding the space with dappled light that dances across the ceiling with each break in the clouds. An acupuncturist’s table—not an easel or drawing desk—takes primary place in the room.

She’s lived here for 30 years, tucked away from the limelight.

Like the majority of female artists who achieve renown, it’s only been later in life that she’s been getting her flowers. (Shapiro turns 80 this August, though age feels like a preposterous abstraction here; she moves and speaks with the vivacity of someone 80 going on 18.) Last spring her solo exhibit, Interconnected Worlds, debuted in Antwerp. Another solo, Body Is Landscape, is currently hanging in Hong Kong. This January, Shapiro received the Betty Bowen Award—one of the region’s most coveted—which comes with a hefty cash prize and an exhibition at Seattle Art Museum. (Hers is scheduled for 2027.)

Categorizing Shapiro’s work is no easy feat. Watercolor and gouache paintings with an energetic, illustrative quality that plumb the esoteric, autobiographical, cosmic cartographies of the body. The body is ever-present in her work. Bodies that serve as landscapes. Bodies that swim in celestial storms and electric seas. Bodies as fine as stardust. Bodies that turn into trees that turn into something much deeper and primal. Detail so minute it seems physically impossible. Humor that is by turns brash, vulnerable, and grotesque mingles with sacred rage throughout earlier work; later imagery unfolds labyrinthine (self)portraiture that could keep a psychoanalyst busy for years.

It’s the kind of work the world is hungry for now. But it wasn’t always like this.

Shapiro grew up a “red diaper baby,” the daughter of card-carrying, working-class Communist parents who lived in a housing project in Queens. They were “neglectful, but had fabulous values,” she notes. Shapiro’s mother encouraged her artistic tendencies (which included being allowed to paint on the walls). On Saturdays, they took the train into the city so Shapiro could take classes at the MoMA’s art school, where she learned to “paint with sponges and throw paint at paper.” When the family eventually relocated to Manhattan, they moved into an apartment directly across from the American Museum of Natural History—a proximity that contributed to the development of Shapiro’s approach to close observation of the natural world. There was never going to be any other way but art for Shapiro; in her free time after high school she haunted the museum across the street, filling sketchbooks with intricate drawings of its curiosities while inquisitive museum guards looked on.

After high school, Shapiro rented a walk-up on the Lower East Side—the kind with a bathtub in the kitchen and a toilet down the hall. She worked at a library, then an advertising agency (where, to assuage boredom, she typed out entire chapters of Moby Dick, one page at a time). She saved enough cash to catch a hippie bus to San Francisco, where she rented a room under a staircase and enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute. She modeled and painted murals for money. She marched with Allen Ginsberg and made low-tech, psychedelic oil-and-paint visuals for the first Kool-Aid Acid Test concert (Shapiro was perhaps the only person present not tripping on drugs).

She attended the University of California, Davis, for grad school, where the critiques were performed exclusively by mustached men. When they brought her to tears during her first review (her paintings were too “primitive,” they berated), Shapiro resolved to never let such a thing happen again. At the next review, she arrived with a rubber penis strapped to her face. She nearly asphyxiated (she forgot to poke holes in the tip), but the stunt was so off-putting it worked; from that day on, the mustaches kept mum and she earned an MFA without further incident.

After graduating, Shapiro traded oil paints for watercolors, scaling to a more intimate style that reflected the inspirations of her youth: Little Lulu comics and the delicate nature drawings of her museum sketchbooks. When a curator from the Whitney Museum of American Art paid Shapiro a studio visit, they offered her a solo show of works on paper—an honor for any artist, let alone a recent graduate. But when the exhibit opened in the fall of 1973, Shapiro was appalled to find they had pulled three of her best paintings at the last minute. “I was shocked,” she says. “I had no idea I was doing anything that was controversial.”

The censored works in question—three watercolors completed in 1971—seem disparate at first glance, but each is threaded with the same provocative humor as Shapiro’s rubber dick that doubled as a mask. One of the paintings, Two Sides of Self, depicts a pair of hermaphroditic mermaids whose bodies appear to conjoin at the breasts, lips, and (male) genitalia. The central figure in Woman Landing on Man in the Moon is a female astronaut in a NASA spacesuit; three American flag patches placed across the uniform reveal slits through which breasts and a penis protrude. Across the inky void in the background, a fleet of tiny airplanes skywrites: one needs a cock to get by.

“I was just asking questions innocently, like, what is male and what is female?” says Shapiro. “There was no multiplicity of pronouns then, or anything like that. I was asking, do you have to be male—or act like a male—to be able to move ahead in the world, to be visible?”

The Whitney wasn’t having it.

Happily, Two Sides of Self and Woman Landing on Man in the Moon were both eventually acquired by the Seattle Art Museum in 2015—part of the Deed of Gift spearheaded by artist Matthew Offenbacher and his partner Jennifer Nemhauser after he won the Neddy Artist Award. Offenbacher used around $20,000 of the award funds to purchase works by women and queer artists, which were then gifted to SAM as a gesture of solidarity to the community and an attempt to help rectify the dearth of work by minorities in the museum’s collection.

That would be far in the future, however.

Following the ’73 exhibit, Shapiro withdrew from the art world. She would continue to paint, but she would not be censored, nor self-censor. Going forward, she exhibited only in underground spaces and spent the next two decades as a self-described “academic vagabond woman.” She taught criticism and art at universities across the country. She spent a semester in a boat sailing the world. In her six years of undergrad and graduate school, Shapiro had never had a woman teacher, not once; while teaching, she found herself the sole woman in every department. The token female academic, with a strap-on cock for a nose.

Or a gorilla mask. It was around this time that Shapiro found herself amid a group of like-minded artists who were pissed. It was also around this time that a close friend was diagnosed with AIDS, an event that would indirectly shift the trajectory of her life. Shapiro took up volunteering at a clinic in Austin that treated people with the disease. The clinic happened to specialize in acupuncture.

“When I started reading about the theory and history and philosophy of Chinese medicine, it was like falling in love,” she says. The definition of qi is not merely energy, Shapiro explains: “It is matter on the verge of becoming. It’s that moment when you’re living and dying simultaneously. And that’s what I’m trying to paint about, the dichotomies—that things aren’t in opposition, but they’re in interconnectivity.”

Shapiro left her university job to study acupuncture in Seattle. Just for a year (she thought). She fell for the practice as much as the theory—and she was really good at it.

To say Shapiro’s work/life amounts to something approximating Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art, in which everything merges into a cohesive whole—is far from a stretch, as art and acupuncture melded on the island she made home. During this time she published multiple books, including a picture book about Vashon, My Island, and a graphic novel, Art Notes of an Acupuncturist. In the latter, she outlines a pictorial history of the synaesthetic cosmologies contained within the human body. With bursts of grotesque humor and poetic wit, Shapiro illustrates the interconnections at play in orifices and organs, tracing the invisible threads between elements and colors, emotions and smells. It reads like a legend to unlock the symbolism of her later work.

Because the demand for Shapiro’s art has increased, there’s less time for acupuncture lately; almost all her hours are committed to the studio, where she’s currently working on six pieces for her upcoming exhibit at SAM. As she leads the way into her workspace—a standalone building behind her house, where soft island light pours through skylights—she explains a piece she is working on, about the ginkgo trees she recently encountered in Japan. “They’re the oldest trees in existence, living fossils,” Shapiro muses. “They survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb.”

But, of course, it’s about more than just that. If you look closely, you can trace the nervous system of the universe in the wood and roots of those trees.

Drag Race Episode Six: It’s the State of Florida vs. Jane Don’t

Mike Kohfeld — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:07:00 -0800

Drag Race Episode Six, the end of Rate-a-Queen. by Mike Kohfeld

This week, we wrapped up Season 18’s Rate-A-Queen talent show. Some queens showed that savvy strategy can outweigh a mid performance, but others *cough* Jane Don’t *cough* proved that reality TV shenanigans will never eclipse star quality. Let’s get into it.

The End of Glam

Ciara Myst, the lovable oddball from Indy, took center stage after being rated in the lowest position by her fellow queens last week. Her fate depended on the second round of Rate-A-Queen, as she would have to lip-sync against the lowest rated queen this week to save herself from elimination.

In the werkroom, Ciara, Vita, Darlene, Juicy, Nini, and Mia put their heads together to strategize for Rate-A-Queen before the second round of talent performances. Ciara thought she’d be able to out-perform Discord in a lip-sync battle, so she quietly asked her Team Glam sisters to rate Discord in the bottom regardless of how well Discord did in the talent show.

It didn’t take Juicy and Vita long to spill this tea to their buddy Discord, who wasn’t shaken by the challenge (though, we got a great cutaway of her pretending to be a Britney Spears superfan to out-psych Ciara). Ultimately, Discord’s punk rock performance was solid enough to keep her safe this week. Her glittering, bloody CEO runway look didn’t impress the judges, but its anticapitalist edge struck the right chord for me. Discord Mangione, anyone?

During a walkthrough, Michelle Visage called out Kenya for fumbling her lyrics during her lip-sync against Briar in Episode Four. “Drag queens’ number one job is to lip-sync, and to know their words,” Visage warned as she pointed a long red nail at Kenya. “Learn your lyrics.”

Kenya was shook, and sure enough, she missed several many more words while lip-syncing to her own song during her talent performance. However, Kenya’s alliance with the Miami girls paid off, and she was rated safe.

Myki Meeks of Orlando (aka Arya Stark who grows up to be BenDeLaCreme) learned that being everyone’s friend but nobody’s best friend is the silent killer during Rate-A-Queen. Her Bride of Frankenstein striptease number was a hit. We’ve seen burlesque many times on Drag Race, but bejeweled entrails? Gore-geous.

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Unfortunately, this is Rate-A-Queen, and Myki’s relationships were not strong enough to support her talent. She was rated last, falling into the bottom two alongside Ciara. RIP Glam Alliance, you really had no chance.

The Dion Dynasty

Athena “The Godmother” Dion protested against strategy-based play this week, claiming the rating should be based purely on performance. Either this was a ploy or she needs her memory checked, because she spent most of last week making arrangements for her drag family Juicy and Mia to receive top placements in Rate-A-Queen.

For her runway and performance, Athena leaned heavily into her Greek heritage. Her surreal evil-eye (mati) themed dress was a perfect blend of camp, glamour, and culture. As for the talent show, her Greek-themed variety act was solid but not show-stopping. The word “quaint” came to mind.

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But Rate-A-Queen is not about who has the best talent performance: it’s about leveraging relationships. Athena’s strategy of stacking votes in her favor by putting her Miami sisters on the judging panel during her performance was a brilliant move, and she was rated in the top two for Episode Six.

Jane Don’t vs. the (Allegedly) Illiterate Floridians

Jane Don’t may not have had a drag family to back her up in voting this week, but she didn’t need it.

The most effective drag artists are master historians, remixing references that transport the audience out of reality. On Drag Race, RuPaul has often said that drag queens need to be pop culture experts and rewards queens who know their shit, even when the references are relatively obscure. Seattle’s Jinkx Monsoon was a great example of this, introducing an entire generation to Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale during Season 5’s Snatch Game.

By Episode Six, Jane has proven she has a Ph.D. in Gay Culture. She described her exquisitely feathered chartreuse runway piece as “Galliano for Dior, refracted into this very musketeer 17th-century French moment,” which is queer word salad for “a really fucking cool look.” Even Michelle Visage, who famously hates the color green, had nothing negative to say about Jane’s runway.

Jane knew that her cabaret act inspired by Bette Midler would immediately read for the judges, because this bitch does her homework. She was less confident that the other queens would understand the reference, especially since half of them are allegedly illiterate Floridians.

If the other queens didn’t pick up the Bette Midler, it didn’t matter. Jane’s act was a winning blend of risqué humor, saloon girl style, and loads of confidence. She was voted into the top alongside Athena during the Rate-A-Queen deliberations. On Drag Race, it really doesn’t get much better than lyrics like “No train of thought, but a nice caboose.”

“We’re lip-syncing a punk song and she’s dressed as Donald Duck”

At the end of Episode Six, Jane and Athena, our top two, faced off for the win to “Jerkin” by Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers (vocalist Amy Taylor was the guest judge). Jane figured she’d have an easy win. “We’re lip-syncing a punk song and she’s dressed as Donald Duck,” referring to Athena’s glitzy Greek granny-core talent look. However, Athena turned it out, cementing Dion supremacy for a second week in a row. Her win was well-deserved given how well she played the social game of Rate-A-Queen. (And still, Jane’s been in the top for every episode so far. The only thing keeping Jane from winning Season 18 at this point is a Rate-A-Queen finale.) The real winner of this lip-sync, though, was Nini Coco’s neon-Teletubbie-meets-infinity-labia runway look. Seeing her bobbing back and forth beyond Jane and Athena was sending me.

The aforementioned labia. MTV

As much as we love Discord and Kenya, they were saved by the Rate-A-Queen rules this week. A shocked Myki Meeks was declared the bottom queen, and she lip-synced against Ciara to Britney Spears’ “Toxic.”.

The lip-sync concluded, but before RuPaul could pass judgement, she turned to Michelle Visage and said quietly, “This song was Season 4. Jiggly did it.”

“Bless her,” Michelle replied.

(Quick herstory lesson: After competing on Drag Race and Drag Race All Stars, fan favorite Jiggly Caliente became a judge on Drag Race Philippines and also had featured roles on Broad City and Pose. She tragically passed away in 2025 due to complications from sepsis after an emergency surgery. I couldn’t help but think of Briar Blush, who had just been hospitalized for sepsis after filming Season 18.)

My reverie was broken by RuPaul announcing Myki as the winner of the lip-sync.This came as no surprise—the only reason why Myki was in the bottom this week was because of Rate-A-Queen shenanigans. Ciara Myst was asked to sashay away.

Next week, the queens are tasked with creating political ads (!) plus, the cast get the Rate-A-Queen receipts. It’ll be like the producers throwing a ham hock to a pack of starving wolves. Let the drama roll!

The X Factor

Meg van Huygen — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

“Seattle has better Chinese food than New York." by Meg van Huygen

“Seattle has better Chinese food than New York, anyway,” Xian Zhang quips from the couch in her new office, overlooking Second Avenue. “Well, in New York, it’s mainly Cantonese food. But I find Chinese food from the north actually better here. I’m from the north, so I like the handmade dumplings and hand-pulled noodles, that kind of thing. Seattle does it better.”

Before she even landed, word was already on the street that the Seattle Symphony’s new music director is a massive foodie. Sure enough, it’s only a few minutes before she’s comparing our restaurants to those in her home of the last decade.

Zhang is still pulling double duty between Seattle and the New Jersey Symphony, where she’s been the resident music director since 2016. “My son, it’s his junior year,” she explains, “and it’s too late for him to change schools, so he’s finishing high school there. I don’t wanna mess up his life!” But since accepting a five-year contract in Seattle last year, she admits, she’s been feeling a little more at ease out here.

“I grew up in a climate just like this—cold, a little humid and windy,” Zhang says, motioning toward the window. “And we had lots of shellfish,” she grins, bringing it back to food. “That’s my thing—my favorite! So Seattle is perfect for me, actually.”

It’s mutual, babe. Scoring Zhang is a monumental win for Seattle, and not only for her enormous talent and fiery vivacity. Alongside having no music director at all following Thomas Dausgaard’s sudden email ragequit in 2020, the Seattle Symphony’s had 17 conductors in its 123 years, and they all looked more or less the same—white and presumed male—until Zhang. It brings a li’l tear to the eye of this former Cornish piano major, who could only find one female American conductor to look up to in the late ’90s (the legendary Marin Alsop). Down around Benaroya Hall, when you see all the colorful media paraphernalia heralding Zhang’s arrival—there are vinyl stickers glued to the actual sidewalk, reading XIAN!—it seems like overkill at first. But then you’re like: You know what? Let them cook. This is the Seattle Symphony’s Cinderella moment.

Even today, the game’s still heavily dominated by men in the United States, with women and nonbinary people making up just 29.4 percent of American symphony conductors. It’s much worse outside the US, with a 2023 study reporting that just 11.2 percent of conductors are women worldwide. As well, 66.9 percent of American symphony conductors are white. No figures are currently available on how many of the remaining 33.1 percent are female or non-male, but one can imagine it’s a slender slice. There’s Zhang and there’s Alsop, who’s the laureate director of the Baltimore Symphony, and the Atlanta Symphony has Nathalie Stutzmann at the wheel. But when it comes to symphonies in major American cities, these three women pretty much make up the whole scene.

“There also just aren’t that many of us conductors,” Zhang points out, “women or men. It’s a numbers problem. Because it’s a hard job! Not so many people can do it.”

She said a mouthful there, because to watch this woman conduct an orchestra is electric. Armed with her baton, this mini maestra seems 10 feet tall, commanding her musical battalion with real joy and absolute authority. Even from the nosebleed seats, you can feel the crackle in the air. Few people can do that job, indeed.

Xian Zhang (“sh-yen jahng”) was born in 1973 in Dandong, near the North Korean border, to a music teacher mom and a luthier dad. When Western instruments were scarce in Cultural Revolution-era China, her father built a piano for her from scratch. She began piano lessons at age 3 and was practicing eight hours a day by elementary school. At 11, she was sent to the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing to study piano performance under Lingfen Wu, herself a pioneering female conductor.

Zhang was dropped into conducting somewhat against her will when, one day, Wu sent her 20-year-old student to sub at a rehearsal at the China National Opera. “I’d just finished learning The Marriage of Figaro from her—but I’d never conducted anything in my life! It was a four-and-a-half-hour production, with professional musicians. My teacher called in the day before and said, ‘Um, I don’t feel well, but I’m gonna send my student to conduct tomorrow. If she does a bad job at rehearsal, I will try to come in at intermission and take over.’

“The director of the opera was very mad at my teacher that morning,” Zhang laughs. “‘How can you do this to us? And send a little girl?’ I was very short, very tiny. I remember sitting on the bus with the other musicians going to the opera house, thinking, I’m gonna DIE today. I’m gonna mess this up and be so embarrassed, and I will die.” But she did it anyway, and when her teacher called at intermission to check in, she was told, “Well, she actually seems to be doing okay? She’s almost done with the second act.”

“And my teacher was like ‘Uh, okay, I still don’t feel good! Let her finish the show.’ The next day, she kept saying she was sick. So yeah, she gave me two shows with the China National Opera when I was 20. That was my first public conducting job.”

Zhang didn’t forget it, and today, she goes out of her way to pay it forward and support female orchestral musicians, along with those from other underrepresented groups. She points to a recent Benaroya performance of composer Michael Abels’s Delights and Dances performed by laureate winners of the Sphinx Competition, which is open to young Black and Latino string players in Detroit and endeavors to address systemic obstacles within their communities. “The quartet was all students who’d won a competition for young, less-privileged players. I really, really feel strongly about supporting this kind of program.”

Since leaving China in 1998 to pursue her doctorate in Cincinnati, Zhang’s led orchestras in Milan, Montréal, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Cardiff, Singapore, London, and dozens of US cities. As well as back home in Beijing—in addition to her current roles in Seattle and New Jersey, she’s also the principal guest conductor at the China National Opera this season. True to brand, only a month after her introductory gala at Benaroya Hall in September, she jetted off to Helsinki for the rest of 2025, where she’d already signed up to conduct Tosca before saying yes to Seattle.

Now that she’s picked the reins back up in Seattle, Zhang is super pumped for the production of Iris Unveiled (originally Iris dévoilée), playing February 12, 14, and 15. In a Peking opera-style concert suite that Zhang says is very special to her personally, Chinese-born French composer Qigang Chen mashes up Chinese stringed instruments like the pipa and erhu with a Western-style orchestra, as solo vocalists sing in both Western and Chinese operatic styles. The suite describes the story of Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow, employing texture and color to describe various facets of divine femininity: coyness, jealousy, voluptuousness, lust. As the central figure, soprano Meng Meng wears traditional Chinese makeup and a kuitou (头), an elaborate headdress loaded with pearls and tassels and pompoms.

The production’s timing is pinned to the Lunar New Year and the Seattle Symphony’s second annual Lunar New Year Gala. Benaroya Hall’s lobby will be decked out for the holiday, tickets include a multi-course authentic Chinese dinner, and there’ll be performances by select artists from Iris Unveiled’s cast. “I’m so excited, yes!” Zhang says. “The story is based on old Chinese poems, and there’s some really authentic Chinese art involved in the program. And I find the music just strikingly beautiful.” The show, she adds, will be a great way for her to begin engaging with the Asian community here in Seattle, as a fresh start for the new year.

Zhang isn’t new to Seattle, for what it’s worth, having first guest-conducted the Seattle Symphony in 2008. “I’ve always liked Seattle! To me, Seattle has come up as one of the most vibrant cities in America nowadays. I like the people. They’re different from the East Coast—slightly laid-back, and they’re not as edgy. And also, I like the diversity of the community. I feel comfortable here, you know, as an Asian person.

“And I like the food here too!” she says, splitting off to enthusiastically recommend a hot pot restaurant off Aurora. “It’s like a shabu-shabu place. I know the name in Chinese but not in English!” She goes on to rave about the meat combo, as passionately as she spoke about Iris Unveiled. After playing 20 Questions, we realize it’s No.9 Alley Hot Pot in Bitter Lake.

Despite our rep as one of the nation’s most progressive cities, Seattle’s classical music scene has been kind of a musty old ghost ship over the last few years, with nobody at the helm. So it’s sincerely thrilling to see the fiery, sizzling energy that Zhang brings on board. Right out of the gate, she’s going out of her way to platform women, POC, and other underrepresented musicians, along with youth orchestras, local composers, and hell, the restaurant scene, too. Seattle’s classical community has needed this delicious zap in the butt since 1903. No amount of vinyl sidewalk stickers with her name on them is enough.

How to Date Like an Asian

Michael Wong — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0800

Let me show you how to go on a date like an Asian person. by Michael Wong

After a decade of media dominance, the world finally must admit: Asians got swag. And somehow we are still facing an Asian birth-rate crisis (to the specific chagrin of my mother). So given the circumstances, and with Valentine’s Day on the way, let me show you how to go on a date like an Asian person, in Seattle. Let me know how it goes!

Pregame at Costco
Getting your date kicked off by flexing membership at an exclusive club is never a bad idea. And if you don’t know, Asian people feel the same way about Costco that white people feel about Trader Joe’s and Hispanic moms feel about Ross. It’s our mini Disneyland. It delights us.

Take a stroll and reacclimate to being around people after a long week working from home. Costco also gives you a chance to flex your financial prowess early by starting things off with a $1.50 hotdog combo, aka the Kirkland Signature aphrodisiac. This move will also save you both money on future eating opportunities—big-brain moment.

Find Gems at Uwajimaya and Kinokuniya Bookstore
Imagine if Barnes and Noble were an otaku, in a good way. That’s Kinokuniya, the bookstore at Uwajimaya in the CID. You’ll have a blast walking between the shelves, pointing at things you both like. This is also a great way to determine if your date can read.

The major play alert is the magazine section. The racks are teeming with more special interests than a community college catalog, like: POPEYE (for Japanese “city boy” fashion), Brutus (for culture and home inspo), or the Japan Railfan Magazine (for train lovers, plainly). Japanese magazines are a different breed, and while you probably can’t read them, you’ll still find a lot of inspiration and delight inside the pages. Browsing here is a concise way to learn more about your date’s interests, and for them to learn more about you, too. Look behind the counter for magazines that come with cool niche-interest gifts, like Sanrio or even Bape accessories.

Before heading out, pick out a couple snacks with your date at Uwajimaya, perhaps from the deli. Try a Mogu Mogu bottled drink if you haven’t yet—nata jellies (those translucent, chewy cubes made from fermented coconut water) are like a fidget spinner for your mouth.

Picnic in the CID Hing Hay Park
The next move is to head up the block to Hing Hay Park. It’s a tucked-away pocket of the CID with lots of seating, ornate pagodas, and plenty of characters. It’s the ideal home base to spread out your treasures, share some snacks and stories, and appreciate the energy of the neighborhood together.

Plus, if you’re feeling recently inspired by Marty Supreme, you could play each other at one of the public ping-pong tables, or embarrass yourself by playing against one of the Chinese grinders ready for a new victim.

Browse the CID Shops
Let the CID trinket observation commence. Check out Trichome, a longtime alt hot spot and gift shop for the indie streetwear kids and the psychedelic-interested among us, and not totally in the Spencer’s Gifts sort of way. Ask about the Lexco cases and the refrigerator behind the counter.

Other nearby stores you won’t want to miss include Shishido Zakka-Ya, a shop full of kawaii wares made by local Seattle AANHPI artists, Mam’s Books for the best selection of Asian authors and warm vibes, and Pink Gorilla, where your childhood video game nostalgia comes to life in vibrant tactile glory.

Walk the Jose Rizal Bridge
One of Seattle’s best viewpoints is the bridge that carries 12th Avenue South over the freeway. When it’s time to wrap up in the CID, take a short drive up to Jose Rizal Bridge. Park on the Beacon Hill side, near the Tower of Terror–looking building, then walk the bridge back towards the CID, enjoying the view together.

Not only is it a great place to snap pics of one another, catch a sunset, and appreciate the city, it’s also a great opportunity to flex your knowledge about Filipino explorer Jose Rizal, which I expect you to brush up on before this leg.

Try on Fits at Break Away Vintage on Pike
In the big 2026, we are saving money on clothes by shopping secondhand. No better place in Seattle to take in-store fit pics than at Break Away Vintage Market in Capitol Hill (formerly Late Night Vintage Market).

This spot, IMHO, is holding down the neighborhood, run by a group of fellas who in kind remind me that Seattle still has flavor. It’s laid out similar to the Winchester Mystery House, with hallways and stairs that lead you to unexpected places. Pick through racks and find items your date would find amusing, plus trying on the wildest things for a mini fashion show is never a miss.

Small Bites at Tamari Bar
By now it’s time for a proper meal. In this area—right down the street from Break Away—you have to go to Tamari Bar.

This spot feels casual by design, but the necessity of reservations signals the quality of the meal you’re about to enjoy. I also highly rate their inventiveness, and I’m sure your date will, too. Throw a dart at the menu and you will be thrilled, but don’t miss the famous “206 curry” in any iteration, the mazemen with Parmigiano Reggiano, or the bara-chirashi bowl.

Sip Highballs at Shibuya HiFi
To cap off this date, I suggest one of the coolest places in the city. Shibuya HiFi in Ballard is a vinyl bar and lounge inspired by Tokyo’s legendary jazz kissa (listening cafes). You initially enter through the “Living Room”—a swank, intimate space covered floor-to-ceiling with cedar planks and cozy furniture. Enjoy a highball at the bar, or perhaps a Pink Rabbits (made with Japanese Haku vodka and lychee).

When you’re reset, head back to the reservations-only HiFi Room, which feels like the living room of the world’s biggest audiophile. You’ll have to remove your shoes and leave your drink behind before entering and settling into the plush sofas or vintage Benaroya Hall seats.

Get enveloped in the album (that you’ll listen to start to finish), and if you get carried away by the ambience and realization that life doesn’t get better than this, my suggestion is to look over at your date, smile, and just let it happen.

Pop Loser # 15: Immaculate Collection with Biblioteka

Audrey Vann — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:24:00 -0800

This week's music news. by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser! This week, we dig into some highlights from the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. In another edition of Immaculate Collection, local punk band Biblioteka share their treasure troves of funky shoes, creepy dolls, and Magic: The Gathering cards. Plus, I have two moody song recommendations to get you through the rest of the week.

This Week in Music

The Grammys were on Sunday (if you even care). Politics seeped through the award show’s facade with ICE OUT pins on every lapel and speeches dedicated to immigrant solidarity from Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Olivia Dean, and Kehlani. Other highlights from the show included a D’Angelo tribute from Lauryn Hill and performances from pop divas Addison Rae, Sabrina Carpenter, and Lady Gaga. Trump has already threatened to sue host Trevor Noah, who joked about his visits to Epstein Island.

The award show also brought us live TV gold. Cher made an appearance at the Grammys for the first time in 18 years to accept a lifetime achievement award and present the highly anticipated Record of the Year. What followed was an incredible chain of slipups, pauses, and missed marks that only Cher can get away with. Her appearance ended with her announcing the late Luther Vandross as the winner. (The winner was actually Kendrick Lamar and SZA, for their song “Luther”). This was the greatest award show moment since John Travolta introduced “the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem.”

Let’s talk fashion. There have been entire articles written about Chappell Roan’s red carpet look, but for all the wrong reasons (I am looking at you, New York Times). The merlot chiffon gown, held up by faux nipple piercings, was inspired by a look from Thierry Mugler’s fall 1998 couture collection and should make anyone gasp from its elegance, not prudishness. In the negative space on her skin, Roan was covered in delicate temporary tattoos of lace-woven horses. This is by far my favorite red carpet look of the last 20 years.

RIP Billy Bass Nelson. This week, we lost Billy Bass Nelson, the original bassist of the pioneering psychedelic funk band Funkadelic, who died just three days after his 75th birthday. No cause of death has been reported yet. It was also announced Monday night that Three Dog Night cofounder Chuck Negron, best known as the lead vocalist on “Joy to the World,” died at the age of 83.

The USA could never. Live music venues in the UK are now set to receive government support, following backlash to plans that would increase business rates, which could leave thousands of venues and pubs at risk of layoffs and closures. In response to the possible impact on live music, the Treasury has confirmed a new support package of nearly £100 million for live music venues across England and Wales.

Immaculate Collection with Biblioteka

If you’ve been nonstop bumping Amyl & the Sniffers’ third album, Cartoon Darkness, since it was released, might I suggest you add some Biblioteka into the rotation? Like the Aussie punks, Seattle’s Biblioteka are led by a high-energy vocal powerhouse, Mary Robins, who often sings about being turned on and pissed off (just listen to their newest single “Firestarter”). Ahead of the trio’s album release party at Neumos on Feb 12, I caught up with the band to discuss their obsessions, from funky shoes to creepy dolls.

Mary: Funky Shoes

What do you collect?
I collect shoes, namely, statement shoes and boots for playing shows. There’s something about stomping around in big, boxy boots that makes me feel like a giant praying-mantis-meets-Barbarella. Things I usually go for: platforms, chunky heels, and leopard.

What was the first item you acquired in this collection?
Jeffrey Campbell buckle ankle boots with a metal-caged heel. I wore them for our first Biblioteka show. They’re comfy and look so sick. Local shoe lore is that Jeffrey Campbell got his start working at the Tukwila Nordstrom in the women's shoe department, or so the people who work there have told me. I love a local legend, and I also had my first job at the Tukwila mall.

What is the most prized item in your collection?
The vintage, silver, pointy-toe cowboy boots. I got them at a vintage shop while we were in Spain on tour. They look amazing, one of a kind and out of this world. And they fit perfectly.

Tell me about an item you'd like to add to your collection or a new collection you'd like to start.
I’m trying to de-collect, especially since I grew up in a house where “collecting” can get out of hand, lol. So these days I’m selling clothes and shoes on my Depop :)

Hexx: Souvenir Dolls

What do you collect?
I collect a lot! Vinyl, vintage tees and bolos, guitars, and I also started a creepy doll collection.

What was the first item you acquired in this collection?

I started collecting souvenir plush/dolls/toys while out touring, and it all started with a creepy clown that I found in a Portland alley next to a bag of drugs. I left the drugs, took the clown, and proclaimed her name Gweneviere, which also happened to be the name of the venue owner’s daughter (who despises clowns). Gweneviere is our unofficial mascot!

What is the most prized item in your collection?

I have a green alien plush scored from a middle-of-nowhere gas station close to what I assume or wish to believe is Area 51.

Tell me about an item you'd like to add to your collection or a new collection you'd like to start.

I’d be good with another back alley clown.

Jules: Magic: The Gathering Cards

What do you collect?
I started collecting Magic: The Gathering cards entirely on accident, but now I’ve likely got around two or three thousand cards in my collection, and it is probably what I would need to sell off if I needed a quick windfall someday.

What was the first item you acquired in this collection?

