One really great thing to do every day of the week. by Audrey Vann MONDAY 3/9  

Richard Hell 

(BOOKS) In his 2005 novel Godlike, punk pioneer Richard Hell reimagines the tumultuous relationship between 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in 1970s New York. Hell’s adaptation follows esteemed poet Paul Vaughn, a married 27-year-old New Yorker, and a newly transplanted teenage poet, R.T. Wode, as they embark on a messy affair full of acid trips, crashed parties, and unrequited love. The book is getting a snazzy rerelease from NYRB (the Criterion Collection of the book world), and Hell will be there in the flesh to discuss the book and maybe even sign a few (if we’re lucky). (Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm, free) AUDREY VANN

Indigo De Souza, Mothé

(MUSIC) Indigo De Souza’s music has always dealt with different kinds of death; her layered vocals revel in the ownership of personal missteps that echo as communal failings and social death. Last summer’s Precipice is no different in tone, from the consistently awesome skeletons-with-boobs album artwork to the edge-of-existence conceit. A main marker of evolution has been the embrace of electronic pop production over the crunchy Lucy Dacus–esque guitar ballads of albums past, which she has confirmed to be a purposeful choice, even excitedly. To this, I cannot give a more heartfelt endorsement, to the contrary of Pitchfork’s Robins-Somerville review. Even the album’s most Taylor Swift–ian of tracks are dark as fuck, and I can’t imagine a better, more worthy philosophical mind fuck to jam the pop algorithms. (Showbox, 8 pm, all ages) TODD HAMM

Cochemea, Jungle Fire

(MUSIC) The Daptone label's most out-there act, saxophonist/flautist/bass clarinetist Cochemea creates humid, psychedelic roots music that vibrates in its own lane. Before the Yaqui/Yoeme artist went solo, he played sax for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings and worked with Quincy Jones, Amy Winehouse, Archie Shepp, and others. However, Cochemea's own recordings skew more toward Budos Band and Antibalas, of whose touring bands he was a member. On his 2010 debut LP, The Electric Sound of Johnny Arrow, Cochemea fused spiritual jazz, funk, and boogaloo into gripping sonic panoramas. His next three albums broadened the palette to include cumbia, Moroccan gnawa, blues, and his ancestral Indigenous music. Tangy percussive timbres—Asian Indian and Latin American drums figure heavily—combined with Cochemea's electrified sax and chants from his tribe result in songs that sound at once ancient and otherworldly. This show promises, if only briefly, a primal trip out of our national political nightmare. (Sunset Tavern, 8 pm, 21+) DAVE SEGAL

Mt Fog, Iroiro, DJ Martin Douglas

(MUSIC) If a Washington rainforest started a band, it would sound something like Mt Fog—Carolyn B.’s playful whispers are like a sprite luring you into a mossy forest. The percussion, like raindrops plopping into a mushroom. And the electronics, like a ray of light shimmering through the trees. The Seattle-based trio whimsically marries the vocal stylings of Kate Bush, Björk, and Siouxsie Sioux with sparse electronics, evocative of CAN and Mort Garson. They will celebrate the release of their new album, Every Stone Is Green, which they describe as a “Gothic tale (in the Brontë sisters' sense) about finding happiness, which is human-ness.” They will be joined by the psychedelic instrumental band Iroiro and music journalist/DJ Martin Douglas. Read more about the making of the new album in our interview with Mt Fog. (Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+) AUDREY VANN

Scott Broker with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

(BOOKS) Scott Broker’s first novel, The Disappointment, starts where so many stories do: a man trying to sneak his mother’s ashes into his suitcase without his husband noticing. The book is described as a surrealist vacation through this couple’s desperate, disconnected trip to the Oregon Coast. And no one could be better to interview him than Seattle’s own Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (who recently released Terry Dactyl, if you somehow haven’t gotten your hands on it yet). The conversation promises to be brilliant, funny, and very, very queer. (Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm, free) HANNAH MURPHY WINTER

Eric-Paul Riege: ‘ojo|-|ólǫ́’

(VISUAL ART) The soft sculptures of Eric-Paul Riege aren’t quiet objects—their presence inscribed in space is monolithic and monumental, and when brought to life through movement, they become instruments of sound. Riege, who is Diné, has built a practice of collaging and reworking elements drawn from Navajo weaving and jewelry-making traditions, ultimately constructing large-scale, hanging installations that sway, ripple, and jingle when touched. For this exhibit—his largest solo show to date—Riege researched collections of Navajo artifacts held by Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. What emerged is an immersive environment that envelops the viewer while quietly unsettling institutional narratives of Indigenous culture. (Henry Art Gallery) AMANDA MANITACH

Safe

(FILM) Todd Haynes’s Safe is a horror movie cloaked in pastel colors, plastic tarps, and unsettling silence. Julianne Moore, the master of tension and nuance, plays Los Angeles housewife Carol White, who comes down with a debilitating illness that doctors cannot diagnose. After becoming self-convinced that the illness is caused by extreme environmental allergies, White flees to a retreat in New Mexico led by a New Age guru. Perhaps the most fascinating element of this film is the numerous ways it can be interpreted: a critique of suffocating suburban life, an allegory for the queer experience, a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, or a commentary on self-help culture—the more time that passes since its release, the richer the text gets. Don’t miss the chance to see it on the big screen this month for its 30th anniversary. (NW Film Forum, 4 pm) AUDREY VANN

The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Hannah Murphy Winter

Good morning! It’s the first Monday of daylight savings, which means we all had a weird night’s sleep. And the weather’s no help. After a soggy weekend, the weather report promises a whole lot of the same. We’re getting rain all week, with a chance of wintery mix in the mornings. 

Let’s do the news. 

We’re Still at War: After US–Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country has named one of his sons, Mojtaba Khamenei, the nation’s new leader. According to the New York Times, he’s relatively unknown, but has been a shadowy, influential figure in Iran’s government, coordinating military and intelligence operations at his father’s office. He was considered the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ favorite candidate for the role, but no one asked Trump how he felt about it. Before the news was announced, Trump told ABC News that a new leader “is not going to last long” without his approval. He is two-for-two when it comes to violently unseating world leaders. 

Death Toll: The United Nations has estimated that more than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran since the war began. More than 300 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon. In Israel, at least 12 people have been killed, and seven US military personnel have died.

Pressure at the Pump: Unsurprisingly, starting a war in the region that provides a third of the world’s oil caused gas prices to go through the roof. This weekend, for the first time in four years, the cost of a barrel of oil broke $100. Here in Washington, prices are up more than a quarter a gallon. According to Trump, though, we just have to trust his process. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said on Truth Social. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY.” Call me a fool.

Speaking of Fools: Trump is still trying to steal an election. He knows the GOP could lose big in November, so he’s continuing his push to “nationalize” elections to fight his non-existent widespread voter fraud. According to the New York Times, he’s likely to target Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona—all swing states where Republicans are already actively pushing Trump’s conspiracy theory. 

Wonder Twins, Activate! What happens when you combine DOGE and AI? The National Endowment for the Humanities found out. According to court documents acquired by the New York Times, DOGE employees assessed their grants by asking ChatGPT: “Does the following relate at all to D.E.I.? Respond factually in less than 120 characters. Begin with ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’” The “yeses” included: building improvements at an Indigenous languages archive in Alaska, the digitization of Black newspapers, and a 40-volume series on the history of American music.  

Some Good News: Violent crime is down in King County. In 2025, homicides didn’t break into the triple digits for the first time since the pandemic. It’s the second year in a row that we’ve seen fewer homicides than the year before, and fewer overall shootings. Go team!

More Good News: We’ve also seen a dip in ICE arrests in the last month, nationwide. According to government sources who spoke to the New York Times, immigration agents have moved away from their violent, indiscriminate street sweeps, and focused on more targeted enforcement operations. They still arrested more than 1,000 people in February, and it’s still dramatically more than when Trump first took office, but it’s an undeniable shift. 

Women Marched: Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and the return of the Women’s March. By the Seattle Times’ estimate, about 300 people showed up at Cal Anderson Park to hear scheduled speakers (including Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and City Attorney Erika Evans) talk about ICE, the war in Iran, and Trump’s other misdeeds, see the now-traditional Handmaid outfits, and watch one person bop around in an inflatable Chicken costume. (Wanna make sure you know about other protests and demonstrations before they happen? Keep an eye on our Where to Scream column.)

Pity the Millionaires: State Dems have finally come up with a version of the Millionaires Tax that made Governor Ferguson happy, and as we head into the last week of the legislative session, it looks like he’ll actually sign the bill when it hits his desk. But what happens next? It’s all but guaranteed to be challenged in the courts, thanks to a 1930s ruling in our state Supreme Court, which decided that, according to our state constitution, income is property. (Property has to be taxed at a “uniform” rate, meaning that we could only have a “flat” income tax.) A lot of supporters think that precedent deserves another looksee. 

