Kirkland Street Named Best in U.S.

By Shelby Rowe Moyer | October 13, 2017 | Courtesy of 425magazine.com

United States, Washington, Kirkland, Park Lane at dusk. Photo by Merrill Images

Kirkland’s revamped Park Lane — a two block corridor snaking through retail shops — was recognized for its “ingenuity” by Great Places in America, and is being honored as one of the top five streets in the nation.

The city redesigned the street during a roughly $3 million project to update the corridor’s aging sidewalks and water main. Instead of just sprucing it up a little, city officials reinvented the style into an American “woonerf,” after a Dutch word that roughly translates to “living street.”

Park Lane is lush with greenery and promotes a walkable environment while accommodating vehicles with 36,000 square feet of pavers.

The American Planning Association compiles an annual list that recognizes streets, neighborhoods, and public spaces that demonstrate character, quality, and planning meant to “enrich communities, facilitate economic growth, and inspire others around the country.”

The American Planning Association also recognized:

• Congress Street — Tucson, Arizona
• Lincoln Avenue — Chicago, Illinois
• South Grand Boulevard — St. Louis Missouri
• Main Street — Waterloo, New York

City officials will accept the award today at 5 p.m. during a ceremony hosted on Park Lane, which coincides with Kirkland’s monthly Art Walk.

“Kirkland is honored to have Park Lane recognized as one of the best streets in the country,” said Mayor Amy Walen. “When we rebuilt this vital downtown avenue, we set our goals high. Our community told us they wanted a walkable, vibrant and green destination place. Those essentials required imagination, curiosity and commerce. We are proud to have hit the mark and are grateful for a robust public process and a team of engineers, designers and contractors who fulfilled the dream.”

Your Complete Guide To October 2017 Events in Seattle

FreakNight, HUMP!, Earshot Jazz Festival, And 100+ More Events This Month

by Stranger Things To Do Staff | Courtesy of theStranger.com 

There are Halloween events all month long in Seattle—including Fright Fest at Wild Waves.COURTESY OF WILD WAVES FRIGHT FEST

In Seattle, October means not only cooler weather and changing leaves, but also a robust arts season, plenty of big-name concerts, and Halloween parties. Below, we've rounded up the 130 biggest events that you should know about, including the 13th Annual HUMP! Film Festival, the opening of Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect at SAM, Earshot Jazz Festival, Lit Crawl, food events like the Olympic Peninsula Apple and Cider Festival and Seattle Restaurant Week, BenDeLaCreme: Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor, Depeche Mode, and FreakNight. Click through the links below for complete details, and, as always, find even more events on our complete Things To Do calendar.

OCTOBER 3

FOOD & DRINK

1. Feast at the Market
This 35th annual event, benefiting Neighborhood Health at Pike Market Clinic, includes a wine and appetizer reception plus access to more than 20 restaurants like Matt's in the Market, The Pink Door, Red Cedar & Sage, Radiator Whiskey, The Pike Brewing Company and more.

MUSIC

2. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80
Imagine the pressure saxophonist/vocalist Seun Kuti must experience. Being the son of Fela Kuti—revolutionary pioneer of Afrobeat and a powerful political force feared by the government in his native Nigeria—cannot be easy. But 34-year-old Seun has taken the reins of his father’s large ensemble, Egypt 80, and guided it into the 21st century with authority. Fela’s earnest offspring is furthering his pop’s dictum to keep the rhythms sizzling and the lyrics sociopolitically trenchant. Seun Kuti has kept one of music’s heaviest legacies thriving long after its progenitor’s death, maintaining rigorous quality control, with help from several members from Fela’s era. Wear a sweatband or two tonight.  DAVE SEGAL

OCTOBER 4

MUSIC

3. Bleachers with Tangerine
Bleachers, Jack Antonoff's latest project, will unleash its brand of synth-driven, nostalgia-heavy party rock in support of their recently released second album, Gone Now. They'll be flanked by Seattle expat group Tangerine (now in Los Angeles).

READINGS & TALKS

4. Civic Cocktail: Seattle's Shift to the Left
Join Nikkita Oliver, Stranger publisher Tim Keck, and former King County executive Ron Sims in what will no doubt be a lively discussion of Seattle's current leftist movements and their future. Knute Berger of Crosscut will also attend, and Joni Berger will moderate.

5. Women You Need to Know: Janet Mock
The PR copy for Janet Mock's new memoir, Surpassing Certainty, about her life as a twentysomething sex worker is too unapologetically salacious not to partially reproduce here: "Under the neon lights of Club Nu," the copy reads, "Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, who becomes her first." But this encounter with Troy was only the maiden voyage on Mock's long, rough, and ultimately affirming journey to becoming the person she is today. "I came from that world and I was built by that world," Mock told the Los Angeles Times about her time as a stripper and sex worker. "I will not forget my people. I have a firm stiletto planted in the streets and in those clubs with those girls." RICH SMITH

OCTOBER 4-5

MUSIC

6. Feist
Leslie Feist exists in this squiggly middle ground of folksy pop weavers who have excellent production and promotion teams but don’t necessarily stir tangible excitement with their output. To her misfortune, she’s not as poetically bizarre as Kate Bush and not as tightly orchestrated as St. Vincent. Her latest release, Pleasure, relies heavily on the tried-and-true, stark-yet-emotive nature of bluesy arrangements to provide a backbone for her lengthier exercising of lyrical drama. She’s certainly talented, but not life-changing, which, I guess, is all any of us can really hope for. KIM SELLING

OCTOBER 4-18

FILM

7. The Films of Jean-Pierre Melville
If you do not understand French cool, if it is a mystery to you, if you have any doubts about it, then you must see the the action and crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville. Enough said. CHARLES MUDEDE

OCTOBER 6

COMEDY

8. Nick Offerman
Nick Offerman—who you will probably recognize from his role as Ron on Parks and Recreation, his various movie appearances, or from making the New York Times best-seller list with Paddle Your Own Canoe—will entertain for an evening at the Moore. And heads-up: Offerman the comedian is not as aggressively masculine or stubbornly libertarian as the character he's best known for playing.

MUSIC

9. Aminé, Towkio
Portland’s Adam Aminé Daniel, better known as Aminé, emerged on the scene last year with the release of his debut single, “Caroline.” The slick and catchy track rose to number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016, securing Aminé’s place in XXL’s Freshman Class in 2017. Since then, “Caroline” has made it into one of Beyoncé’s Instagram posts, and he released his debut record earlier this year. Good for You is a banana-crazed ode to summer that will stay in your head for days, and it includes features from Offset, Nelly, and Kehlani. ANNA KAPLAN

10. Florida Georgia Line, Nelly, Chris Lane
Nu-bro duo Florida Georgia Line have hit the big time making contemporary country music for the masses. They'll be joined by Nelly and Chris Lane on their "Smooth" Tour.

11. Flosstradamus
Kids these days still have morning wood for EDM and acts like beatmaking duo Flosstradamus, who have forayed into “trap,” a genre that takes its name from the hyper-attitude Southern hiphop of the early ’90s and is characterized by hard bass and manipulated 808-sample melodies. Flosstradamus often vacillate between more hiphop-oriented beats and electronic trap throughout a set, and according to the die-hard youngster demographic, they’re quite good at it. GRANT BRISSEY

12. Imagine Dragons, Grouplove, K.Flay
Choose your own adventure, Imagine Dragons edition. A: You go ga-ga for these clean-cut pop-rockers, you bought your tickets months ago, and you have the concert poster set as the lock screen on your phone. Go directly to KeyArena and enjoy yourself. B: You’re jaded, pop radio is garbage, why would the Stranger even bother to waste the space writing about a band seemingly lab-created to enthrall idiots and irritate everyone else? Go here, wherein I’ll give you my honest take: Imagine Dragons craft an entirely disposable, offensively innocuous cocktail of Coldplay and Mumford and Sons. A band couldn’t sound more like they hailed from Vegas if they tried. C: You don’t know who or what Imagine Dragons is/are. Turn on that sleek rectangle on your desk, go to this thing called Wikipedia, and catch up with the under-30 set, then return to choice A. D: You want a contrarian thesis on why, actually, Imagine Dragons and their ilk are secretly pop-music geniuses and their pre-fabricated sound is a subversive commentary on the transient nature of fame in a post-sellout music landscape. Go to choice B. I don’t have the energy, and these guys aren’t that smart. KYLE FLECK

13. Moon Taxi
Moon Taxi is a five-piece indie-rock band hailing from Nashville, Tennessee. They'll be stopping in Seattle for their Put Em Up tour, joined by Too Many Zooz, an experimental dance group from New York.

CLOSING OCTOBER 6

FILM

14. French Cinema Now
This annual mini-festival celebrating new French movies, presented by SIFF, is one of Seattle’s best film festivals. This year, the opening film is Django, a slice of the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt’s life in Nazi-occupied Paris. Indeed, the festival is heavy on biopics this year: Other entries include Marie Curie, The Courage of Knowledge, Dalida(about the Egyptian-born Italian-French pop star), and Nelly (about the Quebecois writer Nelly Arcan). But if you see only one or two films at the festival, we recommend Bertrand Tavernier’s cinephilic collage My Journey Through French Cinema and the idiosyncratic master Agnès Varda’s Faces Places.

OCTOBER 6-8

MUSIC

15. Boney James
Four-time Grammy nominee, multi-platinum-selling musician, and prolific saxophonist and composer Boney James has been performing for over 25 years, and recently announced the release of his 16th album, Honestly, which he will promote over a three-night set.

OCTOBER 6-9

FILM

16. Orcas Island Film Festival
Head to Orcas Island for this film festival—with 30 feature-length and short films—featuring progressive plots and directors. From the festival: "Going into its fourth year, the Orcas Island Film Festival has presented extraordinary films from around the world that have garnered 25 Academy Award Nominations and 6 Oscar wins. The 2017 edition—October 6-9—has some of the best films fresh from their debut at Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, Venice and the New York Film Festival."

OCTOBER 6-14

FILM

17. Seattle Latino Film Festival
This year's Seattle festival of hispanic and Latinx cinema will highlight the Dominican Republic and feature nine days of independent films, filmmaker panels, workshops, parties, and more.

OCTOBER 6-15

FESTIVALS

18. Seattle Made Week
Drink beer, learn about the future of urban manufacturing, attend demos, and party the night away at this week of events celebrating all of the wonderful things that are Made in Seattle.

FILM

19. Twelfth Tasveer South Asian Film Festival
Plunge into the cinema scene of the South Asian subcontinent at locations from Bellevue to Seattle to Renton. Tasveer will show 45 films this year, with a special focus on Nepal.

OCTOBER 7

FOOD & DRINK

20. Seattle Fresh Hops Festival
Being a beer lover in the Pacific Northwest can sometimes feel like death by a thousand IPAs. At some point, the bitter, hoppy onslaught is too much for my taste buds, and I revert to the gentler, more understated domain of pilsners and pale ales. But then fresh hop season rolls around and I remember that, contrary to what all the one-dimensional hop monsters out there might lead you to believe, hops are our friends. Fresh hop IPA is made with whole fresh hops, as opposed to compressed hop pellets. The difference might seem insignificant, given that it's all the same hops with the same terpenes at the end of the day, but an Amarillo flower pulled straight off the vine and tossed into the boil does something very different from an Amarillo pellet. Fresh hop IPAs are lush and vegetal, offering you the richest expression of the hop possible. There is no purer way to experience the hop and its terroir, and no more potent reminder of why we love IPAs so goddamn much. Fremont has a line of fresh hop IPAs celebrating individual hops, as well as a single farm brew. You should get them, and you should also keep your eye out for two of my other favorite fresh hop makers' releases—Schooner Exact and Two Beers. TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

MUSIC

21. Boris, Sumac, Endon
Boris don’t want to be categorized. Fine. I’ll just say that the new album, Dear, sounds like tectonic plates shifting and/or a boulder rolled by Sisyphus slowly crushing a garbage truck full of glass. That simple! And they don’t seem decided about breaking up and/or not releasing new stuff after they run out of already-recorded stuff, so catch this if you care. Sumac want to be the heaviest band in the world. Well, I hear a lot about such things down here, but they’re smart enough to mix in some plink in with the smackdown. ANDREW HAMLIN

22. Gorgon City
London-based Gorgon City will present their second studio album, KINGDOM, joined by Solardo, a fellow UK techno duo.

23. Liars, HXXS
So rereading Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew turns out to be good schoolin’ for the new Liars album, TFCF. I got reacquainted on both sides with menace rising dark and burbling like floodwater, and the isolation a human can feel inside said human’s own head. Liars mastermind Andrew Angus shows up solo in a wedding dress for the cover, waiting for someone to take it, not from him but with him. He’s the only one left from what used to be a band, and he’s down to less in-your-face Lecter, more brooding over time lost and how much is left.  ANDREW HAMLIN

24. Ludovico Einaudi
Iconic Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi has topped the classical charts in 42 countries and recently released an album called Elements.

OCTOBER 8

MUSIC

25. Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Illest Uminati, Swisher Sleep
Hip hop legend Tech N9ne brings his many evolutions to the Showbox stage, with guests Krizz Kaliko, Illest Uminati, and Swisher Sleep on his second Seattle tour stop of 2017.

OCTOBER 8-NOVEMBER 12

MUSIC

26. Earshot Jazz Festival
If you have any love for jazz in the Pacific Northwest, clear your schedule right now for the Earshot Jazz Festival. The nonprofit Earshot began life in 1984 and has presented 2,500 concerts since then, and the festival marks the yearly culmination of their programming. This year, it will feature more than 50 events in venues across the city, including "the contemporary giants of the art" (Brad Mehldau, Brian Blade, and Wycliffe Gordon), according to Charles Mudede, not to mention the avant-garde star Satoko Fuji and Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar Arkestra, which is "all about Miles Davis fusion period." What keeps Earshot so vital, year after year? "Jazz is an expanding universe," said festival executive director John Gilbreath to The Stranger's Dave Segal in 2014. "All directions. All of the time. In Seattle, as around the world. And that's the juice for this festival, presenting that momentum within the frame of this place, at this time."

OCTOBER 9

FESTIVALS

27. Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration
In 2014, the Seattle City Council unanimously voted to stop celebrating the voyage of Christopher Columbus and turn the second Monday in October into a day of recognition of Native American cultures and peoples. As Ana Sofia Knauf wrote in 2016, with this move, Seattle "stepped onto the correct side of American history." This year, the United Indians of All Tribes will once again lead a march from Westlake Park to City Hall, host a lunch with guest speakers, and serve a dinner accompanied by cultural performances, round dancing, and singing in honor of the holiday. More events will be popping up as the day approaches, so stay tuned.

READINGS & TALKS

28. Art Garfunkel: What Is It All But Luminous
American songbook legend and general beloved weirdo Art Garfunkel will bring his decades of folk-pop experience, myriad of chart-topping hits, and literal thousands of miles walked and the memories therein to Seattle. Garfunkel will share his highly anticipated memoir What Is It All But Luminous: Notes From an Underground Man.

29. Steph(en) Burt
Steph(en) Burt is a Harvard professor of English, one of the greatest living literary critics, and a very good transgender poet. Burt is touring with a new book called The Poem Is You, which offers 60 good readings of poems. If you have ever thought to yourself, "I don't get poetry!" then this lecture is for you. Also, you can just e-mail me. I'm right here. RICH SMITH

OCTOBER 9-10

MUSIC

30. The War on Drugs, Phoebe Bridgers
There’s a paradox at the heart of the War on Drugs. For a band so baldly influenced by the freewheeling Americana of Springsteen, Petty, and Dylan, their music can sound strangely tense and stultifying. The most obvious cause is WoD mastermind Adam Granduciel’s reputation as a fastidious studio obsessive. Most War on Drugs songs are rich with detail: layers upon layers of guitar and synth, carefully calibrated vintage effects. But the music, though frequently gorgeous, rarely has room to breathe. Instead, it bellows—Granduciel’s work has increasingly taken on an anthemic, shouting-toward-the-cheap-seats quality. And, unsurprisingly, it’s paid off with sold-out dates like this one. ANDREW GOSPE

OCTOBER 10

MUSIC

31. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Tropical Fuck Storm
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are a collection of seven Aussies who produce music on a frequency like no other. King Gizzard put out at least two albums a year, and they’ve said they want to put out four or five in 2017 (they’re up to three already). Their music changes from record to record, but it always has something unique—including an infinitely looping album to a full-length recorded exclusively with microtonal guitars. You never quite know exactly what you’re going to get with these guys, but their live show is guaranteed to be outrageous. ANNA KAPLAN

32. Ms. Lauryn Hill, Nas, Hannibal Buress, Chronixx, Nick Grant
We have said more than enough already about Lauryn Hill’s personal shit. Let’s just stop the gossip and focus our attention on the fact that hiphop has only a handful of female rappers who really made it big (meaning, entered the mainstream) by selling nothing but skills, and Ms. Lauryn Hill is one of those rappers. Her name is on two albums in the hiphop canon—the Fugees’ The Score and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. There is also the raw boom-bap of the track “Lost Ones,” which is on Miseducation and put any doubt about her skills on the mic in the grave. So none of this talking behind her back—let’s just show some respect to someone who contributed to the great adventure of hiphop.  CHARLES MUDEDE

OCTOBER 11

MUSIC

33. Gillian Welch
The phenomenon of seeing the “two person band called Gillian Welch” (Welch and David Rawlings) play and sing together really does feel like a miracle. You’ve seen people do what they do before—roughly—which is to pick guitars and sing new old-timey songs in complicated, perfect harmonies, but Welch and Rawlings are less like a conventional duet than an exercise in alchemy, the migration of souls, transubstantiation. I’m sure their secret has something to do with attention to detail, attunement to instinct, or just good old-fashioned talent, but I’ve seen them many times, in 2,000-seat theaters, movie houses, and living rooms, but I’ve never come anywhere near understanding just what it is that makes them and their work so special. Lucky for me (and less fussy people) that not understanding isn’t a requirement. Sometimes you can just listen and love it. SEAN NELSON

34. Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, Daydream Machine
One good thing about Hope Sandoval: If you like her earlier work with Opal and Mazzy Star and previous recordings with the Warm Inventions, her latest unit with My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig, you’ll probably dig her new stuff, too. For example, the just-released Son of a Lady EP captures Sandoval and company’s keen grasp of melancholy melodiousness in an intimate orchestral-pop vein. Fans of Lee Hazlewood and Nico should sigh with deep pleasure over these songs and, by extension, everything Sandoval’s done since the late 1980s.  DAVE SEGAL

OCTOBER 12

FOOD & DRINK

35. Eat Your Heart Out
Join Tom Douglas, Renee Erickson, Edouardo Jordan, Jason Stratton, Josh Henderson, Kari Brunson, and many others in supporting those affected by the recent natural disasters around the world. Enjoy bites from several chefs, including Etta's Andrew Rivera. All proceeds benefit Direct Relief.