I started playing around 2018 when a friend of mine moved back to town and decided to get us all hooked. The first Magic cards I bought on my own were from Mox Boarding House, a battle deck they had assembled called Chimera Flash. The deck was built around a card called Spellheart Chimera, which at the time felt like the strongest card imaginable. It has flying and trample AND its power is equal to the number of instants and sorceries in my graveyard? What could be better than that? Soon after I started collecting packs from the Guilds of Ravnica expansion, which had a card called Crackling Drake, which was basically the same as Spellheart Chimera but it also drew a card when it entered. The search for the strongest version of Spellheart Chimera still continues to this day.

What is the most prized item in your collection?

I’m a lifelong Sonic the Hedgehog fan, so I bought the crossover Secret Lair collection when they launched it. There are seven secret bonus cards, the seven chaos emeralds, that were all super rare drops for those who bought the collab. I ended up getting the red chaos emerald, it was such a thrill pulling that out of the pack. I’ve got it in my trade binder to proudly show, and it’s doubtful I’ll pull an individual card that I’m more stoked on.

Tell me about an item you'd like to add to your collection or a new collection you'd like to start.

Ideally, this collection never gets any bigger. I’d love to just survive for the rest of my Magic career by selling cards if I want to buy more cards. I’ve got too many of these things.

Music Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week

Naima Bock Feb 5, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Robyn Hitchcock Feb 6, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

The Maya Experience Feb 6, Barboza, 6:30 pm, 21+

Audioasis Live Feb 7, KEXP, 5 pm, all ages

Claire Conway, Your Jack, Frankie Beach Feb 10, Sunset Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+

Olivia Barton Feb 10, Barboza, 7 pm, all ages

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The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night

“Heavy, Why?” by Blackwater Holylight
Portland-born metal band Blackwater Holylight contrast their shimmering harmonies with sludgy, psychedelic instrumentals for a product that is haunting, beautiful, cathartic, and scary all at the same time. Their new album, Not Here Not Gone, was released on Friday and features some of their most approachable songs yet—take “Heavy, Why?” for example, which is reminiscent of 2010s rock bands like the Dum Dum Girls and Broken Water. I don't listen to very much metal, but I love this band—consider them your gateway into the genre.

“Bluebell” by Babes in Toyland

When I’m in a bad mood, I listen to Babes in Toyland’s 1992 album Fontanelle as loud as I can tolerate. I’ve been in a bad mood a lot this week, so naturally, “Bluebell” has been literally stuck in my head, keeping me up at night. Specifically, the part where she yells, “You know who you are / You're dead meat, motherfucker!” Listen to it for a cathartic release.

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We Keep Each Other Alive

Katie Lee Ellison — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:10:00 -0800

Ally Ang sparks up this city with a distinctively queer, raucous energy that’s nerdy, enthusiastic, genuine, and joyful. “Reading a really good book of poems is so exhilarating,” Ang told me, when I spoke with them around the release of their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble. “I get hype off of it. It feels like downing cold brew or something. It makes me feel so, just, like, alive. Nothing else gives me that feeling. I'm so addicted to the feeling of reading really exciting poetry.” by Katie Lee Ellison

Ally Ang sparks up this city with a distinctively queer, raucous energy that’s nerdy, enthusiastic, genuine, and joyful. “Reading a really good book of poems is so exhilarating,” Ang told me, when I spoke with them around the release of their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble. “I get hype off of it. It feels like downing cold brew or something. It makes me feel so, just, like, alive. Nothing else gives me that feeling. I'm so addicted to the feeling of reading really exciting poetry.”

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt anywhere near this excited about much lately, which is another reason why Ang is a beacon in Seattle. Bestowed with the honor of an NEA grant in 2023, they shot into a wider collective public consciousness, but as they’ll tell you themselves, they’ve been publishing poems in zines and anywhere else that would have them for 12 years and counting. This seemingly sudden arrival to the poetry scene with their debut collection was in fact built from years of work with mentors, studying craft, and honing their voice.

In fact, “the earliest poem of the book was written in 2018, and most of them were written from 2019 through 2022,” Ang said. The collection has “undergone somewhere between 10 and 100 revisions.” You could say they learned to write through the creation of this book. “I used to be a little bit anti-form, because I was like, oh, poetry shouldn't have rules. After reading a lot more poems, and reading a lot more poets who work really heavily with form, I began to see that it opened up a lot of possibilities, as opposed to being restrictive. My relationship with form has evolved, and I have a lot of fun with it now.”

And there is more to come. “I am working on something that will hopefully be a second book someday,” said Ang. “But right now it's just a bunch of poems in a Google Doc. What I'm thinking through in the new project is gender as a form, and how queerness is breaking that form and recreating it.”

What stands out most from our conversation is the idea that no art is made in a vacuum. It’s collective care and exchange—that comes in so many forms—that allowed this work to bubble up to our communal surface.

“A lot of people in Seattle, like Jane Wong and Luther Hughes and Cass Garrison, they're all influences to me,” said Ang. “Even though I also just see them around.” They also mentioned a Yin Yi workshop through Oneworld Publications that got them focused; their friend Serena Brown, whom they hired to help with order and structure; and South Korean poet Kim Hyesoon, whose grotesque, feminist work “gave me permission to lean into the more disgusting and gooey aspects of being a person and having a body.”

Ang leans hard into that permission in Let the Moon Wobble to explore the complexities of queer sex, alongside the gross weirdness of having a body at all. Inherent in these pages is a resistance to the kind of domesticated queerness Ellen DeGeneres made popular.

“There is this narrative that once you come out as queer and embrace your identity,” said Ang, “then you let go of all your internalized whatever, and just be proud all the time. That has certainly not been the experience for me. I am obviously very proud of my identities, and I feel pretty comfortable in who I am, but the lifetimes of shame that have accumulated in me are something that I don't know if I'll ever be done with. Even in moments of pleasure, intimacy, and ecstasy, that shame is also always present. Instead of trying to be like, ‘hashtag it gets better,’ it was important for me to be like, well, you know what, all of this is present: the pleasure and the shame and the disgust and the pride. It's all tangled up together.”

In their day job, Ang is a nonprofit fundraiser, and, when not writing, co-runs and cohosts a monthly reading series, Other People’s Poems, with Cody Stetzel at Open Books in Pioneer Square. People turn out, and the community built from this series is strong. And that’s the point. Ang is deeply invested in community, perhaps for reasons that stretch far beyond their own life.

“I don't think I'm going to be alive to see the downfall of capitalism, nor the rebuild of whatever [takes] its place. [But] we can take care of each other as our governments fail to take care of us. Like, people really do care about each other. The early days of the pandemic were actually the most optimistic I ever felt about the world, even though it was a really scary, uncertain time. People mobilized so quickly into mutual aid, taking care of each other, and creating pods. When the uprisings [after George Floyd’s murder] took place, people were training as street medics and doing jail support. I feel less optimistic than I did then because of how things have unfolded in the last five years. There's so much room for improvement, because so many people do fall through the cracks, and people who don't have strong networks of community don't tend to receive that care.”

This conversation took place before the eruption of protest and action in Minneapolis against ICE, but their words are a breathing example of how politics are always personal.

Of their collection and the very deeply personal in it, Ang said, “It feels scary to talk about the suicidal ideation stuff, or feeling hopeless and despairing about the world. I wrote [those pieces] at a very different point in my life, and it is weird to have this book coming out at a time when I want to be here, I want to be alive. I like my life for the most part. I don't know if I'll read those poems aloud at readings, because I don't want to go back to that. But it's important that it's there, because it was real, and I think it's real for a lot of other people, too. Which is why I also wanted to put a lot of joy and hope in the book, and not just linger in that really despairing place.”

In all of Ang’s energy and excitement about poetry, there is a wisdom and depth to the understanding that celebration is a necessary antidote to our losses and fuels our fight against the terrible, monstrous, murderous, sponsored, and authorized state-sanctioned violence across this country right now. We don’t know what’s coming, but Ang’s work is one way to prepare ourselves, one way to help keep ourselves and each other alive.

Jill Busby Is the Northwest Film Forum’s New Executive Director

Chase Hutchinson — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

Jill Busby wants to restore the film nonprofit to the bustling cultural center it once was. by Chase Hutchinson

Jill Busby, the interim executive director at Northwest Film Forum (NWFF), is dropping the “interim” from her title and stepping into the role full-time. She wants to restore the film nonprofit to the bustling cultural center it once was.

She’ll be the fourth executive director to try in the last decade. Busby, a multidisciplinary writer and artist, says her “brain began to tingle with possibilities” shortly after she took over from previous executive director Derek Edamura, who stepped down last October.

“I felt ready to step up in this moment especially after seeing us through so many hard moments and recovery points,” Busby says in an interview with The Stranger. “I don’t ever want to see us in a situation again, even in chaotic times, where we have to lose someone because we aren’t in a sustainable moment.”

The hard moment she’s referring to came in 2024, when the organization laid off nearly half of its staff to keep its programming from tumbling off the edge of a sheer financial cliff. What type of programming? Year round, NWFF teaches filmmaking workshops and screens the type of unique films you won’t see anywhere else, such as the fascinating The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, a strikingly shot queer drama set in 1980s Chile that made a splash at Cannes, which opens this week.

It’s tough out there for independent theaters and film orgs, and NWFF isn’t the only one struggling. The magnitudes-larger SIFF, with its three theaters and annual film festival, has laid off round after round of employees in the last year and left the beloved Egyptian to dust while attempting to make their marquee purchase of the SIFF Cinema Downtown (formerly known as the Cinerama) work.

Busby seemed optimistic that the worst was behind NWFF. Grants and enthusiastic donors have come through, and audiences are returning to its theaters. Busby specifically shouted out her org’s partnership with the volunteer-run Seattle Film Society. On the last Thursday of the month, the group hosts “Locals Only” at NWFF, a showcase of local films, such as in January when they screened shorts by James Andrews, Bryon Donaldson, Nicole Olson, and Derek Nunn.

Providing that space is essential to making NWFF a hub like it used to be, Busby says. It was at NWFF that the late, great director Lynn Shelton saw the French auteur Claire Denis, who made her first movie at 40, in 2003, and realized there was still time for her to make movies, too. Think about that—without NWFF, we might not have Humpday, Your Sister's Sister, Outside In, or Sword of Trust. We might not have Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, either. He screened some of his earliest work, including Medicine for Melancholy, at the forum.

“For me, it’s the perfect embodiment of what an independent film organization can do to empower a filmmaking community,” Jenkins said in 2009. “You can go and see movies that you wouldn’t normally get to see because they don’t screen at your local multiplex, but also, in the same building, I have access to equipment or you can learn how to make the same kind of films that you see on those same screens.”

The forum’s still connected to the talents it nurtured. Busby intends to lean on board members like Megan Griffiths, the longtime local filmmaker and SIFF staple, who brought in actor/director Jay Duplass to collaborate on the session “How to Make Movies in the Apocalypse” last year.

Busby also wants to hear from us. The forum is launching a free, community-curated festival this year. Anyone who donates $50 or more can nominate any film that’s graced its screens in its more than 30-year history.

“In such hard times, people really do rediscover how much community is important to them,” Busby says. “I think we will see more and more people return to that third space, that hub, and we’ll be there.”

But aren’t they always saying the children are our future? Busby wants to grow, and diversify, NWFF’s youth summer camps. SIFF cut its youth summer camps this year. It’s a gap NWFF can fill, but not completely. Fill a balloon too much, too fast, and it pops. It takes serious money to expand programming, the kind only grants and rich donors can provide. Busby first wants to rebuild, rehiring positions cut in the dark days of 2024 (by the end of next month, she expects to hire one part-time and one full-time position) and spending grant funds on a new development director.

“You can’t grow before you have found a way to be sustainable. Staying small for as long as we have to,” Busby says. “We have remained strong and we’re not doing more than what we can actually do.”

Remembering Judith Arcana

Megan Burbank — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0800

Portland’s own underground abortionist-turned-poet was a legend. She was also my friend. by Megan Burbank

This story was originally published in our sister paper, Portland Mercury.

In 2017, Judith Arcana sent a postcard to the old Mercury offices in Old Town/Chinatown. I was the arts editor at the time—it was my first real journalism job—and after many stories covering local theater (I still think about the plays I saw at Shaking the Tree) and books (a reading at Powell’s followed by a strong martini at Pepe le Moko was a typical after-work routine), I had written a feature on the newly-formed Northwest Abortion Access Fund. After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2023, NWAAF would become a frequently cited source in coverage across the country. But at the time, most newsrooms were not covering the issue of abortion access particularly well. Reaching out to an abortion fund for comment on anything was rare.

So Judith noticed when someone did. “BIG CHEER!,” she wrote in her missive. “HUZZAH!—and all like that—Great work on the NWAAF—Thank you. Jeanie’s right: FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND.”

Judith had been part of Chicago’s underground abortion service known as Jane—never the Jane Collective, she told me later. That was a journalist’s language, never hers. As one of the Janes, she had helped facilitate 11,000 abortions in Chicago in the years before Roe v. Wade and was even arrested for it. Though she wasn’t directly involved in NWAAF’s work, the abortion fund carried on the legacy of the Janes, connecting people seeking abortions with funding and compassion when state-level policies stood in the way—a dynamic that long preceded the gutting of Roe.

The story of the Janes was made into movies and books, but Judith was, before everything else, a teacher. In Portland, she was known as a writer and a poet. She was someone who could be described as a feminist icon, but she was also approachable and generous, a friend to many.

We didn’t meet in person until years after she sent me that postcard, when I wrote a profile on her for a Seattle-based outlet. I had left the Mercury to work for The Seattle Times, and after years of general assignment reporting that left me feeling scattered and unfocused, I returned to the subject I knew best: abortion policy.

The first time I called Judith for the story, I could tell she didn’t really want to speak to yet another journalist. But the more we talked, the more we got along. Sometimes you meet someone and you just have a feeling that they’ll be important in your life. Anne of Green Gables called them kindred spirits. Though she was already on the edge of her 80s, and I was barely in my 30s when we met, Judith was a kindred spirit. She connected me with other Janes for the story—fascinating, generous women who had been brave in ways that made them the subjects of movies and books. They had survived ordeals in jail and illegal abortions in underground economies, and recounted those experiences to me in full, horrifying detail, but also shared their personal obsessions and pleasures. I talked with one of them about my reality TV fixation; she recommended the Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People.

I met Judith in person for the first time at Case Study Coffee on NE Alberta. We sat in the upstairs space at a long table, and talked until closing time, then outside on a bench. It was not a warm day, but the business at hand was too important not to keep talking about it. My phone battery died, my fingers cramped in the cold as I took notes, and I knew that as long as Judith wanted to talk, I would want to listen.

After the story came out, we became friends, or perhaps that’s what we’d always been. I would let her know whenever I was coming to Portland, and she would email me ahead of time if she had a reading in Seattle. In the meantime we corresponded regularly.

When you meet someone already nearly 80, you know your time with them will likely be limited, but her death in December still surprised me. I think it surprised me because she and the other Janes were so sharp in their intellect and sense of justice as to seem ageless, but of course they were not.

The last time I saw Judith was in July. She’d recently moved, and I met her at Coffeehouse-Five on N Killingsworth. It was a much nicer day than the one years ago, when we’d sat outside in the wintry dark. We found a different bench, under the trees in the sunshine at Portland Community College. It was one of those perfect Portland days, when the sky is slightly golden—more golden than it is in Seattle, an atmospheric quirk I have never quite understood—and we talked about the current political situation, which we were both following with dismay. Judith was the kind of person who didn’t buy into false hope. When you said something was bad, she would agree, and in that clarity, you would feel held. It was awful, but you were in the struggle with Judith. That was a good place to be.

And the fight could also be beautiful. As we sat together on the bright-green lawn, the sprinklers kicking into high gear, Judith showed me pictures on her phone of the Great Columbia Crossing 10k walk she had taken 10 years prior. The organized walk takes place every year, starting from Dismal Nitch in Washington state, then taking the 101 and crossing the entire impossible span of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, the behemoth of engineering that runs four miles across the Columbia. The bridge was the highlight of Judith’s walk, and she talked about it excitedly. We talked about going together the next time the walk was held. “People say we cross a bridge to get to the other side / and that’s true, though there’s more– / on the bridge one day, we walked through the sky,” Judith wrote in a poem about that day she sent via email when I’d come home.

When I heard of Judith’s passing, I looked back through our correspondence. We had written each other after our visit in July, but she had never responded to my final email. When I read my last email to her, I think I understood why. I was surprised by my own message. After some griping about managing a public media newsroom while the president defunded PBS, I said I hoped to see her again next time I was in town, then signed off like this: “Thinking fondly of your walk thru the sky, Megan.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but this is how I will remember Judith forever. It is the final memory and image she, a poet, would leave me with—that of a slightly younger Judith, on that compelling walk, feeling free in her body, marveling at the world around her, a world shaped by her own bravery and moral clarity, showing all of us what is possible.

Easy Street Records Owner Defends, Then Apologizes for, Sympathetic ICE Comments

Audrey Vann — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:30:00 -0800

As Easy Street Records owner Matt Vaughan has demonstrated, posting is almost always a mistake. by Audrey Vann

It really didn’t have to go down like this. On Friday, the long-running West Seattle record shop and cafe, Easy Street Records, posted on Instagram that it’d donate 10 percent of its sales through the weekend to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. This was the store’s way to support Friday’s sort-of “general strike” without cutting staff hours. All day, they’d be blasting song requests from their outdoor speakers. Suggestions poured in: “Know Your Rights” by the Clash, “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye, and “Imagine” by John Lennon.

Then, an hour later, Easy Street liked (accidentally, says the shop’s president Matt Vaughan) and un-liked a lovely screed, bringing it to the top of the comments section:

“ICE is doing God's work. Ain't nobody above the law, and that includes immigration law. Abolishing ICE is a radicalized notion; if people truly wanted change, they'd ask for a reform but abolishing a federal law enforcement agency is pure lunacy. Because of such a fundamental disagreement I will never participate in idiotic calls to boycott nothing. And in spirit of good neighborlyness [sic], here's my song request: Led Zepellin [sic], Immigrant Song.”

People wanted to know why Easy Street liked the comment. Easy Street could’ve said anything, and chose wrong.

“Dude chose Immigrant Song,” wrote Vaughan. “C’mon! He’s trying. Obviously the guy has some decent thoughts…at least has good music taste. I may not agree w what he says, but I’ll fight like hell for him to express his opinion.”

People did not like that. Vaughan doubled down. “We agree w him saying ‘nobody is above the law,’ we agree w his song choice, we appreciate the engagement. It seems the guy is trying to come to grips w things, we can support that even if we don’t agree.”

By “we,” Vaughan must have meant “I,” because he’s “in charge of social media and replying,” says an anonymous Easy Street employee who wanted to keep their job. Vaughan confirmed they were his comments. “Our social media person had the day off,” he wrote in an email to The Stranger. He apologized for speaking for his entire staff of sales clerks and music buyers, whose pithy reels of music recommendations have made them the faces of his account.

Though in the moment, Vaughan kept digging: “I imagine there are some decent ICE agents out there, if u are a quality human being...gotta be a tough job. Clearly we don’t agree w how it’s been managed…and the optics are awful.” The comment has been deleted. But the screenshots are alive, well, and on Reddit.

Realizing his mistake, Vaughan commented that “It takes 20 years (or 58) to build a reputation…and 5 minutes to lose it. I very much understand that notion.”

In an email to The Stranger, Vaughan said he hadn’t seen the bit about ICE doing “God’s work” when he was liking song requests, and had made a mistake by “not reading the whole thing.” (Close readers will note the comment began: “ICE is doing God’s work.”)

“I agreed with the reply the guy saying ‘nobody is above the law,’” Vaughan continues, “I thought he was referring to Trump and the administration, everyone.” He acknowledged that upon reading it again, he can see how it could be referring to “protesters who aren't above the law.”

“This was inappropriate given the circumstances in recent weeks and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. I am terribly sorry to my staff and any customers who feel let down. This was all on me.”

It’s unclear whether Vaughan’s real-time responses and ever-changing explanations for the comments (the apology on Instagram continues to be edited) are a reflection of a man trying to learn from his mistakes or a business owner trying desperately to get back in good graces with his customers. Patrons of Easy Street Records, at least in the online sphere, appear to be split. “This is how you handle a mistake,” one commenter writes. “Performative apology,” another says.

Either way, Vaughan’s employees are bearing the brunt of his thumbs.

“We have received angry calls and people in-store voicing their opinion on Matt's comments,” says an employee. “On behalf of the staff, I just want to reiterate that his comments on Friday were not ours.”

Before you seek retribution on Easy Street with a nasty phone call, remember the last time your boss did something stupid, and you took the hit. My advice to Vaughan: put down the phone. My advice to you: Take your business elsewhere if you please, but leave the workers alone.

Editor's Note: This story has been edited since its publication. The original article stated that Vaughan had continued to edit his apology. The nature of Vaughan's edits to his apology are unclear.

February Things to Do: Film

Audrey Vann — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best film events in February in Seattle. by Audrey Vann

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

The Pacific Northwestern

TUESDAYS THROUGH FEB 24

Despite the Western genre being associated with images of cowboys in dusty deserts, there are, surprisingly, a large number of Western films set in the lush Pacific Northwest, and SIFF’s Pacific Northwestern series is bringing these gorgeous movies to the big screen. The series kicked off last month, but there is still so much great programming to come, like 1959’s The Hanging Tree, starring Gary Cooper as a doctor in a Montana gold rush town (but filmed entirely in Yakima), Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, following a cook and a Chinese immigrant as they team up to steal milk from a prized cow in Oregon Country, and, my personal favorite, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman’s snowbound Western starring Warren Beatty and soundtracked by Leonard Cohen. (SIFF Film Center, 6:30 pm) AUDREY VANN

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo

FEB 5–8

Set in the Chilean desert in the early ‘80s, director Diego Céspedes’s feature debut follows Lidia, an 11-year-old who was abandoned as a baby and raised by a fiercely loving queer found family. Their ragtag clan is ostracized by their sleepy mining town, blamed for a mysterious plague that is believed to be transmitted by a single gaze when two people fall in love. Lidia sets out to defend her loved ones and determine whether the rumor is true or not. The surreal Western explores AIDS panic, transphobia, violence, revenge, marginalization, and prejudice, mixing folktale vibes with the scrappy tenderness of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters. (Northwest Film Forum, times vary) JULIANNE BELL

HUMP! Film Fest

FEB 26–APRIL 30

Look, HUMP! is always good. You already know that this indie porn festival is nothing like the 5-minute clips you watch while bathed in the cold, blue, loveless light of your laptop. They’re creative and silly and usually feel like a friend is sharing their new, naked, art project with you. But if the trailer for this year is any indication, this year’s spring lineup isn't one to miss. It has stop-motion praying mantises, pottery, a sexy Bop It, and the Starfish Sex Beetle. One person managed to weave in sanitation workers and labor solidarity into their submission. Another clearly knows what it’s like to bomb on stage as a standup comedian, and used the power of porn to reimagine it. This festival only happens twice a year, and it’s never the same. Don’t miss this one. (Various locations) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

More

Truth to Fiction: Black Is… Black Ain’t Feb 5, Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm

Fools’ Paradise (lost?) Feb 6–7, SIFF Film Center, 7 pm

Resurrection Feb 6–8, Northwest Film Forum, times vary

A Void in the Cosmos and From There You Sing: Early Pasolini Feb 8–Mar 5, Beacon, times vary

Friday the 13th Feb 13, Beacon, 10 pm

The Bridges of Madison County Feb 14, Beacon, 7 pm

In the Mood for Love Feb 14, Beacon, 10 pm

2026 Sakinah Film Festival Feb 14–15, Northwest Film Forum, 3 pm

Daisies (with Velocity Dance Center) Feb 18–19, Northwest Film Forum, 7:30 pm

Star 80 Feb 22 & 25, Beacon, times vary

Martin Scorsese: Maestro of Cinema Wednesdays Feb 25–Apr 29, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7:30 pm

February Things to Do: Food

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best food and drink events in Seattle in February. by Julianne Bell

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Polina Chesnakova, ‘Chesnok’

FEB 5

Local author (and former Book Larder culinary director) Polina Chesnakova returns with her third and latest cookbook Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora: Recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, a love letter to the food of the Soviet diaspora. Chesnakova, who was born in Ukraine to Russian and Armenian parents from Georgia, has painstakingly documented over 110 regional recipes ranging from Ukrainian varenyky (dumplings) to medovik (honey cake), alongside essays and stories of her childhood memories of cooking and eating. (Book Larder, 6:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Nicki Sizemore, ‘Mind, Body, Spirit, Food’

FEB 9

Trained chef, professional recipe developer, and cookbook author Nicki Sizemore has nearly 20 years of experience in the food industry, but she hasn’t always had an easy relationship with food. She’s shared her journey of overcoming diet culture and health issues on her Substack newsletter and podcast Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD and offers recipes paired with mindfulness techniques, as well as interviews with guests on their relationships with food. Her newest book, also called Mind, Body, Spirit, Food, contains 51 recipes (that just so happen to be free of gluten, due to her medical necessity) alongside mindfulness prompts that invite home cooks to slow down, invoke the five senses, and enjoy the process. (Book Larder, 6:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Naoko Takei Moore, ‘Simply Donabe’

FEB 26

Meals cooked in a donabe (a traditional Japanese earthenware pot) are the original one-pot meals. Besides being energy-efficient and having even heat distribution thanks to their porous material, they’ve also given rise to “nabe o kakomu” (“surrounding the pot”), a culture of communal meals centered around the donabe. Naoko Takei Moore’s new cookbook Simply Donabe demonstrates how you can recreate some of this comforting, nourishing magic in your own kitchen, with recipes like sour minced pork hotpot and miso-simmered ramen, plus side dishes like quick-pickled Napa cabbage and desserts like matcha ice cream. (Book Larder, 6:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

More

Ballard Farmers Market Every Sunday, Ballard Ave, 9 am–noon, free

Capitol Hill Farmers Market Every Sunday, E Denny Way and Nagle Pl, 11 am–3 pm, free

West Seattle Farmers Market Every Sunday, Alaska Junction, 10 am–2 pm, free

Fremont Sunday Market Every Sunday, Evanston Ave N and N 34th St, 10 am–4 pm, free

Strong And Dark Beer Festival Feb 7, Figurehead Brewing Magnolia, noon–5 pm

Hops & Props Feb 21, Museum of Flight, 7–10 pm, 21+

Tacoma Beer Week Feb 27–March 8, various locations across Tacoma

Early Warnings

Taste Washington March 21–22, various locations, 21+

February Things to Do: This & That

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best culture and community events in Seattle in February. by Julianne Bell

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Tết in Seattle

FEB 14–15

Gallop into the Year of the Horse with the Tết Festival, a free, family-friendly event hosted at Seattle Center as part of the Festal World Cultural Program. Browse vendors and health-related booths with free screenings and services, check out lion dances and other performances, enter some eating competitions if you’re feeling bold, and watch a fashion show with traditional Vietnamese garments. Don’t forget to wear red and yellow or gold for good luck! (Seattle Center, 11 am–6 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL

Babylon Death Party

FEB 27

The intimate Rabbit Box Theatre will host this evening of witchcraft, led by the psychic, medium, and ceremonial artist Mugga Rose (formerly KOOK Teflon), who recently returned to Seattle. Shamanic arts throat singer Soriah will cultivate otherworldly vibrations, followed by an occult performance by storyteller and psychic Doña Macabra. Meagan Angus, Hannah Haddix, and Gabriela of All Gates Within will impart stories and spoken word, Mugga Rose will read from her book, and Jessica Henry and CURRĄŊ will curate a market full of “unique, peculiar, one-of-a-kind creations” from artists. The night is also in part a tribute to the late “fire-tongued, spell-bright, never forgotten” witch Jaguar Bullet. (Rabbit Box Theatre, 7–10 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

More

The Real Twin Peaks Various locations across Snoqualmie Valley, Feb 19–22

Riding Together: 135 Years of Cycling in Seattle Through Apr 26, Museum of History & Industry

Early Warnings

Isaac Mizrahi April 9, Triple Door, 7:30 pm

February Things to Do: Music

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best February music events in Seattle. by Julianne Bell

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Jade: That’s Showbiz Baby! Tour

FEB 6

I constantly annoy everyone I know by bragging that I was three years early to knowing about Chappell Roan, so I need you to believe me when I say that former Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall is going to be a main pop girlie within the next couple of years. She’s already big in the UK and steadily gaining popularity stateside. No one else out there is doing it like her—I mean, who drops a fully art-directed visual album for their solo debut?? There are no skips, either. You can hear touches of all the great pop divas, like Gaga, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Diana Ross. The opener, “Angel of My Dreams,” about Jade’s ambivalent relationship to fame, is dreamy, celestial pop goodness reminiscent of “Lucky” by Britney Spears. I also love the track “Before You Break My Heart,” which samples a recording of Jade singing the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love” as a little girl, and which she says is written from the POV of her “younger self, begging me not to forget her and how far we’ve come.” (Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

Robyn Hitchcock

FEB 6

There is only one musician alive who could write a song titled “Tropical Flesh Mandala,” and that magus is 72-year-old Englishman in Nashville Robyn Hitchcock. A veteran psychedelic-rock court jester whom you should take very seriously, he continues to rock unorthodoxly and spin surrealistic yarns of deep mirth and poignancy at an age when most of his peers have declined creatively or dropped out of the game. Had the man with the lightbulb head only released those Soft Boys records—especially 1980’s jangly, neo-retro-psych classic Underwater Moonlight—he’d still be a hall-of-famer. But, of course, Hitchcock’s also built a prolific solo career studded with idiosyncratic gems that extrapolate on the brain-tickling elements of sonic soul mates Syd Barrett and John Lennon. Recent albums such as the earworm-intensive Shufflemania! and the acoustic-guitar-heavy, instrumental Life After Infinity prove that Robyn’s noggin’s still teeming with great, weird ideas. You never quite know which gaggle of tunes you’ll get at a Hitch gig, but you’re always guaranteed transport to more fascinating headspaces—particularly if he dips into 1981’s Black Snake Diamond Röle (hint, hint). (Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Blood Cultures

FEB 11

They’re an anonymous, experimental indie-pop band who rock out on chillwave in hoods. What more do you need? I’m all about bands wearing disguises, and with the Residents out of commission for the moment (sigh), a quartet that tinks and reverbs and chirps along to videos of themselves (or somebody in hoods) lifting weights, shooting guns, making a mess with Chinese takeout, and turning themselves into scarecrows, just might fill dat gap. That was the gist of their video for the “Set It on Fire” single from their 2021 album LUNO, at least. What they’ll do in concert, I have no idea whatsoever, but it’s got to be conceptual. (Neumos,
7 pm, 21+) ANDREW HAMLIN

GZA

FEB 11

The fact that “Does GZA have a degree in physics?” pops up as the top GZA-related query on Google is a fitting testament to the scientific rhymes of the Wu-Tang cofounder and eldest statesman. Though he has appeared as a guest lecturer at Harvard and several other lauded institutions of learning (mostly about the field of life rather than the official study of physics), GZA—aka the Genius—keeps his most heralded published material on wax. His current tour is in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the release of his classic RZA-produced sophomore album, Liquid Swords. The album is an important document in the Wu catalog as it captured the essential Wu formula in amber—RZA’s developing cinematic, hard-knocking East Coast beats, heavy kung-fu samples, stacked guest verses from bandmates—while the group was in the process of taking over the rap world. Seeing a legendary artist perform a classic album, especially with a live band, is always a great opportunity to shout your favorite lines with a bunch of rowdy fans, and who knows, maybe he’ll give us a taste of his long-awaited Dark Matter project. (Nectar Lounge, 8 pm, 21+) TODD HAMM

Cécile McLorin Salvant

FEB 12–13 & 15

Cécile McLorin Salvant has the most exciting voice in contemporary jazz. It’s not just her pitch-perfect voice, which reaches the heights of Edith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, and Kate Bush, but the inventiveness with which she flexes her vocals. On her most recent album, Oh Snap, the three-time Grammy Award winner and MacArthur Fellow croons through a dozen short, intimate original songs (plus an a cappella cover of the Commodores’ “Brick House”) that she never intended to see the light of day. Setting out on a personal creative quest to place spontaneity and joy at the heart of her writing process, Salvant tinkered with home recording programs to craft personal songs inspired by the music that soundtracked her childhood in 1990s Miami, from grunge and pop boy bands to classical and folk music. The result of the album is a delightfully chaotic audio journal that will please traditional jazz fans as well as genre rulebreakers like Erykah Badu and Solange. (Jazz Alley, 7:30 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

Ghostface Killah

FEB 15

Four days after his brother in Wu, GZA, touches the stage at Nectar, Ghostface Killah—he of many names and statement furs—plays the Crocodile. The silver-tongued storyteller is perhaps the greatest yarn-spinner in rap history; his extensive catalog stretches, of course, back to the Staten Island genesis of Wu-Tang Clan, and with very few breaks, extends to this past summer’s Supreme Clientele 2, which arrived complete with the typically preposterous skits, dicey slang, and tall tales of street corner business ethics you’d expect. It does pay to mention that not all Ghost’s exploits have aged well, and recent reports of homophobia and paternal negligence in relation to his queer son, who happens to be the rapper/singer Infinite Coles, show that he may have carried some of the uglier side of ’90s rap with him into the current day. Here’s hoping he makes an effort to clear things up by showtime. (Crocodile, 7 pm, 21+) TODD HAMM

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore with Tiny Vipers

FEB 17

After touring together for several years, ambient musician/vocalist Julianna Barwick and experimental harpist Mary Lattimore developed a “musical telepathy” that became the basis for their newly released collaborative album, Tragic Magic. The result sounds like what would have been if there were synthesizers in the 18th century, thanks in part to their access to the Philharmonie de Paris’ Musée de la Musique’s instrument collection while recording the album. The duo miraculously recorded the album over just nine days, shortly after the 2025 LA wildfires, and poured their emotions from the tragedy into this meditation on the healing power of improvisation and shared experiences. They will support the album alongside Seattle-based experimental folk musician Tiny Vipers. (Crocodile, 8 pm, 21+) AUDREY VANN

Bitchin Bajas, Geologist

FEB 22

Don’t be deceived by Chicago trio Bitchin Bajas’ goofy name: They’re one of the world’s headiest groups. Evolving out of neo-krautrockers Cave, BB synthesists Cooper Crain and Dan Quinlivan and saxophonist Rob Frye have been enhancing their melodic chops, creating majestic tracks that would sound righteous filling Europe’s most ornate cathedrals. This past October at Neptune Theatre, they outshone their much more celebrated headliners Stereolab in a set that made me feel as if I were on five hits of Owsley. Animal Collective member Geologist (aka Brian Weitz) just released Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, the follow-up to last year’s arcane, abstracted Americana LP, A Shaw Deal, with Sleepy Doug Shaw. The new hurdy-gurdy-powered album’s a mystical avant-rock trip that I dig more than anything his parent group have done. (Sunset Tavern, 8 pm, 21+) DAVE SEGAL

clipping.