Fleet Flop: Washington is watery. And our state is finally recognizing that we should consider using those waterways to, ya know, move people. The state legislature is considering the Mosquito Fleet Act, a bill that would allow waterfront cities to create their own ferry systems, but after passing the State House with a resounding 84-11 vote, the new version in the Senate poked a bunch of seemingly unnecessary holes in the hull. According to the Urbanist, the new version requires that new passenger-ferry districts only use zero-emission boats made in Washington State, bans all state funding for passenger ferry districts starting in just two years, and requires that passenger ferry districts not overlap, which means cities wouldn’t be able to coordinate with each other on these ferry routes. Just give us the boats!

Looking for something to do tonight? Stranger contributor Meg van Huygen knows a spot. The No Call No Show popup is back tonight, with themed craft cocktails and snacks “concocted by a group of fine-dining creative weirdos.” Your hosts will be Kamonegi’s Chef Mutsuko Soma, Matt Pachmayr from Le Coin, and the mononymous Quan from the Sake Noire pop-up.

Sabio-Howell’s pitch is this: Sen. Pedersen is quick to concede to big business before the politicking has even begun, and a corporate-friendly incrementalist like him had no business representing a district of progressive renters like the 43rd. by Vivian McCall

A rain-soaked Hannah Sabio-Howell and I were at Gemini Room in Capitol Hill, ordering coffee and talking about breakfast sandwiches in Seattle. The few, the expensive, and the far away. The small, cheesy signifier that the neighborhood could be a better place if only our zoning laws allowed for more storefronts.

Recently communications director for Working Washington, a workers rights nonprofit that backed the $15 minimum wage and fought to keep gig worker minimum pay in Seattle, 29-year-old Sabio-Howell believes if we tried, we could have breakfast sandwiches on every block, and more substantive things like a statewide version of Social Housing, denser housing, and expanded paid parental leave as a first step toward universal childcare. But who is keeping us from this utopian future? None other than Majority Leader Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle), sponsor of this year’s millionaires’ tax. For that, she wants his seat. 

Sabio-Howell’s pitch is this: Sen. Pedersen is quick to concede to big business before the politicking has even begun, and a corporate-friendly incrementalist like him had no business representing a district of progressive renters like the 43rd. He’s progressive for a leader in the party, sure. But she argues that she’s a far better representative for the people who live in the 43rd District and a reliable vote for the major economic and taxation issues that are facing the state. She’s betting that makes him vulnerable enough to lose, even as a leader of the party. (She has insight there—in addition to her time in the state Senate, Sabio-Howell was chair of the Urbanist’s elections committee).

“He’s going to try to brand himself as effective because he is a deal maker,” Sabio-Howell says. “I think that approach to leadership is actually more of a deal broker, not someone who is actually driving the outcome. I think it’s giving things away before we need to give them away. Our district is too visionary and vibrant.”

Sabio-Howell was born in St. Louis, Missouri and spent most of her childhood in Wheaton, a an conservative, affluent suburb on the rim of Chicago, famous for a protestant college that lifted a Civil War-era ban on dancing in 2003. 

Wheaton’s conservative vibes did not rub off on the daughter of two school teachers (and one Filipino immigrant, her mother), lifelong Democrats who preached that government existed to improve our lives.

She organized for immigration reform at Whitworth University, a Presbyterian university in Spokane. An internship at the State Legislature led to her first job out of college as the legislative aide with  a surprising political mentor, the centrist Rep. Larry Springer, who represents some of the wealthiest towns of East King County, and later a communications job for the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Every year, Rep. Springer and his wife, former Kirkland Mayor Penny Sweet, host a Christmas dinner with his current and former legislative aides. This year, other aides “grilled” Sabio-Howell on her run. “I came away, I told Penny, she’s done her homework.” Politically, Sabio-Howell is far left of Springer. But he taught her the same lesson he teaches all of his legislative assistants, he said. The stuff that lasts the test of time is “not solely crafted by one end of the spectrum.”

“I think what she learned from me is, speak to both sides and craft something that works, not something that feels good,” he said. “The other part is, of course, your enemy today is your ally tomorrow.”

Over coffee, it was clear she’d taken that lesson to heart. I’d heard Sabio-Howell’s platform from first-time progressive candidates before. Affordable housing and childcare, investments in working families, and taxes on the rich to pay for it all. The floundering usually begins when you ask “how.” She didn’t give me specific solutions either, but instead of trying to make them up on the spot, she pitched an alternative viewpoint: Good policy only comes through consensus, and we can't start our politicking with business-friendly concessions. We want to give both the working class and the puffer jacketed types with enough money to tax something to actually believe in.

“Standing 10 toes down on your values to be clear about what you are…and what would get you to a “yes” or get you to a “no,” these are essential to an approach that equals effective policy making,” she says. It helps that she’s convincing and “damn nice,” says Rep. Springer. (If you disagree on something, you’ll agree and “love her” by the time she’s done analyzing it for you, he says.) State senator turned Congresswoman Emily Randall (WA-6), who doesn’t endorse in King County races, says Pedersen has done a great job as majority leader, but also called Sabio-Howell her “forever communications and strategy partner,” who helped her hone her voice on difficult issues in a swing district. 

A better way is possible, she says. Her platform points to plentiful housing in Austin, Texas, and Jersey City, New Jersey, and New Mexico’s new universal childcare program. None of her examples are perfect comparisons to Washington, of course. Austin sprawls in a state with a lower cost of living and fewer land-use regulations; Jersey City recently saw a surge in construction, and rent is falling after years of hikes, but the city still doesn’t have the housing it needs; New Mexico, a state with an income tax, is struggling to fund universal childcare without taking from the state’s general fund. (She also wasn’t sure what state or local policies in Jersey City and Austin made housing more attainable). The point is that it’s possible, she says. We’re not breaking new ground with these ideas.

“Is it possible in our vibrant, visionary, record-breakingly progressive district to present a new type of Democratic leadership, and to say we are aware that politics as usual, status quo-governing pro-corporation Democrats are not delivering on the things that we have reaffirmed over and over again,” she says. “I want to basically say to people in our community, choose your fighter.” (Some already have—according to her political consultant, Stephen Paolini, Sabio-Howell has raised about $30,000 from about 100 friends, family, activists, and colleagues.)

Reached by phone on a rainy drive home from Olympia Friday night, Sen. Pedersen says he found the critique that he’s not progressive enough “somewhat surprising.”

In 2006, the summer he ran for House, Pedersen was “single-minded” on equality. A gay lawyer on the board of Lambda Legal, Pedersen had taken depositions for Andersen v. Sims (later Andersen v. King County), the organization’s challenge to the state ban on gay marriage. Lambda won the case in King County Superior Court, but lost in 5-4 State Supreme Court ruling.

Determined, Pedersen worked with Ed Murray, the once State Senator and since-disgraced Mayor of Seattle, on securing the 425 rights and obligations that depended on marital status in Washington. They co-sponsored three domestic partnership bills. The first gave domestic partners basic rights like hospital visitation and inheritance. The second added them to laws about probate and trust, community property and guardianship. The third swept the rest into an “everything but marriage” law that survived Referendum 71, the conservative attempt to repeal it. After Gov. Christine Gregoire requested a marriage bill in the twilight of her second term, Pedersen whipped support in the House. 

But it’s been 14 years since Gregoire signed marriage equality into law. The world, and the definition of progressive, has, well, progressed. Pedersen’s big social wins like gay rights, limited gun control, gun violence prevention, the decertification of bad cops and other police accountability measures, weren’t all safe when he backed them, but don’t seem so radical now.

Heading into his sixth election, Pedersen has the support of big corporations, the same corporations that the state needs to tax to have a functioning budget. A third of Pedersen’s $187,000 warchest comes from business, including BNSF, timber company Weyerhaeuser, Amazon, Kroger, (my enemies at) Regence Blue Shield, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, (piss bottlers) Anheuser Busch, AirBnB, Pfizer, burger merchants at McDonalds, and more. 

Do they own him? “No,” said House Speaker Rep. Laurie Jinkins, followed by a somewhat tense silence, because of course money in politics matters.

As for Pedersen being Mr. Incremental, “Olympia is generally an incremental place with transformative moments,” she says. “It is fairly pointless to pass transformative legislation only to have voters repeal it.” Twenty-six US states allow for initiatives and referendums, most West of Missouri. It’s a blessing and a curse, particularly with anti-tax wraiths like Brian Heywood and Tim Eyman around.