36. Omnivorous
A benefit for the great Capitol Hill Housing, Omnivorous will be full of food and drink from dozens of places that are also great, including Marjorie, Cafe Presse, Grim's, Le Pichet, L'Oursin, Lost Lake, Caffe Vita, Rumba, Optimism Brewing Co., That Brown Girl Cooks!, Monsoon, and more. Proceeds from the event will go to help CHH provide safe, affordable housing for people of limited means.

MUSIC

37. alt-J
Alt-J sound like the survivors of the electro-war waking up, hastily trying to re-invent the language of emotions through reverse engineering of forest sounds, just in time to headline an Ewok luau. JOSH BIS

38. Gavin Degraw
Despite 14 years having passed since his breakout album, Chariot, Gavin DeGraw has reemerged for his "Raw" Tour, named for the manner in which he'll be spilling out those indie pop-rock throwback tracks.

39. Live @ Benaroya Hall: Sun Kil Moon
Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon has spent his career wrangling his choked acoustic darkness into a marketable shape, and that decades-old practice remains the case with his latest album, titled Jesu / Sun Kil Moon, a project in partnership with perma-weird Brit experiment human Justin Broadrick of the early ’00s band Jesu, known for their coherent drone-gaze. As much as I prefer the imagery of Kozelek’s lone figure bleating into the void (as it is in much of his music), the partnership works. It’s got a very mid-’90s “The Future Is Nigh” vibe, with an innate sense that you’re keeping pace with a guy traversing his neighborhood as he shout-mumbles distinct memories throughout his life of every corner he rounds, set to the slash-and-burn reverb of three-chord guitar riffs and the background noise of someone banging their face against a kick drum. There’s something very therapeutic about Kozelek screaming “SUCK MY HUNDRED MILLION DOLLAR DICK” over a backing track that a bored high-schooler could’ve arranged. Humor and angst, what else do you need? KIM SELLING

READINGS & TALKS

40. Dan Savage with Esther Perel
Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel is known for the 2007 book Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, her podcast Where Should We Begin? and her popular TED talks. At this event, she'll join our own snarky, hilarious, and helpful relationship expert Dan Savage to discuss her new book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Expect a frank and entertaining discussion about cheating, "successful" relationships, and love.

OCTOBER 12-14

MUSIC

41. Joe Bonamassa
Grammy-nominated blues-rock guitarist and genre icon Joe Bonamassa has set off on his North American Fall Tour, in support of his latest solo studio album, Blues of Desperation. Joe has been hailed worldwide as one of the greatest guitar players of his generation.

OCTOBER 12-15

FESTIVALS

42. Taste of Iceland
Join Iceland Naturally for its tenth year of celebrating Icelandic culture with four days of the Nordic nation's cuisine, music, art, film, and literature. Among other giveaways at this year's event, guests can win a trip to Iceland.

PERFORMANCE

43. Jody Kuehner/Cherdonna Shinatra: Kissing Like Babies: Part III of one great, bright, brittle alltogetherness
You never know what you’re going to get with Cherdonna, the female impersonator impersonator (or is it female female impersonator?) who combines dance, performance art, drag, music, and political commentary into uncategorizable spectacles. The political commentary is almost never explicit, so here’s a handy tip: This one "explores the infantilization of the feminine.” It’s also said to be faster paced than some of her recent work, and it will include a chorus of adult toddlers and a seven piece brass marching band. I can’t wait. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

OCTOBER 12-22

FILM

44. TWIST: Seattle Queer Film Festival
Local shorts, indie features, and national or international releases will stoke and satisfy your appetite for gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and otherwise queer-focused films, from hot romances to incisive documentaries to perverse suspense flicks. If you love queer movies and moviemakers, this festival is indispensable: Not only will you watch the pivotal LGBTQ+ films of the year (last year, the lineup included Clyde Peterson's extraordinary Torrey Pines, just to give you an idea), you'll also get the chance to rendezvous with filmmakers and take cinema workshops.

OCTOBER 12-29

PERFORMANCE

45. BenDeLaCreme: Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor
Someone got wise and gave BenDeLaCreme a Halloween show. The fact that that someone is ACT Theatre, a company not exactly known for big drag blowouts, is suspicious, but for BenDeLaCreme I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. This horrific tale begins—where else—at Gaylord Manor, where a team of "paranormal researchers" have found themselves on this fateful night. Soon they're beset by "vampire vixens, well-built werewolves, mischievous mummies and witches that WERK," and it only gets more fabulously frightening from there. RICH SMITH

46. Disney's Aladdin
Laugh if you must, but Disney's Aladdin is great. Any musical that has lyrics written by Howard Ashman is a masterpiece in my eyes. Granted, Ashman died (heartbreakingly, of complications related to AIDS, at the age of 40) before Disney produced Aladdin, so only a few of the songs in the final cut of the movie were his—specifically the linguistically dazzling tongue twisters “Prince Ali” and “Friend Like Me.” But as with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, the stage version includes songs you may not know, and some of them have lyrics by Ashman, including “Proud of Your Boy.” CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

OCTOBER 13

FOOD & DRINK

47. Science of Spirits
Science: It gets you drunk! Sample booze from local distilleries and learn why alcohol does the wonderful things that it does. Plus, enjoy the Science Center's attractions after hours.

48. Taste America: Seattle
Ashley Christensen, alumnus of Iron Chef and James Beard Award winner, has won the title of "All-Star Chef" at this year's James Beard Foundation "Taste America" dinner, taking place right here in Seattle. The annual event, which spans six weekends from September 22 to November 11, has stops in 10 American cities, including Austin, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, and our fair city. The star-studded lineup at the Seattle dinner includes past James Beard Award winners Matt Dillon and Holly Smith. In addition to a reception featuring samples from some of the city's best chefs, there will also be a four-course dinner, prepared by Christensen.

MUSIC

49. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony with Guests
“Tha Crossroads” is one of the sacred texts of rap, a Grammy-winning, heart-bursting, radio-dominating slice of maudlin thug life, perfectly suited to the post-Eazy, post-Pac, post-B.I.G. hiphop scene of the latter ’90s. The album from which it sprang, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's E. 1999 Eternal, is rightly considered a classic of the era, with equally transcendent bits of street knowledge like “Budsmokers Only” and “1st of tha Month” sprinkled liberally, magically, throughout. KYLE FLECK

50. The Mavericks
The Mavericks are scene legends, having started in the Miami punk club crowd, and made their way into a groove all their own, drawing on a mix of classic country, cow-punk, and rhythmic Latin standards.

51. RL Grime
RL Grime's gusty, crystallized "Amphibian" swishes solidly out of the speakers. This is the sound of the selfie, and it's time to display to potential mates that your vibe couldn't be righter. Grime's sonic ingredients set you up well—the glide of rave, the tonnage of Southern rap beats, and the game (shame) of meathead trap. Your moves are succinct demonstrations of pelvic knowledge. Next up on the system is the harder-hitting "Valhalla" off Grime's new album, Void. You let out an eighth of a twerk, and then it's the build. Feel it ascend—whap whap whap whap, tat-tat-tat-tat, ta-ta-ta-ta shuffffle. Then the moment of silence, the hesitation, and the drop. The room loses it when the beat kicks in. Vodka Red Bulls spill everywhere. People fall and flail. This is what you've worked for—this losing it. The room combusts in selfies, sex explodes, and you dance like a condor. TRENT MOORMAN

SPORTS & RECREATION

52. Air Sex World Championships
Watching someone shred an imaginary guitar is fun, but not as much fun as watching someone have imaginary sex onstage, alone, with imaginary partners. That's exactly what you'll see at this kinky sporting event created and hosted by comedian Chris Trew.

OCTOBER 13-15

FOOD & DRINK

53. COWABUNGA
Cowabunga USA, a beef-filled bacchanalia brought to you by Seattle Met and Amazon, is three days full of 9,481 pounds of red meat. There will also be over 50 chefs preparing said beef. There are different events and activities each day. (This event was moved to November.)

54. Olympic Peninsula Apple & Cider Festival
It's a fact that cider is one of those things essentially Northwest—it defines our region, and it's always seemed to especially define the fall. Take advantage of apple season this year with the first annual Olympic Peninsula Apple & Cider Festival, an ambitious three-day celebration of cider and the fruit it comes from. On Friday, indulge in a five-course feast paired with Alpenfire ciders and prepared by former Canlis executive sous chef Deborah Taylor and her husband, Scott Ross, (the couple who owns the buzzy new Port Townsend restaurant Finistére). The festivities will continue with a "hard cider tasting festival" on Saturday, featuring more than 40 ciders, apple pressing, live music, and an after-party that promises a fire show. To close out the weekend, there will be open houses at participating cideries, distilleries, and tap rooms on Sunday.

OCTOBER 13-NOVEMBER 5

PERFORMANCE

55. Ragtime
This musical is “rarely produced at the professional level due to the sheer size of it,” a source at 5th Avenue Theatre said. “It calls for a nearly 30-person cast and the orchestra is monstrous.” But after Theatre Latte Da in Minneapolis produced a stripped-down, streamlined version of Ragtime with very little in the way of a set, the 5th Avenue hired that same director, Peter Rothstein, to do a similar production for Seattle. The cast includes talented 5th Avenue all-stars like Joshua Carter, Louis Hobson, and Kendra Kassebaum. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

OCTOBER 13-NOVEMBER 12

PERFORMANCE

56. The Crucible
Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a powerful play that's also fun: the McCarthy-era communist witch hunts are communicated through the Salem witch trials, a device that enables Miller to combine themes of ideological and political paranoia with religious zealotry, teenage girl drama, and foreboding scenes of creepy witchery. Knowing ACT, they'll also manage to tie in relevant Trump-era mind games and intimidation.

OCTOBER 14

COMMUNITY

57. Diwali Ball
Celebrate India’s Festival of Lights, which honors "the triumph of good over evil." The Ball will feature henna, fortune tellers, dance performances, live music, tours of SAM's collection, food, drinks, and dancing.

58. The Diwali Experience
Celebrate India's Festival of Lights at MoPOP by watching a traditional diya-lighting ceremony, getting a henna tattoo, dancing to a Bollywood set by DJ RDX, watching YouTube singer Arjun perform, and more.

MUSIC

59. The Kooks with Barns Courtney
Brighton rockers The Kooks have entered their thirteenth year of playing together and will showcase tracks from The Best of... So Far at this tour stop with bluesy singer-songwriter Barns Courtney.

60. Nick Murphy, Charlotte Cardin, Heathered Pearls
Nick Murphy has returned to his actual name after years of making swirling electro-soul under the name "Chet Faker." With a new album and an extensive tour, he'll continue to soundtrack elitist music festival after-parties the world over for years to come.

READINGS & TALKS

61. Whitney Cummings
Comedian and actress Whitney Cummings (Whitney and 2 Broke Girls) will visit Seattle to speak about "codependence, addiction, workaholism, dating narcissists and a host of other mortifying situations." She'll also share her new book, I'm Fine...and Other Lies.

OCTOBER 14-28

PERFORMANCE

62. The Barber of Seville
Gioachino Rossini's classically humorous and high-energy opera The Barber of Seville, known as the prequel to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, will be given a slightly modernized tweak by Seattle Opera. The sets and costumes have been created squarely under the influence of the worlds of Wes Anderson and Pedro Almodóvar, and each performance will feature a special appearance by Juilliard-trained burlesque sensation Marc Kenison (as his alter ego Waxie Moon) in the role of Ambrogio. This production will of course still be in Italian with English subtitles.

OCTOBER 15

MUSIC

63. Arcade Fire with Phantogram
We agreed that Montreal-based Arcade Fire have a suspended-over-your-own-body quality to their sound, something lambent and at peace. Reflektor rises spiked with endorphins and heads toward a bright white light, of a disco ball. The band lives in melodies and etched euphonic conglomerations. For Reflektor, the Grammy winners took the baroque and wood from the casket of their previous releases and fashioned it into a dance floor. Sounds embody much more bubble machine than hymnal. Arrangements travel an arc lit by the husband-and-wife harmonies of Win Butler and Régine Cassagne. TRENT MOORMAN

64. Kaki King and Lost Lander
A routine singer-songwriter Kaki King is not. Her toolbox of guitar techniques includes fanning, finger tapping, flamenco, and other uncommon methods. Put another way, she knows how to get more sounds out of a guitar than almost anyone, and it’s served her pretty well: King has contributed to the Into the Wild and August Rush soundtracks, as well as to albums by the Foo Fighters and Miley Cyrus, plus a collaborative EP with the Mountain Goats. Solo, King’s versatility makes predicting her sound kind of tricky. She’s as adept at pop songs as she is at experimental loops. Always, though, her playing is pyrotechnic.JOSEPH SCHAFER

CLOSING OCTOBER 15

PERFORMANCE

65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
To say Malika Oyetimein is “having a good year” is an understatement. Though she just graduated from the University of Washington school of drama this year, her direction of Robert O’Hara’s Barbecue showcased her comic chops and her ability to handle big ensembles, while her direction of Katori Hall’s Hoodoo Love proved she’s not afraid to get in your face with intense material. And now she’s co-adatping one of the most harrowing and yet triumphant memoirs written in the English language? Not to be missed. Neither is Dedra D. Woods, who plays the indomitable Mother Dear. Also—Book-It is kinda good this year? I’m still thinking about their incredible production of T. Geronimo Johnson’s Welcome to Braggsville. RICH SMITH

OCTOBER 15-NOVEMBER 2

FOOD & DRINK

66. Seattle Restaurant Week
I think Seattle Restaurant Week benefits all parties involved. For one, it provides access to a host of the city's best restaurants at a price comparable to what you'd pay to Postmates for some mediocre pad thai. You can go out to all the places you've been meaning to go, try a wide swath of their menu, and leave with your financial well-being intact. It's only $33 for three courses, and only $18 at lunch! At places like Lark, Tilth, and Terra Plata! For two, restaurants win because it brings in all those people who have been meaning to go but have never gone, and potentially converts them to return customers. Regulars are, as any restauranteur will tell you, the real meat and bread of the business. Lastly, the actual restaurant staff wins because, if you're not a bad person, you listen to the sage advice my predecessor Bethany Jean Clement used to give every year, "Tip well, these things are hell for servers." TOBIAS COUGHLIN-BOGUE

OCTOBER 16

READINGS & TALKS

67. Armistead Maupin: Logical Family
San Francisco-based novelist Armistead Maupin was one of the first authors to write about AIDS (in 1983) and is best known for his Tales of the City series. His latest book, Logical Family, is a photograph-filled memoir that Neil Gaiman described as "fascinating, as delightful and as compulsive as any of the tales he has made up for us.”

OCTOBER 17

MUSIC

68. Hanson
Famous corn-fed brother trio Hanson have weathered 25 years in the music biz since their platinum album, Middle of Everywhere, dropped. They'll be celebrating this anniversary on an extended tour, playing tracks from this album, along with newer works.

OCTOBER 17-18

FESTIVALS

69. Seattle Interactive Conference
Seattle Interactive Conference is the culmination of the best technology that online business professionals, developers, and entrepreneurs from around the world have to offer. SIC brings technology, creativity, and current trends to one place for tech lovers to explore and discover. Attendees will be able to network and mingle with individuals in the tech industry while enjoying disruptive technology, business models, social media apps, new games, advertising, and more hands-on entertainment.