FEB 25

clipping. have let it be known that they spend a lot of time thinking about what space sounds like, but it’s their creative process that may capture the idea best: Aside from a few notable exceptions, they use no samples, no presets—they make every sound from scratch. In short, they create in a vacuum. Space also permeates their lyrics and concepts. Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany pop up in verses; they have entire albums billed as Afrofuturist space operas. But it’s important to remember the three humanoids amidst the sci-fi poetry: vocalist Daveed Diggs (whom you may remember as ol’ Tommie Jefferson in the original cast of Hamilton), and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. Hutson and Snipes graft jagged power electronics to the cyberpunk quilt, bold and discordant by design, while Diggs pens horrorcore anthems that he unleashes breathlessly. The result is like a cleaner, more theatrical Death Grips—both of which are equally beautiful and terrifying. Tonight’s show opener, Open Mike Eagle, is also not to be missed. (Showbox, 8 pm, all ages) TODD HAMM

Patty Griffin, Rickie Lee Jones

FEB 26

Patty Griffin is one of the of the most consistently underrated American singer/songwriters in recent decades, boasting shotgun pipes and writing chops that have led Emmylou Harris, Ellis Paul, Kelly Clarkson, Rory Block, Dave Hause, Sugarland, Bette Midler and the Chicks, to cover her. And if you don’t believe them, take the word of Robert Plant, who installed her in his Band of Joy and still comes around to sing backups, notably on her latest album Crown of Roses, a tribute to her late mother. Rickie Lee Jones has a new live album out, Way Up High (Live Boston ’89); she’s looking to consolidate her longer-running position in the firmament. Not that it needs much consolidation—she had a hit on the singles chart with “Chuck E.’s in Love” back in 1979, and in 2012 she sang “Sympathy for the Devil” in the matter-of-fact scratchy diction of Mr. Scratch himself. Not even Jagger managed that. (Moore Theatre, 7:30 pm) ANDREW HAMLIN

säje

FEB 26–MARCH 1

The jazz-vocal quartet säje (rhymes with “beige”), took home two Grammys between 2023 and 2025. They consist of Sara Gazarek, Seattle native and graduate of Roosevelt High’s mighty jazz program; Amanda Taylor, also of our fair city; Johnaye Kendrick, a San Diego native who moved north to teach at Cornish College of the Arts; and Erin Bentlage, who came out from Vermont to teach in Los Angeles. They blend jazz, soul, blues, pop, folk, and Gazarek’s ever-evolving experimental edge, into an elaborate mix emphasizing complex chords and braided vocal parts. They solve problems neatly, too—stuck without a recording studio during the pandemic, they rented an Airbnb and dragged their own gear into it. That’s how they clocked their first Grammy. Excelsior! (Jazz Alley, 7:30 and 9:30 pm, all ages) ANDREW HAMLIN

Jackie O Motherfucker, Abronia, Von Wildenhaus

FEB 27

Way back in the ’00s, Pacific Northwest psychonauts Jackie O Motherfucker were standard-bearers for what venerable British mag The Wire termed “New Weird America”—a hazy axis of US musicians who infused folk and rock with a lysergic looseness and who mutated songforms into third-eye-punching jams. At their best, JOMF boast the opiated tunefulness of Relatively Clean Rivers and the organic, free-range rock sprawl of Amon Düül I. Leader and sole constant Tom Greenwood keeps changing the design of JOMF’s freak flag (as well as personnel), but the colors always astound. Portland’s Abronia have been steadily rising in the underground with five albums of peyote-spiked, Popol Vuh-like soundtrack grandeur, including the new Shapes Unravel (out 2/20 on Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube). Listen to songs such as “Cauldron’s Gold,” “Smoke Fingers,” and “Walker’s Dead Birds,” and feel mountain-sized. Tacoma’s Von Wildenhaus are unpredictable eclecticists whose songs range from chamber-jazz torch songs sung by the alluring vocalist Billie Bloom to anthemic, Grandaddy-esque indie rock to Middle Eastern–inflected electronic pop to the most gorgeous song ever about ketamine. (Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+) DAVE SEGAL

cupcakKe

FEB 27

Get your loved one what they really want this Valentine’s Day: tickets to see cupcakKe. I was introduced to the Chicago rapper in 2018 when she released Ephorize, and was immediately obsessed with the icy percussion that is just as frosty as her blue metallic lipstick on the cover. It belongs in the holy trinity of winter albums alongside Björk’s Vespertine and Whitney Houston’s My Love Is Your Love. On her newest album, The BakKery, cupcakKe serves up a fresh batch of witty, pearl-clutching poetry with memorable tracks like “One of My Bedbugs Ate My Pussy” and the very romantic “Fist Me.” As always, cupcakKe’s magic lies in her ability to pair the most random topics and references with unexpected production styles, such as the silky-smooth “Akeelah,” a city-pop-inspired breakup song with references to the 2006 film Akeelah and the Bee. (Showbox, 8:30 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

Esther Rose

MAR 3

I discovered Esther Rose in 2017 when she released her debut, This Time Last Night, an intimate country/folk album that feels like she’s playing for you around a campfire. Now on her fifth studio album, Want, the New Orleans native defies the expectations of what an Esther Rose album can be with bold indie rock arrangements and fuzzed-out guitars. As it’s depicted on the album’s cover, with Rose in a gauzy white cotton dress beside a Rose in a black pleather catsuit, the album balances hard and soft, juxtaposing songs like the Liz Phair–esque track “Ketamine” with the stripped-down piano ballad “Color Wheel.” The album also includes “Scars,” a duet with Seattle-based troubadour Dean Johnson—we love to see it! For this local date, Rose will be joined by fellow New Orleans singer-songwriter Thomas Dollbaum. (Sunset Tavern, 8 pm, 21+) AUDREY VANN

More

The Wayne Horvitz Ensemble Feb 2, 9, 16, 23 and March 2 & 9, Royal Room, 7:30 and 8:30 pm, all ages until 10 pm

The Stylistics Feb 5–8, Jazz Alley, times vary, all ages

Purelink, 'no hup,' Hünter Feb 10, Substation, 7 pm, 21+

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Feb 11, Woodlawn Hall, 7:30 pm, all ages

Iris Unveiled Feb 12–15, Benaroya Hall, times vary, all ages

Biblioteka, TeZATalks, Acapulco Lips Feb 12, Neumos, 7 pm, 21+

Sudan Archives Feb 14, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Christopher Owens Feb 17, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Living Hour Feb 16, Vera Project, 7 pm, all ages

Cat Power Feb 20, Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Lola Kirke Feb 21, Fremont Abbey, 8 pm, all ages

SRJO Presents: The Music of Jimmy Smith and Oliver Nelson Feb 21–22, Benaroya Hall, times vary, all ages

Cardi B: Little Miss Drama Tour Feb 22, Climate Pledge Arena, 7:30 pm, all ages

Joan Shelley Feb 22, Ballard Homestead, 7:30 pm, all ages

Suzanne Vega Feb 22, Neptune Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages

Neko Case Feb 27, Edmonds Center for the Arts, 7:30 pm, all ages

Early Warnings

St. Vincent Mar 5, Town Hall Seattle, 8 pm, all ages

Toody Cole, Semisoft Mar 6, Tractor Tavern, 8:30 pm, 21+

Blackwater Holylight, Som, Muñeca Mar 10, Neumos, 7 pm, 21+

Indigo De Souza Mar 10, Showbox, 8 pm, all ages

Mt Fog, iroiro, DJ Martin Douglas Mar 12, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Peaches Mar 14, Showbox, 8:30 pm, 21+

Aimee Mann: 22 ½ Lost in Space Anniversary Mar 15, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Conan Gray Mar 16, Climate Pledge Arena, 8 pm

Dirty Three Mar 21, Neumos, 7 pm, 21+

Marissa Nadler Mar 26, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Skullcrusher Mar 30, Barboza, 7 pm, 21+

Eliza McLamb Mar 31, Neumos, 7 pm, all ages

Raye: This Tour May Contain New Music Apr 3, WAMU Theater, 8 pm, all ages

Cass McCombs, Hand Habits Apr 4, Tractor Tavern, 8:30 pm, 21+

Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman May 3, Paramount Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages

Florence + the Machine May 12, Climate Pledge Arena, 7:30 pm, all ages

The Last Dinner Party May 22–23, Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, all ages

February Things to Do: Visual Art

Amanda Manitach — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best February visual art events in Seattle. by Amanda Manitach

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Timothy Siciliano: The Lunch Before the Détente

THROUGH FEB 28

It’s kinky, it’s neon, it’s fascism. Timothy Siciliano spent the past three years creating a suite of paintings that hold a mirror to our times—a campy hot take on corruption and carnival rendered in luscious hypercolor. His war generals and dominatrix figures populate a sadomasochistic fever dream with echoes of The Night Porter, while other moments harken to Weimer-era artists like Otto Dix, who painted the grotesqueries of their zeitgeist with unflinching color and a dash of gallows humor. You’ll want to linger with cacophonic compositions dripping bullet shells and blossoms, gender-ambiguous bulges, leather, chains, and ruby pearls of blood. But don’t fret: He doesn’t gild the fascist lily with all sugar and sex. There are plenty of flies swirling around literal shit. Siciliano proves that in trying times, clowning the bad guys can be a pleasure. (studio e) AMANDA MANITACH

Scent Lending Library

THROUGH MARCH

What does God’s sweat smell like? Or the anoxic cold of Eau De Space? Smell for yourself at the Scent Lending Library, an olfactory exhibition that arrived at Fogue after its five-month run at Olfactory Art Keller in New York. While determining the base note of divine perspiration may involve a smidge of poetic license, NASA did actually work with chemists in 2008 to recreate the smell of the void (as relayed by space-walking astronauts), and Australian-born documentary filmmaker turned olfactory artist Donna Lipowitz has bottled these distillations for your sniffing pleasure. There are over 100 scents to explore (70 of which are available to check out for two weeks at a time), including delightful nose poems like Old Luggage, Bermuda Triangle, and American Psycho, as well as more classic fare, including the oldest continuously produced perfume, Guerlain’s 1889 Jicky. The sensory excursion to the world right under our nose is the perfect antidote to algorithm purgatory. (Fogue Studios & Gallery) AMANDA MANITACH

Samantha Yun Wall: What We Leave Behind

FEB 5–OCT 4

Overlapping figures of female bodies emerge and dissolve in Samantha Yun Wall’s velvet monochrome worlds. The Portland-based artist (and winner of the 2024 Betty Bowen Award) is a master of rendering images in ink and conté, where layers of shadow intertwine with stark black silhouettes. Wall’s imagery reflects the artist’s multi-ethnic background, blending Korean folk stories with elements from Eurocentric mythology to create scenes that seem plucked from an untold fairy tale. Her solo at Seattle Art Museum features new works haunted by the iconography of the pasqueflower, a motif throughout Korean lore, which Wall has entwined with the memory of a lost grandmother. While there, pause for Song Cycle, a newly installed kinetic sculpture by Chris Kallmyer, which uses vintage train-station signage to generate ever-revolving cascades of poetic fragments—words clacking and flipping through a mechanical stream of consciousness. (Seattle Art Museum) AMANDA MANITACH

Once Removed 01: Art in Vacant Spaces

FEB 21

It’s the first installment of what is whispered to be a recurring event (yes, please) granting artists free rein in a transitional site slated for demolition—in this case, a house in Greenwood. The project was conceived by Sammy Skidmore and Zoë Hensley, two gallerists with day jobs at commercial galleries wanting to expand into unconventional spaces while showcasing work too large, too experimental, or too existential for the white cube. Artists for the inaugural edition (probing themes of sex, power, and the poetics of space) include Nadia Ahmed, Rachael Comer, Jenikka Cruz, Gaeun Kim, and Ali Meyer. The free, all-ages party starts at 6 p.m. and goes late, with music by DJ spicycherrypop and Friends of the Road Ensemble. (DM @once__removed for address) AMANDA MANITACH

More

Excellence in Fibers X Through Feb 14, Schack Art Center, free

Welldweller: New Works by KEMC Through Feb 14, Specialist Gallery, free

Dan Webb: Yespalier Through Feb 21, Greg Kucera Gallery, free

Aisha Harrison: Porous Body Through Feb 22, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, free

Black History Month Exhibition Through Feb 26, M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery, free

Austin Lewis Through Feb 28, James Harris Gallery, free

Crystalline Lens - Curated by Allyce Wood Through Feb 28, SOIL, free

Group Show: Landscapes Through Feb 28, Winston Wächter, free

Kandis Susol Through Feb 28, Winston Wächter, free

New Nordic: Cuisine, Aesthetics, and Place Through Mar 8, National Nordic Museum

Susan Meiselas: Crossings Through Mar 22, Photographic Center Northwest, free

The One-Two Punch: 100 Years of Robert Colescott Through Mar 29, Tacoma Art Museum

Boren Banner Series: Camille Trautman Through Apr 12, Frye Art Museum, free

Priscilla Dobler Dzul: Water Carries the Stories of Our Stars Through Apr 19, Frye Art Museum, free

Jonathan Lasker: Drawings and Studies Through Sept 27, Frye Art Museum, free

A Room for Animal Intelligence Through Nov 1, Seattle Art Museum

Ten Thousand Things Through Spring 2027, Wing Luke Museum

Ash-Glazed Ceramics from Korea and Japan Through July 12, 2027, Seattle Art Museum

Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Bronze) Through Oct 2027, Olympic Sculpture Park, free

Chris Kallmyer: Song Cycle Ongoing, Seattle Art Museum

Gossip: Between Us Ongoing, Tacoma Art Museum

Haunted Ongoing, Tacoma Art Museum

Qiu Zhijie: Map of the History of Science and Technology Ongoing, Olympic Sculpture Park, free

Indira Allegra: The Book of Zero Opens Feb 4, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, free

Susan Bennerstrom: The Light Is Never the Same Twice Opens Feb 5, Patricia Rovzar Gallery, free

Worlds Seen and Unseen: Paintings by Gary Faigin Opens Feb 5, Harris Harvey Gallery, free

Wallflowers Opens Feb 7, Frye Art Museum, free

Legacy: Highlights from the Permanent Collection Opens Feb 14, Tacoma Art Museum

Project NW: Ralph Pugay Opens Feb 14, Tacoma Art Museum

Early Warnings

Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest Opens Mar 5, Seattle Art Museum

Actualize AiR and SOIL Collaboration: Imprints and Echoes - Curated by Julia Anderson Opens Mar 5, SOIL, free

Aimee Lee: Tethered Opens Mar 6, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Crafting Futures: Emerging Artists Invitational Opens Mar 6, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

George & David Lewis: Deeply Rooted Opens Mar 6, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Interwoven Narratives Opens Mar 9, M. Rosetta Hunter Art Gallery, free

Water Ways: Healing the Circle of Water and Life Opens Mar 26, Schack Art Center, free

Boren Banner Series: Chloe King Opens Apr 15, Frye Art Museum, free

Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan Opens May 13, Seattle Art Museum

Tom Lloyd Opens May 16, Frye Art Museum, free

February Things to Do: Literature

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best book events in February in Seattle. by Julianne Bell

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Mark Z. Danielewski

FEB 4

Mark Z. Danielewski is most well known for his debut novel and postmodern horror cult classic House of Leaves, which famously requires active participation (including turning the book upside down at times) from the reader to decipher its multiple nonlinear narratives, cryptic text, and copious footnotes. Reading it feels like a descent into madness and will have you glancing around to make sure no one (or nothing) else is in the room with you. He’s now embarking on a tour to promote his longest novel to date, Tom’s Crossing, which came out last October and clocks in at 1,200 pages. It’s a dark, epic Western/ horror hybrid that required 10 drafts and which Danielewski has said he considers the “pinnacle” of his work. Here’s a chance to catch a living horror legend in the flesh. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL

‘Document’ by Amelia Rosselli with Translator Deborah Woodard with Rachel Karyo

FEB 4

A newly translated collection of 1970s anti-fascist poetry by a female poet? I’m listening! Italian poet Amelia Rosselli’s last collection to be translated into English, Document, explores how poetry can document our contemporary experiences through the lens of classical models. Rosselli was long obsessed with classical sonnets, particularly Petrarchan sonnets, in which meaning is conveyed through sequence and structure. Through the collection of 175 poems, Rosselli speaks to her experiences in postwar Italy, meditating on violence, class struggle, religion, consumerism, and capitalism, all topics that unfortunately still resonate 50 years after they were written. For this Q&A and book signing, Document translator Deborah Woodard will be joined by poet Rachel Karyo. (Third Place Books Ravenna, 7 pm, all ages, free) AUDREY VANN

Chuck Klosterman

FEB 15

Chuck Klosterman bucked himself up from tiny-town obscurity all the way to toast of Manhattan and staff position at the Gray Lady itself (though he’s since moved to Portland). Music scribing put him on top, but he’s branched out into broader cultural criticism, plus the occasional novel; now he’s tackling “America’s game” in time for Super Bowl weekend. His new book, Football, approaches the mighty gridiron as a “hyperobject” so massive in time/space that its true contours can’t be mapped. As an honest effort, though, he essays the six-man variant (silly me, I only knew about eight-man), the myth of the Great Man Theory (or at least Great Jock Theory), the sport’s seamless melding with television, and the morality of potentially crippling violence as public spectacle. No word on whether he’ll tackle arena football (Washington Wolfpack and Seattle Sabercats represent!), women’s football (we’ve got the Majestics, the Spartans, and the Thunder), fantasy football (I vote ecchh), and/or video games (scratch Madden, I’m sticking with Atari). Want to know more? Ask the answer man himself. (Town Hall, 7:30 pm, all ages) ANDREW HAMLIN

Nicola Griffith

FEB 17

Seattle-based author and self-described “queer cripple with a PhD” Nicola Griffith has received countless honors, including two Washington State Book Awards and six Lambda Literary Awards, and was inducted into MOPOP’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2024. Her novels Hild, Spear, and Menewood explore the medieval era through a queer perspective, and she also cofounded the #CripLit movement with the late activist Alice Wong. Her latest work, She Is Here, is a new installment in PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series, in which “today’s edgiest fiction writers showcase their most provocative and politically challenging stories.” Griffith’s contribution combines fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and artwork to discuss topics ranging from disability justice to the distinction between love and ownership. (Third Place Books Ravenna, 7 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL

More

Aja Monet Feb 5, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Emily Nemens Feb 11, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm

Roddy Bottum Feb 13, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm

Nick Offerman Feb 15, Moore Theatre, 7 pm, all ages

Cristina Rivera Garza & Javier Zamora Feb 24, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Early Warnings

James McBride March 3, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Stephen Graham Jones March 30, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

George Saunders: Vigil: A Novel Apr 7, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Patrick Radden Keefe April 22, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Marlon James May 6, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Emily Wilson May 12, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Tommy Orange May 21, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

February Things to Do: Performance

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

The best performance events in February in Seattle. by Julianne Bell

Want more? Here's everything we recommend this month: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Next Exit

FEB 5–21

Meet j. chavez, a Seattle theatre maven who won the KCACTF (Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival)’s National Undergraduate Playwriting Award (whew), for their opus how to clean your room (and remember all your trauma). Their new play Next Exit deals passionately, yet sympathetically, with a man named Miguel trapped on a highway (sans car, I think), who is communing with and deriving philosophical companionship from a dead possum called Orlando. Some deer come out, and a Lady In Yellow, and a sinister force that threatens to eat up anyone and anything lingering too long by the sizzling side of I-5. I’m not clear on how this all flows together. But you should indubitably find out. (Annex Theatre, times vary, all ages) ANDREW HAMLIN

Depths of Wikipedia Live

FEB 12

These days, there are only a handful of accounts that keep me from deleting Instagram altogether: Flamenco diva Charo (whom regularly gives life advice with a massive glass of wine), Our Lord and Savior Britney Spears (who I honestly just need to check on once a week to make sure she’s okay), and, of course, Depths of Wikipedia. Run by journalist and comedian Annie Rauwerda, Depths of Wikipedia scours the deep, dark depths of the free online encyclopedia for the site's most obscure, magical, and bizarre entries. Some memorable examples include a moth species named Freak, a medieval tradition called Feast of the Ass, and the Japanese concept of “hatsuyume,” referring to the first dream one has in the New Year. Rauwerda is bringing her live show of comedy and research back to Seattle to answer all your burning questions, like “When was ciabatta invented?” and “Why is there anything at all?” (Neptune Theatre, 7 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

Young Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story

FEB 19–MAR 15

Keiko Green is a playwright, screenwriter, and performer who splits her time between Seattle and LA, and has written for TV shows like Hulu’s Interior Chinatown and the upcoming Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles. Last fall, Seattle hosted productions of two of her plays: Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play, a wacky time-traveling comedy set in 1999, and Hells Canyon, a chilling horror thriller. Now, there’s another opportunity to glimpse even more of Green’s impressive range with the Seattle Children’s Theatre premiere of her play Young Dragon, which shows Bruce Lee as an ambitious young man finding his place in the world in Seattle. I’m willing to bet audience members of all ages will be moved by Bruce’s journey to becoming a “flexible, fluid, and flowing master.” Seattle Children’s Theatre recently made the difficult decision to pull a two-week April run of Young Dragon from the Kennedy Center due to the impact of the Trump administration, which makes it even more important to support local productions like this one. (Seattle Children’s Theatre, times vary) JULIANNE BELL

Jimmy O. Yang

FEB 27 & 28

Hilarious Asian-Millennial perspectives spill forth from Jimmy O. Yang at a rapid pace in his stand-up performances. Sure, the actor and former strip-joint DJ covers some familiar ground: relationships, parent-child interactions, the importance of friendships, how different cultures talk about money, media representation of his people—and the pressure he feels as a high-profile Asian to do his tribe proud. But the Chinese American comic also tackles some less common subjects, such as the feet etiquette of different cultures, the limited options for Halloween costumes among Asians (“I was Bruce Lee for six years.”), whether it’s okay for Asians to say the N-word when singing along to rap songs, as well as an advanced lesson on how to tell Asians apart by the sound they make when they’re disappointed. He also does the best tai chi joke I’ve ever heard. With his acting chops honed in TV comedy shows such as Silicon Valley and Space Force and the movie Crazy Rich Asians, Yang has become an efficient and super-expressive joke machine. (Paramount Theatre, 7 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

More

Topdog/Underdog Feb 4–Mar 1, ArtsWest, times vary

Bridge Project 2025 with DaeZhane Day, kelly langeslay, and No Girls No Masters Feb 6–8, Velocity, times vary

Bosco Presents: GRINDHAUS Feb 7, Crocodile, 10:30 pm, 21+

The Wiz Feb 10–15, Paramount Theatre, times vary, all ages

The Serpent Sisters Tour: Nymphia Wind and Plastique Tiara Feb 15, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Rose Jarboe’s Rose: You Are Who You Eat Feb 19–21, On the Boards, 8 pm

Fellow Travelers Feb 21–Mar 1, McCaw Hall, times vary

Early Warnings

Amy O’Neal: Again, There Is No Other (The Remix) Mar 26–28, On the Boards, 8 pm

Pacific Northwest Ballet Presents: Giselle Apr 10–19, McCaw Hall, times vary, all ages

Jonathan Van Ness Apr 24, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Margaret Cho Apr 19, Moore Theatre, 7 pm, all ages

Seattle Opera: Carmen May 2–17, McCaw Hall, times vary

Fauxnique: How Do I Look? May 7–9, On the Boards, 8 pm

Drag Race Episode Five: Return of Rate-A-Queen

Mike Kohfeld — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 12:11:00 -0800

Episode Five tapped the brakes on Season 18 with the Rate-A-Queen Talent Show. This two-episode story arc suspends the conventional Drag Race challenges and culminates in only a single elimination, but we get to see the queens in a solo performance format. After last week’s “Faintgate,” I am absolutely ready for a gay-ass variety show. by Mike Kohfeld

Episode Five tapped the brakes on Season 18 with the Rate-A-Queen Talent Show. This two-episode story arc suspends the conventional Drag Race challenges and culminates in only a single elimination, but we get to see the queens in a solo performance format.

After last week’s “Faintgate,” I am absolutely ready for a gay-ass variety show.

There’s Friendships, Lovers, and Barbecues

Rate-A-Queen splits the cast in two: in week one, half the cast performs and the other half judges; then in week two, their roles reverse. The highest rated queens lip-sync for the win while the lowest rated queens of each week are declared the bottom two and must lip-sync-for-their-lives.

We’ve seen Rate-A-Queen in previous seasons, but it’s always been part of the premiere, before the queens get a sense of who’s-who in the competition. As a result, the ranking has historically been less about strategy and more about genuine reactions to the performances. So Season 18 threw a curveball when it put Rate-A-Queen in Week Five, after the queens have built friendships… and have had plenty of time to size up their competition. Kenya, who had wanted to kick off Episode One with the talent show, did not understand why they’d play Rate-A-Queen in the middle of the season. “We already know each other! There’s friendships. There’s lovers. There’s barbecues.” I’m waiting for an invite to that barbecue.

Our local queen and frontrunner Jane Don’t worried that the other queens would rate her in the bottom regardless of how well she does in the talent show simply to eliminate a threat. “I planned to be judged by RuPaul,” Jane grumbled, “but now I’m being judged by a bunch of bitches from Florida who can’t read.”

The Miami girls—mother/daughter Athena and Juicy, plus “Auntie” Mia—had a natural alliance, and Athena quickly snagged Kenya as a fourth vote in her favor. But it was team GLAM! from the Q-Pop Girl Groups challenge that emerged as the superpower of the episode: Nini, Mia, Ciara, Myki, and Kenya (yes, Kenya is playing both sides. Werk!). They strategically split themselves between the two talent performances so they could rate each other highly in each episode.

The storyline potential of Rate-A-Queen is more useful at the top of a season, when the slower pace gives audiences time to get to know the full cast. Here, it felt like a loss of momentum at a critical point in the season, when viewers are more likely to tune out for a non-elimination episode that felt more like Survivor than RuPaul’s Drag Race. (Give us a Mini-Challenge! I will die on this hill.)

Mama Mia, Starr On the Rise

This week’s performers were Ciara Myst, Juicy Love Dion, Nini Coco, Vita VonTesse Starr, Darlene Mitchell, and Mia Starr, while the remaining queens rated their performances. Each queen got 60 seconds to prove their star quality.

Nini treated us to her genius Mother Mantis routine in the talent show, but got mid-ratings by her castmates for her act of drag déjà vu. Darlene did a campy country song about screws, nails, and drills and Vita gave us a shaky aerobics routine. All three were rated safe. One would think a savvy queen would use frontrunner Vita’s slip-up in this episode to put her in the bottom, but no. These queens are not built for Survivor-style play.

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Ciara went with an unconventional lip-sync to a raw piece of original poetry about her struggles with depression that highlighted her exquisite costume construction, but it did not translate well to the Drag Race mainstage, and her performance was rated last by the queens.

Mia and Juicy proved that Drag Race is really all about splits, tricks, and death drops. (Sigh.) As far as drag goes, I’ve always been more attracted to the weird, cerebral, and unconventional (AKA Seattle vibes), so the polished, dancing Drag Race diva act feels tired to me. I literally groaned aloud when judge Ross Matthews said that Ciara’s poetry performance needed a death drop to grab his attention.

Flips and dips may not be my cup of tea, but the Miami girls killed it. Juicy did an exquisite dance number in Ready Player One drag, skillfully shimmying across every inch of the mainstage. Mia brought us Y2K video ho with a smart mashup of hip hop dance and drag excellence. Go listen to “Mama Mia [Runway Mix]” by Mia Starr: it’ll cure whatever ails you, I promise.

Ultimately, the “most hated girls in Miami” got their way (thanks, Mama Athena). Juicy and Mia were rated as the top two queens by their peers. This marked a turning point for Mia: she’s finally getting a top-four edit rather than the “filler queen” cut she’s had in past weeks.

Juicy and Mia lip-synced-for-the-win to guest judge Zara Larsson’s “Pretty Ugly.” This high-energy pop track became the perfect soundtrack for a hung jury: RuPaul declared a tie after an epic auntie-niece dance-off.

Larsson also treated us to a Swedish translation of RuPaul’s classic “good luck, and don’t fuck it up”: “Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpe,” which literally translates to: “now you’ve really taken a shit in the blue closet.” I’m gonna need to hear RuPaul say this at some point this season.

Jane Don’t Gives Good (Talking) Head

Jane Didn’t perform this week, but we still got plenty from her. Beyond being anxious about her castmates sabotaging her with Rate-A-Queen, she gave top-tier side-eye cutaways during the queens’ talent acts. She questioned Ciara’s choice to feature poetry, citing “drag family trauma” after her drag sister Irene was sent home first on Season 16 for a similar performance in the talent show. It sounds like Jane will be taking the conventional route next week–maybe we’ll see her do a death drop for Ross Matthews.

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As part of the “Not Today, Satin” runway category, Jane was anything but conventional. She slithered down the runway in a sky blue satin gown with sun and cloud details, complete with a giant orange-and-pink feathered bird draped over her shoulders. “I’ve had this bird for a few years. Her name is Denise.” Her mind.

If a queen can win both America’s Next Drag Superstar and Miss Congeniality on the same season, it’s gonna be Jane. Kenya’s designer wasn’t able to deliver her satin runway look in time for filming, but Jane saved the day by lending Kenya an oversized satin coat that Kenya quick-sewed into a cute dress. “Jane, thank you so much. You saved my life, bitch!” My heart! Can we convince Kenya to move to Seattle, too?