For years, Washington couldn’t pass a tax or even fix a tax loophole without a two-thirds supermajority in both houses because of one of Eyman’s initiatives. (To sum up Jinkins’ history of that time, it sucked—we were at the tailend of the recession, broke, and cutting programs left and right) But in 2013, the State Supreme Court smacked it down as unconstitutional. Why? Sen. Pedersen and Rep. Jinkins crafted a legal weapon, a bill to fix a tax loophole, specifically designed to go to court, she says.

“I could not have done that without Jamie’s help,” Jinkins says. “He’s the one who understood the process … Had we not done that, we would not have gotten Cap Gains,” a nine-year slog of its own. Or the millionaire’s tax, which is almost certain to go before the voters and to court.

“I’m not going to argue it’s bigger than marriage equality,” says Jinkins, who is gay and could if she wanted. “But it’s been our tax structure for 100 years. This bill is so important.”

And so not enough, Sabio-Howell says. As she wrote in a Stranger op-ed with Fatema Boxwala and Oliver Miska last month, big business is being given a big break. From the jump, Pedersen presented the bill with these carveouts, pissing off half the party in the process.

Again, she thinks we can do more. Pedersen says he spends time on things he thinks will be efficient. Therein lies the tension. Does the 43rd want to hold onto an incumbent who is a proven leader in the party, but whose politics have not kept pace with this constituency? Or are they willing to switch up party leadership for someone who’s more aligned with what progressives want now? 

Did you see someone? Say something! by Anonymous

Illustrations by Helen Nesburg

three friends on the one line

you and your friends hopped on the packed 1 line yesterday as i was heading home, but your black/blond hair combo got me, hmu?

huggers outside la dive 1/5

Seattle, we don’t hug enough. Or at least not like the two I saw last Thursday night. That was an EMBRACE. TY for keeping romance and whimsy alive.

Drugged up and down bad

Me: I’m the ER for a broken back. You: hot doctor who had to give me a rectal exam. Let’s break HIPPA?

u know how to whistle don't you steve

to have and have not @ SIFF. same stop on D line. i regret not saying hi! u have good taste in clothes & movies. thin man @ central cinema next month?

My heart stopped in the soup aisle

Cap Hill TJ’s 2/11 6pm. You: Dark ponytail, glasses, 2 black panniers, rolled up pant leg Me: Blue coat, short brown beard, wishing I paused when we locked eyes by your bike

Compliments @ st. Bread 2/6

you, blonde cutie w/ a blue bag and “mt. st. helens pin” me: wearing an orange knitted hat. You complimented my hat and name. Baked goods on me?

Is it a match? Leave a comment here or on our Instagram post to connect!

Did you see someone? Say something! Submit your own I Saw U message here and maybe we'll include it in the next roundup!

If a Washington rainforest started a band, it would sound something like Mt Fog. Carolyn B.’s playful whispers are like a sprite luring you into a mossy forest; the rhythm section—Andy Sells and Casey Rosebridge—like raindrops plopping into a mushroom; the electronics shimmer like a ray of light through the trees. The Seattle-based trio whimsically marries the vocal stylings of Kate Bush, Björk, and Siouxsie Sioux with sparse electronics, evocative of CAN and Mort Garson, and a free jazz song structure. Ahead of releasing their new album, Every Stone Is Green (out Mar 13), and accompanying release show at the Tractor Tavern, I spoke to the band about the medieval mystics, cosmic jazz albums, and psychedelic dreams that inspired them.

One thing that is really unique about Mt Fog is that you don’t use six-string guitars. Was this a conscious choice or something that happened by accident?
CAROLYN: Well, I started Mt Fog as my solo project, and I don't play guitar—I’ve never been that into guitars. So, in the beginning, all the music I was writing was oriented towards voice and a drum machine. It has just evolved from that. Also, I think a trio is the most powerful, stable form. If we had a guitarist, they wouldn't be included in our throuple scenarios. [Laughs]

ANDY: Carolyn covers a lot of ground with the various synth patches and her voice. We play around with all kinds of textures as well, with the drum and bass. It's full enough without having a guitar. Although I like the guitar sometimes. It's either guitar, or I’m like, hey, we should put some congas on this thing!

CAROLYN: No guitar. No shaker. No slap bass. 

ANDY: There are a lot of rules in Mt Fog [laughs]. It’s not a democracy, and that's cool. 

Every Stone Is Green has an improvisational feel to it, especially on songs like “Trees in Conversation.” Were spontaneous decisions made while recording?
ANDY: There's not a whole lot to say about the drums on “Trees in Conversation,” but it was improvised. We kind of built that into the song that's right after it, so it starts with the drum solo, then goes into “Eyes in Buildings.” I have a jazz background, so that song has that improvisational character to it. I was surprised when Carolyn said, “Yeah, the drum solo should be this long!” 

CAROLYN: Side B is more spontaneous because we recorded it live together in the studio. My instincts on this album were to capture a fleeting, whimsical, curious feeling, so I'm really happy to hear that comes across. The song started as these rough ideas, as songs do, and then we worked on them together, and things would come up just naturally, spontaneously. For example, “Imperfect Machine” was something Casey came up with while I was taking a break during rehearsal. I came in, and he was playing this really cool thing. I made a voice memo of it, and then he and Andy expounded upon that idea at the studio. Then, I had a realization that the song sounded like a caravan full of giggling goblins with a little ratty flag coming through the desert, that’s like, getting closer and closer, then goes off into the distance. 

What media were you consuming while writing or recording the album?
CAROLYN: ECM’s ’70s jazz records were a big influence, particularly Gateway [the trio of John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette]. It’s hard to describe, but they create these portals in time that you could spend a million years in—it's really beautiful cosmic jazz. One of the records we have by them had a skip in it during Dave Holland’s bass playing that was really cool. I recorded it, and then while learning bass, I tried to replicate that baseline skip. That became the basis for “Grimelda’s Cave.” It was an immediate reflection of the things we were listening to. We were also listening to a lot of prog—Yes’s Fragile, and a lot of other weird 1970s jazz. I was just thinking a lot about the different textures you can make and how music can be fractal; there are micro moments that can be really special, but how do we turn them into a whole song? 

I was also inspired by mystics of the medieval times, especially Hildegard of Bingen. I've always loved her—I organized a mini music festival last year inspired by her, which got me to delve deeper into her concept of “viriditas,” about the green energy that's within us all. One of the songs, “Life as a Window,” is from Hildegard’s perspective. 

ANDY: We all have musical backgrounds, but it's all filtered through Carolyn’s vision. Carolyn has concepts for a lot of the songs, like “Hey, this sounds like goblins!”

CASEY: Yeah, it’s usually goblins. 

You also mentioned the Brontës in your album description. Do you have a favorite Brontë sister or a favorite Brontë novel?
CAROLYN: Definitely Jane Eyre. While thinking about how to describe the album, I was like, “It's Gothic with a capital G, like Gothic literature.” Andy was like, “No one will know what that means; they’ll think it means dark wave.” So I described it as “a Gothic tale, in the Brontë sisters’ sense.” 

I think, too, that there are feminine aspects to the music, reminiscent of a journey that might get scary at times. You might encounter big landscapes and ghosts. You may not be able to entirely understand what's going on, and there is a lot of heightened emotion. The Brontë sisters created huge worlds, even though their worlds were actually really small. They were governesses; they didn't traverse that much area, yet they were able to build these magnificent emotional universes. 

My friend actually asked me recently which Brontë sister each member of Mt Fog is. I was like, “We're not the sisters, we’re actually long-lost characters from the Brontë sisters' imagined world of Gondal. [Laughs]

Do you think seclusion is necessary for making art?
CAROLYN: Actually, Björk was recently talking about how streaming is the worst thing for artists because of the pressure of constantly being visible and making things. Björk is on our wall. [Points at poster] We love Björk in this household. “In this house we believe…” [Laughs] 

It’s a great thing to think about, because being able to retreat, hide, and explore things without being looked at is really, really important. It’s also really important for artists to be original. When you're out in the world, you're like a sponge absorbing information, and you need time to go home and dream about it. I think isolation is the sleeping/dreaming aspect of being an artist—you have to go to sleep so you can learn things. I think being alone is important as an artist, so you can synthesize the world that you're experiencing. Throw your computer into the sea, metaphorically (don’t cause environmental pollution!). 

Is the band’s relationship to the internet something you guys think about often?
CAROLYN: Definitely. We're all involved with Seattle Artists Against Spotify. As artists, we have a responsibility to be leaders and help create the world that we want to see. Our music is not on Spotify, but people are still listening to it. I don’t think these corporate-owned platforms have our best interests in mind. It’s a losing game for artists to try to succeed on these platforms. I'd rather have 100 people listen to our record and cry than a million people streaming on Spotify while they're doing five other things and paying their taxes.

What are your personal favorite tracks on the album?
CASEY: “Look Inside” really resonates with me lyrically and musically. I like the melody, the bass line, and the shape of the song—it’s fun to play. Every element is individually catchy, the energy is infectious, and the message is really positive.