OCTOBER 17-NOVEMBER 18

PERFORMANCE

70. Coriolanus: Fight Like a Bitch
The all-woman cast of this infrequently produced Shakespearian tragedy stars Z Nation’s Nike Imoru, who showed off her ability to play King Lear and Lady Macbeth in her solo show Ode earlier this year. When she bellowed Lear's famous line, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" I felt a desperate urge to see her take on a kingly role of classical proportions, and the theater gods (who are taking the form of Rebel Kat Productions) have granted me this wish. Straight from the audition materials: “What happens when we smash our current political, gendered landscape onto the sacrosanct canvas of one of the greatest playwrights ever? If a man can destroy an entire city… can’t a woman do the same? We say they can.” RICH SMITH

OCTOBER 18

MUSIC

71. The Afghan Whigs with Har Mar Superstar
The Afghan Whigs are the real treat here. Greg Dulli's kinky, soul-inflected hard-rock project are still one of the most vital acts in alternative rock. Oh, also, their comeback album, Do the Beast, is a monster. JOSEPH SCHAFER

72. Iron & Wine
Oscillating between straightforward folk, alt-country, and generic traveling bard, singer-songwriter Sam Beam has been at the helm of Iron & Wine for over a decade now.

73. Paul Weller with Lucy Rose
British rock vet Paul Weller makes his second Seattle appearance since 2009, when he played the Moore. The venue change suggests waning popularity, but the former Jam and Style Council leader hasn’t declined artistically as steeply as some of his OG punk peers have. An adaptable, versatile musician, Weller has gone through punk-inflected mod, Motown-homaging soul, psychedelia, funk, and sensitive singer/songwriter motions over the decades. If he’s never really embarrassed himself through all those changes, he’s also rarely attained lofty heights in his 23-year solo career. Weller’s last two full-lengths, Sonik Kicks and Saturns Pattern, mark a steadfast reliance on solid rock foundations with hints of psychedelia—as if he nibbled a fifth of a tab of acid in the studio, just to add a glimmer of disorientation and chaos. A man in his mid 50s has many responsibilities, after all. DAVE SEGAL

READINGS & TALKS

74. Ron Chernow
I'm sure you're familiar with the Tony Award-winning smash hit musical explosion known as Hamilton? Well, I've been told Ron Chernow wrote the biography of Alexander Hamilton that Lin-Manuel Miranda used as source material for his wildly popular show. This year, Chernow will be touring with a new presidential biography about Ulysses S. Grant, probably the greatest writer ever to hold the office. RICH SMITH

OCTOBER 19

MUSIC

75. The Aquabats, Mean Jeans, Dog Party
You know that camp song, the one that never ends? "This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends!" The Aquabats are the band equivalent to that song. Annoying to many, but childishly charming to some. And, like the song, they never really end. The 'Bats have kept up their ska-playing superhero act for about a decade now, surprisingly, and through all the trends and music-biz ups and downs, they've stayed on course, fighting off villains and assaulting their enamored fans with flying vegetables at live shows. You love them or you hate them—either way, the Aquabats remain true to themselves. "Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was, but they continued singing it forever just because..." MEGAN SELING

76. Zola Jesus with John Wiese
Zola Jesus (aka Nika Roza Danilova) is sort of a modern-day Siouxsie Sioux, a powerful singer with a propensity for dark, chilly, and semi-over-the-top synth ballads. Which makes her an unlikely—but totally likable—pop artist. Her fifth album, Taiga, is a bit of a departure from her past works. As The Stranger’s Dave Segal noted, it’s more accessible and slickly produced: The songs are still dramatic but less gloomy, her beats more club-worthy and her voice more soulful and melismatic (though still operatic—she was trained in opera). I’d still take her over [insert any pop star’s name here] any day. KATHLEEN RICHARDS

READINGS & TALKS

77. Lit Crawl Seattle: 2017
Last year, Rich Smith described the fifth annual Lit Crawl thus: "Lit Crawl is an obnoxious, overwhelming, FOMO-inducing literary nightmare that exploits the labor of writers who feel as if they have to say 'yes' to all readings. But last year all the events were really well-attended! And it ran pretty smoothly! And the evening introduced Seattle to some new writers and revived interest in more established ones!" Now the event is back for its sixth incarnation with more than 35 locations, and you won't want to miss it either.

OPENING OCTOBER 19

ART

78. Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect
Born in Pennsylvania 100 years ago, Andrew Wyeth is an American realist painter associated with regionalism. His paintings and drawings generally include figures—sometimes in a landscape, sometimes in contemplatively lit interiors—that simultaneously present drama and stillness. In the 1970s and ’80s, he painted more than 247 studies of a German-born woman named Helga Testorf, resulting in some of the most intimate and compelling examples of 20th-century portraiture. Organized in partnership with the Brandywine River Museum, Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect presents more than 100 works by this quintessential American artist. EMILY POTHAST

PERFORMANCE

79. Love, Chaos, and Dinner
Beloved circus/cabaret/comedy institution Teatro ZinZanni will return to Seattle for a dinner theater production of Love, Chaos, and Dinner. They promise "the same stunning, velvet-laden, and iconic Belgian spiegeltent Seattleites will remember from Teatro ZinZanni’s former location on lower Queen Anne." The cast is led by first-time "Madame ZinZanni" Ariana Savalas, and will feature a duo on aerial trapeze, a magician, a "contortionist-puppet," a yodeling dominatrix, a hoop aerialist, and a Parisian acrobat.

OCTOBER 19-21

MUSIC

80. Christian McBride
Lauded bassist Christian McBride, who's been a force in the jazz world for over 20 years and has played with musicians including Herbie Hancock and Sting, will perform with Benny Green and Lewis Nash in memory of Ray Brown.

OCTOBER 20

COMEDY

81. wellRED: From Dixie With Love
See stand-up from three Georgian and Tennesseean comedians, including "the Liberal Redneck" Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan, and Corey Ryan Forrester, who are touring across the country to promote their book Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin Dixie Outta the Dark. Their take on the ideal South: "It’s about dancing to country music at a gay wedding. It’s about loving your neighbor whether you have the same religion, skin color, or sexual preference, as long as they cheer for the same college football team."

82. Whose Live Anyway?
The cast members of the Emmy-winning show Whose Line is it Anyway?—including Bellingham-born Ryan Stiles—will play their hilarious improv games onstage.

FOOD & DRINK

83. Behind the Table
Enjoy an evening of local art, live music, dinner, drinks, a silent auction, and more. Proceeds benefit The Market Community Safety Net, a fund that provides financial assistance to anyone working or living in Pike Place Market.

PERFORMANCE

84. Poppy
Bizarro pop Barbie web artist Poppy has racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube for her many surreal Technicolor videos. She'll be gearing up to release her debut album this October.

OCTOBER 20-21

FOOD & DRINK

85. The American Whiskey Experience
Consider a "Northwest premiere showcase of some of the finest and rarest American whiskeys." Drink cocktails, sample whiskey, and eat "whiskey-centric food pairings" from local chefs.

OCTOBER 20-31

PERFORMANCE

86. This is Halloween
Can Can's creepy yet cheery musical is back! Last year, Rich Smith wrote: "It's Tim Burton's classic The Nightmare Before Christmas repackaged as a semi-scandalous spectacle for the masses. The audience eats chicken skewers and knocks back $10 cocktails while they watch Tim Keller as Jack 'the Pumpkin King' Skellington sing and dance, cabaret-style, along with Luminous Pariah, Paris Original, Marissa Quimby, and Baby Kate, while a ghoulish orchestra pumps out the show's signature tunes. Despite the glitzy and consumerist exterior, the crew manages to smuggle a complicated cabaret about the horror of fixed identities into the unpretentious space of the Triple Door."

OCTOBER 21

MUSIC

87. Ariel Pink and Telecaves
They broke the mold when they made Runaways manager Kim Fowley, who left this mortal coil in 2015. When it comes to an heir apparent, though, look no further than Ariel Pink (born Ariel Rosenberg), who shares Fowley’s knack for insidious hooks and jumble-shop threads. If his records, like the Zappa-damaged double-album Pom Pom—it features five songs co-written with Fowley—can be scattershot affairs, Pink has a way with throwback tracks like "Lipstick," the imaginary theme to a neon-lit slasher flick, that helps to balance out bizarre proclamations like "I love pedophiles." (Huh?) Bust out the feather boas and the platform shoes, and prepare to get weird. KATHY FENNESSY

88. Bob Mould
While he may be best known for writing heartfelt anthems for the seminal punk band Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould has had a long and diverse career: forming short-lived-but-excellent power-pop band Sugar, releasing several cross-genre solo albums, and in more recent years abandoning rock altogether for electronic music. Now, at age 55, Mould has re-embraced the legacy of his Hüsker Dü–era works to deliver another round of introspective jangle punk at its finest. Beauty & Ruin, his last solo effort, sounds like a natural re-evolution from the decidedly Dü-y Silver Age, and sees Mould’s rediscovery of his deep pop sensibilities and driving rock roots. While Beauty is not a new day rising (*wink*) for Mould, his musical chameleon-ism doesn’t betray what he does best: smart, honest punk songs. BRITTNIE FULLER

89. Depeche Mode
Over the past 36 years, synth-pop pioneers Depeche Mode racked up 50 UK-charting singles and worldwide adoration for their emotional electronic sounds. Recently, as all good things are, they were appropriated by the "alt-right" (aka white supremacists) and the group immediately shunned their support (have they heard BDSM anthem "Master and Servant" or the practically socialist "Everything Counts," tho?). From the infectious synth-pop melodies of "Just Can't Get Enough" to the passionately stoic "Never Let Me Down Again," the band evolved from bright techno-pop to something darker and more industrial. They've been cited as an influence from Nine Inch Nails to Coldplay, and through the fetish wear and seductive darkness, Depeche Mode wrote some of the 20th century's best songs. BRITTNIE FULLER

90. Little Big Show #19: Perfume Genius with Briana Marela
When “genius” is right there in your band name, you’re going to have to deliver. Fortunately, Mike Hadreas figured out how to summon the goods. The first two records were real good, but Perfume Genius achieved a glory on 2014’s Too Bright that only grew more glorious on this year’s No Shape. If there’s any justice, he’ll be carried out of this show on a team of white stallions. SEAN NELSON

OCTOBER 21-22

MUSIC

91. Courtney Barnett with Kurt Vile & The Sea Lice
The first time I heard Courtney Barnett sing, I was writing a passive-aggressive e-mail in a stall of the Sub Pop bathroom, which ended up being the ideal landscape for her casual misdirects of true emotion. With inscrutable delivery and a ramshackle lyrical structure, Barnett tells you about her deepest secrets, most abject failures, and forbidden needs in the course of a simple rock song—seemingly downplaying her own humanity by showcasing it completely. Some of the most affecting music, Barnett’s included, comes from artists who feel exactly like your peers and yet create something that sounds better than however you tried to say it. KIM SELLING

OCTOBER 21-22

GEEK & GAMING

92. GE2
Spend an evening playing Esports, board games, dodgeball, and laser tag, racing drones, and experiencing VR.

OCTOBER 22

READINGS & TALKS

93. Humans of New York: Brandon Stanton
Brandon Stanton gained international fame for his Facebook page "Humans of New York," on which he posted his street photography documenting the interesting outfits, poses, and activities of NYC residents. But what made his work really interesting were the captions, often quotes from the people being photographed, that allowed glimpses into their inner lives and most traumatic struggles. There have been quite a few smart take-down pieces of Stanton that point out the potential dangers of his empathetic ethnography, but ultimately, Stanton has achieved his goal of humanizing strangers and giving audiences practical examples of the (newly minted) word "sonder" (the realization that strangers have as rich and complex a life as you do). At this event, Stanton will share "his own personal story, and the perspective he has gained since embarking on his journey to help others tell theirs."

OCTOBER 22-23

MUSIC

94. Broken Social Scene with Belle Game
Easy listening is a term most commonly deployed as a pejorative, but I think Broken Social Scene make a convincing case for its use as an accolade. The loosely defined, sprawling indie-rock collective's equally loose and sprawling guitar rock could not possibly be easier on the ears, but that's not to the detriment of their songs, which range from tiny pop treasures à la "Anthem for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" to careening yet controlled studio riots to impeccable chill-out music just the right side of yacht rock. ERIC GRANDY

OCTOBER 23

MUSIC

95. The Black Angels with Ron Gallo
The Black Angels' music has always come off as something like psych-rock 101. While they have a solid discography in the Velvet Underground/13th Floor Elevators/Doors style, which has become a default mode for a lot of psych groups, the Black Angels never conjure the delirium and otherness that the greatest psych artists achieve. These Texans too closely adhere to psychedelia's dog-eared manual rather than forging new pathways to aural transcendence. They may be (figuratively) tripping, but they've always got one hand on the reins. Don't get me wrong: The Black Angels are a very good band, probably more enjoyable than 79 percent of the groups working today. But they could stand to fire all of their guns at once and explode into space once in a while. DAVE SEGAL

96. Milky Chance
Known for their 2013 EP Stolen Dance, German duo Milky Chance are back on tour for Blossom, their second full-length album rife with electronic beats and indie-folk melodies.

READINGS & TALKS

97. G. Willow Wilson with Jamala Henderson
G. Willow Wilson used to describe herself as an "upper-middle-class American White girl with bland politics and polite beliefs." That changed when she converted to Islam in college, worked as a journalist in Egypt, and began writing the comic series Ms. Marvel, featuring a Pakistani American teenage girl from Jersey City. Hear Willow discuss the series, moderated by KUOW's Jamala Henderson.

OCTOBER 24

MUSIC

98. Yelle
Maybe it's because everything sounds better in French (cwoisssaaauunnt), but there's something extra super about Yelle's French electro-posi-pop. It's bright Euro disco with a slightly comical (can a synthesizer sound like bouncy house feels?) approach to the music that makes the aforementioned genre more listenable than usual, especially when each song is catchier than the last. Yelle's (Julie Budet) neon voice shines with a glittery sexiness that is not gross or eye-rolly in the least. And the last time I saw her, matching drummers and coordinating outfits were involved! EMILY NOKES

READINGS & TALKS

99. David Neiwert: Alt America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump
The journalist David Neiwert wrote a book a few years ago about killer whales (Of Orcas and Men) that was so packed with illuminating facts it practically changed my life. His latest is a book is Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, about neo-Nazis, militias, conspiracy theorists, xenophobes, and the president of the United States. For more than two decades, Neiwert has been tracking homergrown extremists for the Southern Poverty Law Center, so who better to provide what is being billed as “a deeply researched and authoratative report on the growth of fascism and far-right terrorism.” CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE

OCTOBER 25

MUSIC

100. Silversun Pickups with Minus The Bear
I first heard Silversun Pickups when their song “Panic Switch” was the only good thing about the trailer to the movie Sucker Punch. (Does anyone remember that movie?) After purchasing that record, Swoon, I discovered that the band had a less-than-stellar reputation in critical circles. Screw the critics, I later thought, watching the band open for Metallica in Detroit. They’re energetic and driving live, even though singer Brian Aubert has a somewhat delicate voice. Every one of their records has at least a handful of excellent chrome-plated-but-plaintive rock songs, and 2015’s Better Nature is no different. JOSEPH SCHAFER

101. Slowdive with Cherry Glazerr
British shoegaze giants Slowdive recently joined the ’90s reunion circuit. Lovers of “noisy guitars and cool pedals” (sayeth the band of themselves), Slowdive are a legendary part of the early-’90s Creation Records history, and should lull listeners into a dream-pop coma tonight with their walls of blissed-out distortion. BRITTNIE FULLER

102. Yelawolf, Mikey Mike, Big Henri, Cookup Boss
Yelawolf is a lean, tattooed, half-white, half-Cherokee MC from the unlikely hiphop outpost of Gadsden, Alabama, at the tail end of the Appalachians. He has floppy, jet-black hair that falls somewhere between mullet and uncharged Mohawk. He's probably the most unusual face in Southern hiphop right now, and after years of mixtape toil, he's poised for big things in the year to come. ERIC GRANDY

READINGS & TALKS

103. Amy Tan: Where the Past Begins
Amy Tan has written beautifully (and sometimes controversially) about Chinese-American culture, generational gaps, and familial relationships; her best-known books are The Joy Luck Club (which was made into a fairly groundbreaking movie, for Hollywood standards) and The Valley of Amazement. She's here to share her latest work, Where the Past Begins, a memoir about how she became a writer.

MUSIC

104. Action Bronson
Action Bronson's towering concoctions, whether they're meals or songs, only seem over-the-top once he tells you so. The best part of his music isn't necessarily what he says as much as how he says it. You can pick any Bronson song and find some of his favorite references: '80s wrestlers, '90s athletes, his hometown of Queens, New York, and yes, food, all expertly arranged and distorted. JACKSON HATHORN

105. Hoodie Allen, Luke Christopher, Myles Parrish
"Hoodie-Hop" progenitor Hoodie Allen will be back in town for an all-ages rager rife with pop-infused bars and guest artists like Luke Christopher and Myles Parrish.

106. Songhoy Blues
Malian blues, West African throwback funk, and desert rock will take the stage in the form of Songhoy Blues.