Tune in next week for the final half of Rate-A-Queen, where we will finally see Jane Don’t’s talent performance and find out who will be lip-syncing against Ciara Myst!

Stranger Suggests: A Surreal Queer Western, Nose Poems, and the Next Main Pop Girlie

Julianne Bell — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:55:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell MONDAY 2/2

Rituals of Mine with LabRats & Rose Peak

See Rituals of Mine play her brand of electronic-influenced alt-R&B at Baba Yaga. JEFFREY LATOUR

(MUSIC) Terra Lopez has been making electronic-influenced alt-R&B since 2010—first under the moniker Sister Crayon, then changing the project’s name to Rituals of Mine in 2016. That year was a landmark one for the group, touring with alternative metal band the Deftones and celebrating the re-release of their sophomore album Devoted on a major label, but Lopez was on the verge of a mental health crisis. After processing the trauma of losing her father and best friend in a six-month span, Lopez released her third record—and first solo venture—HYPE NOSTALGIA in 2020. Rituals of Mine has since released a handful of singles, groovy and emotional tracks that have left me wanting more. They're on tour with support from jazz hip-hop fusion group LabRats, who double as the headliner's backing band. (Baba Yaga, 7 pm, 21+) SHANNON LUBETICH

TUESDAY 2/3

Yeobo Cafe and Bar

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(FOOD) Yeobo, will you be our Valentine?? The name "yeobo" is a Korean term of endearment like "honey" or "sweetheart," which is fitting, because I'm extremely smitten with this Capitol Hill coffee shop. In fact, I'm writing this blurb there right now, enjoying a cup of roasted oolong tea while Norah Jones plays in the background. In our recent Complaints Issue, arts editor Emily Nokes begged local businesses to stay open later, whereas I lamented the lack of truly cozy coffee shops in Seattle, and Yeobo might just be the answer to both of our prayers—they even extended their hours to 9-ish pm daily as a direct response to Emily's complaint! They have delicious coffee drinks (I love the burnt honey miso latte), a selection of Friday Afternoon tea, and both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails, plus kimchi breakfast sandwiches made with house-made gluten-free English muffins. There's always something fun playing on the TV, like Avatar: The Last Airbender, anime, or Kim's Convenience, and if you want some analog entertainment, they have a community library, puzzle exchange, and board games. This is the inclusive third space that the neighborhood desperately needed. Also, if you have some spare cash, consider donating to their GoFundMe to help them out with critical repairs and unexpected expenses so they can keep the lights on. (2332 E Madison St, 7 am-9ish pm) JULIANNE BELL

WEDNESDAY 2/4

Mark Z. Danielewski

Horror legend Mark Z. Danielewski will appear at Elliott Bay Book Company on Wednesday, February 2. LINDSEY BEST

(LITERATURE) Mark Z. Danielewski is most well known for his debut novel and postmodern horror cult classic House of Leaves, which famously requires active participation (including turning the book upside down at times) from the reader to decipher its multiple nonlinear narratives, cryptic text, and copious footnotes. Reading it feels like a descent into madness and will have you glancing around to make sure no one (or nothing) else is in the room with you. He’s now embarking on tour to promote his longest novel to date, Tom’s Crossing, which came out last October and clocks in at 1,200 pages. It’s a dark, epic Western horror hybrid that required 10 drafts and which Danielewski has said he considers the “pinnacle” of his work. Here’s a chance to catch a living horror legend in the flesh. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm, all ages, free) JULIANNE BELL

THURSDAY 2/5

aja monet

Experience poet, organizer, and musician aja monet's galvanizing voice at Town Hall Seattle on Thursday, February 5. FANNY CHU

(LITERATURE) Poet, organizer, and musician aja monet is a triple threat who’s in the business of activating rooms. Drawing from a lineage rooted in oratory practice, monet blends spoken word, music, and experience into something that feels more akin to a performance or communal offering than a standard reading. Her latest book, Florida Water, explores love, migration, climate grief, and community with a clarity that reflects, reveals, and unravels in equal measure. A Grammy-nominated spoken word artist and Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam Champion, monet creates urgent and intimate work. If you plan to attend, you’re in for a treat. Just be sure to stick around for the post-event Q&A hosted by Kiesha B. Free. (Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm, all ages) LANGSTON THOMAS

FRIDAY 2/6

Jade: That’s Showbiz Baby! Tour

(MUSIC) I constantly annoy everyone I know by bragging that I was three years early to knowing about Chappell Roan, so I need you to believe me when I say that former Little Mix singer Jade Thirlwall is going to be a main pop girlie within the next couple of years. She’s already big in the UK and steadily gaining popularity stateside. No one else out there is doing it like her—I can't name another artist who dropped a fully art-directed visual album for their solo debut, but that's exactly what she did with That's Showbiz Baby. There are no skips, either. You can hear touches of all the great pop divas, like Gaga, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Diana Ross. The opener, “Angel of My Dreams,” about Jade’s ambivalent relationship to fame, is dreamy, celestial pop goodness reminiscent of “Lucky” by Britney Spears. I also love the track “Before You Break My Heart,” which samples a recording of Jade singing the Supremes’ "Stop! In the Name of Love" as a little girl, and which she says is written from the POV of her “younger self, begging me not to forget her and how far we’ve come.” (Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

SATURDAY 2/7

Scent Lending Library at Fogue Studios

Follow your nose to the Scent Lending Library. FOGUE STUDIOS

(ART) What does God’s sweat smell like? Or the anoxic cold of Eau De Space? Smell for yourself out at the Scent Lending Library, an olfactory exhibition that arrived at Fogue after its five-month run at Olfactory Art Keller in New York. While determining the base note of divine perspiration may involve a smidge of poetic license, NASA did actually work with chemists in 2008 to recreate the smell of the void (as relayed by space-walking astronauts), and Australian-born documentary filmmaker turned olfactory artist Donna Lipowitz has bottled these distillations for your sniffing pleasure. There are over 100 scents to explore (70 of which are available to check out for two weeks at a time), including delightful nose poems like Old Luggage, Bermuda Triangle, and American Psycho, as well as more classic fare, including the oldest continuously produced perfume, Guerlain's 1889 Jicky. The sensory excursion to the world right under our nose is the perfect antidote to algorithm purgatory. (Fogue Studios and Gallery) AMANDA MANITACH

SUNDAY 2/8

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo

(FILM) Set in the Chilean desert in the early '80s, director Diego Céspedes’s feature debut follows Lidia, an 11-year-old who was abandoned as a baby and raised by a fiercely loving queer found family. Their ragtag clan is ostracized by their sleepy mining town, blamed for a mysterious plague that is believed to be transmitted by a single gaze when two people fall in love. Lidia sets out to defend her loved ones and determine whether the rumor is true or not. The surreal Western explores AIDS panic, transphobia, violence, revenge, marginalization, and prejudice, mixing folktale vibes with the scrappy tenderness of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters. (Northwest Film Forum, 3 pm and 6:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Playwright Keiko Green On Pulling Her Play from the Kennedy Center

Julianne Bell — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:00:00 -0800

Last week, Seattle Children’s Theatre announced their decision to pull their two-week run of the play Young Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story from the Kennedy Center due to the impact of the Trump administration—namely, Trump installing himself as chairman, dismissing and replacing staff, and installing his name above Kennedy's. The Stranger caught up with playwright Keiko Green about the decision. by Julianne Bell

Last week, Seattle Children’s Theatre announced their decision to pull their two-week run of the play Young Dragon: A Bruce Lee Story from the Kennedy Center due to the impact of the Trump administration—namely, Trump installing himself as chairman, dismissing and replacing staff, and installing his name above Kennedy's. Many other artists, including Issa Rae, Phillip Glass, and the cast of Hamilton, have also canceled their upcoming performances at the theater for political reasons.

The play would have been staged at the Center in April, after its still-planned run at the Children’s Theatre from February 19 to March 15. "The landscape in which the production was originally created has changed to an extent that after careful consideration, we have come to the decision that this is not the right time to transfer a SCT production to the Kennedy Center,” said SCT managing director Kevin Malgesini in a statement. “Our priority is to honor Bruce Lee's story with integrity and to uphold the trust our community places in us.”

Keiko Green, the playwright, has been a celebrated contributor to Seattle’s wider theatre landscape. She was commissioned to write the script for Young Dragon by SCT and the Kennedy Center two years ago. And in the meantime, Seattle hosted productions of two of her plays: Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play, a wacky time-traveling comedy set in 1999, and Hells Canyon, a chilling horror thriller. Green has also written for TV shows like Hulu’s Interior Chinatown and the upcoming series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which stars Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman and premieres on Apple TV on April 15.

The Stranger caught up with her after the announcement to pull the Young Dragon from the Kennedy Center.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This decision means that the play isn't associated with the Trump administration, but it also limits its chance to reach a wider audience. How do you feel about that?

It's really complicated, to be totally honest with you. I really feel a lot of relief about this decision, personally. I can't really speak for the theater. I mean, there's obviously a lot of stress and complexity along with it too. I know that we had school shows that were going to be pretty heavily attended. When it comes to the public shows, the audience space has declined to around 20 percent of what it used to be, so I know that there's already been such a lack of support from their previous audiences.

I'm very sad about the school shows that will be canceled. In a way, the fact that the ticket sales for the Kennedy Center at large are down [makes me think] okay, at least we're not robbing a huge plethora of people. And the people who are upset about us not going probably weren't ever going to come to the show anyway. They're not really people who are supporting a story about a cool Asian American, and they're not necessarily supporting children's theater, either.

I also think that this was really an opportunity for us to tell the country and the world morally where we stand with this play. As much as it's sad to not be able to reach this audience immediately, I actually think we can use this as a launching point to try to reach out to new partners and find a future. My hope is that it'll end up in DC at some point, whether it's with the Kennedy Center in the future or a different location. It's just not going to be at this very moment, at that very place.

Are you and Seattle Children’s Theatre looking into any alternative venues?

I have personally been in touch with a few other theaters that have just reached out to read the script in completely different locations outside of DC—I’ve [been in contact with] a theater in Southern California and a theater in Kansas City. I've heard that [Seattle Children’s Theatre] plans to hopefully bring people from other regions in to see the production itself.

I am so proud of this team. What's really great about the play right now is that we have all this attention for pulling out, and with that comes a bit of pressure to make sure the show is good. I think the show is really, really cool, so the moment that we get people to come in and see what we're offering, I feel really confident that the show is going to have a future.

How were you involved in the decision making process, and how long were you and Seattle Children’s Theatre thinking about this?

We've been having these conversations for a long time. About a year ago, we had this workshop in New York, and at that time, there were a lot of conversations that were happening separately.

Before the [Kennedy Center’s] name changed, when the board was first fired and replaced, there was a conversation with myself and the director, Jess McLeod, about what that meant. For me, growing up in the South and seeing so little representation, for a long time I was like, those kids need it maybe more than ever. It was always a decision where we were going to have to see how things were evolving and moving.

For me, a big clincher is that no one who I was ever in communication with [at the Kennedy Center], who were giving notes through the process and were originally part of the commissioning team, works there anymore. We don't even know what to call this institution anymore, legally. There are still great people working there, and my heart goes out to them, but they're not the people who I originally was in contact with. So in addition to the big blowup and snowballing of everything that's been happening, there's just been a very real sense that I don't know what we're walking into.

I really applaud Seattle Children's Theatre for this. There are very real consequences that are not just affecting them—there are actors who are losing two weeks of work and two weeks of health insurance. There are crew members in DC who were going to be rebuilding the set and bringing it in and working the show, who are now going to be out of a job. [SCT] was really trying to talk to as many people who would be affected as possible, and in between that, Jess McLeod and I were chatting with the leaders at SCT, probably every other day, to help them as they were making a decision. But ultimately, we were saying, it's their name on the line, it's their contracts, and so I'm here to support them. I'm not going to sabotage anybody, I'm not going to leave if the choice is to go, I'm not going to leave actors hanging. But we were pretty vocal that our hope was that we would be able to pull out of the contract.

I know this play is at the Seattle Children’s Theatre, but would you encourage adults without children to attend too?

We were originally hoping to write something that was mostly for teens, and we started opening up that age [group] a little bit. That means we're not dumbing it down or talking down to kids at all on this play, which serves the play and who Bruce was. It just means that instead of a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes, we might be leaning more into letting physicality and visual storytelling do some work. The play itself is really cool, even for diehard Bruce Lee fans—it's about a lesser-known part of his life, which is when he was in Seattle. Before, he had been basically banished from Hong Kong for getting into too much trouble and was feeling a lot of shame about where he was in his life and what that meant for his future. It was a huge, sobering wake-up call.

Suddenly he's a dishwasher at a restaurant, and slowly, he's enrolling in college at University of Washington and becoming an instructor and getting the first little seeds of creating this new style of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do. What's really cool about the play is that even the parents or adults on their own who want to come see the show [will have] a really fun time. It'll be visually entertaining, but it's also a lot about his philosophies.

The play is full of a lot of moments in Bruce Lee's life that are going to be a little less familiar, even to a lot of adults. I’m really excited. I think it's the most fully intergenerational thing I've ever written. My hope is always that number one, I don't want to talk down to kids because they're smarter than we think, and two, I just want to make sure that those parents who may already have a relationship to Bruce Lee can gain something from the story.

What do you hope Seattle audiences take away from Young Dragon?

The trickiest part of this play has been making a play that's about Bruce Lee, before he's the legend. I had a meeting with Shannon Lee, Bruce's daughter, and I asked her, “What do you hope that young people take away from the show?” She said, “I really want people to know how curious he was, how he was trying everything. How he was a real renaissance man.” He loved the arts, and he was also writing poetry and drawing and dancing—he was a cha cha champion!— in addition to being this movie star and the creator of Jeet Kune Do.

Also, because the show so heavily features his philosophies, specifically the “be like water” philosophy, the play itself is about how Bruce Lee—who, as a kid, is this hothead, who we associate with in our play with fire—every single obstacle he's encountering, he’s hitting back as hard as he can, and there's this rageful fire. That's how he's approaching all of the obstacles in his life. Through the story, and in his time in Seattle, he's discovering truly what it means to be like water: When these obstacles present themselves, how do we find the cracks and the paths around to ultimately peacefully and more efficiently reach our goal? I think that the decision feels true to that message. We were hit with this big obstacle of having [to adapt from] the idea that we're going to be presenting the show at the Kennedy Center, and now we have this opportunity to find a new way around and hopefully find an even more exciting path forward for the play.

Pop Loser #14: MAITA Shares What No Doubt Taught Her

Audrey Vann — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 13:00:00 -0800

This week's music news. by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser! Despite everything feeling unbearably horrific in the world this week (FUCK ICE), there have been a few tiny glimmers of joy: the Vera Project has announced a new venue, Victoria Beckham’s single “I’m Not Such an Innocent Girl” is trending, and Connie Converse’s How Sad, How Lovely is finally getting reissued. And, in another edition of First Times, Maria Maita-Keppeler of Portland-based indie rock project MAITA shares her early musical influences from Elliott Smith to Vitamin C.

This Week in Music

Let’s start with some rare good news: The Vera Project is opening a new all-ages venue in Georgetown next year. Dave Segal spoke with Vera’s executive director, Ricky Graboski, about their plans for expansion in 2027. While they consider Vera to be their “home base,” and Black Lodge their “underground venue,” they are hoping that the new Georgetown venue will be a space for mutual aid. “We want it to be run by and for community, so every show's going to have a mutual aid group, a nonprofit, someone there who is supporting something in local community,” Graboski told Segal, specifying that 40 to 60 tickets at every show will be pay-what-you-can. Vera's goal is to raise $2.5 million by early 2027, when the yet-to-be-named Georgetown space is set to open. Seattle-born rock band Band of Horses is already on board to contribute by donating $1 from every ticket they sell on their upcoming tour to help fund Vera’s new venue.

The lineup for Portland’s Pickathon festival has dropped, and it’ll be worth the three-hour drive south this summer. Highlights include Brazilian music icon Marcos Valle, alt-country king Steve Earl, and Idaho’s finest Built to Spill, along with lesser-known gems like experimental guitarist Mary Halvorson, Aussie outfit Folk Bitch Trio, and indie rock duo Widowspeak.

Meanwhile, the Watershed Festival will run dry in 2026. The Gorge’s annual contemporary country music festival announced its hiatus this year, providing no further details or reasons why. Oh well, Willie Nelson’s Outlaw festival is the only country music fest I was interested in anyway.

This week in pathetic Drake news (seriously, this could become a regular segment), the rapper has appealed the lawsuit ruling on “Not Like Us.” In October, a federal judge dismissed the rapper’s defamation lawsuit against UMG, which sought damages from the label for promoting Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track. UMG claims that Drake “lost a rap battle that he provoked and in which he willingly participated,” to which the judge agreed. But the self-proclaimed “Certified Lover Boy” still won’t give it up.

Reggae icon Sly Dunbar (of Sly and Robbie) has died at the age of 73. The Grammy-winning drummer, who has played on iconic tracks by Lee Perry, Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Grace Jones, was found unresponsive in his home on Monday morning. No cause of death has been made public thus far.

The best news of the week: Monster-in-law Victoria Beckham has scored the biggest-selling single of the week, with a nearly 2,000 percent surge on her 2001 single “I’m Not Such An Innocent Girl.” If you’ve been living under a rock, Posh Spice’s son, Brooklyn, recently popped off on Instagram, revealing that his parents have been sabotaging his relationship with wife Nicola Peltz, citing his mother’s “inappropriate” dancing at their wedding. Release the tapes!

Prepare to be gagged: If you’re not familiar with King Crimson guitarist/Brian Eno collaborator Robert Fripp and New Wave diva Toyah Wilcox’s YouTube channel, let me introduce you. The married couple posts weekly covers while decked out in unbelievable costumes (for example, they recently used their giant pet rabbits as puppets while singing “Auld Lang Syne”). This week, the duo shared their cover of X-Ray Spex's “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” in full bondage gear, ball gag and all.

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First Times with MAITA Oops! All cheeks.

MAITA, the indie rock project by Portland-based singer-songwriter Maria Maita-Keppeler, has moved many people with her angelic vocals and cathartic lyricism. One such person was Kill Rock Stars' founder Slim Moon, who came out of a twelve-year-long retirement and revived the label to sign her. Four years after her debut album, Best Wishes, MAITA signed to Portland’s Fluff & Gravy Records, releasing her 2024 label debut, want—a must for fans of emotional indie rock à la Big Thief, Mitski, and Lucy Dacus. I caught up with the singer-songwriter ahead of her show at Baba Yaga on Sunday (with Seattle indie folk band St. Yuma) to discuss her early musical influences from No Doubt and Elliott Smith to Vitamin C.

What was the first album you bought?

It's so difficult to remember this because, admittedly, my middle school years were soundtracked almost exclusively by burned CDs. I do know that at one point I owned a No Doubt greatest hits CD, which I remember as one of the first albums I really fell for, even though technically it's not a real album and just a collection of their singles. Still, unbeknownst to me, No Doubt taught me a lot about song structure (they always had a bridge), as well as the concept that there could be women and electric guitars in a band. (What a novel concept for a pre-teen!)

What was the first song you sang in front of people?

I sang a lot as a young kid, but forced myself into hibernation for about a decade after hearing that I didn't have a good singing voice. Then, when I was 16, I decided to perform "Between the Bars" by Elliott Smith at a high school open mic night. I was shaking like a leaf! I did a private run-through in front of my best friend before the show, and even then, it took me about 10 minutes to start singing. I still love that song.

What was the first instrument you played, and what was the first song you learned?

I taught myself to play piano as a kid, mostly all by ear, so I never really got a firm grasp on music theory. (This is true even today, unfortunately.) I loved that song "Graduation" by Vitamin C when I was in elementary school, and learning that it was basically Pachelbel's Canon was a revelation for me. You bet I learned to play Pachelbel's Canon, and you bet I paired it with Vitamin C's "Graduation" and played it for my fifth-grade class when we, well, graduated.

What was the first song that made you cry?

I wasn't a big crier as a kid. This feels really random and almost embarrassing, but for whatever reason, I remember the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003 hit me really hard, and my mom was listening to some Jim Brickman piano song, and the combination of those sunk me into a deep, sulking state. I wallowed all afternoon. Now I mostly just cry at shows, when the energy is potent and all-encompassing. I cried when Feist revealed her full band mid-set at a show last winter. I bawled all the way through a Haley Heynderickx set last summer.

Who was the first musician you idolized?

Probably Conor Oberst. I went hard for Bright Eyes when I found them in middle school. I was obsessed, I listened to their albums on repeat. There's nothing like discovering Fevers and Mirrors as a young teen.

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Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week

Tyler Ramsey & Carl Broemel: Celestun Tour Jan 29, the Crocodile, 8 pm, 21+

WAR Jan 29-Feb 1, Jazz Alley, 7:30 pm, all ages

Den Tapes Winter Jam IV: Great Ooze, Tourist Activities, 222, & Young-Chhaylee Jan 30, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Drink The Sea Jan 30, Town Hall Seattle, 8 pm, all ages

Glaive: Y'all Tour Jan 30, the Showbox, 8 pm, all ages

Glitterfox Jan 30, Barboza, 6:30 pm, 21+

MAITA with St. Yuma Feb 1, Baba Yaga, 8 pm, 21+

Speak-Easier: Bridging the Abortion Divide, Presented by The Pro-Voice Project Feb 1, Hidden Hall, 4:30 pm, 21+

Want these recs a day early? Subscribe to Pop Loser.

The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night

“House” by Connie Converse

I have many special holy-grail records that I’ve collected through the years: an early pressing of Velvet Underground and Nico with a perfectly intact banana, an original copy of Big Star’s #1 Record, etc. Yet, Discogs tells me that my most valuable record is the 2015 compilation of Connie Converse's 1950s recordings, which continues to baffle me. If I’ve learned anything from being a record-buying freak, it’s to never pay a premium for contemporary out-of-print records. They will be reissued, I promise! Exhibit A: Third Man Records has announced that they are reissuing Converse’s How Sad, How Lovely, which will likely make the value of my copy decrease from $300 to $20. Aside from making her music more widely accessible, the best part about the reissue is that it features this previously unreleased track. The song showcases everything I love about Converse’s songwriting: whimsy, complaining about rent prices, and puzzling song structure, which was far ahead of its time.

“Way Out” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Have you listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s 2006 album Show Your Bones in a while? If not, throw it on now. The world is enveloped in darkness right now, and we can all use a boost of comforting nostalgia that isn’t the 2016 Instagram trend (I’d much prefer to return to 2006, thank you very much). This song in particular brings me back to the fourth grade, making pillow forts in my bedroom.

Drag Race Episode Four: Lights, Camera, Tension

Mike Kohfeld — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:01:00 -0800

If you like messy reality television, look no further than Episode Four of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Simmering tensions between the queens progressed into finger-pointing and name-calling before the queens made-up in time for a bestie vs. bestie fashion mashup challenge. But the drama didn’t stop. A queen fainted on the main stage! And then we got a disrespectful camera op with a side of gaslighting! by Mike Kohfeld

If you like messy reality television, look no further than Episode Four of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Simmering tensions between the queens progressed into finger-pointing and name-calling before the queens made-up in time for a bestie vs. bestie fashion mashup challenge. But the drama didn’t stop. A queen fainted on the main stage! And then we got a disrespectful camera op with a side of gaslighting!

It all left us with only one question: How many more episodes of Drag Race until ICE is abolished?

The Girls are Fighting

The episode picks up right where we left off: with the drama surrounding Briar Blush. First, the producers treated us to some unused footage from earlier episodes. Briar gives Mia Starr the cold shoulder after Mia teased Briar about a past breakup. But Briar spent much of last week poking at Athena. Mia, who was also upset that Mandy had just been sent home in favor of Briar, confronted Briar about her behavior, and several other queens chimed in with similar complaints. It all felt very middle school.

Later in the episode, Briar tearfully confessed to her bestie Juicy about feeling shaken by the argument and hurt by Mia’s suggestion that she should have gone home instead of Mandy. When it was time to get ready for the runway, Briar sat next to Mia to squash their beef. The producers squeezed as much as they could out of it: We learned about Briar’s childhood of feeling isolated and unloved, culminating in her leaving home at sixteen years old. Mia opened up about losing her brother to addiction in 2020 (I shed a genuine tear when I learned that her entrance look for Season 18 was made out of her late brother’s jeans). It pays to know what the people around you are going through, and Briar and Mia made up just in time.

We also got a touch of Kenya Pleaser’s backstory. She was born in a college dorm bathroom to a mother who didn’t know she was pregnant, and raised by her grandparents to allow her mother to finish school. One day during college gospel choir rehearsal, Kenya called her mother to come out to her, and was accepted without hesitation. “You won’t be the first, and you won’t be the last,” her mother said. Kenya’s choirmates then treated her to a loving rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” More of these stories, please. Better yet, let’s make stories like this happen for our own friends and communities.

Red Carpet Mashups

Bring back the mini-challenges! Like the previous two episodes, Episode Four did not include a mini, and I miss them. They’re lighthearted, the queens are sillier and more relaxed, and it’s always fun to see the creative (and stupid) “quick drag” looks from the cast.

This week’s main challenge was the opposite of quick drag. After pairing up with their besties, the queens were given materials and two memorable red carpet looks to mash-up into a single look. The twist: each queen will be judged against their bestie in interpreting the same looks; in other words, “who wore it better!?”

Vita and Mia were paired together to combine Katy Perry’s chandelier outfit from the 2019 Met Gala and Lil Kim’s provocative one-boob-out 1999 VMAs look. Style icon and judge Law Roach fawned over her look: “if one of these queens don’t come out with a tit exposed with a pasty on it, I am getting up and walking the fuck out… this was incredible.”

Law Roach did not walk out.

Despite the praise, Mia was not breast in show. Vita’s career outside of Drag Race includes replicating celebrity looks from scratch, not to mention she placed in the top in Episode One’s design challenge. Her exquisite “high drag” mashup that perfectly balanced the two looks brought her the win for the week.

Wild Card Auntie Jane

After her string of successes in the last three challenges, Jane felt the pressure to keep up her game. For the Red Carpet Mashups challenge, she was paired with her bestie Discord Addams.

The duo were given Cher’s black-feathered 1986 Oscars look, a Bob Mackie masterpiece, alongside the neon-green Prada fringe fantasy of Sarah Paulson from the 2018 premiere of Ocean’s 8. “I’m excited that we got this color combination,” Jane said to Discord. “I am a little irritated to be paired with you only because… we can both sew,” the two finished in unison.

The battle was on between two of our top design queens, but ultimately the fit of Discord’s creation was critiqued along with her stiff walk (the same walk RuPaul praised last week). She fell into the bottom three.

Jane brought Cher and Sarah together beautifully in an Auntie Mame-inspired look that paid homage to legendary actresses Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur in a delicious black-and-neon gown, cape, and headpiece. Calling her season 18’s “wild card,” Michelle Visage praised her for bringing such different and exciting looks each week, and the rest of the judges agreed that Jane is a smart cookie. “Jane knows how to bring a little vintage into the now,” commented Broadway star and guest judge Annaleigh Ashford.

Briar’s Farewell

Ciara Myst of Indianapolis bested bestie Kenya Pleaser, who were assigned Lady Gaga’s 2010 VMAs meat dress alongside Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake’s denim duet at the 2001 AMAs. While her energy was winning, Kenya’s look landed her in the bottom two.

More dramatic were the critiques of besties Juicy and Briar, who were assigned Lil Nas X’s pink Versace suit from the 2020 Grammys and Rihanna’s breathtaking gold 2015 Met Gala dress. Juicy got positive reviews from the judges, but Briar wasn’t so lucky. “You look like a WWE wrestler,” Law Roach told Briar. Suddenly, she began to sway, fainting sideways into Juicy.

It was an uncomfortable moment. Medics arrived to check Briar, but the cameras continued to roll with an unceremonious angle on a rip in the crotch of her yellow jumpsuit that soon showed up all over the internet. The other queens standing onstage were stunned. “That better be real,” Mia whispered to Vita, who scathingly replied, “It’s not. It’s a show.” The entire sequence left me feeling deeply unsettled, and for good reason. The day after Episode Four aired, Entertainment Weekly reported that Briar had been hospitalized after her run on Drag Race for pneumonia that had progressed to sepsis.

Briar was taken offstage to receive a comprehensive checkup while the critiques progressed. After getting cleared by the medic, Briar returned to the mainstage where she ended up in the bottom two with Kenya. They battled it out to Kylie Minogue’s “Lights, Camera, Action.” but Briar (unsurprisingly, considering the sepsis) couldn’t match Kenya’s energy and was sent home.

We’ll be back next week for part one of the Rate-A-Queen Talent Show.

The Vera Project Announces New All-Ages Venue

Dave Segal — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

The new 300-capacity venue is set to open in Georgetown in early 2027. by Dave Segal

The Seattle music industry has been rife with misfortune since COVID lockdown. Bucking odds, though, the Vera Project has a raft of good news. The city's stalwart all-ages nonprofit organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, and its staff has plans to offer more opportunities for young artists and promoters, to put on more free shows, to launch a new festival, and to open a new 300-capacity venue in Georgetown. And they're going to do all this without selling a drop of alcohol.

For a quarter century, Vera Project—currently headquartered at Seattle Center—has been hosting all-ages music shows and visual arts exhibits, teaching studio recording and screen-printing skills, and providing a “safe space for radical self-expression” for young people. Vera also has helped to transform Black Lodge from an off-grid cultural hub to a legit music venue.

In an interview with The Stranger, Executive Director Ricky Graboski elaborated on Vera Project's ambitious vision for the near future. Vera's goal is to raise $2.5 million by early 2027, when the yet-to-be-named Georgetown space is set to open. (Vera signed a 20-year lease for it.) The org already has garnered more than 53 percent of that total. Much of it has come from Paul Allen's Allen Family Philanthropies; Graboski singles out Amber Rose Jimenez, the organization’s program officer, as an advocate for Vera. “They're just trying to support youth in a real way,” says Graboski. “[The decision] evolved quickly from what seemed like smaller funds to a full Seattle Center-wide thing. We were among the highest-funded [organizations]. We also pitched something fairly radical compared to what a lot of arts funding is pushing out there. Because we're just immediately spending the money on free shows run by young people for young people.”

Vera's Ratsquatch faces off with Snacks the Bunny at the Rock Lottery show in 2025. BRITTNE LUNNISS

Speaking of free shows, Vera has inaugurated “Ticket-blaster,” a program enabling over 60 no-cover events annually, to facilitate experimentation. In addition, the “Hidden Track” scheme—a series of shows produced by people in the community—will foster curatorial skills by six individuals per year, drawn from open applications and peer adjudication. The aim is to boost “under-represented subcultures, communities, or experimental artistic directions,” under Vera staff's mentorship and taking place in Georgetown. “We just started booking underground and alt-comedy stuff,” Graboski says. “We can use this opportunity to find new things out.” Another development is the Always All-Ages Fest, a multi-venue, cross-genre, pay-what-you-can extravaganza scheduled for November. As a bonus, VERA Art Gallery will offer free entry almost every Saturday.

To help fund these endeavors, Vera brokered a brilliant deal with Band of Horses, who are donating a dollar per ticket sold on their upcoming tour. “We'd been talking to them about 25th-anniversary stuff, because they're an important band in Vera's history.” Graboski says he hopes to approach other bands with similar fundraising deals.

A screenprinting demo at Vera during the Rock Lottery show in 2025. BRITTNE LUNNISS

Much is riding on the multi-purpose Georgetown space, which will better accommodate Vera's demographic, most of whom live in the South End. “More young people need more opportunities. We have lots of friends in Georgetown who spent the last 18 months connecting with dozens of community groups to make sure it's something that the community actually wanted.

“Vera is our home base, our all-ages space. Black Lodge is our underground venue. It's as close as we can be to the DIY scene we can get as a nonprofit. We're hoping Georgetown is our mutual aid space. We want it to be run by and for community, so every show's going to have a mutual aid group, a nonprofit, someone there who is supporting something in local community. Forty to 60 tickets at every show will be pay-what-you-can. We're having this crazy modular setup built into the space so we can reconfigure the room for anything.”