CAROLYN: My favorite track is “A Single Green Strand Emerges,” because the idea came from the most vivid dream I've ever had. In this dream, I was looking for someone and came upon this vintage camera with a single green strand emerging from the aperture. I knew I had to crawl into the camera to find the person I was looking for. When I crawled inside, the middle of the camera was a dirt tunnel. I could feel that I was climbing through this tight space, and then, I emerged into a green, soft world that was very childlike. I found the person I was looking for, but I also knew I had to leave soon. It was one of the most psychedelic experiences I've ever had. So, the song is about that dream, and also about the feeling of working really hard to get someone to love you, which is a sad feeling that I've experienced before.

ANDY: “Green Strand Emerges” is also my favorite. I just love the feel and the power of it. I think it's a nice representation of what the band has morphed into. Plus, we recorded it live in the studio together, which is a testament to what the band can do. We were able to pull it off, and we surprised ourselves when we finished recording it. We were like, “Holy shit, this is it!”

Can you guys tell me a little bit more about the album artwork? Did the artist make it before listening to the album, or after? How did it come about?
CAROLYN: Yeah, we actually have the original oil painting right here. [Points at wall] It was done by our friend Nico Lund. She came to one of our shows, and we just connected like mad. Then, I reached out to her to see if she would make an original painting for our album art. It turns out she was about to reach out to me about the same thing! We were both in each other's heads. So, I shared all of the earliest recordings of the album, before we had fully recorded everything. 

We had a lot of conversations, but she is a fan of our music, so she already knew the vibe. When I first saw the concept sketch, I started crying because it was just so perfect. Then she took that original concept and made this beautiful painting. She's an amazing artist. Her work is really cool in person, too.

Let’s end with a fun question! Can you each share an artist, album, or song that you love but that other people hate? What music needs to be reevaluated?
CAROLYN: I like Björk’s 2007 album Volta, and I know some people really don't like that one. I love the song “Earth Intruders”—the very beginning sounds like gross, muddy footsteps. I actually like tried to recreate it for one of our other songs, and I wasn't able to come close. I also like that weird costume she wears on the cover.

ANDY: Maybe the third Duran Duran record, Seven and the Ragged Tiger—I think it's a really cool record. I also like the Accüsed a lot, which is a pretty far stretch from Mt Fog. Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told is one of my favorite records that's ever been put out. 

CASEY: I’ll say Muse—people always told me that they were a poser band to like when I was like 18. They’d say, “Oh, you like Muse? That’s so lame!” But I thought they were so cool, and I still think they have cool musical ideas—they seem like fucking dorks, but whatever.

See Mt Fog at Tractor Tavern on Thursday, March 12, 8 pm, 21+

Ready for the time jump that is spring forward this Sunday? Before Monday's rough wake up call, spend time at weekend events from the Seattle Women's March to Seattle Fat Mall's Big Love Social + Market and from Chinatown-International District's Lunar New Year Celebration to the opening of Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. For more ideas, check out our top picks of the week.

Echo Ravine (Album Release,) VuVu & Black Nite Crash
Local band Echo Ravine joked on Instagram that though two of its members are originally from Massachusetts, their friendship survived the Super Bowl. The group is used to bridging divides; their alt-rock song "Tumbling Wall" is about breaking down literal and metaphorical barriers between countries and people. The track is off their third album, Taking Up Space, which they put out last month and are celebrating with a release show at Seattle's own community-owned cooperative venue this Friday. Pick up a one-of-a-kind record at the show—the band hand-stamped images and track names onto the vinyl covers for a perfectly DIY feel. Fellow shoegaze bands Black Nite Crash and VuVu open the night with their layered, guitar-driven rock. SHANNON LUBETICH
(Conor Byrne Pub, Ballard, $15)

The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Nathalie Graham

Layoffs at the 5th: The 5th Avenue Theatre Company is laying off 14 employees, cutting staff from 55 people to 41. The 5th is mired in the $7.5 million budget deficit it’s accumulated since the pandemic. Subscription rates haven’t recovered since COVID-era slowdowns. So, the theater is cutting jobs in "marketing, box office, education, and artistic departments," according to the Seattle Times. If you care about live theater in Seattle, you better go see their production of Jesus Christ Superstar this May. Don’t be a Judas.

We're Doing Slurs Now? During a House debate in Olympia over a bill that would “eliminate the Community Protection Program, a service for people with developmental disabilities who have a history of sexually aggressive behavior" Sen. Leonard Christian, R-Spokane Valley said this: "The folks that we’re responsible for, we’re putting rapists in with retarded people," reports the Seattle Times. It's not 2007 anymore, Leonard. He later defended his use of the r-word, saying it emphasized that the bill would be "feeding these people to the wolves." He has not apologized.

School District Sued: Makena Simonsen, a special needs student in the Edmonds School District (ESD), graduated from Lynnwood High School with a 3.87 GPA and a first-grade reading level. Four years after getting her diploma, Simonsen's family is suing ESD claiming it was "benevolent discrimination" to hand their daughter a diploma. Because if she hadn’t gotten one, she would’ve been eligible for a free vocational program in the district that helps special needs students make the transition to adult life. Simonsen had to pay more than $40,000 for a similar program at Bellevue College.

Big News for like 20 People: The walking, rolling, and biking advocacy group Seattle Neighborhood Greenways has rebranded to Seattle Streets Alliance. Just thought some of you might care, idk.

The Weather: Drizzly, rainy. What did you expect?

The Time: And say goodbye to an hour of sleep starting Sunday. Clocks skip forward this weekend.

Security. We’re On It: Donald Trump has removed Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security and replaced her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma). Her new role is “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” head of a new security initiative. The purpose of this very real job will be announced tomorrow at an event in Florida.

It’s Tornado Season: Warm Gulf air is mixing with cold air from Canada. Millions of Americans from Iowa to Texas could be hit by strong tornados, the AP reports. Taking precautions could be the difference between life and death, experts say.

Water Is Wet: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. The Pope is from Chicago. And the Florida International University college republicans are racist. Leaked WhatsApp group chats showed—surprise, surprise—the young conservatives are sending slurs, sexist and homophobic comments, and Nazi references back and forth. I can't wait until they graduate into high-level roles at Palantir.

I Don't Know Who I Am Anymore: For some reason, I care about Shohei Ohtani hitting a grand slam in his first game with team Japan at the World Baseball Classic.

SHOHEI OHTANI GRAND SLAM

[image or embed]

— MLB Daily News (@insidemlbnews.bsky.social) March 6, 2026 at 2:35 AM

Meanwhile, the Mariners Blew Chunks in Their Latest Spring Training Game: As Lookout Landing put it, Seattle's favorite only baseball team "gave up three touchdowns and two field goals" to the Padres yesterday. Yep, they lost 27-6.

An Update from Job Land: It's no good out there in Job Land. Employers axed 92,000 jobs in February and unemployment climbed to 4.4 percent. The unemployment rate isn’t bad, but the fact that it's rising is worrisome. The report paints a bleak picture of stagnant job growth. Hang onto your job if you have one.

Congrats to everyone who voted for Trump and a Republican Congress "for the economy." This is what you get, a sputtering job creation engine that can't make progress like before and keeps rolling backwards.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

[image or embed]

— Max Kennerly (@maxkennerly.bsky.social) March 6, 2026 at 7:20 AM

We are the Baddies: According to Reuters, US military investigators are pretty sure the US is responsible for the apparent strike on an Iranian girls school that killed 150 children. The investigation hasn't been concluded yet.

War Continues: On Friday, Israel warplanes barraged Tehran and Beirut. Iran launched retaliatory strikes against Israel. President Trump made it clear he wants "complete surrender" from Iran. He made this statement in a Truth Social post.

Pass Gas: China is pressing Tehran to allow crude oil and Qatari gas safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reports. The war has all but shut the Straight, which makes China unhappy, because China gets 45 percent of its oil from the Straight. Meanwhile, crude oil prices are up 15 percent and US gas prices rose 11 percent in one week, hitting their highest point in the last year-and-a-half. Will this radicalize the normies?

Don't Forget about the Real Threat to Humanity: While everyone is worried about the rise of fascism, global warfare, and AI, climate change is still chugging away and spelling our doom. Researchers found that we are heating the earth faster than ever before. The heating rate has almost doubled. From 1970 and 2015, global heating increased by a rate less than 0.2 celsius per decade. In this most recent decade, that number jumped to 0.35 celcius. Scientists say that's the highest jump in warming since anyone started keeping track of temperature back in 1880. We are so boned.

Huge News: The Swiss Canton of Bern has chosen to keep the bear penis on its coat of arms after the government rejected a proposal to erase his junk. This bear will continue to hang dong as he has proudly for 600 years.