READINGS & TALKS

107. An Evening with Anna Faris
Actress (and UW alumna) Anna Faris will discuss and sign her new memoir, Unqualified, which "reveals her unique take on how to navigate the bizarre, chaotic, and worthwhile adventure of finding love."

OCTOBER 26-NOVEMBER 12

FILM

108. 13th Annual HUMP! Film Festival
Every year we put out the call to sex-havers everywhere to submit a homegrown amateur porn film depicting whatever they're into (barring poop, kids, and animals, of course). The result is an incredibly diverse representation of human sexuality in all its straight, gay, trans, queer, kinky, funny, pissy, painful, and pretty forms. (And then it goes away, allowing the filmmakers to go back to their normal lives, thanks to the festival's strict privacy and security policies.) That diversity is also reflected in HUMP!'s audiences, making for a unique theater experience. The person sitting next to you might be seeing your everyday kind of sex for the very first time. In a world where fear and ignorance breed hatred, HUMP!'s demystifying inclusivity is on the front line of deflecting destructive alienation. (You also might surprise yourself by getting turned on by something unexpected.) And, like the best film festivals, it's also fun, thought provoking, and often hilarious. MARJORIE SKINNER

OCTOBER 27

HALLOWEEN

109. Seduction: A Fundraiser for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival
The Foundation for Sex Positive Culture and the Seattle Erotic Art Festival present what they describe as "a carnival of delights!" From interactive installations to aerial and bondage shows to an Oddities Emporium, this event will be kinda artsy and definitely sensual.

110. FreakNight 2017
Annual high-key wild-out throwdown FreakNight raises the bar for their 20th anniversary celebration, with a two-day set of live music, dancing, and a darkly neon environment of circus surprises, bizarre sideshow wonders, and carnival rides.

MUSIC

111. Kesha with Savoy Motel
Witness pop star Kesha perform as her newest, most colorfully redemptive iteration with Nashville glam rockers Savoy Motel.

112. Snakehips, STWO, Yahtzel
Blog house superheroes Snakehips' remix of "Warm Water" by Banks essentially made her entire career worthwhile, and while we wouldn't say the same of all their remixes, they're reliably groovy dance technicians KYLE FLECK

113. Tegan and Sara
If you have a twin, you basically owe it to the world to start a band with them and cash in on those perfect harmonies. Cases in point: the Breeders, P.S. Eliot, Wet Nurse, and um… Good Charlotte? Fellow twin band, Canadian pop stars Tegan and Sara, make the kind of music that fits seamlessly into a Forever 21 soundtrack but somehow still oozes real emotion. They weren’t always pumping through shopping-center sound systems alongside recycled air, though. The record that endeared me to them was 2004’s So Jealous, which I first heard through the CD library of the community radio station where I volunteered. For months I would drive home at 3 a.m. after my DJ shift listening to the perfectly crafted indie-rock breakup record, and feel justified in liking something my cooler friends deemed uncool because Weezer/Rentals member Matt Sharp played Moog on it. Tegan and Sara’s rise to full-fledged pop stars has made the music more electronic and mainstream-palatable, but it kept the same whip-smart heart (and magical twin harmonies) that first cut straight to myheart. ROBIN EDWARDS

OCTOBER 27-28

COMEDY

114. Arsenio Hall
Join comedian Arsenio Hall, best known for his late-night talk show The Arsenio Hall Show, which debuted in 1989.

OCTOBER 27-29

FESTIVALS

115. Steamposium 2017
It's a three-day celebration of all things steampunk, so bust out your finest clockwork corsets and reserve some zeppelin parking down at the waterfront. Spectate future-past style parades at the Tea and Fashion Show, snoop out the villain at the Murder Mystery, and hear concerts by Abney Park and Unwoman.

OCTOBER 28

HALLOWEEN

116. Fremonster Spectacular
This Halloween party promises wild DJ performances, a costume contest, a full bar with specialty cocktails, festive chocolates, and performances.

117. Haunt: The Ultimate Halloween Bash
Dance to sets from "party band" Brand X and DJ Funkdaddy, watch other spooky performances, and participate in a costume contest for "most elaborate," "most creative," "scariest," "best group," and other categories.

MUSIC

118. Alvvays with Jay Som
Alvvays, saddled with general Canadian cuteness, hark back to a time of indie-pop nostalgia wherein the ice-cream truck jingle morphs into a siren song of teen drone necessity. This time never actually existed, which makes Alvvays that much more affecting, a band capable of making you miss an age through which you never lived. KIM SELLING

119. NEEDTOBREATHE with Guests
Southern rockers NEEDTOBREATHE bring their South Carolinian shred to the Moore on their All The Feels Tour, ostensibly named for what will be invoked within you once you experience the unbridled energy of their live show.

120. Shadows: Toro Y Moi (DJ Set) and Sango with Romaro Franceswa, Qreepz, Chong The Nomad
Upper Left will be taking a more avant-garde approach to Halloween this year, with an evening of live performances and DJ sets that will soundtrack the darkest of holidays. Revel in the haunted imagery of a bygone era alongside the sounds of Toro Y Moi, Sango, Romaro Franceswa, Qreepz, and Chong The Nomad.

OCTOBER 29

MUSIC

121. Mary Lambert with Mal Blum
Queer pop artist Mary Lambert, who performed with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis on "Same Love," will perform tracks off her latest EP Bold, along with guest musician Mal Blum. She's got a nice blend of snark and sincerity, so if you like smart lyrics and sunny hooks, go check her out.

PODCASTS

122. An Evening with with Brian Reed
One thing that the podcast S-Town (a truth-based radio mystery à la Serial) is great for is provoking strong opinions—everyone and their mother had a take on the style, investigation, and ethics of the series. At this event, get a peek into the mind of S-Town co-creator and host Brian Reed, who will share audio outtakes from production, reporting details that were left out of the final product, and anecdotes from the process.

CLOSING OCTOBER 29

ART

123. Storme Webber: Casino: A Palimpsest
Storme Webber is a Two-Spirit First Nations (Alutiiq/Black/Choctaw) interdisciplinary artist, curator, writer, and performer who creates socially engaged texts and images at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, memory, and spirit. Through the exhibition of archival photographs, installation, and experimental storytelling, Webber uses the pre-Stonewall working-class LGBTQ history of the Pioneer Square neighborhood as a point of departure to shed light on the hidden stories of the marginalized people in Seattle's present and past. Expect to see the historical made timeless, and the timeless made tangible. EMILY POTHAST

HALLOWEEN

124. Fright Fest
Listen to the swooshing of the wind on rollercoasters in the dark, check out two haunted houses, walk down a creepy trail through the woods, and make scary arts and crafts at Fright Fest.

PERFORMANCE

125. Pride And Prejudice
Kate Hamill (known for her adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Vanity Fair) offers another modern take on Jane Austen through this production of Pride and Prejudice. This run at the Seattle Rep will be the play's West Coast premiere, with direction by Amanda Dehnert, who has directed shows at a number of regional theaters (including the esteemed Oregon Shakespeare Festival).

OCTOBER 30

MUSIC

126. A$AP Mob, Playboi Carti, Key!, Cozy Boys
Known possibly more for what they've taken rather than what they've originated, A$AP Mob returns to the best coast on a promotional tour for their recent release Cozy Tapes Vol. 2: Too Cozy. Expect appearances from A$AP Rocky, A$AP Twelvyy, A$AP Nast, and A$AP Ant, with support from Playboi Carti, Key!, and Cozy Boys to round the night out.

127. Chelsea Wolfe with Youth Code
Chelsea Wolfe’s 2015 album Abyss was a big step forward for the Los Angeles doom-folk maven, an alluringly abrasive witch’s cauldron of overblown goth pop, desperate balladry, and sludgy metal. Its bounds more hi-fi than her early work, with industrial beats that pound like premium-grade Nine Inch Nails and ghoulish ambience swirling in the margins of the songs, and the songwriting matches the production’s ambition. Wolfe's aesthetic sometimes leans toward histrionics, as goth tends to, but there are moments like “After the Fall” that approach latter-day Portishead for grandiosity, a kind of glamorously damaged suicide soundtrack that’s called for in certain times of emotional desolation. KYLE FLECK

READINGS & TALKS

128. Walter Isaacson: Leonardo da Vinci
The very influential Walter Isaacson (President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, former CEO of CNN, and former managing editor of Time) has written a number of very good biographies of people including Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. At this event, he'll share his latest book: Leonardo Da Vinci, which explores the artist's life and essential genius.

OCTOBER 31

HALLOWEEN

129. The Bowie Ball with BowieVision
The local tribute group Bowievision—featuring members of Dudley Manlove Quartet and Purr Gato, plus saxophonist Brian Bermudez—replicate as faithfully as they can the chameleonic British singer/songwriter’s hits, with a light show and video backdrops for bonus dazzlement. DAVE SEGAL

CLOSING NOVEMBER 4

HALLOWEEN

130. Georgetown Morgue
Want to grope through a pitch-black maze with a bloody clown screaming in your ear, but most likely emerge with all your important bits still attached? Cheesy as it looks, Georgetown Morgue has scared a lot of people. Not recommended for claustrophobes.

National Home-Building Giants Flock to Moneyed New Seattle

An invasion of national firms has changed the home-building market here.

BY: JEANNE LANG JONES | Posted October 2, 2017 | Courtesy of seattlemag.com

Image Credit: Navid Baraty

Quadrant Homes; The company has three townhome sites, including Breva in Bellevue near the planned light-rail line.

In 2011, as the local economy was recovering, giant home-building firms poured into the Seattle market. Among them were Richmond American Homes (Denver), Toll Brothers (Philadelphia), Henley Properties (Australia), Newland Communities (San Diego) and Lennar Corp. (Miami). They joined Shea Homes (Los Angeles) and publicly traded home builders D.R. Horton (Fort Worth) and Centex Corp. (Dallas), now owned by PulteGroup Inc. (Atlanta).

These new players quickly snapped up local home builders. Richmond American parent M.D.C. Holdings bought SDC Homes of Seattle. Toll Brothers bought Kirkland’s Camwest Development. Lennar bought Premier Communities of Puyallup. Henley partner, Sumitomo Forestry Group Housing, bought Bellevue’s Bennett Homes. These acquisitions provided the newcomers with local expertise and instant property portfolios.

To better compete, Quadrant Homes, a former Weyerhaeuser subsidiary, hired an industrial design firm in 2012 to do consumer analytics on the housing market. The research “brought in some different thinking and yielded great fruit,” Quadrant President Ken Krivanec says.

Krivanec relates that some well-heeled buyers were willingly paying $750,000 for a new home at a time when Quadrant’s average sale price was below $300,000. So the company developed a contemporary design aesthetic and decided to concentrate on the Eastside luxury home market.

Quadrant itself was acquired in 2014 by publicly traded TRI Pointe Group, which is based in the Los Angeles area and owns six premium homebuilding brands operating across eight states. Fueled by new capital, Quadrant began shopping for land — from Bothell to the Renton Highlands — and was able to win some very aggressive bids, says Bonnie Geers, Quadrant’s SVP of community development.

Quadrant also sold five properties in Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood, where it once planned to build more than 100 townhomes. The properties had appreciated significantly in value. “Selling the assets in Seattle let us keep our energy focused in the direction we were heading,” Geers notes. Quadrant currently has three townhome sites on the Eastside — in Kirkland, Newcastle and near the planned light-rail line in Bellevue.

Meanwhile, Charlie Conner, owner and president of Conner Homes in Bellevue, says his company had to become more nimble to compete against the larger home builders. At its peak in 2004, Conner Homes built about 220 homes a year. After suffering a dip in production during the recession, Conner extended its reach into the South End market and partnered with another business with significant land holdings there. The geographic expansion enabled Conner to return to a pace above 200 homes a year despite the downturn.

Conner now has a presence in seven communities, from Sammamish in the north to Edgewood and Buckley in the south.

While the business did slow in 2009, says Conner, support from its banks enabled the company to continue building throughout the recession. One advantage of being an independent home builder, Conner adds, is that he can be more creative in the type of house he builds on a particular parcel that might not fit a larger builder’s stock house plans.

Photograph by Navid Baraty. Developer Conner Homes added properties in the South End market, including homes in Edgewood’s Westridge, above.

Like Quadrant, Conner is also building townhomes. He sees them as a good alternative for empty nesters and others who don’t necessarily want a big yard. But Conner says the competition remains “pretty fierce” from national companies that can spread their risk across projects nationwide. “People build in inflation, assuming prices will continue to go up 10 to 15 percent per year,” Conner says. “If you operate all over the United States in different markets, then perhaps you will gamble here and there and pay the upper price for land.”

By contrast, says Conner, “We have to make it work here because we are a local company.” 

Puyallup-based Soundbuilt Homes has also adjusted. Before the recession, Soundbuilt was doing 600 to 700 homes a year. It has scaled back production to about 200 homes annually.

“All the nationals are here and it’s hard to get land to do that kind of number,” says COO Kurt Wilson. “We have to be nimble and able to do various types and sizes of projects that we may not have done 10 years ago.”

Soundbuilt builds houses in King, Pierce and Thurston counties, from Renton to Gig Harbor south to Yelm. Soundbuilt also develops and sells land to national home builders when the properties don’t fit into its production timeline, Wilson says. The company is working on some big projects that were acquired before or during the downturn and are being built in phases.

No Passport Required

By Denise Sakaki | September 20, 2017 | Courtesy of 425magazine.com

photos by Olivia Brent

Within the city of Bellevue, your taste buds can travel the world. As the city continues to grow, so does its culinary scene, with a dynamic array of international options. Local restaurants and markets specialize in cuisine from so many countries, we wanted to share a taste of what’s available within a five-mile radius — stretching from downtown Bellevue to Crossroads.

Blue Ginger Korean BBQ

The aroma of meat and vegetables sizzling on a grill is hard to resist, and what better way to enjoy it than at a table full of friends? Experience Korean barbecue with a hands-on approach by ordering combination plates of fresh beef, cuts of pork, and seafood to sizzle away on the grill set in the center of the table. The marinated gal-bi is the best of everything — beef short ribs cut flanken style, thin for quick searing, with the added flavor of meat on the bone and the sweet/savory/spicy flavors of Korean seasoning. That, with the banchan of pickled vegetables, and one of the spicy soups make for a memorable group meal. 14045 N.E. 20th St.; koreanbbqbellevue.com

Byblos Deli

Levantine cooking, the Eastern Mediterranean region that includes Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Israel, is diverse with multiple culinary influences and permeated with garlic, spiced meats, and fresh vegetables. Byblos Deli’s combination platter of grilled marinated beef, lamb kafta, and chicken shish taouk is a delicious sampler of different meats atop seasoned rice with vegetables and a swirl of creamy hummus. There are also specialties like manti, small Turkish dumplings, and lahmajune, a pizza-like Armenian flatbread topped with seasoned beef, fresh tomatoes and onion.