With news of the Crocodile being for sale, the health of Seattle nightlife seems more precarious than ever. Yet Vera Project appears to be thriving. What's their secret? “Our strategy has always been 'there's a better way.' Young people need access to arts, culture, community, and gathering spaces. Vera's been weirdly successful in choosing what's a fairly reckless strategy: If folks need things, we provide those things now, not to secure our legacy. And Vera's nearly gone out of business nearly 50 times since we were founded.”

Zookraught playing the Vera stage at Bumbershoot in 2025. BRITTNE LUNNISS

Grants from Doors Open and Satterberg, abundant donors, special events, and dedicated volunteers have also kept Vera thriving. “We've been scrappy forever. We try to keep our budget as low as possible. We've just gotten good at asking the right people for money at the right times. And we've gotten good at not having to take money from major corporations or foundations whom we don't agree with ethically.

“The message we're trying to send is, Vera's working because our community is largely young people, and they're not fully broken down by this system yet. They're still excited. Because they're building what we're putting on, it's working. If people gave in to this ecosystem in a real way, then artists would be supported, and maybe these venues wouldn't be shutting down.”

Stranger Suggests: Sparkly Majorettes, a Classic Fairy-Tale Ballet, and an Underwater City Made of Trash

Julianne Bell — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:20:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell MONDAY 1/26

Lady Windermere's Fan

(FILM) I attended my first Silent Movie Monday last month, and now I am completely obsessed. The film series pays homage to the history of our beloved Paramount Theatre, which opened in 1928, showing silent films accompanied by live musicians on the theater’s original Mighty Wurlitzer (a single organ that’s connected to various pipes and percussion instruments), and serving free, old-fashioned bags of popcorn—it’s truly like stepping into a time machine. For the next Silent Movie Monday, organist Donna Parker will soundtrack Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. Set in 1890s London, the film follows an elegant society woman who’s convinced her husband is having an affair. It’s full of drama, scandals, and stunning costumes. Warning: You will likely leave the theater wanting to cut your hair into a 1920s bob. (Paramount Theatre, 7 pm) AUDREY VANN

TUESDAY 1/27

Honorée Fanone Jeffers

See Honorée Fanonne Jeffers at Town Hall Seattle Tuesday, January 27. SYDNEY A. FOSTER

(LITERATURE) National Book Award-nominated fiction writer, poet, and essayist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers spent 15 years researching archives for her critically acclaimed 2020 collection The Age of Phillis, which reimagines the life of revolutionary 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley. For her next act, she published her 2021 debut novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, an ambitious 816-page intergenerational epic that traces a Black family’s lineage from before the Civil War to the present. Her latest work is her nonfiction debut Misbehaving at the Crossroads, which explores the crossroads—defined by Jeffers as “a location of difficulty and possibility, a boundary between the divine and the human”—in Black American and African cultures. Jeffers will join host Colleen Echohawk, Community Roots Housing CEO and Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Community Curated Series director, for a discussion on this fascinating intersection. (Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Cate Le Bon, Frances Chang

(MUSIC) Sometimes you listen to an album, and your first thought is “Well, this is gonna be my whole personality for a while.” Cate Le Bon’s newest, Michelangelo Dying, is one of those. It’s a no-skip record, and one of my favorites, “Is It Worth It? (Happy Birthday),” could be a B-side on Ziggy Stardust. You have two chances to see Madame Le Bon today: first at 11 a.m. at the KEXP In-Studio show (which is free! As long as you’re willing to get there early and snag your spot), and second, at 8 p.m. at the Neptune, with special guest Frances Chang. (Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

WEDNESDAY 1/28

Stuff You Should Know

(COMEDY) If you’ve ever lost an hour falling down an internet rabbit hole, there’s a good chance Stuff You Should Know contributed to it in some way. Hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant, the SYSK podcast has spent nearly two decades unpacking the history, science, and cultural weirdness of everything from Ouija boards to Pop-Tarts to Nazis on meth (yes, really). Racking up 2,700+ episodes and billions of downloads across the web, the pod has been the inspiration of many a YouTube deep dive, and now it’s coming to Seattle, live! It’s all that curiosity, joking, and banter delivered directly to a room full of fact-loving nerds, sans the HelloFresh commercials. (Paramount Theatre, 8 pm) LANGSTON THOMAS

THURSDAY 1/29

Ogemdi Ude: MAJOR

(PERFORMANCE) Majorette dance has been a staple of Black girlhood since the 1960s, when it was popularized at HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) in the American South. Dressed in their signature glittery costumes, majorettes dance alongside marching bands and display bold showmanship, glamour, precision, power, and sensuality. In this contemporary performance directed and choreographed by Ogemdi Ude, six Black femmes will pay homage to the majorette dance form, accompanied by composer Lambkin’s score blending “Southern rap, horns, drumlines, and melodic R&B and soul.” Back in September, On the Boards executive director Megan Kiskaddon told Stranger staff writer Nathalie Graham that MAJOR is the show everyone must see in the venue’s 2025–2026 season, explaining, “It’s one of those pieces that anyone would get something out of, because it’s so exuberant.” (On the Boards, 8 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

FRIDAY 1/30

Merlantis, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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(VISUAL ART) What lies beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? An underwater city loosely based on Seattle and built of fallen trash, of course. While “the damaging effects of commodification and rampant capitalism on our planet” sound like heavy themes for troubled times, this exhibition put on by the group True Misschiff promises to handle the subject with campy panache in an attempt to “normalize non-normative approaches to life and gender” through the adventures of characters like Brosiedon, the douchey ruler of the merpeople. Base Camp 2 has recently restructured its exhibition timeline to focus on four big shows a year, which is great news, as the massive old luggage store space lends itself to immersive worlds such as Merlantis promises to be. In addition to ticketed events and cabaret performances (sponsored by the fictional corporation Blissfish), there will be art for sale, a thematic gift shop, and more fishy shenanigans available through March. (Base Camp 2, through Feb 28) AMANDA MANITACH

SATURDAY 1/31

Cinderella

The Pacific Northwest Ballet's production of Cinderella runs through February 8. ANGELA STERLING

(PERFORMANCE) Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of Cinderella was conceived and choreographed in 1994 by founding artistic director and choreographer Kent Stowell, who sought to emphasize the romantic nature of the fairy tale in contrast to the tragicomic sensibilities of earlier modern productions. The result is an enchanting, swoon-worthy confection filled with dazzling costumes by Tony Award-winning costume designer Martin Pakledinaz and fantastical sets by scenic designer Tony Straiges. Fun facts: The production features over 120 costumes, which required more than a mile of tulle to make, and the trim on Cinderella’s ball gown alone took over 100 hours to create and sew. (McCaw Hall, various times, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

SUNDAY 2/2

The Chronology of Water

Imogen Poots as Lidia in The Chronology of Water. THE FORGE

(FILM) “I remember things in retinal flashes. Without order. Your life doesn’t happen in any kind of order… It’s all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common,” the Oregon-based author Lidia Yuknavitch writes in her 2011 memoir, The Chronology of Water. It follows, then, that director Kristen Stewart’s film adaptation of the book opens without clear exposition. Instead, the camera is submerged, trained upward toward a figure in a red swimsuit. Blood spills onto a shower’s tile floor. The two images—which happen years apart in Lidia’s (Imogen Poots) life—set the tone for a film revealed in fragments of trauma. Read the full review at the Mercury. (SIFF Film Center, 7 pm) LINDSAY COSTELLO

Pop Loser #13: Austra on Opera Arias and Boyz II Men

Audrey Vann — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:00 -0800

This week's music news. by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser! This week, the Crocodile announced that it’s up for sale, Bandcamp banned AI music, and Harry Styles revealed the name of his new album. Plus, I attended the opera for the first time, and coincidentally, electronic music diva Austra shares her early musical inspirations, from operas like Puccini’s La bohème and Mozart’s Magic Flute, in another edition of First Times.

This Week in Music

The Crocodile is up for sale. The owners announced on Tuesday that they’re selling the long-running Belltown venue through a receivership process, which is generally used as an alternative to bankruptcy. According to court documents, the Crocodile has $1.6 million in debt, with the vast majority owed to ticketing platform TicketWeb, and cites decreased attendance and alcohol sales, along with rising operating costs, for its lack of profitability. In the meantime, the venue and its upstairs hotel will operate as usual, booking future shows in hopes of selling the club as a “turnkey situation.”

Live local music is still alive and well at the Black Lodge. This weekend, the Black Lodge will host Susquatch 5, a two-day festival organized by local noise artist Fleetwood Snack. I highly recommend checking out fuzzy indie rock band Spiral XP and experimental rap project Lonelygirl15 on night one, and Tacoma garage rock trio Semisoft on night two.

Singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman and his wife, Marie-Claire Lambert, died in a house fire on Sunday at their home in Belgium. Zimmerman was best known for his ‘70s folk songs and, later, his collaboration with contemporary indie folk favorites Big Thief. His 1969 debut, Ten Songs by Tucker Zimmerman, was often cited by David Bowie as one of his all-time favorite albums. Zimmerman was 84.

Let the album rollouts begin! Harry Styles has unveiled his forthcoming album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally., due March 6. BLACKPINK also announced their upcoming mini-album Deadline, out February 27. Mitski dropped a new song, “Where’s My Phone,” and revealed that her upcoming album, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, will also arrive February 27. And Charli XCX dropped her second single from the highly anticipated Wuthering Heights soundtrack, “Wall of Sound.”

Bandcamp is the first major streaming platform to ban AI music. Last week, Bandcamp committed to “putting human creativity first” by prohibiting any music created using artificial intelligence. This comes amidst reports of AI slop climbing streaming charts, such as AI-generated “music creator” Sienna Rose, who has over 3.4 million monthly Spotify listeners.

Watch the heavily costumed heavy metal band GWAR cover Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” The shock-rock band, who are known for spraying their fans with fake blood, urine, and semen, covered the pop hit on AV Club’s Undercover series on Friday. “‘Pink Pony Club’ is about embracing exile from a boring, shitty world and remaking yourself into whatever you want,” frontman Berserker Blöthar said in a statement. “Be who you are, be who you aren’t, piss people off, we don’t care!”

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First Times with Austra

Austra is the longtime electronic project of Toronto-based vocalist, composer, and producer Katie Stelmanis, whose career started on a high note with her Juno Award–nominated 2011 debut album, Feel It Break. Now, 15 years and four albums later, Austra continues to craft operatic pop songs, reminiscent of fellow dark divas like Zola Jesus, Carla dal Forno, Molly Nilsson, and US Girls. On her fifth album, Chin Up Buttercup, Austra pairs Euro-dance and late-’90s pop with emotionally charged lyrics about heartbreak and healing. I caught up with her ahead of her stop at the Crocodile on her first tour in eight years to talk about her early musical inspirations, from Boyz II Men to opera arias.

What was the first album you bought? Where and when did you buy it?

I think it was Boyz II Men because I loved the song “I’ll Make Love to You.” I believe I was 8 years old.

What was the first song you sang in front of people?

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by the Tokens. When I was in grade six, my teacher made everyone in the class choose a song from the ’60s and perform it, which, in retrospect, was probably traumatizing for most of the non-music-oriented students.

What was the first instrument you played, and what was the first song you learned?

I started singing and piano at the same time, joining a choir and also taking piano when I was 10. When I was really young, like under 5, I was obsessed with the "Queen of the Night" aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and would sing it with my grandma, so maybe that was the first song I learned?

What was the first song that made you cry?

This would likely be something from Puccini. When I was a kid, I performed in the chorus of the Canadian Opera Company whenever they required kids. I loved La bohème, and I probably cried at some point while watching it.

Who was the first musician you idolized?

I never really idolized musicians in a pop way, but when I was 18 or 19, listening to Nine Inch Nails changed the trajectory of my life from being a classical kid to whatever I am now.

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Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week

Judy Collins Jan 22–25, Jazz Alley, 7:30 pm, all ages

Yarn/Wire Jan 22, Meany Center for the Performing Arts, 7:30 pm, all ages

Ice Goth IV: Vanilla Abstract, Deft Lips, and Cuvier Jan 23, Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+

Popdefect, Girl Trouble, and Tom Price Desert Classic Jan 23, Clock-Out Lounge, 8:30 pm, 21+

Susquatch 5 Jan 24–25, Black Lodge, 5 pm, all ages

Austra Jan 27, Crocodile, 6:30 pm, 21+

Cate Le Bon Jan 27, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Wanna see these a day earlier? Subscribe here.

The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night

“The Four Sleeping Princesses” by Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore

After touring together for several years, experimental vocalist Julianna Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore developed a “musical telepathy” that became the basis for their newly released collaborative album, Tragic Magic. The result sounds like what would have been if there were synthesizers in medieval times. “The Four Sleeping Princesses” is an ethereal new age lullaby, and it’s the standout track for me so far.

Daphne, Op. 82 by Richard Strauss

Over the weekend, I attended my first opera: the Seattle Opera’s concert rendition of Strauss’s Daphne. The hour-and-40-minute show—short by traditional opera standards—follows the Greek myth of a nature-loving girl who rejects her suitors until she becomes one with nature, in the end being turned into a laurel tree. I am obsessed with the queer subtext of this story, told through poetic lyrics, which were sung in German but translated above the stage. And there were no microphones in sight! In our world overrun with technology, it was incredible to experience live music with no amplification, just the pure, unadulterated human voice and acoustic classical instruments bouncing off the walls of McCaw Hall.

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Drag Race Episode 3: Sketch(y) Comedy with my Inner Saboteur

Mike Kohfeld — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:32:00 -0800

We are back for Episode Three of Drag Race. This week, we saw RDR Live, the infamous sketch comedy challenge, and as with previous seasons, Season 18’s RDR Live proved that the struggle is real. The writing was inconsistent. The editing was heavy handed. But at least much of the cast surprised us with their improv skills. It was a bunch of drag queens in a who-can-be-the-stupidest contest, a much needed escape from the chaos in the real world. by Mike Kohfeld

We are back for Episode Three of Drag Race. This week, we saw RDR Live, the infamous sketch comedy challenge, and as with previous seasons, Season 18’s RDR Live proved that the struggle is real. The writing was inconsistent. The editing was heavy handed. But at least much of the cast surprised us with their improv skills.

It was a bunch of drag queens in a who-can-be-the-stupidest contest, a much needed escape from the chaos in the real world.

“RuPaul’s School of Overacting”

SNL cast member Sarah Sherman—whose body-horror comedy was once described by the New York Times’s David Cronenberg as “if he had been swallowed by a mulleted clown”—was the perfect guest judge for RDR Live. She arrived on set as a rainbow-brite harlequin, complete with matching ventriloquist puppet. (I think I saw that same doll at an East Vancouver vintage shop last weekend, sitting next to a taxidermied pangolin.)

We saw new sides of the queens on Episode Three, and not all of them were cute. The producers made Boston-based Briar Blush one of the stars of the episode as the annoying little sister of the cast. After flitting about, throwing shade, and literally poking an exasperated Athena, Briar cast herself as RDR Live hostess Athena’s “inner saboteur.” It didn’t pay off—the judges called her forgettable.

Kenya Pleaser brought us top-rate talking head in the episode with confessional cutaways on How to Succeed in a Drag Race Improv Challenge. She and Nini Coco played sentient cosmetics in the Lipstick Lovers sketch (plus, Jane’s lipstick headpiece from Episode Two made a cameo appearance on Nini’s head).

Myki Meeks from Orlando, better known by fans as “that queen that looks like Aria Stark,” talked about her impressive theater background when she first entered the werkroom. When she was paired with Juicy Love Dion in the Michelle Visage office supply store skit, Myki coached the younger queen on her performance nerves. Juicy’s fears were unfounded: despite “not being an actor,” Juicy’s confident delivery and queenly poise outshined scene partner Myki and earned her a top placement for the episode. (Side note: by Episode Three, Juicy has confessed to viewers that she can’t sew, can’t sing, and can’t act… girl, what are you doing on RuPaul’s Drag Race!?)

Mandy Mango and Darlene Mitchell appeared together in a half-baked butter-churning competition sketch. Darlene’s white trash biker chick overshadowed Mandy’s conservative Amish character, and Mandy landed in the bottom for the third episode in a row.

I felt bad for Mandy, though. Last week, she was read by the judges for doing too much and then this week she was read by the judges for not doing enough with her character. Mandy’s Drag Race run is unfortunate—a casualty of storyline production.

Keys to the Queendom

Who wouldn't have fun in those shorts. MTV

This edition of RDR Live brought RuPaul to the mainstage for a rare live performance, half-stepping to her 2022 song “Queendom” as the musical guest for the variety show. I watched Episode Three with my sister and nibling (neither had ever seen an episode of Drag Race). For me, watching the legendary RuPaul perform is compelling–call it cringe, but I appreciate her well-crafted pop, and her looks are nearly always perfect. But my nibling’s reaction was telling: “The dancing guys behind RuPaul look like they’re having a lot more fun.” Keep that media empire humming, Ru.

Some Girls Do, but Jane Don’t

Unsurprisingly, comedy queen Jane Don’t had a strong showing on Episode Three. As part of the RDR Live News Skit, Jane played a Minnesota PFLAG mom that was one part Debbie Novotny of Queer As Folk, one part Allison Janney in Drop Dead Gorgeous, and one hundred percent stupid. Her brilliant characterization and flawless comedic timing made her a breath of fresh air in an otherwise bland skit. Sarah Sherman said she’s “taking notes.”

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Thanks, Jane; I’ve been saying “poppers” in a Minnesota accent out loud to no one for days.

Briar wasn’t the only “inner saboteur” at play this week. Jane’s performance on Season 18 has been so strong that the producers gave her a touch of the All-Stars Season Three BenDeLaCreme treatment, when DeLa got so in her head about winning challenges that she exited the competition by writing her own name on a tube of lipstick–let’s be sure to keep Jane away from the Wite-Out. After Jane’s stellar performance in the challenge, she had a menty b in the werkroom, sharing with the other queens that she was worried her winning streak would alienate her from the rest of the cast. It wasn’t a good look for Jane, but it seems to be the only way the producers can keep her from appearing as the most obvious winner ever. Jane, don’t worry about what the other queens think!

“From this day on, I will stop freebasing pangolin”

Episode Three brought us a magnificent collection of runway looks to the theme of “Animal Attraction.” If you were hoping for a furry festival, you might be disappointed, as the majority of the cast interpreted the prompt to the tune of glamorous eleganza extravaganza.

Discord “That’s definitely a walk” Addams finally got to hear about her runway during RuPaul’s walkthrough before the challenge. “You looked like a crazy person,” RuPaul told Discord, “in the most entertaining way possible.” Humiliation kink, Ru?

Discord’s albino alligator look in Episode Three was no joke, though: a sickening take on animal skin in fashion featuring a human skin handbag with her own face screaming out of the side.

There goes Ru's pangolin scale empire. MTV

The top three queens of the week all had stunning looks. True to her roots, Darlene Mitchell appeared as a cow-cowboy hybrid complete with black hat, cape, and hooves. Jane Don’t wore a gorgeous feathered gown in eye-popping colors, channeling the tropical macaw. Juicy Love Dion found herself at the top of the pack in a glittering gown composed of thousands of golden scales modeled after the endangered pangolin. When asked “why pangolin?” by the judges, Juicy spoke to the species' vulnerability to poaching, thus ending RuPaul’s black market stock in powdered pangolin scales.

Briar, Vita, and Mandy landed in the bottom, with Briar and Mandy lip-syncing to Lizzo’s “Love in Real Life.” Mandy delivered another high-energy performance, but most of it was edited out of the episode in favor of Briar. Being in the bottom two for the first three episodes sealed Mandy’s fate as the next to sashay away. We’ll get to enjoy Briar’s mullet for at least another week, yay!

See you next week for Episode Four!

Stranger Suggests: Video Game-Inspired Dream Pop, a Hopeful Play For These Hopeless Times, and a Pistachio Sundae with Black-Currant Sauce

Audrey Vann — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:30:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Audrey Vann MONDAY 1/19

Crushed with Swinging

See Crushed at Baba Yaga on Monday, January 19. BEN RAYNER

(MUSIC) Crushed leans into the video-game aesthetic—titling their debut EP extra life and their more recent full-length no scope—but that doesn't mean they make video game music (aside from a few glitch-pop moments). Singer Bre Morell provides bold, powerful vocals as Shaun Durkan layers beats, samples, and occasionally his own voice to create atmospheric, electronic-influenced dream pop. It's experimental and genre-bending, but still incredibly accessible. The duo met online while sharing their love for '90s alt-radio hits, and they now record out of different cities: Morell is based in Los Angeles and Durkan calls Portland home. Last fall, Paste Magazine named Crushed as "The Best of What’s Next," describing their songs as the perfect combination of "lyrics that come from a place of real despair and struggle and doubt; a trip-hoppy beat, beautiful atmosphere, and simple, lazy guitars; a metamorphic, surging finale." Portland-based artist Swinging opens the show with their experimental and ethereal alt-folk. (Baba Yaga, 8 pm, 21+) SHANNON LUBETICH

TUESDAY 1/20

Publish Your Valentine in The Stranger!

Declare your love in The Stranger's February Issue! MS

(LOVE) Love is in the air! Grocery store shelves are lined with boxes of chocolates, and people on social media are debating whether or not chalky heart-shaped candy actually tastes good. (YES, AND I WILL DIE ON THAT SUGAR MOUNTAIN.) Valentine’s Day is upon us, and we’re filling our February issue with hundreds of your love notes! Just head over to thestranger.com/valentines and spill your heart in 150 characters or less. And new this year: The first 20 people to purchase a one-year subscription to the print edition of The Stranger get a special super-sized valentine! Just buy your subscription here, and then forward your receipt to valentines@thestranger.com using the same email address you used when submitting your valentine message. We'll display your declaration of adoration in larger font with an extra cute design to make it unmissable to your honey bunny/baby poo/sweetie pie. Yay, love! Get them in by January 23 for print, and February 14 for online. MEGAN SELING

WEDNESDAY 1/21

The Heart Sellers

See 'The Heart Sellers' at Seattle Repertory Theater through February 1. SAYED ALAMY

(PERFORMANCE) So, you might not know this, but everything is terrible right now. The federal government and its goons are upending the spirit of America. They’ve tipped over the melting pot and hawked a loogie into the dregs that remain. The American dream is now a polymarket bet that you’ll never win. The new play at the Seattle Repertory Theater, The Heart Sellers, tells the story of the immigrant experience at a time when America was finally opening its doors to people outside northwestern Europe. There is hope in this play, and there is sadness. In it, two women—one from Korea, one from the Philippines—find friendship when they need it most—on Thanksgiving in 1973. The whole play takes place with two characters in one apartment. The Heart Sellers strikes a chord for American immigrants and lets those of us who aren’t strangers in a strange land step inside their shoes (or house slippers) for a spell. Plus, the acting is phenomenal. (Seattle Repertory Theater, 2 & 7:30 pm) NATHALIE GRAHAM

THURSDAY 1/22

Yarn/Wire, Yiğit Kolat, and Yonatan Ron

(MUSIC) The sound of avant-garde classical ensemble Yarn/Wire is in the name—fuzzy, fibrous threads interwoven with scratchy, metallic chords. Founded in NYC back in 2005, the adventurous piano/percussion quartet pushes the boundaries of contemporary music with their annual Currents project, which serves as an incubator for innovative experimental music. While their music can be unconventional, the pianos maintain a sound within the classical music realm that is accessible to the general public—meaning, yes, you can bring your parents or grandparents to this without fearing their judgment or discomfort. This is the relaxing kind of experimental music, not the chaotic kind. (Meany Hall, 7:30 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

FRIDAY 1/23

The 2026 Annual Disabled List Comedy Festival

(COMEDY) Now, more than ever, we need to laugh. And this week, the fourth annual Disabled List Comedy Festival is giving us several opportunities to do just that, with five days of stand-up performances and a variety show starring some of the country’s most hilarious comedians. The Disabled List was co-founded by Kayla Brown and Dan Hurwitz (one of The Stranger’s Champions of Comedy in 2024), and this year’s festival features notable headliners including Hayden Kristal (I hope she brings her dog Creatch!), Comrade Tripp, Derek Shen (another Champion of Comedy alum), and Tina Friml, who so perfectly balances comedy and her experiences as a person with cerebral palsy that when Stranger contributor Mindi Lind interviewed Friml in 2024, she wrote, “This magical unicorn has broken through the impenetrable wall between prime time and the disabled experience, delivering lines so smart, so cunning, so potently real that entire universities have spent decades trying to distill these ideas into hundred-page dissertations.” You cannot lose—pick any show from their stellar line-up and go laugh until your tummy hurts. (Jan 22–25, various venues) MEGAN SELING

SATURDAY 1/24

Judy Collins

(MUSIC) After deep-diving into the catalogs of legendary songstresses like Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, I finally found my way to the discography of Judy Collins. I was already aware of her iconic voice, but given the number of her albums in record store dollar bins, I did not expect her exploration of different genres. Her music is not simply straightforward vocal pop, but swims around trad-folk, country, and jazz, incorporating the occasional experimental flourish (such as the ethereal ocean sounds in “Farewell to Tarwathie.”) Collins has released and collaborated on over 50 albums in her lifetime, with additional career successes as an author, filmmaker, social activist, guitar designer, and record label founder. She’s also been gigging for over 50 years, so show up and make this stop in Seattle a memorable one for her. (Jazz Alley, 7:30 pm, all ages) AUDREY VANN

SUNDAY 1/25

Devour a Deep Sea Sugar and Salt Ice Cream Sundae at Milk Drunk

Get it before it's gone! COURTESY OF MILK DRUNK

(FOOD & DRINK) Deep Sea Sugar and Salt serves up some of the fattest, most indulgent slices of cake in the PacNW. Milk Drunk sells some of the funnest soft serve sundaes and cones—dipped in and covered with toppings like butterscotch hard shell, Fruity Pebbles, and cinnamon streusel—in the city. Together? Fuck. I knew this collaboration was going to be good, but I did not expect it to be so delicious that I can say with certainty that it will remain on my personal top 10 list of best things I ate in 2026. And it’s only January! A mountain of pistachio and black-currant soft serve is smothered with a tart black currant sauce, rich pistachio butter, and a shortbread crumble that makes all the flavors pop. Because it’s a limited-edition collab—Milk Drunk hosts different sundae chefs every month—Sunday, January 25, is your last chance to try it. Don’t miss out. (Milk Drunk, noon–9 pm) MEGAN SELING

Prizefight!

Win tickets to rad upcoming events!*

Jacob Banks
January 24, the Neptune

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Pop Loser #12: This Week's Events, Music News, and Ya Tseen’s Sea of Synths

Audrey Vann — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 13:22:00 -0800

The Stranger's weekly music roundup by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser! This week, we say fuck you to Spotify, congrats to Jenny Lewis (and her dog), and farewell to two talented musicians. Ya Tseen’s Nicholas Galanin shows us his sea of analog synths. And move over, Sabrina Carpenter, Robyn has a new ovulation anthem, and it’s way hornier than “Juno.”

This Week in Music

The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir has died at age 78. His family shared in a statement on Sunday that the jam band’s cofounder “transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones,” after a battle with cancer and underlying lung issues. Weir played with the Grateful Dead for the entirety of the band’s 30-year run, along with Kingfish, Bob Weir Band, Dead & Company, and more.

This mortal coil also lost Black Midi founding member Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin. The 26-year-old guitarist played on the band’s debut album, Schlagenheim, before leaving in 2021 due to mental health reasons. In their statement, the Kwasniewski-Kelvin family added, “A talented musician and a kind, loving man finally succumbed; despite all efforts…. He will always be loved. Please take a moment to check in with your loved ones so we can stop this happening to our young men.”

Spotify is no longer running ICE recruitment ads. But make no mistake, it’s just a meaningless case of convenient timing: The ad campaign simply ended on Wednesday, just before an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good. Despite the platform using this headline to get in our good graces, the end of this specific campaign does not mean an end to these types of ads. The Guardian reports that ICE has planned a $100 million yearlong media barrage for what it calls “wartime recruitment,” targeting conservative radio show listeners, gun rights aficionados, military affairs followers, and “men’s interests enthusiasts.”

Finally, something nice and wholesome! Jenny Lewis celebrated her 50th birthday on Thursday by “marrying” her beloved dog, Bobby Rhubarb (made famous by her 2021 song “Puppy and a Truck”). To mark the occasion, Postal Service bandmate Ben Gibbard joined Lewis in a performance of "Such Great Heights.”

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Immaculate Collection with Ya Tseen COURTESY OF YA TSEEN

Tlingit artist Yéil Ya Tseen (aka Nicholas Galanin) is known for his work across artistic mediums, from wood carving and sculpture to video work and his ever-evolving musical project, Ya Tseen. On his newest album, Stand on My Shoulders, Ya Tseen brings on collaborators Portugal. The Man, Pink Siifu, and Meshell Ndegeocello, among many others, for an album inspired by the gifts given by ancestors and the collective responsibilities to future generations. Genre-wise, the album is difficult to peg, blending electronic music with hip-hop, funk, and goth, but it has sonic similarities to labelmates Washed Out and Shabazz Palaces. I caught up with Galanin ahead of his album release show on Friday at the Clock-Out Lounge to chat about the collections of tools that are behind his shapeshifting work: woodcarving tools and analog synths.

What do you collect?

In my art studio, I have a collection of hand tools I use for woodworking, wood carving, etc. I was trained as a wood carver in my community. I also have a growing collection of analog synthesizers, which are also tools for the music studio.

What was the first item you acquired in this collection?

I made my own adze blades and handles; these were the first tools in my woodworking collection. I think the first serious synths added to my studio were the Moog One and Grandmother.

Get that Yamaha CS-80, Ya Tseen.

What is the most prized item in your collection?

I have some old Japanese chouna adzes I recently acquired and use. They are incredible and useful! As for synths in the space station, I love the Jupiter 8.

Tell me about an item you'd like to add to your collection.

I think about the Yamaha CS-80; I have a CS-60 but would love to upgrade to the 80. Also the Yamaha DX1.

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Music Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week:

Grrrizzly, Sick Crush, Digital Darlings Jan 14, Chop Suey, 8 pm, 21+

Joey Largent and Maumae: Moonlight Dream Dervishes Jan 15, Chapel Performance Space, 6:30 pm, all ages

THUMP (All Vinyl) Jan 15, Timbre Room, 10 pm, 21+

Ya Tseen (Record Release) with Ashley Young Jan 16, Clock-Out Lounge, 9 pm, 21+

Seattle Opera: Daphne in Concert Jan 16 & 18, McCaw Hall, various times, all ages

Constant Smiles Jan 17, Vera Project, 7 pm, all ages

KEXP Presents: 26th Annual Expansions MLK Unity Party & Live Broadcast Jan 18, Clock-Out Lounge, 6 pm, 21+

Painting the Town Red: The Music of Billie Holiday Jan 19, Royal Room, 7:30 pm, all ages

Crushed with Swinging Jan 20, Baba Yaga, 8 pm, 21+

The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night:

"Sexistential” by Robyn

“Shocking,” “utterly bonkers,” and “oh my…” are just a few of the comments from viewers who saw Robyn absolutely GAG America last week on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In this day and age, it is nearly impossible to create any type of art that reflects our times while actually being enjoyable (Exhibit A: when everyone released a COVID album). But, oh my god, the queen of Swedish electropop has done it. “Sexistential” includes lyrics about dating apps, hormonal rants on IG, and having a boner for Adam Driver. What really makes this work is that she leans into the absurd and has fun with it. I love you, Robyn!

“Jackson Browne” by Cathy Hamer

With just under 30 views at the time I am writing this, Cathy Hamer’s “Jackson Browne” might take the cake for the most obscure song I’ve shared on Pop Loser. But that won’t be for long, because thankfully, Numero Group has some reissues in the works! Hamer is the mother of singer-songwriter Kate Bollinger, who unearthed her mother’s ’70s folk recordings while digging through her record collection. Bollinger writes: “She wrote many of these songs in her late teen years while living in St. Thomas, selling suntan lotion by the pool, and playing a weekly gig at a local restaurant.” “Jackson Browne” is just one of those sunny songs of youth, which has a DIY production evocative of ‘80s post-punk bands that came later, like Marine Girls and Young Marble Giants.