A Song for your Friday: I didn't know what to pick, so I scrolled randomly in my library and stopped on this. Enjoy.

News editor Vivian McCall poured a bit of blood and sweat into this slog.

After opening Outsider BBQ last March, self-taught pitmaster Onur Gulbay quickly built himself a cult following in Seattle. by Meg van Huygen

Hard to believe it’s been a whole year since Seattle, frequently bemoaned by Southerners as a barbecue wasteland, finally got some legit Texas-style barbecue. And made by a Turkish guy, no less. After opening Outsider BBQ last March, self-taught pitmaster Onur Gulbay quickly built himself a cult following with the authentic Central Texas-ass barbecue chops that he picked up while living in Austin. 

“I went to Franklin Barbecue and just fell in love,” Gulbay says, “and kept going back over and over, talking to the guys there, until I could learn how they were doing it.”

What started out as a pop-up, which the former IBM salesman ran from a portable smoker on wheels, re-manifested last year in the massive ex-Frelard Pizza Company space on Leary. Gulbay has since transformed the place into a sprawling smoked-meats compound, replete with fire pits, retractable garage-door walls, a play area for kids, a separate little house for his TWO gigantic smokers, and a huge outdoor beer garden. (Guess he learned that part from Texas, too. Oops, haha, it is cold here.) 

If this style and caliber of barbecue weren’t rare enough in the Northwest, Gulbay next-levels it with his gently Turkified versions of classic Southern sides: sumac-dusted potato salad, lemon–poppyseed coleslaw, a cinnamony rice pudding called sütlaç that’s similar to the American version except it's taken a ride in the smoker. The flavorful “street corn,” is a thick, creamy scoop of grilled esquites that’s loaded with fresh herbs and black pepper and shares architectural properties with Beecher’s mac. When asked what he puts it in, Gulbay pauses, then says, “Lots and lots of cheese. Like six cheeses.”

As for the meats, y’all can’t miss the snappy jalapeno-cheddar sausage, made in-house from pork and brisket trimmings, or the buttery meltaway brisket that disintegrates as soon as you breathe on it. Gulbay himself can’t get enough of the succulent beef rib, which is just flamboyantly enormous and always makes me think of the chunk of dino ribs that makes the runny footmobile fall over in the opener from The Flintstones. “My very favorite,” Gulbay proclaims. “It’s a whole meal by itself.” 

On Saturday, March 7, Outsider BBQ will be celebrating its first birthday with live music, specials, new menu items, and an all-day indoor/outdoor party. Guests should make sure to say hi to Gulbay, who is a goddang character and will be holding court all day. As our local barbecue prescriptivists bitch on Reddit about grill marks and bark tones, Gulbay’s creative take on a very pious category of American cuisine is at once faithful and playful, and it's refreshing as hell to see. It's also a great example of what makes Seattle’s restaurant scene so vivacious and unique. Something to celebrate for sure.

Said it before, but this town is a rough place to open a new restaurant, especially if you’re new to the area—and to say nothing of it being your first restaurant!—so a year in biz is no small feat. Congrats to Gulbay and the Outsider team, who are clearly elite insiders now. We’re so glad you’re here.

Kate Olson
So It Goes
(OA2)

Saxophonist/composer Kate Olson has excelled in Seattle’s jazz and experimental scenes for about 15 years as a solo artist, bandleader, and member of Syrinx Effect, Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble, and Battlestar Kalakala. She’s especially shown an affinity for minimalist works that exhibit a deep spirituality, à la Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, and Don Cherry. Olson’s last album, 2020’s Homeland, pushed her into new territory: funereal post-rock, industrial music recalling the Bug’s iciest and most ominous moments, and discombobulating IDM.

Olson returns to jazz on her new LP, So It Goes, joined by Conner Eisenmenger (trombone, trumpet), Tim Carey (electric bass, electric guitar), and Evan Woodle (drums, percussion). With Olson playing soprano sax, the album zips out of the gate with “Bumbling Thumbs Blues,” bustling bebop full of thrilling dynamics, with Woodle devoting acute attention to the tom-toms. Which makes the transition to the sly “Take Five” homage of “ShouldaCoulda” a brilliant change of pace. Olson finesses a quietly ecstatic and rococo solo in this utterly beguiling and introspective tune. The burrowing, mesmerizing bebop sorcery of “All Pear-Shaped” continues So It Goes’s hot streak.

But Olson also excels at cooler temperatures; her ballad game is strong. “Nominally Challenged” is beautiful, serpentine jazz for late nights or early mornings, while “Pink Mountain”—a delicate, bittersweet ballad—displays Olson’s playing at its most tender. Dedicated to Billy Pilgrim, protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, “So It Goes” is a languorous, melancholy ballad with scene stalwarts Wayne Horvitz on piano and Geoff Harper on double bass. And showing immaculate taste, Olson and company—with Horvitz and Harper again lending stellar support—do justice to the legend Alice Coltrane’s questing astral-jazz composition “Translinear Light,” the title track from her final studio album. Real recognize real.

Thomas Andrew Doyle
Twilight
(Incineration Ceremony)

It’s crazy that Thomas Andrew Doyle’s synth-based music from 2017 onward flies so far under the radar, even though it ranks among his best output. The man best known as the leader of Sub Pop grunge brutes TAD has undergone a radical transformation in this century, and maybe fans of that band and critics just can’t get their heads around this new and improved musician/composer.

These days, Doyle’s into creating soundtracks in search of film directors who revel in transporting viewers to profoundly disturbing places. Twilight is Doyle’s latest excursion into the vast bleak. The epic title track begins with a subdued, solemn organ drone poised between hope and distress, creating a paradoxical tension. Eventually, ceremonial male chants enter and lend a wafting gravitas to proceedings. It would sound infernally grand in a theater. “1 over 137” is a bass-heavy dirge of deep suspense, cut with fluid synth motifs that suggest an appreciation for Dune-loving keyboard sorcerer Bernard Szajner. On “Decimated,” Doyle coaxes out the interstellar eeriness of Brian Eno’s best ’80s ambient releases. The despairing drones of “Dormant Complexities” approximate the sound of E.M. Cioran’s brain waves as he was writing A Short History of Decay. Dedicated to Doyle’s late friend, and friend of the paper (and entire city), Bradley Sweek, Twilight epitomizes the art of darkness.

Seattle-area musicians can send music to NewSeattleMusic@thestranger.com for possible coverage.

We’re serving up another fresh batch of tickets. Lo-fi R&B singer Joji supports his recently released album, Piss in the Wind, at Climate Pledge this summer. English virtual band Gorillaz closes out the North American leg of their Mountain Tour in Seattle. Plus, “American Woman” rockers The Guess Who are takin’ it back on their reunion tour. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

MUSIC

Belle & Sebastian: 30th Anniversary Tour, Performing "Tigermilk"
Neptune Theatre (Sat June 13)

Charley Crockett – Age of the Ram Tour
Northern Quest Resort & Casino (Wed July 15)

Concrete Boys
Neumos (Mon May 11)

Seattle’s hottest nightclub doesn’t have velvet ropes, bottle service, or a bouncer. Instead, it has folding tables. It has name tags. It has four people to a table, all playing mahjong. A year ago, this kicked off with two borrowed sets. Tonight, Emerald City Tile Club is standing room only.

An Unexpected Friday Night
On a recent Friday night, when I’d usually be confronting my shortcomings as both a home cook and a human, I instead found myself craving connection. For many these days, “socializing” means forwarding each other Reels… and not replying. Which is why it felt somewhat revolutionary to get dressed, hop in my car, and brave the parking situation of Capitol Hill. All to play mahjong with strangers.

I was at Stoup Brewing wearing a name tag, in a small room upstairs—high above the Carhartt-clad product managers and their Patagonia-donning dogs. The room was rocking, and it felt like a fashion show: gold and jade jewelry brushing against Chrome Hearts hoodies, ruched halter tops, and mock neck sweaters. Perfect mahjong fits: dressed for a game their grandparents played, styled like they might end up at a warehouse party after.

Fifteen tables were in play and not one empty. At some, the mood was loose, alternating between silly and flirtatious. At others, players leaned in without speaking, eyes fixed on the pile of engraved ivory tiles in front of them, focused like they were refining macrodata in Severance. Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Filipino gameplay ensued, with rule sheets open between beer glasses. Onlookers, myself included, crowded around especially interesting games like a Vegas craps table.

I met a white man celebrating his 26th birthday wearing a magnificent custom felt crown like a malevolent mahjong monarch. I dapped him up. At another table, I saw a guy on crutches and another with a boot on. People planned their night around this event—insurance claims included. In the middle of Seattle’s winter, here were over a hundred people voluntarily sitting knee to knee, Labubu to Labubu, for hours, all sharing the understanding that if you sit down long enough, something great might happen.