14220 N.E. 20th St.; byblosdeli.com

Uwajimaya

Located in downtown Bellevue, Uwajimaya has been an Eastside staple for Asian groceries for more than 30 years. Shop for fresh meats, seafood, and produce. Stopping in for lunch? Try the café for hot food or Sashimi Island for fresh sashimi. 699 120th Ave. N.E. (also located in Renton); uwajimaya.com

Mediterranean Kitchen

Their house-made toum, a Lebanese garlic sauce used on almost everything, is totally addictive. Diners aware of the huge portion sizes unabashedly bring containers to take home leftovers, leaving no bite behind. 103 Bellevue Way N.E.; mediterraneankitchens.net

Crossroads Mall Public Market

Before global cuisine had the cachet it’s enjoying today, Crossroads Mall had its international food court with dozens of different countries represented. This is the place to have a little bit of everything when you just can’t decide. 15600 N.E. Eighth St.; crossroadsbellevue.com

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya / Hokkaido Ramen Santouka / Jinya Ramen Bar / Ramen Yoshi

The ramen craze is in full effect! Bellevue’s range of ramen restaurants specializes in different broth styles and noodle combinations, so the most delicious advice is to try them all to find your perfect ramen fit.
kizuki.com, santouka-usa.com, jinya-ramenbar.com, facebook.com/RamenYoshi

Taqueria El Rinconsito

Crave-worthy tacos, along with a full menu of enchiladas, burritos, and entrée-sized plates like carne asada. On weekends, try the special pozole soup, perfect for locations like Bellevue with extended late-night hours. 2255 140th Ave. N.E.; elrinconsito.com

Szechuan Chef

Can’t get enough spicy food? Szechuan cuisine, originating from the Southwestern province in China, features the generous use of the regional peppercorn of the same name. Slightly citrusy in flavor with a unique tingling numbness to the mouth, its heat develops as you eat. Szechuan Chef’s menu is dotted with little red pepper icons, signifying an item’s spiciness, even in the cold dishes. Chong Qing Hot Chicken is an addictive mix of bite-sized crispy, dry-fried chicken mixed with whole chili peppers, appealing to the heat-seeking culinarian, as well as anyone curious to try Szechuan food for the first time.
15015 Main St.; szechuanchef.us

Liebchen Delicatessen

A European grocery store and German deli, you can get hard-to-find imported ingredients, as well as packaged cookies and sweets. They sell cheeses and fresh Bavarian sausages, and it’s a perfect stop for cold cut sandwiches or daily soups. Insider tip: go early for the best selection of fresh pretzel rolls and breads, or call to find out when they get their delivery from their bakery. 14125 N.E. 20th St.; liebchendeli.com

Dough Zone

The popularity of xiao long bao has given rise to dumpling houses like Dough Zone, but take note of specialties like sheng jian bao, steam-fried buns filled with pork and broth; they’re heartier and more than double the size of the dumplings.15920 N.E. Eighth St.; facebook.com/doughzone

Ginza

Some of the freshest sushi you’ll have, beautifully hand-formed to showcase the cut and color of each piece of seafood. Sit barside to watch sushi artistry at work! 103 102nd Ave. S.E.; ginzaatbellevue.com

Fogo de Chao Brazillian BBQ

The flavor of Fogo de Chão got its start on a traditional Southern Brazilian farm, where the founders learned to grill fresh meat. The Bellevue restaurant brings churrasco-style dining to the Northwest. 440 Bellevue Way N.E.; fogodechao.com

Japonessa

This new Lincoln Square restaurant is known for its sushi with Latin flair — like traditional sashimi rolls topped with jalapeño, cilantro, and mango. Don’t miss the happy hour. 500 Bellevue Way N.E.; bellevue.japonessa.com

H-Mart

With locations throughout Eastside suburbs, the Bellevue H-Mart smartly adapts to downtown living. The smaller space is stocked with ingredient basics for Korean cooking, and features a deli-style section of prepared meals. 100 108th Ave. N.E.; hmartus.com

Mercato Stellina

A sibling of neighboring restaurant Cantinetta, Mercato Stellina takes the same care in its focus on handmade ingredients, like producing its own charcuterie and making the dough for its crust, which is transformed to a carbon-kissed crispy delight against the open flame of the oven. 10000 Main St.; mercatostellina.com

Old Country Bakery

A combination of several Eastern European countries in one shop, Old Country Bakery makes a range of items, including Jewish challah braids and rugelach cookies, German whole wheat and Russian rye breads, as well as unique-shaped loaves like the Georgian puri or Armenian matnakash. Of course, there are also familiar desserts like special occasion cakes and French-style pastries, but be adventurous with your sweet tooth and try the Armenian gata, an ornate dessert bread filled with vanilla. 900 160th Ave. N.E.; oldcountrybakery.net

Facing East

Taiwanese food is a complex combination of Chinese and Japanese influences intertwined with Taiwan’s native cuisine. At Facing East, dishes feature seafood and pork with vegetables, as well as tropical fruit. Delicate yet hearty, aromatic yet subtle, the dishes cover a wide spectrum, which Facing East captures beautifully. There’s familiarity in the salt and pepper shrimp, a velvety richness in the braised tofu with pork, and most everyone gets the Taiwanese Pork Burger, a super-sized gua bao — a steamed bun with a slab of slow-cooked pork belly, pickled vegetables, fresh coriander leaves, and crushed peanuts. 1075 Bellevue Way N.E.; facingeasttaiwanese.com

Chaat House

“Chaat” is a general term to describe a savory snack or appetizer-sized repast popular in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Chaat House specializes in vegetarian small plates like potato- and lentil-filled samosas, as well as a variety of flatbreads such as parathas, kulcha and roti, or fried pillowy poori bread with curry or chutney toppings. Or try thalis, small portions of dishes like paneer curry, if your appetite seeks something heartier. And if you’re feeling the heat of the spices, get a sweet, creamy mango lassi to cool those taste buds. 14725 N.E. 20th St. (also located in Bothell). bellevuechaathouse.com. 

Dine Out for a Good Cause at Cactus

Cactus Restaurants pledges $10,000 to help fund hurricane relief efforts

By Margo Greenman | September 22, 2017 | Courtesy of 425magazine.com 

Photo courtesy Cactus Restaurants

ungry to help victims of hurricanes Irma and Harvey? From Sept. 27 through the Oct. 27, Cactus Restaurants is donating $1 from every item sold off its feature menu to the American Red Cross to help fund hurricane relief efforts in Texas, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. All five Cactus locations are participating, and the restaurant has pledged a minimum donation of $10,000.

“We hope to exceed our $10,000 donation pledge,” said Cactus co-owner Bret Chatalas. “We feel strongly about feeding and taking care of people here at Cactus, and by extension, those affected by the hurricanes. We think this is a great avenue for our customers to help their fellow Americans start to rebuild their lives.”

The feature menu includes a wide variety of items for guests to choose from, like roasted carrot tacos made using organically grown carrots from Sound Sustainable Farms, and even cocktails like the Patron single barrel Old Fashioned.

Westland Distillery’s Peat Week Returns

The SoDo single-malt whisperers celebrate smoky whiskeys with a cocktail competition, a peat symposium, and a whole roasted pig.

By Stefan Milne  9/27/2017 at 9:30am | Courtesy of Seattlemet.com 

IMAGE: WESTLAND DISTILLERY

There are a lot of alcohol-related festivities in early autumn: Oktoberfest, fresh hop events, Washington Cider Week. Next week (October 2–7), lauded single-malt maker Westland Distillery is bringing back Peat Week, a celebration of their peated whiskeys, for the fourth year. Here’s why it might be worth the trip to Westland’s SoDo distillery.

All Week
Peat-Focused Distillery Tours
All through Peat Week the SoDo tasting room will hold special, peat-centric tours. You might learn that while Westland’s current peated releases use malts imported Scotland, distillers there have been working with Skagit Valley Malting for the last few years to make true Washington-peated single-malt. Skagit Valley Malting has been getting peat from a bog out in Shelton and malting local barley with it. Westland will be distilling a new batch of this whiskey during Peat Week, though Westland’s director of marketing Steve Hawley says the first batches won’t be ready for a couple more years. 

Mon, Oct 2
Peat Symposium
Washington has a thing for smoke—weed, salmon, and now whiskey. (Cue some jazz about gloomy weather and cozy fireside connotations.) Peat is essential moss that’s turned into charcoal, which is used to smoke the barley malt that the whiskeys are made from. If you want to know more, Peat Week kicks off with this symposium on Monday night, 7–10pm. Westland master distiller Matt Hofmann will speak with Allan Logan, the production manager at Bruichladdich, an Islay distillery that Hawley describes as “a kindred spirit to us, they buck traditional Scottish traditions at every turn and are rebels of the scotch world.” Snag a ticket quick though: last year’s peat talk was the first event to sell out. 

Wed, Oct 4
Cocktail Competition
A $60 ticket lets you judge a peated cocktail competition with four cocktails included in the ticket price. Bartenders hail from Bar Sue, the Barrel Thief,  the Hideout, and Thackeray (which will also provide smoky food stuffs to pair). 

Sat, Oct 7
Closing Night Party
Westland got the idea for Peat Week from similar Scottish festivals, where there’s a long tradition of throwing festivals for new bottlings, similar to Oktoberfest in Germany or Beaujolais Day in France. If you have a similar passion for peated whiskeys, the closing night party may be your best bet. Anyway, it’s a party; you’ve been to a party; they tend to be fun. You can pick up a bottle of the special 100 percent peated-malt special release. Radiator Whiskey is roasting whole pigs. So the next morning you can wake up with very, very smoky breath. 

For more details and tickets, check out the antiquated circus themed Peat Week website.

Fall Might be Washington's Best Wine-Drinking Season

In the final part of a series on Washington varietals to drink each season, Paul Zitarelli recommends the best wines for autumn.

BY: PAUL ZITARELLI | FROM THE PRINT EDITION | OCTOBER 2016

Autumn brings “leafy” reds such as Tempranillo and honeyed-apple Chenin Blanc

I can’t be the only Seattleite who harbors a secret love of our rainy autumns. Don’t get me wrong: I love our glorious sunny summer as much as the next wine writer, but by Labor Day, I’m itching for that first morning when the gray underbelly of Puget Sound’s clouds are seemingly only 15 feet off the ground.

Why the love for overcast weather? It gives us guilt-free permission to turn our focus from the outdoors to the indoors and toward family and home, and very much toward the kitchen and the table. All of the sudden, it doesn’t seem ridiculous to have the entire Saturday to-do list be: 1) Braise short ribs for six hours until spoon-tender; 2) Choose an appropriate bottle of wine.

Autumn is a magical time for drinking wine. The white wine I love most in autumn is Chenin Blanc. Its honeyed apple character is evocative of an autumn harvest fair, where some old salt is pressing apples into cider with an antique hand crank. Chenin is incredibly versatile, making lovely dry wines and luscious sweet wines. Some of Washington’s oldest vines are planted to this character-filled variety.

Now we shift gears to three autumnal reds. This time of year marks the end of tomato season, with the last heirlooms turning up at farmers markets, and with home gardeners bringing under-ripe plants into the kitchen to finish maturing. No wine varietal pairs as well with a fresh chunky tomato sauce as Sangiovese, a grape whose ancestral home is Tuscany, where tomatoes play a central role in local cuisine. Sangiovese’s naturally high acidity allows it to still taste bright and fresh when paired with tomato-based dishes, and its alluring kiss of cherry-pit bitters offsets a tomato’s natural sweetness.

Any wine varietal whose description frequently includes “leafy” seems just about perfect for autumn, don’t you think? Frequently, descriptions of Tempranillo include tea leaves, tobacco leaves and, well, just plain leaves. There’s something about sniffing a good Tempranillo that can put you in mind of a twilight trail walk, leaves crunching underfoot. It’s also a beautiful braising wine, softening up all manner of tough cuts with enough hours of slow cooking.

Finally, autumn is nirvana for Northwest mycophiles. Mushroom lovers across the region head into the woods (or the grocery stores) seeking out chanterelles and lobster mushrooms and porcinis. Pinot Noir is generally considered the ne plus ultra of mushroom pairings. While Oregon is much better known for Pinot Noir than Washington, there are a few select vineyards north of the Oregon–Washington border where this delicate grape performs beautifully. Its light body and delicate flavors complement subtle ’shrooms whereas bolder wines can overwhelm, and Pinot’s natural earthiness makes it a fine spouse for up-from-the-soil fungi of all kinds. Better yet, versatile Pinot is the perfect red for the Thanksgiving table, so keep a few bottles around for the holiday that marks the end of autumn proper.

Paul’s Picks for Autumn Washington Wines

2015 Orr Wines Old Vine Chenin Blanc, $25
Erica Orr’s enology consulting business in Woodinville has been wildly successful since she launched in 2006, helping wineries such as Baer, Mark Ryan, Guardian Cellars and Sparkman Cellars make a series of beautiful wines. For her own Orr Wines label, she makes exactly one wine: this old-vine Chenin Blanc, from a nearly 40-year-old site in the Yakima Valley called Rothrock Vineyard. It’s an intense, delicious, bone-dry Chenin, mixing apple fruit and apple-blossom floral notes with honey and malt powder.
PAIRS WITH: Thickly cut pork chops stewed with caramelized apples and onions.

2012 Kiona Estate Reserve Sangiovese, Red Mountain, $25
This Sangiovese comes from two of JJ Williams’ Kiona estate vineyards on Red Mountain. It offers a wonderful aromatically dusty character, hovering over a core of red cherry and pomegranate fruit. A note of star anise adds further complexity. The palate possesses wonderful Sangiovese character: pie-cherry fruit, rustic back-end chew and a great finishing lick of Aperol-flavored bitters. The rich fruit (14.5 percent alcohol by volume) is well-balanced by Sangiovese’s bright natural acidity.

PAIRS WITH: Gnocchi Bolognese, the sauce made from the last fresh tomatoes of the season. 

2012 Idilico Tempranillo, $20
It’s a sign of Tempranillo’s recent success in Washington that Woodinville-based Javier Alfonso can now source grapes from sites across our state, including Snipes Mountain (Upland Vineyard), Horse Heaven Hills (Elerding) and the greater Yakima Valley. His Tempranillo begins with a nose of deep black cherry fruit, autumnal leafy notes, and spices like anise and clove. Tannins are fine-grained, acids bright and juicy; all the components coexist harmoniously.

PAIRS WITH: Oxtails (short ribs or pot roast also work well) braised in this Tempranillo alongside a mess of root vegetables: carrots, celery root and turnips. 

2009 Bainbridge Vineyards Pinot Noir, $29
Most of Washington is climatically inappropriate for growing Pinot Noir, but there are a few cool-climate pockets where it makes sense. One of those is the Puget Sound AVA. This Pinot Noir comes from one of the closest vineyards to Seattle as the crow flies: Bainbridge Vineyards on Bainbridge Island. Winemaker Betsey Wittick has crafted an eye-opening Pinot, elegant and delicious with its mix of red fruit and earthy mineral tones. Now seven years past vintage, this is beginning to display wonderful maturing tones of mushroom and leather.

PAIRS WITH: A bowl of polenta topped with whatever wild mushrooms you can find, sautéed in butter and fresh thyme, and deglazed with dry sherry.

Check out Zitarelli's picks for winter, spring and summer.

Where to Drink (and Hoist a Stein) for Oktoberfest

Honor German tradition with a boatload of brews and Bavarian meats at these six events across town.

By Jaime Archer  9/20/2017 at 8:30am

eattleites celebrated with a cold one (or two or three) at last year’s Fremont Oktoberfest.

IMAGE: BOLD HAT PRODUCTIONS

Way back in 1810, Germans celebrated the marriage of King Ludwig I and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen with a festival and horse races. In the following years, small beer stands and a carousel were added to the jubilee. Fast forward 200 years and Oktoberfest is still going strong. While most of us are unable to afford a ticket to Munich, Washington has its own slew of Oktoberfest events—alas, with fewer horse races. Here are a few that have us polishing our novelty steins in anticipation...

Sept 21–Oct 1
Rhein Haus
This Capitol Hill beer hall channels Oktoberfest vibes yearlong with bratwurst, schnitzels, and a lengthy menu of German-sourced beers, but September means even more Bavarian eats and music. The biergarten will host a pig roast on September 21, with live music on September 23 and 30. Then Rhein Haus will do a traditional firkin keg tapping on September 29, put on an eating contest on September 30 (winner gets a swag bag, trophy, and a donation to a charity of their choice), and will entertain kiddos with a puppet show on October 1.

Sept 22–24
Fremont Oktoberfest
Get your lederhosen to the dry cleaners stat because Fremont’s Oktoberfest is just around the corner. The fest stretches the entire weekend, kicking off with a Led Zeppelin tribute band followed by a stein hoisting competition. Ziegler’s bratwurst and curly fries will be aplenty, as will pretzels, and—of course—there will be more than 80 craft beers. Other activities include a Miss Buxom beauty contest on Friday at 8pm, chainsaw pumpkin carving on Sunday at 2pm, and a slate of kid’s events. Friday and Saturday are strictly 21-plus, but kids are welcome on Sunday (and free with a paying adult). Tickets range from $20–$50.

Sept 22–24
Kirkland Oktoberfest
Human foosball and Hungry Hungry Hippos? Check. Stein racing and keg rolling? Check. Cornhole and beer pong? Kirkland’s Oktoberfest has those too. There will be a beer garden with German classics (Paulaner, anyone?) as well as local favorites like Maelstrom and Chainline. And it wouldn’t be Oktoberfest without some Bavarian meats, served up at Sausagehaus. On Sunday, Kirkland will host a set of wiener dog races, and kids are welcome to watch (and add to) the adorableness. The rest of the weekend, however, the biergarten is strictly 21 and over. One-day tickets start at $25 and a three-day pass is $60.

Sept 22–Oct 21
Queen Anne Beerhall
Queen Anne doesn’t mess around—the beerhall is prepped for a lengthy Oktoberfest, which includes two kegs of Paulaner Munchen Wiesn Bier, an impressive feat given that there’s only six kegs of the good stuff in the entire state. A confit hog head platter will also be available every Friday and Saturday. If a pig’s noggin isn’t really your cup of tea, you can also grab roast pork on October 14 and 15, or munch on wood-roasted lamb on September 30 and October 21. Also on the agenda: a performance by the Speakeasy Jazz Cats on September 22, beer yoga on September 23, and Kidtoberfest on September 24. Prost!

Sept 30
Tacoma Oktoberfest
After you’ve recovered from your first beer-centric weekend, get ready for round two at Dystopian State Brewing Company on September 30. Wingman, Odd Otter, Harmon, 7 Seas, and Tacoma Brewing Company are all invited to the festivities, and will bring their best Oktoberfest-themed beers. Free 0.5 liter steins will be given out to the first 10 guests to arrive, and will also be for sale for latecomers. The beer starts flowing at 2pm, and if you’re hell-bent on getting that stein, you can pre-purchase it along with two fills for just $15.

Oct 6–8
Oktoberfest Northwest
Sure, the Washington State Fair closes its gates September 24, but come October 6 the fairgrounds will open for Oktoberfest Northwest, the event that invented Hammerschlagen. Hammer-what? Apparently it’s a game in which you attempt to drive a nail into a cross section of wood faster than your opponents. Other not-to-be-missed events: performances by Queen of Oktoberfest, Manuela Horn, a stein dash 5K (with beer pit stops), and a root beer run. The “festhalle” will pour six German and Austrian beers and an unfiltered cider from Seattle Cider Company. Tickets range from $6–$60; kids are free, but only welcome until 6pm on Friday and Saturday.