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The Heart Sellers Is Unfortunately Really Fucking Relevant Right Now

Nathalie Graham — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 16:13:00 -0800

See 'The Heart Sellers' at the Seattle Repertory Theater through February 1. by Nathalie Graham

The day The Heart Sellers premiered at the Seattle Repertory Theater, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis. One day later, when I saw the show, a federal agent shot two people in Portland after, court documents claim, six border agents attempted to pull them over.

For the last year, President Donald Trump has waged war against immigrants. He is destroying real people and families. He has ripped through the fabric of our country, criminalizing those who come here for a better life—the very principles America was founded on. Even before he won re-election, Trump and the Republican Party stoked the fears of its already paranoid base by magnifying the crimes of a few immigrants and inventing disgusting narratives about others. Throughout the play, I could not quiet the outside world in the Leo K. Theater.

The Heart Sellers by Lloyd Suh is a story about immigrants. Directed by Sunam Ellis, the play is beautiful, and it is sad. It centers on Luna (an electric Becca Q. Co) and Jane (played quietly, and then dynamically, by Seoyoung Park), who meet each other in a grocery store on Thanksgiving in 1973. Neither one of them is from the US. Luna is from the Philippines. Jane is from Korea. They came to the US with their medical resident husbands to escape dictators (Ferdinand Marcos for Luna, Park Chung Hee for Jane). Their husbands are working at the hospital all night. They are alone, but not only on this holiday. They are always alone. Luna and Jane recognize each other as outsiders.

Luna invites Jane up to her apartment. Jane accepts. Luna wants to do Thanksgiving. She bought a turkey but doesn’t know how to cook it. Jane, who’s been watching Julia Child, knows what to do. Except, the turkey is frozen. Cooking it will take hours. They have nothing but time.

There is a hunger for friendship and connection pervasive throughout Heart Sellers. It’s awkward at first as outgoing, bold Luna tries to coax something—anything—out of quiet and reticent Jane. Soon—after a taste of Cheez Whiz and a bottle of wine their husbands wouldn’t approve of—Jane loosens up. Personality pours out of each of them as the play evolves. They both have communist sisters! Jane likes to paint! They both watch Soul Train! It verges on manic at times. All of this has been bottled up. They have not been able to be themselvessince moving to America. Because they sold their hearts upon entering the country.

The Hart-Celler Act, otherwise known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, passed during the height of the Civil Rights movement is the only reason Luna and Jane could be in America. The policy abolished the National Origins Formula, the bedrock of American immigration policy since the 1920s, which reduced immigration from outside northwest Europe. Adolf Hitler gave the National Origins Formula a coveted (to, ahem, some) Mein Kampf shout-out, commending it for excluding immigrants of certain races.

Now, they are here. Every day, they’re left to wonder: Was it worth it?

Luna—prone to wild daydreams and an active imagination—tells Jane about how she always pictured the Hart-Celler Act literally, as though it was someone selling hearts on the side of the road. And that, when she came to America, waiting in the immigration line, she pictured the border patrol agents asking people to exchange their hearts in order to enter the country.

As of 1965, America truly embraced the whole melting pot thing and started welcoming people like Luna and Jane into the fold. Except, it is not so welcoming to be a stranger in a strange land.

While showing Jane her photo albums, Luna points out a picture of herself and her husband at Disneyland.

“You went to Disneyland?” Jane exclaims.

Yes, Luna says. Then she clarifies: Well, only outside Disneyland. They couldn’t afford the tickets to actually go in. But they could see the castle! And the tram! It was fantastic.

Luna and Jane and their young families are as close to the American dream as Luna was to Disneyland, but they are as far from it as Luna was from getting a picture with Mickey Mouse. It is something they can appreciate, like the country town Luna and her husband drove through, where she saw a crowd of people celebrating, a picturesque barn, and seasonal flowers. She knew she couldn’t stop and join in the fun, because she was too different. They will always feel as though they’re on the outside looking in while in America. She still fantasizes about that barn.

Together, though, it’s better. She and Jane make plans for tomorrow, for the next day. They are friends now. But their friendship isn’t a guarantee, because anything could happen. And, who are they really? This experience—this place—has changed them. They have left their hearts at the threshold of this country. Still, they envision a future. It is what is best for them and their families.

Heart Sellers, a one-act play with only two actors, is small and it is intimate. Because of Co’s nimble acting from comedic to sentimental and Park’s tender trepidation mixed with genius physical comedy, I left the theater caring for these characters. Which makes it all the more tragic to know that things seem to be trending far worse today for immigrants in this country than they were in 1973. With ICE raids, travel bans, and canceled citizenship appointments, we have put restrictions on who can dream of more. Luna and Jane were so full in that theater—they brought me to laughter and to tears—but the American dream has never felt so hollow.

The Heart Sellers plays at the Seattle Repertory Theater through Feb 1.

Immaculate Collection with Yéil Ya-Tseen

Audrey Vann — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:41:00 -0800

The Tlingit Artist on the Tools of His Trades: Woodworking and Analog Synths

by Audrey Vann

I caught up with him ahead of his album release show on Friday at the Clock-Out Lounge to chat about the collections of tools that are behind his shapeshifting work: woodcarving tools and analog synths.

What do you collect?

What was the first item you acquired in this collection?

I made my own adze blades and handles; these were the first tools in my woodworking collection. I think the first serious synths added to my studio were the Moog One and Grandmother.

Get that Jupiter 8! COURTESY OF YA TSEEN

What is the most prized item in your collection?

I have some old Japanese chouna adzes I recently acquired and use. They are incredible and useful! As for synths in the spacestation, I love the Jupiter 8.

Tell me about an item you'd like to add to your collection.

I think about the Yamaha CS-80, I have a CS-60 but would love to upgrade to the 80. Also the Yamaha DX1.

This interview is part of the Pop Loser newsletter. Want this in your inbox? Subscribe here.

Is This the Ugliest Apartment Building in Seattle?

Charles Mudede — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0800

Urbana doesn’t even look like a mind was behind its construction. by Charles Mudede

It's impossible to miss Urbana. It’s a gigantic apartment complex (nearly 300 units), and, because of its prime location, Northwest Market Street and 15th Avenue Northwest, it introduces the world to Ballard.

But, my god, the building has no aesthetic appeal to speak of; nothing in all of it could suggest it to a region of dwelling we call architecture. Urbana doesn’t even look like a mind was behind its construction: it was, by all appearances, just built, just raised, and now it can only be just there. Huge, ugly, and functional (it keeps a roof over your head). But this is my impression of the complex, which was completed in 2014.

In this episode, I turned to the local and always insightful architecture critic Keith Cote (of Instagram’s @buildings_of_seattle) for his opinion of this Ballard monstrosity.

Drag Race Episode 2: Local Queen Jane Don’t Proves She’s the (Cherry) Bomb

Mike Kohfeld — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:59:00 -0800

We’re back with Episode Two, where our biggest challenge is keeping track of who’s who among the fourteen shapeshifters we just met. The producers treated us to another Drag Race classic: the girl group challenge. We said goodbye to our first Season 18 queen, but don’t fret! Our hometown hero Jane Don’t’s success last week was no fluke. by Mike Kohfeld

We’re back with Episode Two, where our biggest challenge is keeping track of who’s who among the fourteen shapeshifters we just met. The producers treated us to another Drag Race classic: the girl group challenge. We said goodbye to our first Season 18 queen, but don’t fret! Our hometown hero Jane Don’t’s success last week was no fluke.

“Quintessentially Queer and Queeny”

The main challenge was called Q-Pop Girl Groups, but if you expected a K-pop moment on Drag Race (!), you’d be sorely disappointed. Instead, the featured genres were “Funk Almighty” (disco, Ru’s favorite), “Go Go Go” (pop), and “Cherries” (punk).

Disco might seem like it’d have a leg up in the challenge. The disco scene of the late 1970s was the musical epitome of queer joy. Rooted in urban, queer, Black and Brown communities in the US, disco became a global sensation for its emphasis on movement, freedom, and defiance of rigid social norms—embodied by Sylvester, the Queen of Disco.

But the other girls had fabulous options. Pop group Wham! in the early 80s brought us gay icon George Michael. And queer culture and punk music alike are indebted to the sound, image, and attitude of The Runaways from the late 1970s—featuring Joan Jett, the Godmother of Punk.

(Your homework tonight is to listen to “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester, “Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)” by Wham!, and “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways. Then, do a free-write on what “queer joy” means to you.)

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Drama! Over Disco

Nothing generates tension like a Drag Race group challenge. Episode One top two Vita and Nini took turns choosing castmates for their groups. Vita chose Briar, Juicy, Discord, and Jane for her group; Nini picked Mia, Ciara, Myki, and Kenya. This left behind a disgruntled Athena, DD, Darlene, and Mandy as the third group.

The queens got heated when it was time to choose their themes. Everyone wanted disco, and when Athena confronted Vita on why her group shouldn’t get first pick, Vita smoothly clapped back, “Because you’re the Leftovers, doll.” While Athena’s protest was drowned out by the rest of the cast cackling madly, the producers spent much of Episode Two focusing on Athena’s displeasure at being perceived as “difficult to work with” by the other queens. She is clearly a Main Character of Season 18.

Main character energy. MTV

Eventually, Athena got her way when Nini’s group picked pop and Vita’s group pivoted to punk. Vita revealed she had secretly wanted punk all along, but chose disco to mess with Athena. Discord Addams of St. Pete, a punk guitarist, was thrilled with getting punk: she uses rock and drag as vehicles for queer political activism. “Drag has gotten Disney-fied,” Discord said in the episode. “There is a lot of drag that doesn’t say anything at all.” (Discord’s Instagram story on Saturday featured her hosting a watch party wearing a rad dress with ABOLISH ICE emblazoned across the front.)

Mainstage Takeaways

Nini’s group, Glam!, clearly had a blast during their performance. While Nini had a breakdown during recording after losing her voice from last week’s “screamography,” she ultimately managed a safe placement. It was professional dancer Mia Starr of West Palm Beach who brought tight choreography and a standout performance, launching her into the top two. Mia’s runway outfit captured the week’s theme of “Yo’ Neck, Yo’ Back, Yo’ Pussy and Yo’ Crack,” with a dramatic Gaga-esque black lace bodysuit that featured clever tearaways for all four assets.

Vita’s group, The Tucked Aways, brought cohesive looks in black leather, high energy, and entertaining verses that screamed punk rock. The smart lyrics and campy performance of Jane Don’t made her the standout. “Thank f*cking God we got the punk song,” Jane shared in a confessional after her team crushed their performance.

The “Leftovers” tackled the disco theme as The Studio Fifty-Whores. While they had the best group name, that’s where their chemistry ended. “You belittled the song,” RuPaul admonished the group, citing the elementary lyrical structure and “lack of soul.” Athena was declared safe, as was Indiana-born Darlene Mitchell of LA. “It’s one of the stupidest names I’ve ever heard, and I love it,” RuPaul said bluntly of Darlene, whose Midwest charm and trashy Americana runway saved her. (Darlene performed at the Drag Race Episode Two watch party at queer/bar…maybe we can convince her to move here.)

DD Fuego of NYC, who grew up in Monterrey (“the Beverly Hills of Mexico”), was read by the judges by her flat makeup and stiff performance. She landed in the bottom two with Mandy Mango, whose strange side-table runway outfit and frenetic main challenge performance also failed to impress.

Having been in the bottom last week, it wasn’t looking good for Mandy as she and DD lip-synced to guest judge Dove Cameron’s “Too Much.” But once Mandy fought her way out of her table dress, she lit up the stage with a killer lip-sync and multiple tricks, literally making the judges’ jaws drop. We have a lip-sync assassin on our hands! DD could not keep up and became the first queen eliminated from Season 18.

“Miss One-Take Wonder”

Jane Don’t already proved that she could design a top look from scratch, and began Episode Two with some shade, saying that she thought her mainstage look last week was better than winner Nini’s “orange brastrap.” Though Vita chose Jane last for her team, she demonstrated she’s much more than a look queen.

Jane is no stranger to the music industry. She’s managed punk bands (and helped manage Stranger arts editor Emily Nokes’s band, back in the day) and worked as an intern at a record label. So as part of Team Punk, she crafted her verse with time to spare, which she used to help teammates Juicy and Discord with their lyrics. (We love to see a congenial queen. It’s like British Bake Off with more wigs.) Jane’s clever lyrics and husky rocker vocals got no notes from judge Michelle Visage in the recording studio. Teammate Myki Meeks playfully recognized game: “Miss One-Take Wonder over there! She’s crushing it. Fuck you, Jane Don’t.”

Ms. One Take Wonder herself. MTV

Jane’s winning edit didn’t stop there. She was a standout in The Tucked Aways, with the judges calling her “smart” and her performance “pure magic.” RuPaul confessed she would rewind the track just to re-listen to Jane Don’t’s verse. Future collab?

On the runway, Jane featured her mouth: a giant pair of sequined lips with glittering teeth and tongue, complete with a lipstick tube headpiece. Judge T. S. Madison declared that it had her “speaking in tongues,” and Michelle sighed with satisfaction, “this is classic Seattle drag.” Jane’s brilliant performance and memorable runway earned her a win along with $5000. Seattle is making a strong statement in Season 18!

Until next week!

New episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 18 will air on MTV every Friday at 8PM PST.

Stranger Suggests: A Psychosexual NC-17 Sensation, the Beginning of Your Year of Opera, and a Stoic White-Guy Worth Your Time

Julianne Bell — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell MONDAY 1/12

Collide-O-Scope 16th Anniversary

(FILM) For a whopping 16 years, Collide-O-Scope has been a fixture of Seattle’s underground film and performance scene. It’s an institution that’s evolved alongside our city’s venues and creative spaces, putting in a decade at the (dearly missed) Re-bar, shifting online during the pandemic era, and finding a four-year home at the Crocodile’s recently closed Here-After before landing at its newest venue, the Clock-Out Lounge! For the uninitiated, the 16th-anniversary show is the perfect entry point into the cabaret, the chaos, and the community that have cemented Collide-O-Scope as a resilient part of Seattle nightlife history. (Clock-Out Lounge, 8 pm, 21+) LANGSTON THOMAS

TUESDAY 1/13

Colm Tóibín

(LITERATURE) Celebrated Irish author Colm Tóibín follows in the footsteps of literary giants like Henry James, James Baldwin, and Elizabeth Bishop, writing intensely human stories with unadorned, rhythmic prose. You’re most likely familiar with him through his sixth novel, Brooklyn, a breakout success that was adapted into the Oscar-nominated 2015 film of the same name starring Saoirse Ronan. Brooklyn revolves around young midcentury Irish immigrant Eilis Lace’s struggle to reconcile her past in Ireland with her new life in New York. Tóibín continued the saga with his 2024 sequel, Long Island, which picks up 30 years later as Eilis finds her marriage with her Italian husband Tony in disarray. Join him for this conversation at Town Hall for a glimpse into the mind of what the Boston Globe called “one of the world’s best living literary writers.” (Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

WEDNESDAY 1/14

Steve Gunn, Jeffrey Silverstein

(MUSIC) It’s understandable if you’ve had your fill of stoic, white-guy guitarists with limited (yet pleasant) vocal ranges. But you should leave a sliver of precious time in your hectic life for Steve Gunn. What he lacks in singing prowess, he makes up for in instrumental expressiveness. Gunn’s a guitarist of rare melodic elegance and deceptive soulfulness, as evidenced by his 2013 breakthrough, Time Off, which found him contending with the legacies of British psych-folk masters such as Michael Chapman and Bert Jansch. Since then, Steve’s kept busy with several collabs (Kim Gordon, Mdou Moctar, Mike Cooper, Natural Information Society, etc.) and solo works, steadily building a fan base, with help via Matador Records’ marketing might. This year, Gunn’s released Daylight Daylight and Music for Writers for the more underground No Quarter and Three Lobed labels. The former thrums with chamber-art-pop splendor; the latter zones out in glowing ambient-drone-fingerpicking space, sans vox. The Triple Door should be a copacetic setting for this music’s understated grandeur. (Triple Door, 7:30 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

THURSDAY 1/15

Fatlesque Fest NW at Triple Door

(PERFORMANCE) Fatlesque Fest NW is back with burlesque that challenges expectations and expands upon what the art form can look like onstage. Rooted in fat liberation and body positivity, the festival showcases performers from across the US, Canada, and the UK, with each night featuring a different cast and its own distinct energy. Headliners Lady Drew Blood and Lady Lola LeStrange anchor the lineup alongside a roster of featured performers serving humor and glamor. Produced by Puckduction, the same team behind Fat Con (also recommended), the fest carries a community- and visibility-first ethos into a bold, high-glam performance space. More than a showcase, Fatlesque Fest NW is a statement that celebrates joy, artistry, and bodies. (Triple Door, 7:30 pm, 18+) LANGSTON THOMAS

FRIDAY 1/16

Monster Rally

(MUSIC) For the past 15 years, Cleveland’s Ted Feighan has created a trove of transportive sound collages as Monster Rally. Envision your mid-century Pan Am touching down for several minutes at a time on a volcanic tiki retreat as imagined by the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes; a bustling, sand-swept day market bearing bold spices and vibrant fabrics from across the empire; a Los Angeles Chinatown bossa nova jazz joint where the password is an inside joke. Alternately, the great thing about Monster Rally is that most of what your brain conjures when dosed with the sounds, Feighan has already made in visual form—most every release has been coupled with an extraordinary magazine cut-out piece of artwork that matches the escapist, exotically colored sounds he’s made, and his live shows are no different. By trade, a multi-instrumentalist beatmaker in the vein of Dirty Art Club, Teebs, or Madlib on his “Curls” beat shit, Feighan has chosen to open his studio for only the second time to outside vocalists (after his 2015 Foreign Pedestrians collab with Bay Area rapper Jay Stone), and the singles so far have displayed the telltale signs of crossover appeal. (Barboza, 6:30 pm, 21+) TODD HAMM

SATURDAY 1/17

Mourning Sickness: Showgirls

(FILM) What can I say about Paul Verhoeven’s landmark 1995 erotic drama that hasn’t already been said? That I felt like a changed person after watching it for the first time? That it is tacky and absurd to a degree approaching transcendence? That never in my life have I seen anything quite like Gina Gershon flirting with Elizabeth Berkley by talking about eating doggy chow? Whether you love or hate the critically panned movie, I’m willing to bet that you’re probably not indifferent. (I’m solidly in the love camp myself, in case you couldn’t guess.) See the psychosexual NC-17 sensation and its bevy of naked breasts on the big screen—drag queen and self-described “bird-brained bombshell” Monday Mourning will give an introduction to the film, which is part of her “Mourning Sickness” series of camp and cult classics. (Northwest Film Forum, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

SUNDAY 1/18

Seattle Opera: Daphne

The Seattle Opera presents Daphne at McCaw Hall January 16 and 18. COURTESY OF SEATTLE OPERA

(PERFORMANCE) One of my goals for 2026 is to start frequenting the opera—who’s with me? I want to see Seattleites step out of their Blundstones and Patagonias and into their opera gloves, faux furs, and antique opera glasses for an evening of art and glamour. I’ll be kicking off my Year of Opera with Strauss’s underrated masterpiece, Daphne, inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Strauss’s take on the Greek myth tells the story of Daphne, a woman who loves nature but has no interest in human romance, who turns into her favorite laurel tree after mourning the death of her suitor. Not only will this whimsical tale be brought to life on stage by the Seattle Opera, but the Seattle Symphony will join, playing the lush, pastoral score. (McCaw Hall, various times, all ages) AUDREY VANN

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MAGA and The Consequences of Selling Your Soul

Charles Mudede — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 12:10:00 -0800

The Difference Between the Devil's Pie and a Devil's Bargain

by Charles Mudede

Not long after Renee Nicole Good was shot by ICE, and Trump outright lied about her killer being the actual victim (the killer was, in this alternate reality posted on “Truth” Social, run over, in the hospital, and in very bad shape), I played D'Angelo's “Devil’s Pie.” Produced by DJ Premier and released in 1998, the dusty, bass-dragged, soul-simmering track concerns desperate people who are reduced to crime or selling their bodies for a few bucks—a slice, and a very slimy one, of the “devil's pie.” But the track is deeply sympathetic. D'Angelo is not condemning but describing the raw realities of hood capitalism. These people might be fallen, but they are not irredeemable. They might be living in hell, but they haven’t sold their souls.

Now let's turn to the matter of a devil's bargain. We could get all fancy and talk about Goethe's Faust, which presents the devil’s bargain in a Cartesian and Laplacian universe of intellectual mastery—no, that won't do. Let’s instead keep it real simple and locate its meaning in a 1987 film that mixed horror and noir, Alan Parker's Angel Heart. What happens in this movie: A private detective, Harry Angel (played by Mickey Rourke—an ’80s actor who is going through something right now), is hired by a rich man, Louis Cyphre (played by the only Hollywood actor to inspire an ’80s pop hit, Bananarama’s “Robert De Niro’s Waiting”), to investigate a mystery that needs, for contractual purposes, to be cleared.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Harry doesn’t know he is actually possessed by a swing-era crooner, Johnny Favorite, who sold his soul to the devil to become famous and, when the time came to pay off his stardom, tried to get out of the deal by raw-eating the heart of a fresh World War II soldier, Harry Angel. Along the way, Johnny Favorite murders people in a desperate effort to break the bargain. In the end, Louis Cyphre—yes, as in Lucifer, aka Satan, aka the Dark Prince—reclaims what he owns, what was sold in the bargain, Favorite’s soul.

Now, this movie is about a man who cannot be redeemed. Even God can't help Harry. Those who went for a slice of the devil's pie, however, are not totally lost. God is still there for them: on the street, in the jacked car, in the prison cell. D’Angelo knows you still got soul; knows that God will not throw stones but instead wash your feet. Even the tax collector is not in the abyss, not like Johnny Favorite, someone who, by their own choice, is forever out of the reach of God's love and forgiveness.

If Minneapolis shows us one thing, it is the irretrievability of those who support a president who is bombing people on boats, who is kidnapping people from city streets, and who is now killing people for practicing their rights as American citizens. ICE agents are bats right out of hell. Their contribution to society as a whole is next to zero. They are even attacking and traumatizing children.

And it doesn’t get better: The suppressed materials of the Epstein Files make it clear that MAGA has sold its soul to the horrors upon horrors they describe. You are in there now and forever. You will never escape this bargain.

Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme Are Here To Sleigh

Audrey Vann — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 10:45:00 -0800

Now in its eighth year, the Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show should be considered Christmas canon. They are hotter (and younger) than Mrs. Claus, their show is funnier than The Nutcracker, and they have more love in their hearts than your wretched family members. I caught up with the BFFs ahead of their five-night stint at the Moore Theatre to discuss their favorite Christmas songs, least favorite gifts, and the ethics of coal this holiday season. by Audrey Vann

Now in its eighth year, the Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show should be considered Christmas canon. They are hotter (and younger) than Mrs. Claus, their show is funnier than The Nutcracker, and they have more love in their hearts than your wretched family members. I caught up with the BFFs ahead of their five-night stint at the Moore Theatre to discuss their favorite Christmas songs, least favorite gifts, and the ethics of coal this holiday season.

What does Christmas Day on tour look like?

BenDeLaCreme: We have a long-standing tradition of hosting a party in Seattle every Christmas Day for performers, chosen family, and other members of the community to get together on our one day off, since many of us have long stretches of holiday shows. I no longer have a home base in Seattle, but still, we have everyone on this cast and crew, and all of our local friends in Seattle who we don't get to see as much anymore. We have an all-day Christmas party with a lot of food, drinks, catching up, and usually karaoke! It's very homey and familial. I’m so glad that we still get to have that.

What are your go-to Christmas karaoke songs?

DeLa: Oh, well, we are definitely not karaoke-ing Christmas songs! Trust me, we’ve had our fill of Christmas music. My go-to karaoke song in general is Shaggy's “Mr. Boombastic.”

Jinkx Monsoon: If I had to, I would do like “Greensleeves” so that everyone has to confront why it’s a Christmas song.

What are some of your all-time favorite Christmas songs?

Jinkx: I have fewer, so I'll go first. There's a song on our pre-show playlist called “Donde Esta Santa Claus,” sung by a little kid to his mom. He knows he should be in bed, but he can't, because he's too excited to see Santa—the chorus is “¿Mamacita, donde esta Santa Claus?” We have a cast dance that we all do when that song plays. It brings up a lot of warm memories. Then, I don't know, I like “Oh, Holy Night” because it sounds so ominous and dark, especially when played on a pipe organ. It sounds like a bad premonition.

DeLa: I'm very meticulous about having Christmas music during our show intermission that gets people in the holiday vibe while still being pretty obscure. I'm giving away my secret right now, but many of the songs from our show playlist are from this compilation album called the American Song-Poem Christmas, which is all songs from the ’60s and ’70s that were created through scammy magazine ads that said, “Send in your Christmas lyrics, and if they're good enough, you’ll be a star!” They were sent all these atrocious lyrics that people wrote in, and hired some really bad singers to make them into an album.

Anyways, it generated all these insane songs like “Santa Came in on a Nuclear Missile,” about a mutated Santa showing up, and instead of giving the girl a teddy bear, he gives her a laser gun. She's like, “Oh no, please, go back to being regular old, Santa!” I also like “Ole year Christmas,” which is basically a bunch of total nonsense phrases set to a beat. One of my favorites is called “Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Foot Four?” which is from the perspective of a little girl who is watching her mom cheat on her dad and singing to her dad about how Santa is carrying a gun. And the main lyric is, “He carries a torch for Mama and a gun for you.” It’s the most bizarre, weird song.

What is the most memorable Christmas gift you've ever received?

Jinkx: I think for me, and this is gonna sound so materialistic and capitalist for who I am today, but I don't think I've ever been so happy as when I got the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was a Nintendo 64 video game. My entire life, people had given me gifts that I had no interest in, and when they found out that I liked nutcrackers, that's all I got for years. When my family found out I was into video games, it was finally an acceptable gift to give a “boy” that I actually liked. This is part of an ongoing conversation I like to have about buying gifts for your queer relatives, because it's like, do you acknowledge the fact that they're queer, or is that outing them? Video Games were where the Venn diagram finally met, where they finally knew what to get me, and I actually liked it.

DeLa: Because you said memorable and not favorite, I’ll go in a different direction. I have such a distinct memory of being young and very, very queer—I'm talking like seven years old—and my family still trying to figure out what the hell to do with that. I always wanted My Little Ponies and things like that, but I would get action figures. I remember getting one that was a He-Man villain or something with a robot elephant trunk. It scared the shit out of me! When I opened it, I started crying. I was terrified. Once my family figured out they could give me art supplies, everything was cool, but for the most part, gift-giving was always this weird, tricky thing when I was a kid.

This sounds so Pollyanna, but as an adult, I'm not a huge gift-giver. My favorite thing is Christmas Day and when people show up to drink eggnog and spend time together. I’m making myself want to vomit as I say this, but spending that time with those people, and the fact that people commit to doing it, even though we're all performing and exhausted by the time Christmas rolls around, that, to me, is my absolute favorite thing I get from my community.

Well, okay, so you both have a bit of a history of living in Seattle, if you were to take someone on a festive outing in Seattle. Where would you take them? What would you do?

Jinkx: I know it's touristy and I know it's cliche, but I lived in Seattle for 14 years, and I never got sick of walking down to Pike Place Market. Still, every time I'm there, I go on a walk to the market for stones and gem-based jewelry, probably about two times a week. I’d take them there for sure. Then, probably take them to Queen Anne for dinner, maybe an artsy film, if I was in the mood, otherwise, we'd end up at Dave & Busters, because as a sober person that is, strangely, my new favorite place to go.

DeLa: I'm in Seattle Center a lot because that's where we work on a lot of the show. Once the Christmas lights are up, and once Seattle Center starts feeling Christmasy, I really do love it. I'm a nerd for the Space Needle and that whole area.

And, you know, I'm always going to be plugging our show! One of the most special things about Seattle is the performance community. There are so many incredible shows, and specifically queer performance artists who are making amazing stuff for the community. Whenever I'm able to see Scott Shoemaker’s War On Christmas, I'm always there. And, for so many years, the Dina Martina Christmas show was one of my biggest traditions. There are just amazing alternative holiday offerings in town, and so hitting as many of those as possible is always my recommendation.

Lastly, who deserves coal in their stocking this year?

Jinkx: I think they all just posed for a Vanity Fair photoshoot. I would just copy and paste that photo [caption].

DeLa: We might need to rethink coal this year because of all the additional mining.

Jinkx: It’s always a fight over where to put nuclear waste, so maybe it’s in their stocking. Then they can sit with what they’ve done!

See the Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show at the Moore Theatre Dec 23-24 & 26-28

Pop Loser: Music News, This Week's Events, and the First Song Sera Cahoone Learned on Guitar

Audrey Vann — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:40:00 -0800

by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser! This week, we’ll dive into the luminaries we’ve lost, Brian Eno’s newest project, and my nightmare blunt rotation. I get to rant and rave about underrated ‘70s singer-songwriter Dory Previn. And in this edition of First Times, Sera Cahoone shares the first song she learned on guitar.

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This Week in Music:

This week has been filled with loss. Singer-songwriter Joe Ely, who was known as a key shaker of the 1970s Texas progressive country scene, passed away at his home in New Mexico on Monday from complications of Lewy Body Dementia, Parkinson’s, and pneumonia. On Sunday, it was also announced that ‘70s R&B favorite Carl Carlton, who you might know from his songs “Everlasting Love” and “She's a Bad Mama Jama (She's Built, She's Stacked),” has died. No cause of death has been announced yet. Selena’s father, manager, and record producer, Abraham Quintanilla Jr., died on Saturday at the age of 86. And influential director, actor, and philanthropist Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer, film producer, and businesswoman Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their home on Sunday night from an apparent homicide.

Yo La Tengo paid tribute to Reiner at their second Hanukkah show in NYC Monday night by covering “Gimme Some Money” from the 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. “We’re going to salute a Jewish songwriter [whom] we were not expecting to be saluting this Hanukkah,” frontman Ira Kaplan told the audience. “We certainly weren’t expecting to be memorializing him, so we’re going to try to do a song and see how this goes.”

Together for Palestine—an ensemble featuring Brian Eno, Neneh Cherry, Nadine Shah, Mabel, and Celeste—have released “Lullaby.” Eno stated in a press release: “After a year defined by unimaginable loss, grief, and injustice, we want to end with an act of love for Palestine’s children. ‘Lullaby’ reflects their beauty, their longing, and their hope. If we rally together and download it, we have a real shot at landing Christmas No. 1—and turning that moment into vital life-saving support for Gaza’s families.” All proceeds from the single go to Choose Love’s Together for Palestine Fund, which supports Taawon, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and Palestine Medical Relief Service.

Feminist punk collective Pussy Riot have been declared an “extremist” organization by Russian authorities. The court not only has banned the group’s activities in Russia, but also threatens to prosecute anyone deemed to be associated with them. This means that even a simple Google search of their name could permit criminal prosecution. Anyway, stream Matriarchy Now!

My nightmare blunt rotation. Bruno Mars, Chad Smith, and Duff McKagan joined Slash on Thursday night for billionaire Todd Boehly’s private holiday party. But wait, it gets worse—the supergroup-from-hell covered Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

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Interview: First Times with Sera Cahoone COURTESY OF SERA CAHOONE

What was the first CD you bought?

I believe it was Bonnie Raitt’s Luck of the Draw. I listened nonstop. I think it was at Best Buy of all places. We only had so many options where I grew up.

What was the first song you sang in front of people?

It was one of my own songs, I think I was 17. I played it for my best friend Heather. I was terrified!

What was the first song you learned on the guitar?

“Silent Lucidity” by Queensryche. I recently got to meet Chris DeGarmo, who wrote the song, and share that memory with him. It was super sweet.

What was the first song that made you cry?

Dan Fogelberg’s “Leader of the Band.” That song still gets me.

Who was the first musician you idolized?

Pat Benatar. She was my first concert with my mom. I was so sad to see how many people were there. I thought she would only be singing to me!