Community Is Table Stakes
At the center of this room—though he would probably object to that phrasing—was Sean Herrera, the humble proprietor of Emerald City Tile Club.

A year ago, almost to the date, Sean was sipping a beer at Stoup, contemplating his future while doing trivia. He looked up to see folks playing board games, and the idea for Emerald City Tile Club formed all at once. He envisioned an accessible and welcoming social night surrounding the game his dad taught him to play. As a Filipino kid growing up in Alabama, Sean used mahjong as a magnet to find his people. He parlayed that energy when he moved to Seattle, hosting small mahjong nights with friends during COVID. Then they stopped being small. “It got too big at my place,” Sean told me, yelling over the DJs. “And I was like, how do I transform this into something bigger than myself?”

Around that time, he noticed mahjong social nights taking off in New York and Los Angeles, with editorial shots of young Asians framing the game as cool again. Some of the clubs in LA even charged membership or event fees, but that never sat right with Sean. “I don’t want someone moving to Seattle thinking they have to pay to meet friends,” he said. “I hate the idea of having a physical barrier to coming in and hanging out.”

When Sean decided to pitch Stoup on a mahjong night, he went full-out honor student. He shared MLA citations on the resurgence of mahjong among Asian American youth. He included a deck with mockups of attendance. He made a business case for foot traffic and sales. He said please. Stoup obliged, and ECTC was born. Forty people showed up to night one, blowing Sean away and earning more buy-in from Stoup. Tonight, and most nights, ECTC is hosting hundreds of folks.

“I hear about people meeting here and then going on dates,” Sean told me. “Someone came up to me and was like, ‘I met my girl here.’” He laughed, still slightly stunned by it. “I see people hanging out elsewhere and I’m like, ‘I didn’t know y’all were friends.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, we met through ECTC.’ That’s crazy.”

One night, walking through Capitol Hill, he overheard a group of 20-somethings ahead of him debating whether they were going to “mahjong night” that week. They didn’t know he was behind them. “That’s when I knew this was real.”

Flipping the Script
For decades, mahjong lived in kitchens and garages, in the background of family parties, in rooms that smelled faintly of vapor rub and pork. It was something you inherited. A game you aged into. Now it’s something people line up for.

Across America, mahjong nights are quietly filling restaurants and backrooms. Young people are showing up dressed for a night out and are learning that the romantic prospects are better at the mahjong table than the bars. What used to signal retirement now signals arrival. “The traditional view about mahjong,” Sean said, “is that it’s an old man’s game.” He gestured to the brimming room. “Here in Seattle, we’re flipping that script.”

It’s definitely happening in Seattle, headlined by ECTC and supported by budding nights including Mahjong Mondays at Kilig and QT Mahjong Nights—a community for queer/BIPOC folks to learn mahjong together. At each of these events, community is table stakes, but knowing how to play is not.

So Why Now?
Part of the appeal is structural. Mahjong is analog. You can’t scroll through it, you can’t multitask. In a time where you see more AI slop on your timeline than pictures of actual human beings, the youth yearn for something real. And mahjong provides, not only with tangible tiles and real-life conversations, but also an invitation to unplug. To lean in. To pay attention. In an economy of distraction, that feels radical.

But part of it is cultural. For a generation of Asian Americans, mahjong is less about preserving tradition and more about reclaiming it. It’s taking something your parents played and deciding it belongs in public. It belongs under DJ lights. It belongs in breweries.

It belongs to us.

Same Time Next Week
Back at Stoup, my wife had just won her first game, thanks to three new friends she just met, thrilled to be beaten by their new padawan. The DJs were getting crunk, backed by the comforting cacophony of shuffling tiles. Someone just found a roommate.

In a city designed to keep you alone—in your car, in your apartment, in your feed—the kids are choosing something older. Something slower. Something you can’t swipe away.

I stepped outside into the cold and immediately saw three people I recognized from upstairs arguing about game strategies on the sidewalk.

They’ll be back next week. So will I. 

A group of unhappy cosplayers penned a petition to Emerald City Comic Con's parent company asking them to do something about it. by Nathalie Graham

There’s a cloud over Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) this year and, no, it’s not pissing rain. It’s pissing ICE.

Back in January, con-goers discovered that ECCC’s parent company, ReedPop—which acquired the con in 2015 and runs a variety of cons including  New York City Comic Con and BookCon—has a not-so-distant connection to the immigration enforcement agency.

The problem lies in a rotten, corporate family tree. Reed Pop is part of the entertainment group RX which is owned by RELX, and RELX owns LexisNexis, a data broker that holds a $22.1 million contract to be ICE’s precogs, helping the agency track people who may potentially commit a crime (and their cars, according to The Intercept) before they’ve actually broken the law.

So a group of unhappy cosplayers penned a petition asking Reedpop, which purports to “promote inclusion and diversity,” to force their parent company to divest from LexisNexis. ReedPop responded with a boilerplate statement, saying “RX, ReedPop and our event brands operate independently from other RELX businesses on an arm's length basis. RX, ReedPop and our event brands do not sell any information or data to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

The petition reads: "How can event attendees feel safe, supported, or included when they are deliberately choosing to support the equivalent of the Empire in Star Wars, the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and other oppressive forces that fans consistently support the dismantling of on-screen and in the pages?”

Elizabeth Sweet, a Korean immigrant known in the cosplay world as Cosmic Reys, co-organized the petition with her friend group of cosplayers and Romantasy lovers (Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses, the fanfiction that warped your sexuality) that Mallory Shoemaker, a Disney cosplayer, and Jenna Karr, who primarily cosplays romantasy book characters. (Sidenote, while this group doesn’t have a name, they’ve done panels together as The Bookish Baddies).

They wanted to send a message that “Seattle does not eff with ICE,” Sweet says, omitting the cuss word. Nearly 1,300 have signed since late January, and the Baddies have since written to electeds like Mayor Katie Wilson.

Though they aren’t advertising it, they’re tying ECCC’s relationship with ICE into their planned “Smash or Pass” panel about sexy Romantasy characters and tropes.

It’ll be much, much more about fascism than a steamy book panel usually would be (less monsterfucking, more fucking monsters). Sweet gave an example: “We find it attractive when the heroes we root for may have wings or horns or something, but what’s sexier is what they’re standing up for.”

And another: “A smashable trait is standing up for what you believe in and is advocating strongly for critiquing systems of power.”

“We’re putting pressure on our local officials, our city, and reminding nerds, ‘You could be the hero in the story that you're reading about,” Shoemaker says. “You could be Rey, you could be Katniss.”

Sorry to immediately be a bummer, but I can’t stop thinking about the state of technology. by Emily Nokes

Sorry to immediately be a bummer, but I can’t stop thinking about the state of technology. About how we could have done anything in the world with it at this point, and yet this is where we landed. 

Waist-deep in a slop gauntlet run by the most corrupt/least cool (in every sense of the word) grifters imaginable. An internet that currently looks like shit and works like shit, in service of shareholders who will monetize it until there is nothing left to extract. I won’t belabor the point. 

Except of course I will. We are supposedly inching toward an era of AI grandiosity beyond our wildest dreams/nightmares, but until that happens, can we make one website function correctly? It would be incredible, if in the year of our 2026, I could look up what time a show starts without being led to a third-party ticket site, bloated with ads, with some out-of-date map widget that blocks the screen while their glitchy AI asks if you want whatever the fuck. Anything but the information you’re looking for. You will never find it; you will forget what you came here for. 

Woman yells at [the] Cloud, I know. But if you are a venture capitalist reading this (hiiii), let me whisper my incredible idea, then: Make the internet work again. 

Beyond its current janky state, AI’s insidious seep into the arts raises genuine concerns around labor displacement, authorship, surveillance capitalism, and the slow evaporation of expertise. Another concern is simpler: The people pushing AI are fucking dweebs. Mikey Shulman (of generative AI start-up Suno) literally said, out loud, in an interview: “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software.” Concluding that this is a problem to be solved (by him, for money) rather than, you know, the entire point. 

Finally. We are so close to solving the problem of having a creative process.

Okay that is enough rain! The days are getting longer, my friend, and I am once again trying to keep it weird around here. What are the interesting people of Seattle doing with their one precious life?

My moodboard for this issue was ARTS, of course, with a special interest in: anti-slop, DIY out of ethical necessity, weird/cool/fun, hands-on, physical media, in real life. We may not be able to escape algo-driven toxicity entirely at this point, but I was curious about the people and places operating outside of all that. People dedicated to the value of physical experience, or people doing strange or difficult or specific things with a lot of dedication. Some as a deliberate statement, some just because it’s what they’re into, or it’s what they’ve always done. I’m tickled by the results. People are making such neat things!