20 Northwest Day Trips to Make the Most of Fall

Fall foliage, haunted parks, enchanted islands, unforgettable museums—all less than two hours from Seattle.

By Allison Williams  9/19/2016 at 1:47pm  Published in the October 2016 issue of Seattle Met

Ride the Rails in Elbe

1 hour, 30 minutes

The Mount Rainier Railroad has been around forever, chugging dutifully along seven miles of track outside the national park, but since 2013 the museum on the Mineral end of the rails has gotten an upgrade. Check out a 99-ton Heisler locomotive that used to haul lumber, and this year Christmas brings a whole ride in salute to The Polar Express. If the experience is just too damn charming, top it off with a stop in Mineral’s Headquarters Tavern, a 112-year-old bar so divey that Rainier is the fanciest beer on the menu. mrsr.com

IMAGE: ALLENS PHOTOGRAPHIC

Throw back in Centralia 

1 hour, 20 minutes

George Washington may be an American founding father, but another George Washington—son of a slave, Oregon Trail voyager—founded Centralia in the 1870s. The rail and coal town now specializes in vintage, with a retro pool hall at McMenamins Olympic Club and the restored 1930 Fox Theater. But the Shady Lady, an antique store filled with oddities, has the firmest grasp on the past—above the shop is a red-walled bordello museum. Bonus: Amtrak trains from Seattle’s King Street Station stop in the middle of town. ­cityofcentralia.com 

Get lost in Tacoma  

50 minutes

The outer loop of Five Mile Drive, the winding road that circles Tacoma’s Point Defiance, closes to cars for a few hours before noon—ideal for a haunted walk through morning fog. Too few visitors wander beyond the peninsula’s (admittedly excellent) zoo, but the hiking trails, picnic spots, and living museum at Fort Nisqually are all worth the few extra miles by foot or afternoon drive. metroparkstacoma.org/five-mile-drive

Tee up on Whidbey Island 

1 hour, 30 minutes including ferry

It makes sense that Island Greens Golf Course operates on the honor system, with a drop box for cash attached to a tree and a motley assortment of clubs for the taking and returning. After all, golf is all about having enough honor to stay silent through your opponent’s swing and not cheat when the ball stupidly defies gravity on the fifth putt in a row. The par-3 model limits the number of soul-killing bogeys, and dogs are welcome. ­whidbeyislandgreens.com

Declare Pumpkin War in Lake Stevens

35 minutes

With pumpkins as ammo, the Carleton Farms cannons lob squash in a graceful arc over their Everett-area cornfields, sometimes aiming just right to get a big splash into Ebey Slough. Though most of the other fall activities are less destructive—hayrides, three different corn mazes meticulously mapped and planted months in advance—there’s also zombie paintball, which similarly plays to the anarchic autumn demographic. carletonfarm.com

Eat pure in Leavenworth 

2 hours

What does the mind behind now ­shuttered vegetarian restaurant Sutra have to offer Leavenworth, home of the bratwurst? There’s Mana, not from heaven but from the farm-to-table kitchen of Colin Patterson. Dinner at the new spot includes, gasp, meat—but only in one or two of the eight courses, and on opening weekend in August nearly half of diners requested vegan or vegetarian versions. Mana’s 1903 farmhouse predates the Bavarian town takeover, so the prix-fixe experience won’t have much German flair. ­manamountain.com

Suncadia ResortIMAGE: ELAINE EUGENIO

Soak up in Roslyn  

1 hour, 25 minutes

Though they’re called mineral baths, let’s love the outdoor pools at Suncadia Resort’s Glade Spring Spa for what they truly are: rocky little hot tubs scattered through a leafy private garden with a sauna cabin. The hotel also offers motor scooter tours of Roslyn’s historic downtown, of Northern Exposurefame. Spa day passes are available by reservation only on Saturdays. suncadiaresort.com

Leaf peep in Central Washington 

1 hour, 45 minutes

When the doom of autumn descends on the coast, the enlightened hightail it across the mountains of Blewett Pass, to where the sun always shines and the streets are paved in gold. Or rather the sun is often shining and Highway 97 is lined in the golden needles of western larch. Leaf viewing is at its prime on this route between Cle Elum and Leavenworth, and temperatures are usually mild enough for a hike into the Teanaway district or on the Swauk Forest Discovery Trail.

Face fall in Union

1 hour, 40 minutes

Become the very pumpkin spice latte you crave with a rejuvenating pumpkin facial in the Spa at Alderbrook or a free pumpkin hand massage in the hotel lobby on Monday afternoons. The Hood Canal lodge has plenty of Olympic Peninsula outdoor fun—the hiking, the boating—but excels at rainy-day entertainment. The spa has a Finnish sauna, a steam room, and an indoor swimming pool, and the hotel offers a day pass for access to the game room lined with Xboxes, big screens, and leather chairs. alderbrookresort.com
 

IMAGE: COURTESY ALDERBROOK SPA

Dive deep in Keyport 

1 hour 30 minutes including ferry

The small Kitsap town of Keyport calls itself Torpedo Town USA, longtime home to one of the navy’s two undersea warfare centers. All things submarine are celebrated at the U.S. Naval Undersea Museum, where torpedoes the size of small whales hang from the ceiling and the navy’s first deep-submergence vehicle is parked outside. Tamp down the claustrophobia for this fall’s temporary exhibit on submarine accident rescue. The waterfront Keyport Mercantile—the Merc—nearby is known for teriyaki Tuesdays. navalunderseamuseum.org

Haunt history on Whidbey Island 

1 hour, 30 minutes including ferry

The stone batteries of the nineteenth-century Fort Casey Historical State Park are so ideal for Instagram pics and epic games of tag that it’s easy to forget why the Whidbey fortress was built. It was called the “triangle of fire”: Casey, plus Forts Flagler and Worden on the Olympic Peninsula, were meant to protect Puget Sound using guns that could lob ammo eight miles. Today jets from Naval Station Whidbey Island roar overhead, and we’ve still never been invaded; the fort’s lighthouse is used for interpretive tours while radar and GPS do the heavy lifting. parks.state.wa.us/505/fort-casey

The Admiralty Head Lighthouse at Fort Casey, backdropped by a western view of the Puget Sound

IMAGE: ALISON KLEIN

Get lit in Port Townsend

1 hour, 55 minutes including ferry

The lighting fixtures at the Kelly Art Deco Light Museum in Port Townsend hark back to a time when the style meant flappers and illegal cocktails. Though the main floor of Vintage Hardware and Lighting is a store full of gold leaf and stained glass shades, upstairs is an exhibit of more than 400 rare chandeliers and sconces. In a walkable town so Victorian it’s practically a city-size dollhouse, it’s a reminder that the twentieth century had its charms.  (Psst: Spend a full day in Port Townsend! Here’s our itinerary.)

Redefine breakfast in Snoqualmie 

30 minutes

Course one: pastries; a perfectly reasonable start to breakfast. Course two: pancakes and Devonshire cream; enjoy, but don’t get cocky. Course three: steel-cut oats and biscuits hand-drizzled with honey—it’s getting serious now. Course four: bacon, sausage, and eggs. It’s okay to be beaten by the Salish Lodge Country Breakfast, the hotel’s hundred-year-old tradition; the megameal was crafted for fur trappers and mountain men. It’s served till 2pm daily, and at least there’s a waterfall view until you can move again. salishlodge.com

Salute Seinfeld in Tacoma 

45 minutes

What do you do when you feel like you should leave home, but you really want to watch reruns on TBS while eating Doritos dust from the bottom of the bag? Solution: Little Jerry’s, a Tacoma diner that pays homage to the sitcom Seinfeld. The chairs are red vinyl, the floor is white tile, and the TVs are tuned to reruns. Some dishes are named after the show’s infinitely quotable lines. Why? The owner just likes Seinfeld. Seems appropriate for a show about nothing. 253-474-2435

Embrace Americana in La Conner 

1 hour, 15 minutes

The town of La Conner brings an artsy bent to the middle of Skagit Valley’s rolling agricultural fields. Downtown is lined with art galleries, and the town’s grandest nineteenth-­century mansion holds the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum. While there are lots of homespun local patterns on display, the exhibits reach around the Pacific Rim for decorated textiles. laconnerquilts.org

Go wild in Tenino

1 hour, 15 minutes

Wolves get a bad rap—blame Little Red Riding Hood, or the fact that they eat livestock and house cats—but Wolf Haven International in tiny Tenino manages to give sanctuary to captive-born wolves and the occasional wolf dog or coyote. On 50-minute walking tours of the facility in rural Thurston County, staff share the details of wolf life (even the gory ones, like how they collect local roadkill to feed residents). Reserve in advance for the weekend-only tours in fall. wolfhaven.org

IMAGE: COURTESY JULIE LAWRENCE / WOLF HAVEN INTERNATIONAL

Hail the Vikings in Poulsbo

1 hour 15 minutes, including ferry

Here’s how nuts this Kitsap town is about its Norwegian heritage: Every festival, bike race, and souvenir shop harks back to Viking culture (and plastic horned helmets). There’s a 12-foot-tall Viking statue at one end of town. The colorful Poulsbo downtown is dotted with shops, Scandinavian murals, and a fine indie bookstore, and the central Sluys Bakery is famous for sugary smiley-face cookies and grinning gingerbread men. Since the Vikings were such a famously cheerful culture. cityofpoulsbo.com

Prep for ski season in Snoqualmie Pass 

50 minutes

The room that holds the new Washington State Ski and Snowboard Museum is the size of a small coffee shop, but it crams in so much snow culture you’ll be doing a snow dance on the way out the door. There’s a map of all the state’s forgotten and discarded ski areas (Mount Pilchuck had a chairlift?), creaky old wooden gear and high-tech lifesaving avalanche equipment, and videos of local Olympians, including a very cool explanation of how Paralympic skiers race while being near blind. wsssm.org

Migrate to Mount Vernon 

1 hour, 15 minutes

The eight-mile delta where the Skagit River dumps into Puget Sound is exciting for an unexpected reason: eelgrass. Lots and lots of eelgrass, like 9,000 acres of the stuff. While the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and its grass are pretty enough in a boggy, undulating kind of way, they’re more notable for being the habitat for migrating birds (the reserve can see half a million ducks at once). Prime bird time starts in October. The visitor center, on an old farm, has hands-on exhibits for the kids. ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/padillabay

Play detective in Tacoma 

35 minutes

The biggest manuscript collection in the world is in a dated little ex–American Legion building in Tacoma. Kind of. The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum is part of the nationwide network of Karpeles repositories that collectively hold the record in a string of museums from Duluth to Charleston. Tacoma’s free outpost displays a few dozen historic documents at a time, including the navigator log from the Enola Gay and Emperor Hirohito’s formal World War II surrender. The shabby but distinguished little museum is an oddity and a treat on the edge of leafy Wright Park. rain.org/~karpeles

Prolong Summer at These 6 Tiki Spots

Fall is coming, but there’s still some summer left—raise a glass (or coconut) at one of these most tropical of establishments.

By Rosin Saez  8/28/2017 at 1:55pm | Courtesy of Seattlemet.com

Sun Liquor landed on Seattle Met’s round up Best Bars on Capitol Hill.

IMAGE: SARAH FLOTARD

It feels appropriate to drink something out of a coconut or pineapple or flaming ceramic volcano during warmer months, yet these six tiki bars imbue tropical vibes all year round. Before summer truly leaves us, or even as fall sets in, hunker down in paradise, preferably by way of something rum-based.

Hotel Albatross

Ballard, with its maritime heritage and preponderance of craft cocktails, might be the missing link between Seattle and tiki. Here, some of the guys behind Ocho and Hazlewood have opened Hotel Albatross, where Edison bulbs dangle over bartenders affixing tiny umbrellas on orders of pineapply puka punch and the vibe is part Canon, part Cast Away. The bar food hops from puffy tacos to totchos to Instagrammable poke creations at its adjacent No Vancacy Poke raw bar. Original rum creations and drinks from America’s earliest tiki days are resurrected with perfect balance, yes, even the flaming volcano bowl for four.

Navy Strength

This cocktail bar sibling to No Anchor and Rob Roy puts a modern spin on tiki, via sleek midcentury decor and a drink list that mixes classics (zombies, mai tais) with modern creations inspired by tropical flavors. Chef Jeffrey Vance’s food menu is heavy on crudo, fancy chips and dip, and dishes inspired by whatever spot on the globe currently holds court on the drink menu—every six months, Navy Strength celebrates the flavor profiles of a new country.

No Bones Beach Club

The palm-thatched, bamboo-adorned evolution of the No Bones About It vegan food truck has morphed into a fully formed coastal-inspired plant-based restaurant in Ballard. Seattle has its fair share of dreary weather to be sure, so No Bones Beach Club was born, a bastion of tiki-inspired cocktails and an oasis of paradise. Truly, it doesn’t get more offbeat than vegan tiki bar: Surfboards hang on the walls, Blue Crush plays on the TV over the bar, and just about every table has a towering plate of nachos, with cashew and smoked poblano faux queso as a decadent stand-in for the real thing. It’s food even an omnivore can love, and you’d have to be made of stone to resist a boat drink (painkillers, jungle birds, a creamy coconut mojito) bedecked with a paper umbrella.

Rumba

Tango’s rum-focused sibling bar exudes a languorous Havana vibe and fashions its signature spirit into a festive tiki drink, four perfectly balanced types of daiquiri on shaved ice, or something deep, dark, and moody as Papa Hemingway on a bad bender. Latin-tinged bar food includes spicy-sweet wings that are smoked, then fried, and tacos with sophisticated fillings like sauteed summer squash and pork dusted with peppery achiote. Save room for a sipping rum to finish off the night; a seat at the bar doubles as a fascinating seminar in the spirit’s regional nuances.  

Hula Hula

It was open for a decade in Queen Anne next door to its cocktail lounge sibling Tini Bigs. But in April, this longstanding tiki-karaoke bar—that would sling tropical drinks 365 days a year regardless of any chilly weather outside its doors—opened in its new home on Capitol Hill. Off East Olive Way, this den of Polynesian kitsch serve up island-themed bites and tiki cocktails fuel karaoke vocalists who sip on mai tais and daiquiris between renditions of REM’s “Creep” or “Hot in Herre” by Nelly. 

Sun Liquor Lounge

With the Sun Liquor Distillery and Lounge on Pike/Pine no longer serving up its own eponymous batches of vodka, gin, and rum, it’s back to the original. This Sun Liquor, first of its name, is situated on that surprising block of food and drink among the lush trees and stately brick apartments on the north end of Summit—a den hidden in a forgotten corner of the tropics. The first Tuesday of every month is Tiki Tuesday, but you can’t help but feel like any given day at any given hour would birth the most thoughtful of tiki drinks. Take a daiquiri done right, for instance, made with Sun Liquor barrel-aged rum, fresh lime juice, pineapple juice, and ginger, straight up. No matter the time or weather in Seattle, find hints of paradise here: the tiki cocktails, the bamboo furniture, exotic wall murals of unknown locales.

The New Washington State Fair Foods, From Bugs to Bizarre Burgers

Ever want to eat a scorpion? If not, maybe stick to the scone-flavored treats.

BY: ALEXA PETERS | Posted September 1, 2017 | Courtesy of Seattlemag.com

Image Credit: Fisher Scones Facebook

Scone-flavored everything.

Some of us go to the Washington State Fair for the music (this year you’ll be able to see artists like Steven Tyler and Nickelback). Some of us go for the games and rides (can’t beat that Puyallup Ferris Wheel!). But most of us go to stuff our faces with food we can’t find anywhere else.

This year, alongside fan favorites like the Fisher scones and elephant ears, the fair—which runs Sept. 1-24 in Puyallup—is bringing some new edible delights that will shock and hopefully satisfy. Here are the most notable new yummies worth at least a curiosity order.

Fisher Scone Ice Cream
According to the fair website, 1.6 million Fisher scones with raspberry jam were served to fairgoers in 2015, and they’ve been around since the early 1900s. This year there’s a new variation on an old favorite—Fisher scone ice cream! The scones are so coveted during the fair, Fisher and fair staff are highly secretive about the ingredients of the new ice cream. “You’ll have to come taste it for yourself,” said Washington State Fair public relations manager Stacy Howard. The scone flavored ice cream will be sold at nine locations throughout the grounds. Keep in mind it will not be sold at the scone booths, though, only the dessert booths that Fisher owns.

Puyallup River Brewing’s Raspberry Scone Golden Ale
If scone-flavored ice cream isn’t enough to satisfy your scone cravings, wash it down with an exclusive raspberry scone beer from Puyallup River Brewing Co. “The way we get the biscuit flavor is by using biscuit malt and aromatic malts to make it sweeter, and there are tons of raspberries in it—just look at the color of it!” founder/brewer Eric Akeson says. The brew is a beautiful magenta will be sold at the End of Summer Bash in the Grandstand.

Watermelon from Stu’s Fresh Fruit
Stu’s Fresh Fruit is one of the best places to stop for a healthy option amid the caloric binge. Get your slices of watermelon juiced and put back in the rind with a straw, right across from International Village. Delicious! 