What is a song that played at your first school dance?

Oh wow, I have no idea. I’m pretty sure I would have been in absolute misery if I were at a school dance.

Music Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week

Sera Cahoone with Carrie Biell Dec 18, Tractor Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+
Yves Tumor (DJ Set) Dec 18, Crocodile, 8 pm, 21+
Ben Gibbard Dec 19, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages
Jay Som Dec 19, Neumos, 8 pm, all ages
Belltown Bloom Presents: Rock Can Roll feat. La Fonda, Semisoft, Kenshi Killz, Dining Dead, Waltzerr, and Carny Dec 20, Sunset Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+
THEM Dec 20, Neumos, 6 pm, all ages
Damien Jurado's December Residency Dec 21, Tractor Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+

We can tell you how to spend your hard-earned bucks, straight to your inbox.

The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night

“Antídoto” by Colleen

French electronic composer Colleen is one of the few contemporary artists that I follow closely. Throughout her 20+-year-long career, her sound has ranged from abstract and ambient (2023’s Le jour et la nuit du reel) to melodic and lyrical (2016’s The Weighing of the Heart), and although it doesn’t always click with me right away, I’ve learned to trust her genius and drink up everything she produces. This is the case on her newest wordless, minimal synth track, “Antídoto.” I felt underwhelmed at first, but the more I listen to it, the more relaxing and enjoyable it becomes. This seems to mimic the concept of her upcoming album Libres antes del final (Free before the end), which is inspired by learning to swim.

“Twenty-Mile Zone” by Dory Previn

In the 1970s, poet/singer-songwriter Dory Previn wrote dozens of songs about being wronged by her husband, film composer André Previn, who cheated on her with a young Mia Farrow while she was pregnant. “Twenty-Mile Zone” is a deeply relatable song about a time she got pulled over for screaming in her car. “I wasn’t doing nothin’ / just screaming at the dark / just lettin’ it out.” The only thing she should be getting pulled over for is being criminally underrated. I highly recommend you dive into her discography if you appreciate the poetic lyricism of Leonard Cohen or the witty storytelling of John Prine.

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Dear Hendrix

Eva Walker — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:00:00 -0800

Every month for The Stranger, Eva Walker writes a letter to her daughter, Hendrix, to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. by Eva Walker

Dear Hendrix,

One Saturday morning, without telling your father, I went into the bathroom of our tiny studio apartment and pissed on a stick.

It was just a few days after attending the Sawtooth music festival in Idaho. While there, I felt so good from performing in the mountains, seeing all our friends, soaking up the sunshine, and listening to all the good music that I thought, “You know what? I'm in a good mood. I want to try acid!”

Until then, I’d never really tried any drug besides weed and expired, ineffective mushrooms. Still, I had always been curious about psychedelics. Maybe it's the unreal colors people claim to see? The floating feeling they talk about? I don’t quite know. But my anxiety was always the reason I stayed away from the stuff. Because if I know one thing about those drugs, it’s that you should be in a good headspace when you dive in. (And, don’t forget, never with losers.)

At Sawtooth, I was feeling great. Happy and more relaxed than I had felt in a while. But just as I asked my close friend how to safely get some, I suddenly remembered: Your dad and I had been trying to have a baby. I blurted out, “Wait! I can’t try psychedelics right now! I might be pregnant!”

Fast-forward to that fateful Saturday morning with the pee and the stick. I placed the newly dampened pregnancy test on the counter and waited. Butterflies swirled in my stomach. Then, boom! There it was. The second blue line. The blue line that confirmed what I had suspected: I had a baby growing inside me.

At the time, your dad and I had just started writing our book, The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City. (Available at bookstores everywhere! And a great holiday gift!) As I walked out of the bathroom, he looked at me and started talking about this band or that artist and how the book should maybe go this or that direction… blah blah blah… All I could say was, “I’m sorry, I’m totally distracted right now!”

“Is everything ok?” he asked.

“Yeah… um… I’m pregnant.”

We both paused for a moment. I was stoked, but also shocked. Your dad was, well, shocked and then stoked. He stopped what he was doing with the book, said some nice supportive shit that I can’t remember, and hugged me. And then, his back seized up. Like, totally froze. The news of being a new dad went directly to his shoulders, and he couldn’t move! It was like a scene straight from a sitcom. We laugh about it now.

Not long after that, we were lying in bed thinking of baby names. For a boy, we had names like Davidson (my maternal grandfather’s last name), Thurgood (the first Black Supreme Court justice), Warsaw (literally because of a street I used to drive past as a kid), and Michael. For a girl, we agreed we liked more masculine-sounding names. Austin, Payton, Hudson, and Thompson (the names of two of the members of the local band THEM). I did like some classic girl names, too—Rose, Stella, and Estelle. But then it came to me. “If she’s a girl, what if we named her Hendrix?” Your dad immediately responded in the surest tone, “That’s fucking awesome!”

Does it have something to do with the legendary guitar player? Fuck yeah it does! But it’s deeper than that. This may come as a surprise to you, but your outspoken indie-rocker radio DJ mother was a rather socially awkward and quiet teenager. I had friends, but didn’t hang out with many of them outside of school. When I did, we would just play music or watch Alice in Chains videos. Or I would opt to hang out with the 60-to-70-year-old Black men who gathered every early evening at a coffee shop on 23rd and Jackson. I was the dorky kid who lugged a guitar with me everywhere, and, Henny, I even had a wallet chain. It was far out.

But what comes with being a Black teenage girl in the Pacific Northwest in the early 2000s who likes rock and wears wallet chains is that everyone around you tells you how white you are. They say things like, “You play guitar? That’s super white!” Or “You’re like the whitest Black person I know!” Or, my favorite, “Blacks don’t play guitar!” That last one came from a Black girl. These ideas come from all sorts of people who were—and are—ignorant of the diversity of Blackness, as well as Black people who don’t know their own history. (I’m here to pick on EVERYONE. This wasn’t limited to just white people. I heard it from all walks of life.)

At the time, though, I didn’t realize how wrong they were. I thought they were right. Not because I wanted to be white, but because all of the guitarists I’d seen on TV were white guys—from grunge to those acoustic jam band boys. So maybe it is a white thing. Maybe I should stop. Maybe this wasn’t meant for me…

Then I was introduced to the music of Jimi Hendrix. I can’t remember my music life before knowing him. I was hooked. I was flabbergasted. I was broken in the best sense of the word. Everything I thought I knew about life and being Black with a guitar went up in a purple haze. That was the realization that made me say out loud, “Black people DO play guitar!” I. Was. OBSESSED. I began listening to the Smash Hits compilation that your grandma got me one Christmas.

Like any guitar player, my ego obviously made me believe I was Jimi reincarnated. I mean, it just made sense, right??? We were both skinny, awkward, born and raised in Seattle, and Black… I mean, come on! He died in 1970, and I was born in 1989, giving him 19 years to reincarnate as me… not crazy at all. Totally normal, like my tinfoil hat! I even started dressing like him, and wearing loud red velvet pants and velvet vests… I wore lots and lots of velvet. I also wore psychedelic colors (before my all-black phase began, which continues to this day). Most of the clothes I had were my mom’s. Either she would hand them down to me, or I would sneak into her closet after she left for work—shout-out to moms!

Jimi Hendrix was the first person who made me feel seen. His presence, his music, his whole goddamn existence flipped a switch in my brain that made me go, “I can absolutely pursue this guitar thing!” Before, I’d considered putting the guitar down because I felt so out of place and discouraged by the outside world, from my peers to MTV. I don’t know if I would be where I am today had I not been introduced to Hendrix, the guitarist.

Since then, of course, I’ve learned about a whole giant bunch of Black guitarists, and I would have eventually heard of Jimi because he’s the greatest of all time, but I really needed him at that point in my youth, and he got me through some hardcore self-doubt. When people say representation is important, this is example No. 1 for me.

He was the spark I needed to stay persistent in the thing I loved doing—playing the guitar. So, when you came around, I felt as if I owed him my firstborn child. But, since he died decades ago, I thought that giving you his name was an acceptable alternative. We hope you like it!

(Oh, by the way: I still haven’t tried acid, and at this point, I'm no longer interested. Although I did tell myself that if I make it to 80 years old, I might give it a second thought. Check back in with me then!)

Eva Walker is a writer, a KEXP DJ, one-half of the rock duo the Black Tones, and mom to her baby girl, Hendrix. She also cowrote the book The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City, which was released in 2024. Every month for The Stranger, she writes a letter to Hendrix to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. Read all installments here.

Stranger Suggests: Seattle's Favorite Holiday Light Display, One of Hip-Hop’s Old-Soul Success Stories, and a True Hockey Rivalry

Julianne Bell — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 13:25:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell MONDAY 12/15

Vengeance Is Mine

(FILM) The late German-American filmmaker Michael Roemer is primarily known for his landmark films Nothing But a Man (1964) and The Plot Against Harry (1971), but his lesser-known family drama Vengeance Is Mine (1984) could give them a run for their money. On a trip to her family home in Rhode Island, where she hopes to get closure from her traumatic childhood, Jo (Brooke Adams) befriends neighbor Donna (Trish Van Devere) and finds herself ensnared in another domestic conflict altogether. Criterion Collection writes, “Bringing vérité naturalism to a seemingly melodramatic premise, Roemer crafts a miracle of novelistic psychological insight that, as it unspools, reveals ever-greater depths of human understanding.” (The Beacon, various times, through Dec 17) JULIANNE BELL

TUESDAY 12/16

Earl Sweatshirt, Liv.e, Zeloopers, Cletus Strap

(MUSIC) Earl Sweatshirt has been trying to turn the volume down for years. Once a teenage rap prodigy who found cult fame with, and brotherhood in, “the potty mouth posse” Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Earl Sweatshirt now stands at age 31 as one of hip-hop’s old-soul success stories. Having just welcomed his second child and given up booze (and ramped up weed), he confidently told The New York Times’ Popcast this summer that his life is “fuckin’ normal, finally.” The recorded discography of Sweatshirt, born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, documents the life journey of someone who once helped define, then survived to outgrow, a generation of youthful nihilism. But more than a post-nihilist victory lap, his new album, Live Laugh Love, is a bombastic celebration of passion. Gone are the days where each line was an avalanche of syllables that tumbled across the page like a chorus of cracking double-jointed knuckles; today, Sweatshirt raps with a blunted calm that sounds well-earned, but what remains is the vivid imagery and referential depth you have to rewind (gladly) to fully appreciate, proving he’s still one of the best to ever do it. (Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, all ages) TODD HAMM

WEDNESDAY 12/17

Bait Shop Holiday Light Show

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(HOLIDAY) Everyone’s favorite Capitol Hill dive bar is back with its annual holiday light show! Bait Shop always goes whole hog with holiday decorations, and its epic musical light show illuminates every hour on the hour(ish). The staff manually flips the light switches, so be sure to tap into the holiday spirit and tip them extra for their hard work. We love the bar’s seasonal bevvies and details like the decked-out bathrooms, dick-covered wrapping paper, and tiny Santa hats on every animal. (Bait Shop, 4 pm-2 am daily, 21+, free) SHANNON LUBETICH

THURSDAY 12/18

In Tandem: A Trio of Duets

(PERFORMANCE) This evening of performances treats audiences to three different duets, each springing from long-term creative collaborations and exhibiting different choreographic styles. First up is the US premiere of Fable, a work from Bebe Miller with Angie Hauser and Darrell Jones that promises to explore “findings from a 25-year perspective on the contexts of art making through the body over a lifetime, exposing the collision of their internal processes as dance artists, friends, and citizens.” Next, Maurya Kerr, artistic director of the Bay Area-based company tinypistol, will present comet, whom I love, a “duet full of rapture, orbit, intimacy, fury, and presence.” Rachael Lincoln and Leslie Seiters will cap off the night with Fast Craft: Still Unlike Diving, a “study in pause, friction, and the beautiful collapse of certainty” 25 years in the making. (On the Boards, 8 pm, through Dec 20, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

FRIDAY 12/19

Jay Som, Sea Lemon

(MUSIC) Melina Mae Cortez Duterte, better known by her stage name Jay Som, dubs her brand of dreamy, intimate DIY bedroom pop “headphone music,” citing influences as disparate as Carly Rae Jepsen, Phil Elverum, and Alanis Morissette. She’s opened for musicians like Mitski and Japanese Breakfast, and contributed a song to the 2024 film I Saw the TV Glow. After a six-year break from solo music, during which she meticulously trained her technical skills, she’s released her latest album, Belong, which showcases her growth and leans into pop-punk territory with guest vocals from Hayley Williams of Paramore and Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World. Don’t miss an opening set from local artist Natalie Lew of Sea Lemon, who takes inspiration from the eerie beauty of the ocean and describes her vibe as “Costco Cocteau Twins.” (Neumos, 8 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

SATURDAY 12/20

The Game Show

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(VISUAL ART) What happens when art plays by its own rules? Or makes up new ones entirely? The Game Show is a two-weekend exhibition exploring this concept and the space between where games become art and art becomes play. Curated from an open call for work back in October, thirty artists now present whimsical, interactive, and delightfully odd projects, including dancers with bubble wrap, octopus roleplay, cardboard hotels built by mathematicians, projections that speak through walls, and, my personal favorite, a claw machine. Inspired by 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea that rules shift as we play, the show invites visitors to experiment, question, and engage through chance, movement, strategy, and mischief. (Vestibule, through Dec 21, free) LANGSTON THOMAS

SUNDAY 12/21

Seattle Torrent vs. Boston Fleet

Seattle Torrent forward Julia Gosling (#88) and captain Hilary Knight (#21) make a play for the puck in the team's first game on Friday, November 21. BILLIE WINTER

(SPORTS) A lot of energy has been poured into developing a rivalry between the Seattle Torrent and the Vancouver Goldeneyes. I get it. Both clubs made their PWHL debut this year, and the cities are just a few hours apart, making it easy for fans to follow the teams on the road. I’m all for anything that drums up more excitement about women’s hockey. But I say the true Torrent rivals are the Boston Fleet, aka the team that put our Captain Hilary Knight up for grabs during the expansion draft (thanks, dummies!), and was formerly home to our GM, Meghan Turner. Other one-time Mass-holes on the Torrent roster include Alternate Captain Emily Brown, forward Lexie Adzija, and forward Hannah Bilka, who has a goal and two assists in three games. Hopefully, at Sunday’s matinee game, the Torrent can show the Fleet the error of their ways. (Climate Pledge Arena, 2 pm, all ages) MEGAN SELING

The Greatest Science-Fiction Soundtrack Ever

Charles Mudede — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 11:30:00 -0800

Avex Ensemble’s performance will be synchronized with the 1982 version of the film. by Charles Mudede

We open with a row of black smokestacks belching fire. The sky is almost totally black, and one has the impression that the city, which is far down below and has lights like stars stuck in tar, hasn’t seen the sun in a century or more. Suddenly, a bolt of smog lightning. After the rumble, other fireballs rise and roar as a flying car approaches and buzzes by. It’s heading to two massive pyramids in the distance that project columns of light into the night. The pyramids, which look Mayan, are the color of a dying day, and have thousands of cascading office windows. Do people actually work here, or even live in this industrial megalopolis, whose factories dwarf William Blake’s “Satanic mills”?

This is one of the greatest opening scenes in the history of cinema. The movie is, of course, Blade Runner (1982). The pyramids are the headquarters of a biotech corporation, Tyrell Corp, that manufactures androids (replicants) to work hazardous jobs on harsh off-worlds. The flying car is a spinner (a police vehicle). The city is Los Angeles in the year 2019. And what brings the scene together and makes it more sublime, more hellish, more galactic, is Greek-born electronic musician/composer Vangelis’s futuristic score. It’s immersive and expansive. It gives us a sense of a city that’s incomprehensibly large—billions of people, all living somewhere beneath the smokestacks, the corporate pyramids, the flying patrol cars.

The director, Ridley Scott, explained during a Making of Blade Runner interview that he shot the movie at night and used lots of smoke and rain because he didn’t have the budget to directly show the size of this impossible LA. It was beyond the darkness, the rain that never stops, the blasts of smoke from utility holes, passing vehicles, and wall vents. These elements isolate each scene—Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) crossing a wet street, or waiting for ramen, or entering a spinner. As for the rest of LA, it’s in the music.

Vangelis scored less a movie and more an invisible metropolis that spreads out in all directions and has numberless street lights and boulevards, flying billboards, grounded billboards, nightclubs, strip clubs, bazaars, storefronts, vendors, Vid-Phōn videophone booths, power wires, apartment towers and windows. “[If] you’re not [a] cop, you’re little people!” Officer Harry Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh), the head of the LAPD’s Blade Runner Unit, tells Deckard, a specialized cop—a Blade Runner—who has grown tired of “retiring” rogue androids manufactured by Tyrell Corp. Only a fraction of these “little people” are seen on the screen; the rest are in the music, they inhabit the score like Spinozian modes in the substance of a god whose face is the “whole universe.”

Vangelis, who died in 2022, composed the soundtrack in his “control room,” Nemo Studios, which he operated in London between 1975 and 1987 (his peak years). He primarily used the best synthesizers—his workhorse, the Yamaha CS-80, had a central place in his studio. When we enter the Blade Runner world, we hear the Yamaha CS-80 accompanied by sound effects processed by a digital reverb machine. In fact, his studio, with its computer monitors, synthesizer setup, and mixing console, looks much like the spaceship that slowly approaches the opening’s pyramids.

The genius of hiring Vangelis to score this science-fiction film is not that it’s set in the future, but that he was, at the time, one of the few mainstream musicians who was familiar with the new instruments. As with Brian Eno, synthesizers and electronic production had been his bread and butter for a decade. And so, the idea was not to make the future city sound purely high-tech and unfamiliar, but like a place that combined the old and the new, advanced technologies (flying cars) and old technologies (bicycles), dilapidated buildings with gigantic corporate towers. Vangelis’s music was made with the latest machines from Japan, but in the then-new artificial sounds we hear echoes of the immemorial. This was the city in 1982; this is the city in 2019.

If you are going to perform Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, you must use electronic instruments, which is why the UK-based Avex Ensemble employs, for their live performance of the Blade Runner score, synthesizers, electric strings, electric bass, and electrified drums. Indeed, the Avex Ensemble specializes in electronic film soundtracks, because cinematic worlds such as Blade Runner’s would sound and feel all wrong with traditional orchestral instruments. We would not feel the haunting immensity of Deckard’s LA with the music of, say, Bernard Herrmann, whose masterpiece, Taxi Driver, is set in a New York City that’s as gritty as the streets of Blade Runner’s LA. But we see the people and the city in Taxi Driver. They are not in the music. Vangelis’s people are invisible; they are specters in a haze that’s as synthetic as the androids Deckard hunts down and kills with his futuristic blaster.

Though Avex Ensemble’s performance will be synchronized with the 1982 version of the movie, it could be played to a blank wall in Benaroya Hall. And I think this is Vangelis’s greatest achievement. His score is so masterful, so immersive, so urban in its mood, that it doesn’t really need the movie itself, with its world-weary detective drinking whiskey on a balcony miles above the streets, with its artificial femme fatale whose memories are not real, with its pack of cyclists in the rain and smoke. The score can stand on its own, a fact made plain by the Esper Edition—a bootleg version of the soundtrack that was released in 2002, has 33 tracks, includes dashes of dialogue and sound effects from the film, and runs for 113 minutes (the first official soundtrack, released in 1994, is pretty worthless, as it’s missing many important tracks; the second one, released in 2007, is better but also missing important tracks).

The Esper Edition version, which I often sleep to, is the cookie. It’s all one needs to see-feel Vangelis’s incredible city.

See Blade Runner Live in Concert on Saturday, January 17, 2026, 8 pm at Benaroya Hall.

The Five Best Underread PNW Authors of 2025

Katie Lee Ellison — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:10:00 -0800

Brilliant local writers who also absolutely deserve your attention and dollars. by Katie Lee Ellison

Instead of another year-end best-of list, I want to shout out the local writers who toil to find the right words in and around our very town, and don’t always get the shine they earn and deserve. In this wild world, local community is ever more critical to our survival, and books are our collective light in the darkness as we barrel toward the winter solstice and the darkest, wettest days of what has been another whomp-dinger-doozle of a g-d-help-me year. Do yourselves a favor and spend your dollars or library time on these artists who give us varied voices, strange stories, and new ways of seeing our world. One by one, here’s how each of them does it.

Diana Xin, Book of Exemplary Women

Book of Exemplary Women is the debut collection of stories from a writer long established in Seattle, Diana Xin. Xin—who ran the Hugo House Fellowship 2015–2016 and is now a contributing editor of Moss, a Seattle literary journal—is well deserving of our attention. In Book of Exemplary Women, dead animals, ghosts, and vampires are our ways into the inner lives of women in the suburbs, from Chicago to Beijing. Ancestral and personal histories haunt these tales, and Xin weaves quiet pain, humor, and anger in her both lyrical and spare prose. It’s a must-read if you’ve struggled with faith or sleeping through the night, or longed for a series of examples of what exemplary women do under ancient and daily pressures.

Sara Jaffe, Hurricane Envy

Max Delsohn, writer of the recently released, lauded, brilliant, and highly Seattle-specific short-story collection Crawl, called Hurricane Envy “Sara Jaffe’s masterpiece.” And to that, I say: amen. This collection of stories shocks with its quiet refusal of resolution: A baby is left in close proximity to a hostile stalker, for example, and no one thing in particular happens as a result. But you can’t help but imagine what might’ve happened beyond the page. Throughout Hurricane Envy, Jaffe skillfully sucks us into each narrative, then jerks us back into our reader bodies with her precise capture of time. There is often a shock of an event juxtaposed against a stark reality. These stories speak to our greatest social ills through all-too-familiar situations in unfamiliar bars, record shops, and a barn that could hold 40 grand pianos. Compelled? Really, you should be.

Abi Pollokoff, Night Myths • • Before the Body

Abi Pollokoff’s Night Myths • • Before the Body is somatics on the page. In this poetry collection, she creates musicality in her repetition, cutting phrases with periods at sharp and frequent intervals to create songs of rage and fury and rebuilding. If you’re a woman confused about what it means to be a woman, how to be a woman, you will find yourself at home in these pages. If you are the type to wonder how we humans are made, how we are put together, and how we come apart, hang out with Pollokoff in this collection. Reading this book had me thinking of cycles, of the full surface of our bodies we shed from our skin every seven years, and how compost is life and death at once. Here are some frequently appearing words if you’d like a peek into her style, tropes, and aesthetic leanings: lily, cross and uncross, bonesap, light, insides, birch.

Laura Da’, Severalty

Read this poetry collection and, no matter how well read you may be, learn new words. Be touched in your gut before you see it coming. Get a nuanced, precise, and truly wise voice on the experience of health and survival as a woman and a Native woman in this country, now and before. Laura Da’ writes with her heart and her gigantic mind. A few of Severalty’s themes and subjects: generations, health, survival, Genesis and Aristotle, rebirth and fruits, nations and treaties, aging and nature, and, of course—because it’s really good poetry—death, love, and time. Da’s writing is a well more of us would do ourselves a favor to tap.

Jamie Silvonek, Marginal Verse

This poetry collection came to me by recommendation from beloved local poet Ally Ang. Jamie Silvonek wrote these poems and published them from prison, where she’s served the last 10 years after having been incarcerated at the age of 15. She was convicted as an adult, has since applied for clemency, and is now in the hands of our judicial system. Marginal Verse is raw, from a sharp mind with a rare and compelling story and perspective. We don’t always get access to published writing from incarcerated folks, and this is an opportunity to engage directly with the inner world of someone living a tragically complex reality inside our broken justice system.

BONUS BOOKS!

(Also by brilliant local writers who also absolutely deserve your attention
and dollars.)

Ching-In Chen, Shiny City

A poetry collection many years in the works from a teacher, an activist, and your favorite local poet’s favorite poet reaching into the history of Chinese immigrants who picked fruit in Riverside, California, to tell the tale of a global future.

Kalehua Kim, Mele

This is Kim’s first collection of poems, which won the 2024 Trio House Press Editors Choice Prize. If you’re a form nerd, you’ll love this book.

Margot Kahn, The Unreliable Tree

Kahn is the author of Horses That Buck: the Story of Champion Bronc Rider Bill Smith, and coeditor of two essay anthologies, This Is the Place, and Wanting (one of my favorites). This collection of poems tracks her early years of parenthood alongside the seasons of her family’s orchard.

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Outer Stars

Lunstrum is the author of five books of fiction, and this latest won the 2025 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. The seven stories examine how we survive the wreckage of our planet, physically, relationally, culturally, and psychologically, and offer hope.

Josh Fomon, Our Human Shores

This is Fomon’s second collection of poems. Like Lunstrum’s stories, Fomon takes on “how language is rooted within the Anthropocene—and how poetry shapes meaning-making, faith in people and institutions, and death through lyricism, experiment, and ecopoetics.”

Mahjong Nights Are In, AI Food Pics Are Out

Michael Wong — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 12:30:00 -0800

Mahjong social nights are a reminder that the kids are all right, no matter what kinda pants they’re wearing. by Michael Wong

All of a sudden we’re in the final stretch of 2025, and amid the myriad of orange-colored bullshit. I’m glad we survived, and am excited to thrive with you in 2026. But as we look forward to a new year, let’s remember what to leave behind: What’s corny, what’s tired, what’s holding us back, and what can we do better? Written by an Asian guy, for Asian people, but to be enjoyed and considered by all. This is the Asian Verified Ins and Outs list for 2026. Ready? Let’s do it.

Out: Asian Baseball Players

Fucking YAWN, am I right?

Okay, it’s not really like that, but sports fans must know, Asians in sports is a boon. (You saw what Koreans did for pop music.)

And I’ll be honest, as an Asian Mariners fan, I’m still quite peeved that Ichiro himself wasn’t enough to lure greatest-baseball-player-of-all-time Shohei Ohtani to Seattle.

And what’s worse for me is that the World Series champion Dodgers have a bunch of Asians on the squad (even their coach is Asian), and with that the World Series MVP is a Japanese man (not even named Shohei).

This reminds me of when KPop Demon Hunters came out. I had the same feeling: Are we winning too much? Are we flying too close to the sun here? Are we poised for a crashout the likes of which has not been seen since cauliflower had its time in the limelight in the 2000-teens?

I don’t want that for us, and if rolling out the Ichiro song and dance doesn’t work to woo incoming Japanese star Munetaka Murakami, I think it’s time Seattle switches our attention to another sport where Asians are excelling, in our area this time.

In: Asian Basketball Players

While I don’t have news related to a CBA and NBA merger happening in Seattle, what I can offer is that Seattle University has quietly put together a roster full of Asian collegiate superstars from China, Japan, and Korea: the trifecta of cultural imports from the Orient. These stars are Chinese center Houran Dan, Japanese power forward Yuto Kawashima, and Korean forward Junseok Yeo, who also plays for the South Korean national team.

So what is it about little ol’ Seattle University that can attract top Asian talent where major league teams just cannot? I may have an answer. The head coach of Seattle University’s men’s basketball program is none other than Chris Victor, a Caucasian man, yes, but one with deep ball knowledge, and specifically Asian ball knowledge. As a player, this man helped his team in Irvine, CA (the Bellevue of SoCal), win a NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) championship title. This dude was probably chugging bobas and eating KBBQ within mere hours of raising that trophy for Irvine.

This is ball knowledge only a man who came up on the court with Asians can have. And it’s part of why the man is 80-56 over the past four seasons. Something to monitor in Capitol Hill.

Out: Restaurants Using AI for Food Pics

We’re in dark times, folks. If it wasn’t bad enough that everyone is using ChatGPT to write unnecessarily reflective Instagram captions about matcha, we are now witnessing the shameless use of AI to generate pictures of food by the restaurants themselves. Make it make sense.

The day I started realizing this was happening, at beloved spots across town, I felt at the center of an Idiocracy reboot. Excuse me, but why in the fuck would you, a Chinese BBQ restaurant, for example, choose to have AI create unsettling pictures of Chinese BBQ, when you could just go into the kitchen and snap a pic of the delicious Chinese BBQ that you actually make and that exists in real life?

This is only one example, but maybe the most egregious. And it comes with a warning: If you, as an operator, feel the need to generate images of food—food that you already make and serve—it’s time to go on a vision trip or something. Find God. Volunteer. I don’t think selling food is for you.

In: Restaurants Posting Pics of Their Food in General

Here’s a big idea: If you sell food, and you have a social media account for that, put photos of food on your social media account.

I’m not even talking about AI (again, don’t use it), I’m talking about posting photos of the food you make in general. You think I’m being facetious, but oftentimes I’ll visit a mom-and-pop page and see maybe 60 to 70 percent of their profile just being flyers of events they got suckered into sponsoring or otherwise promoting. And I’m looking at the family members responsible for running IG while their family operates the business—you know better! Stop fumbling the bag for your fam. If you can’t be bothered to grab some shots of food heading out the pass, repost some of the patrons who tag you throughout the week. Hell, use an OLD picture you may have in your phone, I guarantee it’s better than those 14 terrible Canva flyers parked on the grid for events that already came and went.

Take a seat with me when I say this: Give the people what they want! (Pics of the food you make.)

Out: Clubbing

I’m no nightlife historian, but as I see it, the death of the nightclub happened around the time that kids started feeling good about wearing pajama pants in public. What seemed like an innocuous fashion trend really just put up a mirror to society: Something went terribly wrong, and now our sweatpants- and Crocs-clad society would rather Super Like on an app than shoot our shot on the dance floor. Rejection on our own terms. Social interaction and decorum: truly casualties of the pandemic, and infinite scroll.

Makes sense, but let’s take this for what it is: a shakeup in the social structure, an ebb that needs a flow. Without an ample nightlife, what are we to do about this Asian birth rate crisis? What will Vietnamese dudes do with all their Ross button-down shirts? Church only comes once a week, after all. And what will come of the Hennessy and XO stocks if Asian folks start coming out less? We’re not thinking enough of the Cybertrucks.

All this energy needs to go somewhere, though…

In: Mahjong Social Nights

In the search for a solid third place in Seattle, and namely one for Asians or Asian stans, a new meta of mahjong social nights has emerged to the delight of many former ABGs and clubbing elite.

Across the CID, these mahjong social clubs have started popping up via Emerald City Tile Club (ECTC), Mahjong Mondays at Kilig, and more. What I can tell you is that night and social life IS alive and well in Seattle, just hidden in after-hours cafe situations across a game legendary among Asian grandmothers.

And regardless of your nationality or familial status, if you’re a cool person and have the mobility to move some tiles around, these mahjong nights are for you. A perfect foil to the sweaty, EDM-heavy clubbing nights of late, these fun gatherings are right-sized and right-volumed for folks of any age and background to tap in for a good time.

I had the opportunity to pull on a pair of jeans (!!!) and pull up on an ECTC mahjong night at Little Saigon Creative, on a night that happened to host Mahjong author Nicole Wong herself. Following a great keynote interview, the room teemed with gamers who sorted themselves across a dozen tables and started playing motherfucking mahjong, many learning the game for the first time that night. And with a live DJ, food, art, and coffee provided by vendors on site, there was little excuse to not stay a while.

Mahjong social nights are a reminder that the kids are all right, no matter what kinda pants they’re wearing.