In these pages you’ll find artists who deal in physical media—less because the aesthetic still fucks (it does), but because every other option sucks. We make the case for recession-era art, repairing your own clothes, and the joy and frustration of a dumber phone. 

Elsewhere, what’s more analog than a baroque flutist? An opera singer, perhaps—did you know they are just belting it out without amplification up there? We also learn about the ancient techniques like the Korean paper art of hanji, and Turkish meat-carving with giant blades. 

We also envision something better. A city with a healthy bodega culture, a city that invests in the arts, a city with unique arts spaces, and a city that envisions something better for a neat old building in a queer/arts neighborhood than a… McDonald’s. 

Spring is coming.
— Emily Nokes 

COVER ART

Samantha Yun Wall
Diaspore No.15 (2026)
From Let There Be Light at Cannonball Arts

The same intensity with which Spencer Pratt reads the audiobook of his memoir The Guy You Loved to Hate

Hot Slog Buns

Zoloft

Gabapentin

The weight of the world

Gun soup

Chappell Roan’s nipples

Alexander Skarsgård’s slutty little glasses

The community fig leaf

Realizing I’ve been wearing my carabiner on the wrong side

Season two of The Boyfriend on Netflix

Joy sobbing to videos of Alysa Liu

Hilary Knight refusing to make excuses for men’s behavior

“Regular Rabbit” by Stephen Spencer

Keri Russell’s wigs on The Americans

Puppy anticipation

A powder day, finally

My last fried nerve

Chu Minh Tofu and Vegan Deli

Ex-Lax

LITERALLY MAKING PHYSICAL MEDIA

Cold red wine

Lightrailers is a real word, Henry

The Kissenger Pocket Pussy for Kissing

Ring, the dogcatching company

Being Chinese before Chinamaxxing made being Chinese cool

Sparkle kicks in Las Vegas

Davis has heard grumblings about his decision to run against an established Democrat incumbent, but he thinks he's the right choice for the seat. by Nathalie Graham

I sat across from Ron Davis—dad, urbanist, bald—at Tailwind Cafe in Capitol Hill. He wasn’t going to eat during our interview, but then he saw the menu: the “finest” avocado toast in the city. He had to try it. But we weren’t here to discuss toast. We were here to discuss his latest candidacy.

Voters may remember the former tech start-up CEO from his 2023 city council campaign. He ran for the District 4 seat as a density champion, a progressive—aka everything 2023 voters rejected. Outspent by corporate PACs, he lost to Maritza Rivera. He’s been a constant poster since—skeets, TikToks, Reels, and Substacks (or just stacks?). Raise your hands, Rondezvous readers.

Even if you haven’t seen Davis, you’ve probably sensed him. He’s become a progressive mainstay in local politics. He even flirted with a mayoral run before Katie Wilson jumped in. A believer in the cause—and a casualty of corporate fundraising—he fundraised with Progressive People Power PAC (P3) which helped unseat Sara Nelson and kickstarted the PAC that supported Wilson with political consultant Stephen Paolini. (“He and I, together basically raised all the individual contributor money between the two of us,” says Paolini, the director of the Katie Wilson for an Affordable Seattle PAC.)

Now he’s hoping to knock Rep. Gerry Pollet out of Washington’s 46th District, the Northeast Seattle region he’s represented for 15 years.

Davis says he’s heard grumblings about this decision. Taking on a 15-year incumbent is expensive and there are actual swing districts where people want to put their energy and their dollars. But “good enough is not good enough, especially right now,” Davis says.

Pollet may be fine on taxes and education, but he’s also a NIMBY firmly standing in the way of change, Davis says. “There's no suburb left in the district, it’s time to act like it,” he says, citing Pollet’s vote against an environmental review exemption to speed along patching the missing link in the Burke Gilman trail, and Pollet’s watering down of the “missing middle” housing bill back in 2022, which could have allowed denser buildings in more places.

Davis wants to build more housing, improve transportation, stick it to Donald Trump, pass progressive revenue. Even if it ruffles some feathers, he thinks he’s the better person for the job.

While writing this story, Pollet’s communications consultant Erik Houser texted me to say he heard I was writing about Davis, and Pollet wanted to respond to anything negative Davis said about him.

Pollet rejects Davis’ characterization. In a statement, Pollet said “he has long advocated for increasing density in Seattle and the 46th district” and has sponsored legislation to make that happen, including 2025’s “middle housing and transit oriented development bills.” He did vote against suspending the environmental review for the Burke Gilman Trail, but maintains “the legislature has put these environmental reviews in place for an important purpose.”

Paolini and Tiffani McCoy, the interim CEO of the Seattle Social Housing Developer, agree that Davis is a housing juggernaut. He’s already been in Olympia advocating for housing bills, like last year’s Parking Reform and Modernization Act which restricts how much parking cities and counties can require for new housing. Davis says he put together the coalition that got the bill passed.

“I realized this is a place I could really make a difference,” he says.

Davis is persistent to the point of being professionally annoying, he says. “It's kind of a personality flaw, but it turns out, like in enterprise sales where I come from, and politics it has proven very, very useful, even if it drives some people nuts.”

Effective, but is that the personality of a guaranteed collaborator, or a pusher hungry for credit and adoration?

Wait. Hold on. Davis’ avocado toast arrived. He paused to take a photo. Two juicy fried eggs sat on the green bed of fluffed avocado, dusted with cracked pepper and spices.

“Oh, the lighting is bad,” he says, and readjusted, leaning back and lowering his body in the chair, twisting his phone to the landscape position.

“Do you always take photos of your food?”

“Not always but when I go—” he gasps— “then I get really excited about it,” he says. The pictures often go nowhere.

He pressed his knife into one fried egg. Yolk spilled over the toast.

He dug in the toast and his loftier goals: 1,000 miles of new bus-only lanes across the state, taxes on the rich to pay for universal child care (the millionaires' tax doesn’t go far enough, he says), and myriad wonky housing proposals.

And then there’s that damn President and his gooners. Davis supports several of the anti-ICE bills making their way through the Legislature—a potentially unenforceable bill to unmask ICE, and another prohibiting agents from becoming cops in Washington. Though the latter doesn’t go far enough, he says.

“It should be a permanent ban from working for any state or locally-funded organization.”

“We should punish companies that collaborate [with ICE],” he says, waving his fork with a perfect bite of fried egg and avocado toast. This could mean taxing them more or, at the state level, cutting any contracts with businesses that are also working with ICE in any capacity.

Davis wants there to be a state run “office of people” to disrupt  ICE operations. People “who are trained in interruption and de-escalation, and who have an understanding of the ways to maximize the difficulty for ICE.” He wants the people “ready and deployable” to make ICE operations more difficult and costlier in Washington.

That’s kind of fucking crazy. All I could say was, “Wow, I can only imagine the Truth Social posts.”

“[Conservatives] say all that shit about paid protesters—they make all that shit up anyway—why not do it?” Davis says.

“That was fucking amazing,” he says of his avocado toast. “Be sure to get the extra egg. I just love runny yolk. I had a whole spiritual experience while we were talking.”

Ed's Note: This story has been updated to clarify that Davis fundraised for individual campaign contributions. 

The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Micah Yip

Constitution? I Hardly Know Him: Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would’ve halted the attacks on Iran and allowed time for Congress to authorize the war. That’s the Constitutional way to go to war, anyway—only Congress has the power to declare war. The president does not (despite this, we haven’t declared any of our wars since World War II, and we’ve waged many). The House will vote today on a similar measure, but it’s expected to fail. 

Also: The US government is dodging responsibility for the deadly strike on the Iranian girls’ school, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth only saying they’re “investigating” the incident. The incident killed at least 165 students and injured 96 others. 

And Also: President Donald Trump says he must be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader. Replacing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with Mojtaba Khamenei, his son and likely successor, would be “unacceptable,” Trump said.

Trespassing/Occupying, Tomayto/Tomahto: Last May, 33 protesters broke into and occupied the University of Washington’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building, smashing windows, spray painting walls, breaking equipment and setting dumpsters on fire to protest the university’s ties to Boeing, which sells weapons to Israel. Twenty-three of them were UW students. Yesterday, King County prosecutors charged them with misdemeanor criminal trespassing—a downgrade from the original felony charges they got in June, which were dropped for lack of evidence. They’ll be arraigned on March 25.

Another Day, Another Anti-Trans Effort: An initiative to keep trans girls out of sports will appear on November’s statewide ballot. Backed by Brian Heywood, the conservative hedge fund manager who founded Let’s Go Washington, Initiative IL26-638 would require girls to “verify their biological sex” with a health care provider to play school sports. Verification could include  blood draws and genital exams.

The War on Drugs Sugar: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants Dunkin’ and Starbucks to prove their sugary coffee drinks are “safe.” How about informing Americans of the risks of going unvaccinated?