Exotic Meats’ Grasshoppers, Scorpions and Kangaroo Sausage
Brand new last year, this adventurous food booth was the talk of the 2016 fair. Out-there favorites from last year—including alligator burgers, rabbit and python sausages—will return. But this year’s new additions are even more exotic: kangaroo sausage, chili roasted grasshoppers, BBQ crickets and even Manchurian scorpions. You can find the Exotic Meats booth (if you dare) in the International Village building. 

Scoops Cookie Dough and Cake Batter
Located near the International Village, Scoops is a new booth this year. Their schtick: serving raw cookie dough and cake batter in a cup. All raw pastries are made with pasteurized eggs and are completely safe to eat raw, as if they were ice cream. Some of the flavors will include chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter/Reese’s Pieces cookie dough, s’mores cookie dough, brownie batter, and birthday cake batter.

Sasquatch Grill-Legendary Burgers
Stop by Sasquatch Grill to get their popular heart attack specialty—the bacon-stuffed burger loaded with pulled pork, coleslaw, pickles, onion rings, BBQ sauce—or try the Cheesy Philly Burger, a cheesesteak/cheeseburger hybrid topped with nacho cheese, caramelized peppers and onions, green chilies, provolone. Sasquatch Grill is taking over the food booth that used to be Cowgirl, down on the south end of the grounds by the End Zone Bar.

Hawaiian Grindz & Lumpia
Polynesian food is having something of a minor moment and the fair is devoting an entire booth to island eats. Look for pork lumpia, adobo pork sliders, chicken katsu with fried rice and Spam kimchi with fried rice.

Totally Shucked Roasted Corn's Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Corn
An old classic, corn on the cob, gets a creative junk-food facelift. At the Totally Shucked booth in the International Village, you will find Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Roasted Corn. Yes, you read that right. It’s roasted corn topped with mayonnaise and that delicious flavor of crunchy Cheetos.

Fiesta Mexicana's Mondo Burrito
There’s not much to say except that Fiesta Mexicana will now have a burrito the size of a newborn baby: 15 inches long and three pounds. If you’re really hungry, you can get the appropritely named Mondo Burrito near International Village.

Paella Pro
New this year will be another healthy-yet-festive option, perfect for those with dietary restrictions. Paella Pro prides themselves on ethically sourcing their ingredients for the paella it makes from scratch. They’ll peddle mixed paella with chorizo sausage, chicken and shrimp; lamb with white beans and Moroccan seasoning; and a vegan option with mushrooms, Kalamata olives and garbanzo beans. Look for Paella Pro in the International Village.

Seattle & Washington Labor Day Weekend Events: Concerts, Festivals, Parties, Food & Drink

Courtesy of Seattlepipeline.com 

The 2017 Labor Day Weekend takes place September 1-4th. There are many great Seattle and Washington events all weekend including festivals, free concerts, movies, and more. As always, we have a large list of events and tips for you to enjoy the city or travel.

2017 Seattle & Washington Labor Day Weekend Events:

• All Month: Everyone Wins Labor Day Weekend w/ Urban Adventure Quest’s Amazing Scavenger Hunt Adventure!
• August 31: Art in the Park @ South Lake Union | 10 a.m. – Dusk, Local Artists, Crafts (more info)
• August 31: Burien Thursday Farmers Market | Fresh Vegetables, Fruits, Flowers, Crafts, Food, Live Music, Free
• August 31: Tacoma’s Broadway Farmers Market | Downtown, Thursdays, May-October
• August 31: Queen Anne Farmers Market | Only Independent Farmers Market In Seattle
• August 31: Bellevue Thursday Farmers Market (more info)
• August 31: Pike Place Market Express | Pop Up Farmers Market @ South Lake Union
• August 31: Lake City Neighborhood Farmers Market | 3-7 p.m. (more info)
• September 1: Phinney Neighborhood Farmers Market | 3-7 p.m. (more info)
• September 1: Pike Place Market Express | Pop Up Farmers Market @ First Hill
• September 1: Bothell Farmers Market | In Season Locally Grown Produce, Live Music, Noon – 6 p.m. (more info)
• September 1: Washington Huskies @ Rutgers
• September 1: Madrona Friday Farmers Market | Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, Entertainment
• September 1: Downtown Outdoor Summer Concerts – “Out To Lunch” | dAyron Jones
• September 1: Free First Friday @ Bellevue Art Museum | Free Admission 11AM-8PM
• September 1: Downtown Issaquah Art Walk | First Fridays, Live Music, Maps & Schedule
• September 1: Fremont Art Walk | First Fridays, Pizza, Beer, Wine
• September 1-3:: Waterfront Arts Market | July-September
• September 1-3: Pike Place Market Farmers Market | 80+ Washington Farmers, Cooking Demos, FAQs
• September 2: Free Outdoor Summer Concerts @ Ballard Locks | Seattle’s Totally Relaxed Ukulele Group
• September 2: Free Historic Paramount Theater Tour: 450,000+ Patrons Per Year | First Saturday Of Every Month
• September 2: Magnolia Neighborhood Farmers Market | 10 a.m.-2 p.m. (more info)
• September 2: Edmonds Museum Summer Market | 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. (more info)
• September 2: University District Farmers Market | Open All Year Round Saturdays, Fresh Fruits, Vegetables, Meat & More!
• September 2: Bellevue Saturday Farmers Market | 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., Free Parking (more info)
• September 2-3: Free Outdoor Summer Concerts @ Ballard Locks
• September 2-4: Bremerton Blackberry Festival | Seattle Labor Day Weekend, 15,000 Visitors, Vendors, Music, Food & More!
• September 3: Mac & Jack’s Weekend Brewery Tours | Free, African Amber, Serengeti Wheat, Blackcat Porter, Two Tun IPA
• September 3: Tacoma MMJ Farmers Market | 35 Vendors, 150+ Flower Varieties, High Grade Edibles & More, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. (more info)
• September 3: Mercer Island Farmers Market | Sundays June – October, Fresh, Local Produce
• September 3: Ballard Sunday Farmers Market | Local Produce, Dairy, Wild Salmon, Artisan Foods
• September 3: Free Yoga at Saint Mark’s Cathedral | Capitol Hill
• September 3: Fremont Sunday Street Market: 150+ Vendors, Crafts, Antiques, Food, English-Style Pub, Chocolate Factory, & More
• September 3: South Tacoma Farmers Market | Fresh, Local Produce, Sundays June – September
• September 3: Broadway Sunday Farmers Market: 55+ Vendors, Local Produce/Meats, Honey, Eggs, Free
• September 4: Free Outdoor Summer Concerts @ Ballard Locks | Michael Clune & Sleep ’til Noon Band, Blues & Rock

Bumbershoot 2017

Images & Information Courtesy of Bumbershoot.com 

Now approaching half a century, Bumbershoot is one of Seattle's largest cultural touchstones. Each year, thousands of people from across the country flock to Seattle Center to attend this acclaimed festival, which has become one of the biggest and most-loved contemporary festivals in North America, while having maintained its Northwest spirit and innovative roots. The name Bumbershoot was chosen both as a knowing nod of respect to our city’s most famous weather pattern, and a symbol of the overarching mission of this festival: to be an umbrella for all of the arts.  Since 1972, Bumbershoot has been a multi-disciplinary arts festival showcasing the best of comedy, dance, film, literary arts, music, performing arts, theatre, visual arts and more. Spanning the Seattle Centergrounds, a campus originally created for the 1962 World’s Fair, Bumbershoot has continued its legacy of celebrating innovation and the search for what’s next.  

425 Magazine reviews summer wines

By Shelby Rowe Moyer | August 23, 2017

Photo Courtesy of E. & J. Gallo Winery.

We’re not highly-acclaimed wine reviewers who can detect subtle notes of toasted hazelnut, but we’re certainly not strangers to a smile-inspiring glass of wine. We were asked to share our thoughts on this eclectic mix of wines, so we did what anyone would do, and broke out our corkscrews and crystal. You’re likely familiar with a few of these, and maybe you’ll find a new favorite.

Below photos by Rachel Coward.

Dark Horse Rosé

A fruity, crisp wine that was refreshing to drink during our hot summer days. Paired really nicely with light BBQ-style snacks. The hints of strawberry inspired me to add a few summer berries as a garnish. — Nicole Logan, client service coordinator

Columbia Winery 2014 Chardonnay

As someone who isn’t much of a chardonnay fan, I really enjoyed this one from Columbia Winery. It is refreshing and fruity without being sweet or particularly oaky. A great pick for summer and crisp autumn evenings. — Erin Humphrey, graphic designer

Fleur de Mer

The Provence region in southeast France is known as the quintessential region for rosé due to their near-perfect growing conditions, however, what is not often known is the region’s flowing hills covered in vibrant, aromatic fields of lavender. In French, “Fleur de Mer” means “Flower of the Sea”, a not-so-subtle nod to the region’s sea of lavender. This medium-bodied, coral pink-colored Rose has a soft texture and tastes of watermelon, cherry, Mediterranean herbs, a subtle citrus, and of course, a hint of the lavender for which it is named. — Joanna Kresge, staff writer

Barefoot California Rosé

Barefoot has been my go-to for years for wine that’s tasty and isn’t fussy. I’m partial to sweeter wines, and this rosé delivered without being overwhelmingly sweet. The light, fruity flavor is complimentary to dinner and dessert. It’s described as having watermelon, strawberry, and sweet cherry flavors, with hints of nectarine, jasmine, and a sweet lime finish. — Shelby Rowe Moyer, staff writer

Columbia Valley Red Blend

The Columbia Valley red blend was spicy and peppery, with cherry, vanilla, and a little bit of cola taste. It was easy to drink and paired perfectly with a Moroccan lamb tagine. The blackberry notes made it fruity and not too overpowering for a still-warm summer night. — Kirsten Erwin, art director

Apothic Limited Release 2016 Rosé

Rosé is the perfect summer drink, and Apothic’s Limited Release 2016 Rosé is no exception. This juicy wine is bursting with flavors like strawberry, watermelon, and raspberry, and at less than $20 a bottle, it’s the perfect refresher for a hot, summer day. I recommend pouring the chilled contents of the bottle into your favorite wine canteen and toting it to your favorite beach to sip seaside. Salud! — Margo Greenman, digital editor

J Brut Rosé

This sparkling rosé is the perfect centerpiece for summer conversation between friends. To me, the boldest notes of the wine were Fuji apples and rose petals, and the liveliness of the bubbles makes it so refreshing. I added a dash of cranberry juice to lighten the flavor, but it’s also delicious on its own. I recommend pouring yourself a glass while perched on the deck as the sun is going down. — Shelby Rowe Moyer, staff writer.

Game On: Party Ideas for Seahawks Game Day

On a scale of 1 to 10, this party is a 12

By Julie Arnan | August 22, 2017

It’s football season. Whether you’re cheering on the Seahawks or your favorite college team, it’s essential to have a few great party ideas in your game-day playbook. When your team is on the road or you can’t make it to the game, bring the party home with easy team-themed sips, snacks, and desserts. I toasted spices and roasted pork tenderloin for a simple game-day brioche sandwich. My 12th Gal cocktail is sure to quench your game day thirst, plus we’ve got cold brews, Bloody Marys loaded with extras, and pretty little Jell-O shots that will score some points with guests. Oh yes — we’ve got game!

12th Gal Martini Drop  

Try this handcrafted feminine and flirty, icy blue martini drop. It starts with a stunning shade of blue. The glass is dressed with mermaids and a saucy garnish of mint and fresh blueberries on diamond picks. 

11/2 shots vodka

1/2 shots Blue Curacao liqueur

Splash of Chartreuse liqueur

½ shot mint simple syrup

¼ shot fresh lime juice

Put the ingredients into a shaker with plenty of ice; shake, strain, and serve.

Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches with Toasted Spices on Brioche

A trio of toasted spices turns up the heat on these yummy and easy brioche sandwiches. Add a hint of sweet roasted red pepper, tender bibb lettuce, and a trio of mustards for a winning game-day combo.

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon coriander

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 pork tenderloins

Olive oil

Salt and soy sauce to taste

Brioche buns

Bibb lettuce

Sliced roasted red peppers

1. In a dry hot pan, toast a tablespoon each of ground cumin, coriander, and chili powder. The spices will brown up a bit, and become crazy fragrant. Set spices aside.
2. Slather two pork tenderloins with olive oil, and coat in the toasted spices. Sprinkle with salt and about four dashes of soy sauce. Marinate overnight in the fridge.
3. Bring pork to room temp, and roast in the oven at 350 degrees for approximately 30 minutes. Cool and thinly slice. Layer a few pieces onto brioche buns; add bibb lettuce and sliced roasted red peppers. Serve with an assortment of mustards. I like honey mustard, stone ground, and Dijon.

Customize Store-Bought Goodies

Purchase ice cream sandwiches. Buy wooden sticks at a local craft store, pop them into the sandwiches, and create laces with a tube of icing.

Spirited Jell-O Shots

Tipping the shot glass in a muffin tin makes these pretty little blue and white Jell-O Shots layers firm up on the diagonal. Here is a recipe I found that works well.

1 cup water

3 ounces blue Jell-O

3 packets gelatin

2 cups vodka

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1. In a saucepan, mix 1 cup of water and blue Jell-O and then sprinkle with the packet of gelatin. Let it hang out for a minute or so, and then whisk.
2. Bring the mixture to a simmer. Pull it off the heat, and add 1 cup of vodka and whisk again. Pour the mixture into a small pitcher. Place shot glass in each muffin tin and tip it, then carefully pour the in the Jell-O mixture. Let it rest on the counter for about 25 minutes, then transfer to the fridge until it sets up completely.
3. Once cooled, add one cup of milk to a clean pan and sprinkle with two packets of gelatin. Wait a minute, and then add sugar and whisk. Bring it to a simmer, and remove it from the heat. Add 1 cup of vodka, and whisk it again.
4. Cool this second mixture. Upright the glasses. Then with a teaspoon, add the white mixture onto the blue layer, and return the shots to the fridge to chill.

Chips, Veggies, and Dip, Stadium Style

Create a guacamole playing field in a rectangular dish nestled into a larger rectangular dish. Layer in blue chips, sliced rainbow carrots, and multicolored peppers for the crowd.

Game Day Bloody Mary

This Bloody Mary is all about the extras. Keep it simple with a good store-purchased mix. Add 11/2 shots of vodka and a squeeze of fresh lime to a tall glass. Add ice, and top with mix and a splash of hot sauce! Create veggie bundles of celery, pickled asparagus, and beans all tied up with chives, and then add bacon. Always add bacon.

Raise the Bar

Frosty brewskis on ice never looked so good thanks to his and hers bottle cozies, palms, fresh flowers, faux fur, and a DIY PVC pipe goal post in gold.

True Colors

Hit up your favorite team stores and party stores for team-themed napkins, bottle openers, beer cozies, footballs, and pom poms, of course!

Blitz Blondie Bars

1/2 cup softened unsalted butter

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 cups flour

1 cup M&Ms (in your team colors), plus more
for the top

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9×13-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray, or line it with parchment paper.
2. Beat room temperature butter and brown sugar in a stand mixer until just creamy. Add one egg at a time, and beat until combined. Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl, and then add that to the sugar mixture, a little at a time. Mix until just combined. Gently fold in the M&Ms.
3. Press mixture into the baking pan. Add more M&Ms on top (because you can never have enough chocolate or spirit). Bake for about 20-25 minutes, cool, cut, eat, and cheer.

See Monica Hart’s design, recipe, and entertaining ideas in every issue of 425 magazine, and at lafamigliadesignllc.com.

Hair by Seven the Salon, senior stylist Chu.

Ingredients from Metropolitan Market, Kirkland. Glassware, tableware, serving pieces, and green mixer from Crate and Barrel at The Bellevue Collection. Crafting essentials from Ben Franklin Crafts and Frames, Redmond; Blue and white linens and green coasters from Hedge & Vine, Bellevue. 

Here Are the Winners of Our Best Restaurants Readers' Choice Poll

Savvy Seattle magazine readers pick their top dining destinations in the city.

BY: SEATTLE MAGAZINE STAFF | FROM THE PRINT EDITION | SEPTEMBER 2017

Image Credit: Geoffrey Smith

Ba Bar's serious pho game wowed our readers.

Readers voted in droves in our annual Best Restaurants Readers' Choice Poll. After checking out their picks, see which restaurants our critics hailed as Seattle's finest here. 