Stranger Suggests: A Campy Christmas Movie Night, a Band for Fans of Kate Bush, and a Weirdo Art Party in Georgetown

Julianne Bell — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0800

One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Julianne Bell MONDAY 12/8

Collide-O-Scope Xmess: Final Show Hosted by Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson

(FILM) We’ve reached the end of an era, and it's time to take the strangest sleigh ride you’ll ever embark on. Collide-O-Scope is back with an all-new Xmess spectacular: a deliriously demented collage of vintage holiday oddities, freaky film scraps, and found-footage delights, all stitched together by hosts Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson. This year’s show is especially poignant, as it’s the final Collide-O at Here-After—the beloved Crocodile venue closing its doors along with Madame Lou’s. Be sure to show up and support the campy thrills, deep-cut ephemera, and big laughs that make Collide-O so special. Plus, enter for some special prize drawings to send you off with a sugar-plum sparkle. (Here-After, 8 pm, 21+) LANGSTON THOMAS

TUESDAY 12/9

Bye Bye Love

(FILM) This lost gem of Japanese independent cinema came out in 1974 and was rediscovered in a film lab warehouse in 2018, leading to its restoration and distribution in America for the first time in 50 years. Evoking the doomed atmosphere of Gregg Araki and the stylish surrealism of Jean-Luc Godard, director Isao Fujisawa’s sole feature film introduces us to Utamaro, a nihilistic vagabond who crosses paths with the beautiful genderfluid shoplifter Giko. Before long, the star-crossed pair must go on the lam for murder and embark on a summer trek through Japan. In short, it’s a queer crime road-trip movie with a Japanese take on French New Wave—what more could you possibly ask for? (The Beacon, various showtimes, through Dec 11) JULIANNE BELL

WEDNESDAY 12/10

The Stranger's Holiday Drink Week 2025

Drinks from left: The Dandy of King Street Crossing's Port Moody, the Runaway's Chocolate Peppermint Martini, and Big Mario's Spiced Cranberry Orange Mule. COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE BARS

(FOOD & DRINK) Ready to get your nog on? The Stranger’s Holiday Drink Week is back, serving up a citywide lineup of festive libations that put mulled wine and spiked hot chocolate to shame. Once again, every limited-edition beverage is just $12 as participating bars and restaurants roll out exclusive holiday-themed cocktails ranging from cozy classics to creative “cups of cheer” you will not find on a normal menu. Round up your band of merry fools and bundle up in your warmest gear to embark on this year’s self-guided winter bar crawl. (Full list of participants here, through Dec 14) LANGSTON THOMAS

THURSDAY 12/11

Mt Fog, Von Wildenhaus, Power Strip

(MUSIC) Seattle-born trio Mt Fog uses minimalist electronic sounds and ethereal vocals as a magic wand to “evoke magical spaces, real and imagined.” Their 2024 album, ultraviolet heart machine, gained critical praise due to its whimsical marrying of Björk-style growls with sparkly ’80s synths. Now, the band is back with a new song, “Look Inside,” which they will debut at this single release show along with a snazzy new music video directed by artist Sean Downey with illustrations by Dena Zilber. This show is a must for fans of Cocteau Twins, the Sugarcubes, Kate Bush, Sinéad O’Connor, and Siouxsie & the Banshees. Don’t miss opening sets from cinematic indie-pop outfit Von Wildenhaus and improvisational ambient project Power Strip. (Sunset Tavern, 8 pm, 21+) AUDREY VANN

FRIDAY 12/12

Peter Ferguson + John Brophy + Jean Labourdette

Peter Ferguson's "The Elopement of Our Beloved Comrades" will be at Roq La Rue through January 11. COURTESY OF ROQ LA RUE

(VISUAL ART) Three solo shows under one roof at Roq La Rue offer paintings of the jaw-dropping ilk. Each artist wields the paintbrush like a Dutch master, and each delves headlong into the realm of dark fairy tale with their unique twist. Montreal-based Peter Ferguson (described as “Norman Rockwell meets H.P. Lovecraft”) offers luminous (yet somehow dim) visions of sepia-drunk cityscapes and other scenes frozen in time that send the mind spiraling in search of a story. Jean Labourdette’s hyperrealistic miniatures of birds, skulls, and other ephemera are often only two or three inches in size, encased in vintage hinged gilt wood casings or antique reliquaries. John Brophy’s oil paintings of characters seem to glow from within: The shimmer of gathered fabrics, reflecting pools of satin, gloss of grass, and threads of delicate pointelle lace will have you hopelessly, luxuriously lost in the details. (Roq La Rue, 6-9 pm, through Jan 11) AMANDA MANITACH

SATURDAY 12/13

Equinox Studios: 19th Annual Very Open House

(PARTY) For nearly two decades, Equinox Studios in Georgetown has been a hub for arts. Sited in a World War II-era factory, the complex oozes that Georgetown gearhead grit and realness and is home to over 150 artists, from dancers and ceramicists to blacksmiths and painters (such as the brilliant Beth Gehan and Mary Ann Peters). We know that Georgetown loves to throw a good party, and this December iteration of the Georgetown Art Attack will be one for the books, as it syncs up with the Equinox open house (the annual event usually draws 6-8k visitors). Festivities this year include a pop-up Native Art Market, a host of food trucks, and artist-made fire pits scattered through the block. Live music starts at 4 p.m. with nance!, Flesh Produce, the Noble Manes, Bandski, Sirens of Serpentine Bellydancers, Night Owl, Town Forest, and Lil Lebowsxi. And since it’s Georgetown, of course there will also be a renegade marching band on the premises. (Equinox Studios, 3 pm–late) AMANDA MANITACH

SUNDAY 12/14

Antibalas, Midpak

(MUSIC) Fela Kuti and Tony Allen may be dead, but their pioneering Afrobeat legacy powers on with more voltage than ever in the 2020s. One of these revolutionary Nigerian musicians’ most skillful disciples, NYC’s Antibalas, have been fanning Fela and Tony’s artistic flames with unmatched fluency and funkiness for a quarter century. The intricate, interlocking polyrhythms, the triumphant horn charts, and the liberatory political lyrics build into perpetual-motion machines that make you think, against all logic, a more just world is possible. Following the departure of long-running singer Duke Amayo after 2020’s Fu Chronicles, Antibalas have returned with the all-instrumental album, Hourglass, which harks back to the group’s first principles, but with greater subtlety. It’s fairly certain that Fela and Tony would bust moves in approval. Opening will be Seattle quartet Midpak, whose serpentine and explosive funk laces African, Latin, and psychedelic elements into potent, party-starting jams. (Hidden Hall, 8 pm, 21+) DAVE SEGAL

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The El Rey Has Been Saved! What's Next?

Audrey Vann — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 11:55:00 -0800

Common AREA Maintenance Is Making Plans for Artist Housing and a Cultural Space

by Audrey Vann

“How do you form a creative space that is sustainable? How do you institutionalize something while keeping it free and fun? These are the important questions we keep asking ourselves,” says Timothy Firth, the director of Belltown-based arts collective, studio, and gallery Common AREA Maintenance (or CAM). The self-described “scrappy” collective has campaigned over the last year to acquire the El Rey building in Belltown, the next-door neighbor of their Second Avenue gallery, studio, and performance space (Common AREA), not only to save it from demolition but to create affordable artist housing and community resources. Last week, CAM officially announced that their plan had worked, and that they’ve acquired the building for the symbolic price of $20, with the Office of Housing agreeing to forgive the $2.2 million loan if CAM can get the El Rey structurally sound and in compliance with fire codes.

Built in 1910, the El Rey is a four-story brick apartment building on Second Avenue in Belltown, between Lenora and Blanchard Streets. Unlike many of its neighboring buildings, the architecture of the El Rey is relatively modest and not encrusted with ornate embellishments, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth saving. Many early-20th-century buildings in Belltown were constructed as worker housing in a very critical period in Seattle’s history, after the Denny Regrade, when there was an urgent need for low-income housing for dock workers. CAM’s advocacy for the arts community is not dissimilar to these origins. “I was really inspired by the building’s history as worker housing,” Firth explains. “Often when an old building in Seattle is torn down, and a new one gets built, the new building is not available to the working-class community anymore: It's not for the arts, and it's not affordable housing.” He continues, “It’s extra ridiculous to tear down the El Rey, because it’s gone through substantial alterations over the years. It has a seismic upgrade, new energy systems, and a sprinkler system—with a very small investment, it is ready for housing and community use.” CAM’s ultimate goal is to fill the top two floors with eight to 12 one- and two-bedroom apartments for working artists who make around 50 percent of the area's median income.

But CAM isn’t just planning to create affordable housing for artists; they are building a cultural space that will be a home to an artist residency program and a performance space. With the Crocodile just down the street closing their sister venues, Madame Lou’s and the Here-After, this is a welcome reprieve for the neighborhood. “There's such a powerful need for a performance space, especially ones that are modest in size,” says Firth. “It’s important to have smaller spaces that are available for people who are exploring new ideas and are in a generative exploration phase of their practice or their career.” Firth envisions the performance and gallery space at the El Rey will follow in the footsteps of their rented Common OBJECTS and Common AREA spaces, expanding their capacity to support artists and performers, including comedy, plays, modern dance, poetry readings, and more.

The El Rey is also home to two retail spaces, which CAM hopes to fill with mission-based organizations. While it’s too early to name any names, there are already a few organizations interested in renting the space. “There are so many cool people in Seattle doing wonderful things,” Firth gushes, “but it's very expensive to run a brick-and-mortar space.” Is it possible to make these spaces more affordable? In Firth’s mind, the answer is yes. “If we approach the project around this debt-free model, and we're not paying a debt every month, that means we are servicing our mission; that's what feels really, really powerful.”

As for the timeline, Firth explains that the project will work in phases, starting with stabilizing the building and getting it off the fire watch. Then, CAM hopes to get the ground floor operational and ready to be of use to musicians and artists while they’re still fundraising for construction costs within the first year. Hopefully, Firth says, if everything goes according to plan (a year of permitting and planning, a year of construction, and a year of stabilizing and inviting people on), the building should be fully functional within three years.

Firth also made it clear that this is just the beginning for CAM and other arts organizations when it comes to saving properties and offering resources to artists. “There should be at least 50 versions of what we're doing,” he states. “But the question is, how can we get a seat at the table?” Firth asks. “Oftentimes, we are not invited to the table. And, if we get there, how are we supposed to know the etiquette of the protocol?” In the last six months alone, Firth has spoken to numerous artists who are trying to start similar projects as CAM, and he is eager to share any spreadsheets, resources, or knowledge that have helped him guide the El Rey acquisition.

Hacking the Met

Amanda Manitach — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 11:48:00 -0800

“Western art history is colonial propaganda.” by Amanda Manitach

“Did you see Washington Crossing the Delaware?” a security officer asked as I scrutinized the labyrinthine floor plan of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “It’s the largest painting in the American Wing. Nearly 22 feet across!”

I had indeed seen it, in all its largeness. It dominated the gallery packed with a crowd that collectively craned its neck to take in the larger-than-life future president, his stony stoicism radiating bombastically amid turbulent waters. But that’s where my experience of the art diverged from the rest of the tourists in the room.

I held my phone up to the painting, and then, as though a hit of psilocybin had just kicked in, the details of the painting began to move. The floating ice atop the river currents jostled, oars churned, and the chests of men heaved. Words materialized: “Rights Of Nature” seared white against the overcast sky, only to dissipate just as quickly into a scattering flock of white birds. The image of Washington and his men soon melted, water giving way to effervescent vegetation that coalesced into shifting forest, which dissipated into a radiant night sky with the words “landback” stamped into the black. I’d never seen anything like this before—not in a museum, or anywhere.

Nearby visitors did a double take at the image dancing across my phone. This visual sorcery was happening on my screen, augmented reality unfolding in real time. Other people were witnessing a frozen moment painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851. I was watching an artwork called LANDBACK by Flechas, an artist collective. Twenty-six artworks like this one are currently being activated at the Met, available to view through the end of the year.

Titled ENCODED, this guerrilla art exhibit is an attempt to address the erasure of Indigenous presence throughout American art history. The absence of Indigenous bodies—or Indigenous anything—is a glaring omission among the 20,000 artworks on view in the American Wing. Instead, galleries are filled with pristine, unpeopled landscapes, there for the (re)claiming. The romanticized paintings of Albert Bierstadt and his Hudson River School colleagues set the tone early on, and as colonizers decimated the lives, fortunes, and lands of some 1,000 Indigenous tribes across Turtle Island (also known as North America), the genre was cemented into art history. Paintings served as postcards for westward expansion, offering a thinly veiled (if veiled at all) gospel of manifest destiny.

To access ENCODED (on view through the end of the year), visitors at the Met can launch an AR viewer accessible via QR code on the exhibit’s website, encodedatthemet.com. The site also offers a gallery of videos that capture what the experience looks like firsthand, as well as a link to an Amplifier app that allows folks at home to activate the static target images through their phone.

While it features work made by 17 Indigenous artists from across the continent, ENCODED has tendrils deep through the Pacific Northwest. It is also, simply put, unprecedented, both for the technology it employs and because it is unsanctioned. Not illegal, per se, but executed without permission.

Hacking the Met was something Cleo Barnett had been thinking about for years. It was the kind of thing her nonprofit, Amplifier, was made for. Founded by Barnett and Aaron Huey nearly 10 years ago in Seattle, the media lab works with artists and technologists to create unforgettable multimedia campaigns focused on disrupting, educating, and amplifying voices. With under 10 employees, the team is small and limber—they can work fast in response to political and cultural events. “We have always been interested in how we can bring the voices of artists from our community into different public spaces, in order to tap into collective consciousness and shift it,” says Barnett. “The American Wing of the Met is the pulse point of the propaganda that we’ve all been told about the founding story of this country in its current form.”

Technology provided a way to address these omissions through AR interventions by Indigenous artists. But the timing and the funding (or lack thereof) was never quite right until this past summer, when Barnett pitched the idea to an anonymous Indigenous funder who agreed to take on the project immediately. With only a three-month runway to Indigenous Peoples’ Day (the second Monday of October), Barnett brought on Tracy Renée Rector to curate the group of artists. “I wanted to show the breadth of Indigenous technologies, ranging from millennium-old pottery to digital art—a span of Indigenous creativity,” says Rector, a filmmaker and curator who splits her time between Portland and Tacoma. For the past two decades, Rector has served as the executive director of 4th World Media (formerly Longhouse Media), which she founded and now co-directs, which provides artist services for Black, Indigenous, brown, trans, and queer creatives. “In the two months before the launch, the technology itself changed so much,” says Rector. “The tech is so incredibly new that even a week before the show, there were major adjustments.”

Many of the pieces in ENCODED push the limits of what AR can currently do, like rendering 3D images that are anchored to 3D objects. Katsitsionni Fox’s Gifts From the Ancestors appears tethered to neither earth nor air. The target artwork in the Met’s collection is Indian Vase, a marble amphora by Ames Van Wart, the well-to-do descendant of colonizers (his grandmother was Washington Irving’s sister) and European playboy. The ornate vase, which was created on the occasion of America’s centennial, features two Indigenous warriors perched on the rim, hunched in resignation. The scene of a buffalo hunt—a wistful memory—plays out in relief carved around the base. Seen through the lens of ENCODED, the marble is eclipsed by a huge clay Haudenosaunee vessel painted blue and decorated with meteor showers. As the viewer circles around the plinth, tails of shooting stars spiral through the air, raining down.

Nearby is Cass Gardiner’s transformation of Jerome B. Thompson’s The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain. It’s a saccharine painting featuring a group of rosy-cheeked picnickers in gowns and ascots gathered on a mountaintop. One figure—a shabbier, less dandified iteration of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog—stands gazing into the expanse of the unfolding mountain range. Gardiner’s activation turns the bucolic landscape into a pixelated image displayed on an old Windows screen—a scene from the Oregon Trail computer game. Two 8-bit Indigenous figures pop up in frame, accompanied by a text block that says: “Look at these guys, acting like they discovered the place.”

Mexican Girl Dying is another piece in the Met’s collection—a woman wounded in battle, rendered in marble, recumbent on the floor of the bustling Charles Engelhard Court. The fortress-like neoclassical façade of the Branch Bank of the United States (originally located on Wall Street) serves as backdrop to the spectacle. Her back is arched as she clutches a naked breast in one hand, a rosary in the other. The sculptor, Thomas Crawford, carved the piece in Rome in 1848, inspired by William H. Prescott’s sensationalized History of the Conquest of Mexico, published just a few years earlier.

Priscilla Dobler Dzul’s augmentation of Mexican Girl Dying is a literal and figurative redressing. The nakedness has been covered with a heavily embroidered pelt of a puma—the digital rendering of a piece Dobler Dzul created for an exhibit at MadArt in Seattle in 2023. The original was made using the pelt of a cougar that died in captivity at a local zoo. The AR component proved one of the most ambitious in the exhibit; both the pelt and the marble sculpture were photographed thousands of times from every angle, in every type of light. (For each piece in ENCODED, the Amplifier team visited and photographed target objects at the Met continually throughout the full breadth of daylight hours in order to seamlessly recreate the image in AR.)

For Dobler Dzul, the intervention is a celebration of her Yucatán Maya ancestry, an attempt to undo the colonial flattening of the cultural identities of nearly 70 Indigenous tribes that populated the region currently known as Mexico. It is also an act of defiance: interrupting a gaze that is endemic to the colonial exploitation of bodies.

In another room in the wing, Jarrette Werk reimagines Seymour Joseph Guy’s Story of Golden Locks—a shadowy depiction of a little white girl regaling her siblings with the British fairy tale—into a portrait of his niece, Harmony. Werk is a journalist and photographer who works for Underscore Native News in Portland, an organization that covers Indigenous communities in the Northwest. For his piece, Werk interviewed and filmed his young niece Harmony (or Bííín íθeih in Aaniiih). In The Story of Bííín íθeih, what emerges from the shadows of Golden Locks is a portrait of exuberance. Trembling rainbows burst into fields of flowers as Harmony describes the joys of being Native.

”So much of the photography of our Native youth has served as propaganda,” Werk says. “Photographers came through Indian boarding schools with a mission to document children being ‘civilized.’ So many of those children look so sad. In the work I do, the youth I encounter are beautiful, vibrant little spirits. They’re having fun. There are many lasting impacts of colonization, but we’re beginning to see intergenerational healing. That’s what I wanted to showcase.”

Portland-based ENCODED artist, writer, and activist Demian DinéYazhi´, from the Navajo Nation (Diné), doesn’t mince words: “Western art history is colonial propaganda.” It’s one of many letterpress statements DinéYazhi´ created for the series Protect the Sacred Voice, made during a residency at Mullowney Printing.

DinéYazhi´ has never stepped foot in the Met. “When I first got the call from Tracy, I was nervous because the Met is one space that I refused to enter,” says DinéYazhi´. “I refused to allow my ancestral philosophies or symbols to be in conversation with the space through my own practice.”

DinéYazhi´s work is frequently rooted in language, text used directly and subversively to critique the institutional structures and powers at play in the art world—powers that dictate who gets to make work, who gets paid, who gets seen. The work of dismantling and rebuilding these structures goes hand in hand with decolonizing work. Violence, power, and genocide are all intertwined, encoded within art history.

Upon entering the American Wing, DinéYazhi´s piece is one of the first interventions activated through the exhibit’s AR filter, with text superimposed over a lavish mosaic fountain mural designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The augmented view reveals a neon sign that flashes across the iridescent Favrile glass swans. It says: we deserve dignity over solidarity / we desire survival over statements / we demand resources over acknowledgements.

ENCODED is not DinéYazhi´s first time hacking a museum. Their piece in the 2024 Whitney Biennial served as a Trojan horse of a poem; stanzas of red neon letters mounted to a steel framework made headlines because of a hidden message revealed only after the piece was installed at the museum. As the neon letters intermittently flickered, they spelled out the words “free Palestine.”

“At the end of the day it’s not a priority of mine to tell people to go to the Met to experience this exhibition,” DinéYazhi´ says. “I think the major takeaway is that we become aware of ways we maintain our power as artists and as individuals in this shared time in our history. As artists, we need to continue to dream new ways of strategizing in these spaces, of challenging these spaces, of maintaining our voice.”

Nicholas Galanin’s “NEVER FORGET,” superimposed over 1865 painting “The Valley of Wyoming” by Jasper Francis Cropsey. AMPLIFIER

Unlocking the art in ENCODED feels like a scavenger hunt after a while. Nicholas Galanin’s iconic Never Forget (featuring the words “INDIAN LAND” in the style of the old Hollywood sign, originally erected outside Palm Springs for the 2021 iteration of Desert X) appears nestled along the horizon of Jasper Francis Cropsey’s 1865 painting Valley of Wyoming. In other paintings still, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Midéegaadi figures dance across hollow landscapes, or emerge through the tangled flourishes of 19th-century wallpaper covering gallery walls—dances to summon the bison back to the land. At times the dancers’ toes balance on the precipitous edge of the painting’s gilt frame. In such moments the seamless integration of the augmented image is pure thrill.

As of now, the Met has yet to issue an official statement about ENCODED and its interventions (though it seems it would behoove the institution to acquire the exhibition works and offer them as a permanent extension of their collection).

Regardless, the strategy behind ENCODED is a success on many levels. It navigates defiance with delicacy: No art was harmed in the making of the exhibit. Perhaps most importantly, it feels like a breakthrough in the way art can be experienced on the most fundamental level. I won’t lie: Once you’ve begun to unlock the artworks in ENCODED, it’s hard to go back to viewing the static, one-dimensional relics. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. At a time in human history when technology seems to be threatening our collective intelligence and livelihoods, the breakthroughs produced by Amplifier and the artists of ENCODED prove that we are still only just beginning to discover the potential of the new tools at hand. And (as is often the case), it is artists who lead the way in dreaming that potential to life.

Pop Loser: Music News, this Week's Events, and John Waters Holiday Traditions

Audrey Vann — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 12:01:00 -0800

Pop loser, you weekly music roundup. by Audrey Vann

Welcome back to Pop Loser, you weekly music roundup! This week, THING Festival announced an indefinite hiatus, Brandi Carlile announced her Super Bowl debut, and Paul Anka announced that he once saunaed with Frank Sinatra (read on to learn about his big takeaway from the experience). Plus, I interviewed the undisputed King of Christmas, John Waters, about his string of novelty singles, holiday traditions, and the time he accidentally consumed 14 doses of THC.

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This Week in Music:

This week in Strangerland, the staff has compiled a big ol’ list of upcoming concerts we recommend this December and January. There is a lot of good stuff coming up this month that is not holiday music, including Mt. Fog, Jay Som, and Takuya Nakamura.

In other local music news, the Vera Project (in collaboration with Denton, Texas, art collective Good/Bad) has revealed the lineup for their 14th annual Rock Lottery, featuring members of local bands like Gender Envy, RUB, somesurprises, Afrocop, Naked Giants, and more. Back in March, Stranger managing editor Megan Seling wrote about her day watching the magic happen during Seattle’s most spontaneous day in music.

THING Festival has announced an indefinite hiatus. The organizers announced on Thursday that the festival will not be returning in 2026. “We intend for it to return in the future and will use this time to recalibrate its vision,” writes STG Chief Programming Officer Adam Zacks. “We want to take time to do THING right and ensure it’s the best it can be.” THING Festival launched in Port Townsend in 2019 to fill the Sasquatch Festival–sized gap in the market. It’s since moved to Carnation, and this past year, it went from one massive festival to a multi-weekend series.

Ravensdale, WA’s own Brandi Carlile will play the Super Bowl pregame show this coming February, alongside Charlie Puth and Coco Jones, with halftime entertainment from Bad Bunny. (This is the only time Pop Loser will be mentioning football, I promise.)

Warner Music Group signed a deal with the devil. The major label has joined forces with AI song generator Suno, whom they were suing for copyright infringement just last year. Pitchfork reports, “The new partnership, which settles their prior litigation, is designed to help Suno move toward a licensed model where users will pay to download songs made on its platform with artificial intelligence.” Apparently, this means that artists will be compensated and retain “full control” over how their music, likeness, and other copyrights are used. Is this good or bad? Only time will tell.

Paul Anka breaks his silence on Frank Sinatra’s penis. While promoting his upcoming HBO documentary, Paul Anka: My Way, the 1950s teen dream confirmed the long-running lore about Ol’ Blue Eyes, telling Page Six that he once saunaed with the Rat Pack. "Yeah, it was huge,” Anka revealed, also stating that he had "had trouble with eye contact" with Sinatra while in the sauna.

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Interview: Rockin’ Around the Electric Chair with John Waters GREG GORMAN

John Waters is an icon—a pencil-thin mustache, dark sunglasses, a transgressive catalog of films, and an overall dedication to filth. But, on his string of novelty singles on Sub Pop Records (“Jingle Bells” / “It's a Punk Rock Christmas” and "John Waters Covers Little Cindy 'Happy Birthday Jesus'” / “A Pig Latin Visit from St. Nicholas”), Waters has an outlet to transform into new characters and direct himself à la Cindy Sherman. Gather around the electric chair, children, because the man with the bag has landed! (The man is John Waters, and the bag is full of filthy jokes.)

How do you decorate for Christmas?

Traditionally and very untraditionally. We decorate, but I don't have a tree. I decorate Divine’s electric chair from Female Trouble. I have lots of Christmas decorations. Many of them have been made by fans, and they're great—some have Divine or Edith on them. A fan made me a statue of Divine knocking over a Christmas tree. It has batteries, and all the lights blink and everything. That, I think, is my favorite one. I also have decorations that my mom made for me. I mix them as I do with my real life: I mix the good taste and turn it into bad taste, hopefully to get you to notice that everything can be pleasing.

In a recent interview, you mentioned that you used to take speed and steal Christmas gifts out of people's cars and unwrap them. Do you remember or did you keep any of the gifts you stole?

We would throw them out the window! Or worse yet, if they had a gift slip, we would take them to the store and get the money! An old friend reminded me recently that she stole a blouse with someone’s mother's monogram on it. She wore it to school the next day and covered it up with a sweater. It was really terrible. It just proves that there is no such thing as karma.

What's the most memorable Christmas gift that you've ever received?

Well, I still go to sleep sometimes with a beautiful cashmere blanket that Divine gave me a long time ago. But don't ever give cashmere! It just calls moths to your house. Cashmere is a moth Woodstock waiting to happen.

How do you feel about fruitcake?

Well, I tried to make a movie that was called Fruitcake—that has almost happened three times. It's a children's Christmas special. I hope I get to make it one day. I personally have never eaten a piece of fruitcake in my life. I don't crave it… let's put it that way.

Well, hopefully now that you've said that, people don't bring a bunch of fruitcakes to your shows!

I won’t eat anything a fan ever gives me. I did it once, and I was in the hospital for three days.

Oh my god! What did you eat?

I ate 14 doses of THC, not realizing it. They thought I had a stroke—I thought I had a stroke! It was a nightmare. Never eat food from fans!

Read the entire interview here.

Music Events Worth Your Hard-Earned Money This Week

Rochelle Jordan Dec 4, Barboza, 7 pm, 21+

The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert with the Seattle Symphony Dec 5-7, Benaroya Hall, various times, all ages

Alaska Presents: A Very Alaska Christmas Show Dec 5, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, 18+

19th Annual Tom Waits Night Dec 6, Conor Byrne Pub, 8 pm, 21+

Matt Rogers: Christmas in December Dec 6, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

The Snowman in Concert with the Seattle Symphony Dec 6, Benaroya Hall, 11 am & 1 pm, all ages

Wimps, Mark Robinson, and Pitschouse Dec 9, Sunset Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+

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The Songs That Keep Me Up at Night

“The Man I’m Supposed to Be” by Bill Callahan

Wow, Pop Loser recommending a song by a man singing about the bad things he’s done? Believe me, I’m surprised, too. However, Smog frontman Bill Callahan’s lead single from his forthcoming album, My Days of 58, is refreshingly honest and vulnerable for this type of song—it’s sort of like a Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon) song with actual self-reflection and regret. Callahan sings, “I've been living too long in my head / not loving you enough in our bed / From now on, I start living my life / As if the next day I'll be dead.” Men, take notes!

“I Lived in Trees” by Mark Fry

Considering that Mark Fry’s 2011 album, I Lived in Trees, was released nearly 40 years after his debut, Dreaming with Alice, I had never considered listening to it—I had the wrongful assumption that it strayed far from the ‘70s psych-folk sound I had grown to love. But when my best friend played me the album during breakfast one morning over the weekend, I was stunned. I Lived in Trees, particularly the title track, combines just about every beautiful sound you can think of—bird chirps, gentle piano, autoharp, harmonium, flute, and bells—alongside Fry’s timeless coos, reflecting on his life: “When I was a boy I lived in trees / hidden in the leaves / looking down on my world / dreaming down on my world.” For fans of Robert Wyatt, Nick Drake, and Vashti Bunyan’s Heartleap.

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Don’t Be an Asshole

Dave Segal — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:56:00 -0800

If you’re wily enough to sneak drugs into the venue (which I don’t condone!), offer me some. by Dave Segal

FOOMP!

That was the sound of a dancer’s hand slamming into my cheekbone as I was minding my own business at a recent Cut Chemist show in Nectar Lounge. This incident—which caused no bruise, but did leave a psychic scar—illustrates three key rules of attending music shows: Be aware of your surroundings. Do not invade other people’s space. Understand that you do not exist in a goddamn bubble!

Now, as someone who’s been going to gigs, indoor and outdoor concerts, DJ events, house parties, raves, and record-shop in-stores for 45 years, I’ve picked up some hard-earned wisdom that may benefit the public. Much of what I’m going to say here should go without saying. Y’all should’ve learned most of this stuff before puberty. But each generation yields a high percentage of doofuses who need certain guidelines repeatedly drilled into their thick crania. And even then, many fuck up. Those Devo guys were right.

Okay, let’s go over some basic rules of attending music shows in an allegedly civilized society.

STFU when musicians are performing.

Literally nothing you’re saying at a show should take precedence over the sounds emanating from the stage—unless you are suffering a medical emergency. Or if you want to tell me that you dug that one blog post I wrote in 2013. Otherwise, zip it. We didn’t shell out $35 + fees to hear your inane babble. Some years ago at a J.R.C.G. show in Barboza, a few people nearby were shouting at one another in order to be heard over the band’s boisterous horns. Never, ever be those assholes.

Do your damnedest not to obscure the views of others when taking pics/video with your phone.

This is a corollary to the dictum in paragraph one. Sure, it’s crucial that you document shows on social media for street cred/brand-building/inducing FOMO in your followers. But be mindful about it.

Don’t sing along with the music... unless you have good pipes.

We didn’t shell out $89 + fees to hear you mangle our favorite tunes with off-key showboating. If the urge strikes, just take your ass to the nearest karaoke joint.

If you jostle somebody or step on their toes by mistake, apologize.

Sure, it’s super-important for you to rush up front so you can ogle that hottie at the mic stand, but a quick “Sorry” after a bodycheck or foot stomp goes a long way toward avoiding bad karma. I’m still fuming at the rude boy who rammed into me at Neptune Theatre circa 2017 as he sprinted to get close to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.

Don’t be a sex pest.

Always respect boundaries. Music shows aren’t CPACs.

Don’t bring food into the club.

Back in 2018, a dude carried some Bok Bok chicken tenders into Neumos, and the aroma was downright foul. However, if you must consume food while experiencing music, go to the Triple Door or Jazz Alley, venerable nightclubs with quality kitchens and classy decor. The bookings are often great, too.

This edict applies mainly to jazz audiences: For the love of Alice Coltrane, please do not applaud until songs are finished.

I don’t care if it’s “tradition”; clapping after solos or particularly delicious passages drowns out the very great music that we paid handsomely—or strenuously pulled strings for guest list—to hear. Such applause is more about congratulating oneself than rewarding the players. “Hey, everybody—look how awesomely I appreciated this part!” Yeah, yeah... don’t strain a muscle patting yourself on the back, bro.

If you stand over six feet tall, don’t post up near the stage.

Look, you won the genetic lottery, so the least you can do is hang out near the back or off to the side.

Tip your bartender well—even if you’re buying non-alcoholic drinks.

They have to put up with a lot of drunken shenanigans, cringe-y flirting, and, often, lousy music.

Bring breath mints.

Nobody—especially me—wants to smell your rancid beer-and-cigarette breath... particularly when the band I spent $48 + fees to see is tearing the roof off and you’re jabbering in granular detail about the features of your new effects pedals. Not the time and place, Poindexter.

Wear deodorant.

Yes, even you, Phish phan. It’s just common scents.

Don’t fart, unless you’re in the bathroom.

Ancient Greek philosophers observed that sphincter control is crucial to the maintenance of civilization. And you know what? Those geezers nailed it.

Don’t wear any MAGA paraphernalia.

Unless you want your head to be used as a speed bag. After all, this is the “Communist” paradise known as Seattle; be aware of your surroundings.

If you’re wily enough to sneak drugs into the venue (which I don’t condone!), offer me some.

I’ll trade you for a breath mint.