Best New Restaurant
JuneBaby
Ravenna, 2122 NE 65th St.; 206.257.4470

Best Neighborhood Restaurant
Cafe Lago
Montlake, 2305 24th Ave. E; 206.329.8005

Best Eastside Restaurant
Barking Frog
Woodinville, 14580 NE 145th St.; 425.424.2999

Best Rooftop Dining/Bar
Mbar
South Lake Union, 400 Fairview Ave. N; 206.457.8287

Best Cheap Eats
Dick’s Drive-In
multiple locations

Best Restaurant with Gluten-free Options
Capitol Cider
Capitol Hill, 818 E Pike St.; 206.397.3564

Best Vegetarian Restaurant
Cafe Flora
Capitol Hill, 2901 E Madison St.; 206.325.9100

Best Juice Bar
Juicebox
Capitol Hill, 1517 12th Ave., No. 100; 206.607.7866

Best Brunch
Goldfinch Tavern
Pike Place, 99 Union St.; 206.749.7070

Best Independent Coffee Shop
Caffe Ladro
multiple locations

Best View
Ray’s Boathouse
Ballard, 6049 Seaview Ave. NW; 206.789.3770

Best Place for Outdoor Dining
Westward
Wallingford, 2501 N Northlake Way; 206.552.8215 

Best Place to Dine Alone
Sushi Kappo Tamura
Eastlake, 2968 Eastlake Ave. E; 206.547.0937

Best Restaurant for Kids
Frelard Pizza Company
Fremont, 4010 Leary Way NW; 206.946.9966

Best Late Night Dining
13 Coins
multiple locations

Best Waitstaff/Service
Goldfinch Tavern
Pike Place, 99 Union St.; 206.749.7070

Best Splurge Restaurant
Canlis
East Queen Anne, 2576 Aurora Ave. N; 206.283.3313 

Best Tasting Menu
Altura
Capitol Hill, 617 Broadway E; 206.402.6749

Best Sandwich
Un Bien
Ballard, 7302 1/2 15th Ave. NW; 206.588.2040 Shilshole, 6226 Seaview Ave. NW; 206.420.7545

Best Salads
Evergreens
multiple locations

Best Takeout
India Bistro
Ballard, 2301 NW Market St.; 206.783.5080

Best Burgers
Red Mill
multiple locations

Best Barbecue
Jack’s BBQ
Industrial District, 3924 Airport Way S; 206.467.4038

Best Pizza
Pagliacci Pizza
multiple locations

Best Oyster Bar
Taylor Shellfish Farms
multiple locations

Best Seafood
RockCreek Seafood & Spirits
Fremont, 4300 Fremont Ave. N; 206.557.7532

Best Sushi
Sushi Kashiba
Pike Place, 86 Pine St., No. 1; 206.441.8844

Best Poke
45th Stop N Shop Deli & Poke Bar
Wallingford, 2323 N 45th St.; 206.708.1882

Best Steak
Metropolitan Grill
Downtown, 820 Second Ave.; 206.624.3287

Best Fries
Luc
Miller Park, 2800 E Madison St.; 206.328.6645

Best Korean
Girin
Pioneer Square, 501 Stadium Place S; 206.257.4259

Best Chinese
Dough Zone
multiple locations

Best Thai
Little Uncle
Hilltop, 1523 E Madison St., No. 101; 206.549.6507

Best Indian
Aahaar
Snoqualmie, 7726 Center Blvd. SE, Suite 135; 425.888.5500

Best Middle Eastern
Mamnoon
Capitol Hill, 1508 Melrose Ave.; 206.906.9606

Best Vietnamese
Ba Bar
multiple locations 

Best Pho
Pho Bac
multiple locations

Best French
Café Presse
First Hill, 1117 12th Ave.; 206.709.7674

Best Italian
Spinasse
Capitol Hill, 1531 14th Ave.; 206.251.7673

Best Food Truck
Nosh
location varies; 206.489.8712

Best Ice Cream
Molly Moon’s
multiple locations

Best Bakery
Bakery Nouveau 
multiple locations

Best Doughnut Shop
Top Pot
multiple locations

Best Dessert
Hot Cakes
multiple locations

Best Cupcakes
Trophy Cupcakes
multiple locations

Best Cookies
Hello Robin
Miller Park, 522 19th Ave. E; 206.735.7970

Best Dive Bar
Ballard Smoke Shop
Ballard, 5439 Ballard Ave. NW; 206.784.6611

Best Sports Bar
Quality Athletics
Pioneer Square, 121 S King St.; 206.420.3015

Best Pop‐up Restaurant
Raised Doughnuts 
Chinatown–International District, 510 Maynard Ave. S; 206.623.1776

Best Local Wine Tasting Room
JM Cellars
Woodinville, 14404 137th Place NE; 425.485.6508

Best Local Distillery
Woodinville Whiskey Co.
Woodinville, 14509 Redmond‐Woodinville Road NE; 425.486.1199

Best Cocktail Bar
Canon
First Hill, 928 12th Ave.; 206.552.9755

Best Neighborhood Pub
Mulleady’s 
Interbay, 3055 21st Ave. W; 206.283.8843

Best Happy Hour
Fireside Room 
First Hill, 900 Madison St.; 206.622.6400

Best Local Brewery
Reuben’s Brews
Ballard, 5010 14th Ave. NW; 206.784.2859

10 Great Seattle Spots to Watch the Solar Eclipse

Can't make it to Oregon? There are plenty of places in Seattle to watch this once-in-decades event.

BY: ALEXA PETERS | Posted August 16, 2017

Play hooky for an hour or two and find a Seattle spot to watch Monday's eclipse.

On Monday, Seattle will be at a great vantage point for the solar eclipse, starting at 9 a.m. and ending around 11:39 a.m. Though we won’t be able to see a total eclipse, from our angle 92 percent of the sun will be blocked.

For those of us not taking time off work to travel into the “path of totality” in Oregon where most of the organized events are going down (though the Pacific Science Center's hosting an official Seattle shindig), there are plenty of local parks, viewpoints, monuments and rooftops to see this astronomical wonder from. Here are 10 free or inexpensive places to watch the eclipse near downtown Seattle. Just don't forget those viewing glasses to protect your eyes!

Kerry Park in Queen Anne
The site of many wedding and prom photos, Kerry Park in Queen Anne gives visitors a panoramic view of the Seattle skyline that is postcard perfection. This will be an ideal but undoubtedly popular spot to see the eclipse from on Monday morning, so plan accordingly. Arrive early and park your car in the neighborhoods north of the park where parking is free and more available than in the park’s tiny lot. 

Gasworks Park
For holidays with fireworks, Gasworks is a notorious Seattle viewing spot. Why should the eclipse be any different? Lay in the lush green grass or climb one of the old stacks from the former Seattle Gas Light plant that used to occupy the park to get one of the best views of the Seattle sky around. This will be another popular destination, so do plan accordingly. It’s best to park in the surrounding neighborhoods and walk down or Lyft to Gasworks. Bring a picnic and make it an early lunch. 

Staircase next to Seattle Marriott Waterfront hotel
This outdoor staircase next to the Seattle Marriott Waterfront hotel on Alaskan Way carries you to the iconic Pike Place Market (where the new MarketFront could also offer sweet views) and faces the Seattle waterfront. The views during the climb are spectacular, but it is steep so keep that in mind if your party includes children or seniors. About halfway up the stairs there’s an overlook where you can pause and rest—perfect for the eclipse.

Public Rooftop Garden at Fourth and Madison
During weekday business hours, the public can access a rooftop garden at the Fourth and Madison Building (925 4th Ave.). To get to the garden, enter the building from 3rd Avenue, take the elevator to the seventh floor and exit the elevator through the right door. There, you will find a garden that wraps around three sides of the building—a great spot to watch the sky.

Smith Tower Observation Deck
The Smith Tower invites eclipse-watchers onto their open-air observation deck on Monday. They’ll offer specialty “eclipse” mimosas and coffee, as well as stunning 360-degree views of the city. Be sure to bring your own eclipse glasses, as they will not be provided. Capacity is 400 people, so it's first come first served. Tickets go on sale at 8:30 a.m. and run $15-$19 (save 10 percent by booking online). 

Seattle’s Great Wheel
Bring your friends—each gondola on the Ferris wheel holds about eight people—and ride the Seattle Great Wheel at Pier 57 during the eclipse. The wheel opens at 10 a.m., but get there early: lines are always long and will be longer during a rare event. Tickets to ride the wheel are $9-$14. 

Ride the ferry to Bainbridge Island
A unique way to experience the solar eclipse on Monday morning would be on one of Seattle’s quintessential ferries. The best views will be on the ferry to Bainbridge Island, which leaves from the downtown Seattle dock. Here is the WSDOT ferry schedule so you can plan your ride around the peak time for the eclipse. 

Sky View Observatory
On the 73rd floor of the Columbia Center building, the Sky View Observatory offers a 360-degree view of Seattle. It’s open daily from 8 a.m. to 11pm, tickets are $10-$15 and kiddos under 5 get in free. 

Discovery Park
For a quieter experience more immersed in nature, try hiking out to the lighthouse on the shores of Seattle's flagship park to catch the eclipse. Pack a lunch and stay the day if you're boss won't notice: Discovery Park offers views and hikes you can’t get anywhere else in town. 

Belvedere Park
Located on Admiral Way in West Seattle, Belvedere Park’s viewpoint gives a staggering view across Elliot Bay. It’s a popular destination for wedding photos and ought to make for a scenic eclipse viewing spot. Take some time to appreciate the park’s historic totem pole, too, which was carved by a fifth generation descendent of Chief Seattle.

A Guide to August’s Rare Total Solar Eclipse

ARE WE ALL GONNA DIE?

Be ready: It’s the first in the continental U.S. since 1979, and won’t occur again until 2024.

By Allison Williams  6/12/2017 at 8:00am  Published in the July 2017 issue of Seattle Met

THERE’S NOTHING MORE NATURAL than eclipses, which were reported in ancient history and cited in the Bible (check Amos 8:9). One occurs every 18 months, somewhere on the planet. But they only happen in the same specific spot every four centuries or so, and for a long time they were…confusing. 

Some North American indigenous groups made noise to scare the sudden darkness away, while in Togo it was traditionally a time to resolve feuds, in hopes that the sun and the moon would make up. Public observatories have reported that in advance of eclipse events, they hear questions about whether the eclipse will hurt pregnant women or unborn children.

“You will understand why people sacrificed animals and people. It’s amazing to see a black hole in the sky,” says Tom Masterson at the Table Mountain Star Party. There’s scant evidence that the ancients of any continent went into a murderous frenzy during eclipses. Then again, this will be the first solar eclipse in the twenty-first century to take place along the I-5 corridor, which is already apocalyptic on a good day.

Open graphic below in new window

Eclipse Dos and Don’ts

• Don’t Assume you can drive into the path of totality a few hours before the event; the state of Oregon is expecting a million visitors within its borders, and even rural roads become clogged with drivers leading up to eclipses.
• Do Travel somewhere likely to have a cloudless day, like Eastern Washington. The eclipse will still be spectacular in places where it’s only partial (like Seattle), but the skies must be clear to get a good show.
• Don’t Try to photograph the eclipse if you’re a beginner and in the path of totality, advises star shutterbug and president of the Seattle Astronomical Society, Stephanie Anderson. “Totality is so brief, just go and experience it,” she says.
• Don’t Look at the eclipse without proper eyewear. 
• Do Use glasses or simply watch shadows of the eclipse projected through a hole in a box or piece of paper—no special shades required.

10 Places to Celebrate National S’mores Day in Seattle All Weekend Long

A S'mores-gasbord of Options Ranging From Milkshakes to Macarons

by Stranger Things To Do Staff

If you close your eyes, you can almost pretend you're still at camp—especially if you get one of Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery's limited edition s'mores kits. COURTESY OF HOT CAKES

Thursday, August 10, is National S’mores Day, and to commemorate this momentous "holiday," we’ve compiled a s'mores-gasbord (sorry) of places that offer takes on everyone’s favorite childhood dessert—some of which are available year-round, and some of which are only available this weekend in honor of the occasion. The options below range from chocolate bars to milkshakes to cookies to actual s'mores, but it's hard to go wrong with graham crackers, marshmallows, smoke, and chocolate, so we're pretty sure they'll all be delicious.

1. S'mores Tart at Dahlia Bakery
Usually, a visit to the Dahlia Bakery means a huge slice of T. Doug’s triple coconut cream pie, coined “Seattle’s Favorite Dessert” by many. Not today, friends. Today you want the s’mores tart, a concoction of all things good and right in this world: chocolate ganache, a plump, smoky mallow, and a single homemade graham cracker nestled comfortably in the middle of it all. You could also try the s’mores ice cream, available at Dahlia Lounge, Palace Kitchen, Serious Pie, Serious Pie & Biscuit, and Etta’s.

2. “Mackles’more” at Hello Robin
Capitol Hill’s Hello Robin features the “Mackles'more” regularly—it’s a s'mores cookie with Theo chocolate chunks, and yes, it’s named after that Macklemore (also reportedly a Capitol Hill resident).

3. Limited Edition S’mores Kits at Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery
In honor of S’mores Day, Hot Cakes is bringing back its award-winning “s’mores kits” for one weekend only. The kits include all the ingredients you need for crafting your ideal s’more: cold-smoked chocolate, buttery graham crackers and house-made mallows (enough to make six total). They’ll be stocked in both Ballard and Capitol Hill shops starting today, while supplies last. You could also try Hot Cakes’ s’mores molten chocolate cake (roasted to order), the s’mores bar, or the s’mores cookie.

4. The S’mores Macaron at Lady Yum
Lady Yum has an impressive selection of macarons in every color and flavor, but one that is especially intriguing is the s’mores macaron. Dainty French delicacy meets scrappy, all-American amuse-bouche? It has all the trappings of a perfect hybrid.

5. S'more Cookie at Midnight Cookie Company
Fremont’s Midnight Cookie Co. is the perfect solution to your nighttime munchies, and it also just so happens that they have a special s’mores cookie on their regular menu. At $1.75, you can easily and affordably satiate your s’mores craving with this all-in-one masterpiece.

6. Complimentary Nightly S’mores at Shelter Lounge
Shelter Lounge in Ballard offers all the ingredients for making (free!) s’mores outside in its fire pit area. Anyone can have access to the nightly s’mores with the purchase of an entree.

7. The S’mores Sundae at Shug’s Soda Fountain
Shug’s Soda Fountain downtown has a cute, retro feel and a large variety of ice creams that may be transformed into sundaes. One of those elevated sundaes is the s’mores version, resplendent with marshmallows (toasted tableside—yes, really), graham cracker crumbles, and chocolate.

8. Chocolate Pie with Smoked Marshmallow at Slab Sandwiches
Slab features a year-round chocolate pie with smoked marshmallow—the perfect $6 mouth-pleaser after a meaty porchetta sandwich.

9. S’mores Days at Theo Chocolate
Theo is unveiling its new s'mores collection just in time for National S'mores Day, and besides the fact that the $5 goodies sound delicious (homemade organic graham crackers, marshmallows, and fresh Theo chocolate), the company is also donating $1 from each s'more to Mary's Place.

10. S’mores Ice Cream at Molly Moon's
Luckily for you, National S'mores Day sometimes becomes a National S'mores Month. For the rest of August, Molly Moon's will be scooping s'mores-flavored ice cream at each location, complete with graham cracker crust, marshmallow, and milk chocolate ganache. We hear there is a discernible "hint of smoked salt," and "torched marshmallow." Need we say more?
This was added after this post's original publication.

Need s'more advice about how to enjoy today's dessert of choice? Consider a few hints from the s’mores-happy, 1993 cult classic movie The Sandlot.

New 21-Plus Movie Theater With Full Bar, Restaurant Opens in Bellevue Cinemark's swankier new addition joins its regular Lincoln Square theaters.

BY: MAX ROSE | Posted August 3, 2017 | Courtesy of seattlemag.com 

Image Credit: Provided by Cinemark Theatres

Inhale this burger while watching Ben Stiller's next terrible rom-com.

Just when you thought Lincoln Square was done with its summer expansion, Thursday welcomes the addition of a new 21-plus movie theater and lounge.

The Cinemark Reserve boasts ergonomic electric-powered recliners, a purportedly fancy digital projection setup, wall-to-wall screens and (best of all) a full bar. As if craft beer, wine and cocktails weren’t enough, the grown-up theater will also offer seat-side ordering service throughout showings, so you don’t have to miss Spider-Man web-tying bad guys to tee up sandwiches, salads, quesadillas and fish tacos (among other options) from the full kitchen.

And if you don’t have time for a flick, you can always kick back in the lounge or on the outside terrace to try out the drink and dining options.

“We’re looking forward to offering the downtown Bellevue community a brand new, luxury movie-going experience,” Cinemark CEO Mike Zoradi said in a statement. “[The theater gives] our guests a choice to dine at their seats, enjoy a relaxing dinner in our lobby lounge or grab a craft beer on the terrace after work.”

To kick off opening weekend, the new theater is offering a 2017 Cinemark refillable popcorn bucket and cup full of other Cinemark swag for the first 100 guests to purchase a ticket in the box office or present a receipt of their online purchase.

Tickets to Cinemark’s swankier new theater run $13-$20—not much more than the $10-18 it charges at its existing Lincoln Square theater.

To view movie show times, buy tickets and reserve seats, visit Cinemark.com or visit the box office on the third floor of Lincoln Square South. Don’t forget to hire a babysitter, since the new “luxury” theater—and dinner lounge and terrace—are 21-and-over.

It's been a rough year for Seattle movie theaters, with two beloved theaters closing in June. But the new Cinemark Reserve joins a crop of regional theaters with sweet amenities that put sticky-floored, stale-popcorn pushers to shame.