Mayor Wilson Proposes 1,000 New Shelter Units: Mayor Katie Wilson sent legislation to City Council that would let the city more quickly secure space for 1,000 new units of shelter and emergency housing in Seattle this year. Her proposal would both allow the Finance and Administrative Services Department to sign lease agreements with property owners and temporarily increase the number of people allowed in most shelters from 100 to 150, while one shelter in each district could house up to 250.

Weather: Mostly cloudy with a high of 51 and a 50 percent chance of rain before noon. Tonight, temps drop to a low around 44 with rain falling after midnight.

Ouch: Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy tried to help Capitol police arrest Brian McGinnis, a Marine and Green Party candidate, protesting the war in Iran at a Senate hearing yesterday, and ended up snapping his arm as he clutched the door. 

Here’s the video. Keep scrolling if you’re squeamish.

[TW: graphic fracture, sound of breaking bone]

Sen Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) badly breaking the arm of a Marine veteran protesting the war Iran.

[image or embed]

— Claire Zagorski, MSc, EMT-P (@clairezagorski.bsky.social) March 4, 2026 at 2:05 PM

Extreme County Makeover (Cont.): It looks like King County Executive Girmay Zahilay is continuing to reconfigure the county workforce. He just hired a new internal auditor and created a “subcabinet” focused on accountability, new internal grant fund controls and training employees on ethics and fraud prevention to “improve oversight of the county’s finances.” 

Hurry Up: State lawmakers are running out of time to pass the millionaires' tax before the legislative session ends. Most Democrats support the bill, but intra-party division threatens to derail this much needed tax. If passed, the bill would still need Gov. Bob Ferguson’s signature, but he’s now said for the third time the measure still needs revisions before he’d sign. He said he’s hopeful they can reach an agreement but is committed to getting this “right,” even if that means pushing the issue to next year.

War in Iran Brings Higher Gas Prices: The state's average price climbed another two cents per gallon. The state’s average price is $4.40 per gallon, as of yesterday—43 cents more than a month ago and $1.20 above the national average. 

FIFA Transit Money: Seattle is getting $8.4 million from the $100 million Federal Transit Administration to mitigate any  strain on the city’s public transit system from the FIFA World Cup this summer. These funds can be used for event planning, hiring, security equipment, and more. The money is part of last month’s $1.2 trillion congressional spending package that prevented a government shutdown but stalled funding for the Department of Homeland Security. 

Will Iran Send a Team? They’re scheduled to play against Egypt in Seattle on June 26, but after the US attacks, Iranian soccer federation President Mehdi Taj said they might not.

Smoke anywhere else. by Anonymous

Hey, '90s throwback guy: Your cigarette smoke is gross. And I hate having to walk through it to get my coffee.

You’ve been asked—politely—by staff and customers to move. There is signage. There are coughs. There are stares. Yet you remain.

It’s peak Hill. A neighborhood that prides itself on being considerate—but when it comes to shared air, asking someone not to hotbox the doorway is apparently a controversial take.

We all share the sidewalk. We all share the air. The NO SMOKING sign is not a vibe check. It’s a rule. You are not bravely disrupting the system. You are just making everyone smell like 2003.

Newsflash: You are not the main character. Standing in the doorway, smoking like this? It’s giving entitled vibes—and that’s not a good look.

Please take an extra 20 steps. Smoke anywhere else. Capitol Hill is not short on corners.

Sincerely,

Someone Who Would Like Their Cortado Without a Side of Marlboros

Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous and we'll illustrate it! Send your unsigned rant, love letter, confession, or accusation to ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and the guilty.

Meaty finger waves. by Meg van Huygen

It’s prep shift at Hamdi, and the room smells like fire. Winter sunlight filters in, and there’s a faint hum of spices in the charred air. Chef Berk Güldal is giving a private tutorial on making Turkish Adana-style kebap—aka kebab—a meticulous, laborious two-day process that plumps up these peppery lamb skewers.

Hand-mincing kebap is considered an art form in Southwest Asia, but this time-consuming process is being practiced less and less these days—even in Turkey, and certainly here in Seattle. Güldal, however, has all the time in the world to practice this thousand-year-old culinary craft.

Hamdi opened in 2021 as a Turkish food truck and moved into its beautiful, simple fine-dining space on Leary Way the following year. Güldal and his partner, Katrina Schult, had spent their careers in Michelin-starred restaurants—in Güldal’s hometown of Istanbul as well as NYC and Healdsburg, California, among other places—before peacing out to starless, Michelin-free Seattle to do their own thing.

That thing is fire. “We don’t have gas ranges,” Güldal says. “It’s all fire—wood or charcoal.” Low flames and embers burn here and there under grills around the open kitchen. It’d be a waste to NOT make kebap here.

The artist’s tools are a butcher block, a scraper, and a giant medieval-looking Turkish zirh (“zuh-ruh”). Genetically somewhere between a machete and a Bowie knife, it looks like the weapon your orc-slaying half-paladin/half-rogue D&D character carries. A fantasy knife.

I ask him if he bought it in Turkey, and he says, “No. I got it on Etsy.”

Güldal holds his colossal knife with both hands. A few pieces of suet—the hard fat that surrounds a lamb’s kidneys—sit in a ninth pan. He utilizes the zirh as a parer, deftly removing the silverskin enclosing each parcel of fat. “In Turkey,” he says, “they use tail fat for kebap. But it’s a different kind of lamb with a much bigger tail. It’s like a second butt.” However, America’s lambs aren’t quite as caked up, so Hamdi uses suet instead.

It’s no compromise. “To be honest, this lamb right here is the best lamb ever,” Güldal boasts. “We don’t need the tail.” Hamdi sources lamb from Anderson Ranches, 30 minutes outside Eugene, Oregon. “I cooked a lot of lamb in New York and California, at Michelin restaurants? I never tasted any lamb like this lamb.”

Güldal adds that Hamdi only uses grass-fed lamb, so Anderson Ranches is a natural choice, where free-range sheep and lambs graze on pasture ryegrass, herbs, and flowering forbs. “I really believe that grass-fed meat is the best, most nutritious food for your body,” he says. “It’s more chewy. It’s not gonna melt in your mouth. That’s why it’s great for kebap.”

The artist’s canvas is a massive wooden butcher’s block. This one was custom-made by Lee Andrews, a woodcarver in Walla Walla. “This artist told us this block’s gonna survive like four generations,” Güldal says. “Plastic just breaks.”

He sets the snow-white suet chunks on the block, then places his two-foot blade alongside them. Carefully but powerfully, he lifts the knife’s handle up and out, like a crank on a water pump, pinching the back of the blade with his other hand. He slides it back and forth over the pile for what seems like 20 minutes but is probably like five.

After Güldal pulverizes the suet into a hill of crumbles, Schult brings over some rough-chopped lamb belly, cold from the fridge, where it’s been aged for 24 hours. He begins delicately smithereening it with the same precise skill: slicing motions, not crushing motions. Sounds simple, but it really is a complex physical performance, requiring minute movements to flick and flex this heavy sword. Controlled strength as art. I could watch him do this all day.

“The purpose of this knife is to slice,” Güldal says. “When you put meat in a grinder—how most people do kebap now—it smooshes it, and it becomes very sticky and soft and loses texture. But here, you use a very sharp knife like this one, moving it minimally to slice, not chop.”

He adds that a grinder creates a dry kebap. “Not as juicy. And the texture this way is gonna be very coarse. Not, like, smooshed.” That coarseness creates more edges and facets to be Maillarded later.

After mincing the meat and fat separately, Güldal does the same to a red bell pepper. Then he methodically kneads the pepper, lamb belly, and suet together to create binding protein structures. “Another thing,” he says, after wordlessly kebapping for a while, “is that you don’t wanna use gloves to do this. Because then it tastes like gloves. I believe the flavor of your hand needs to go in the food.”

Güldal produces a speckled loaf of mince. Now it’s time to season: paprika, Turkish pepper flakes, and salt. He pulls out a sheet pan of lined-up skewers, specifying that they must be iron, not aluminum, and starts fleshing out the metal skeletons.

The meat football gradually disappears as Güldal applies it to the skewers, punctilious, his fingers tantamount in his arsenal to his big-ass knife. We simmer in the piano lick from “Ms. Jackson” on the aux as he shapes the mince. Per tradition, he’s giving the kebap a subtly scalloped pattern, for both Mailliard reaction and artisanal reasons. Meaty finger waves.

And that’s it. They’re ready to hit the charcoal. The raw skewers look kinda pixelated, since unrendered suet is so brittle, but it’ll liquefy into nutty, golden, umami-tinged tallow on the grill, like lamby compound butter. It’s the art of suspense. A delicious future promise.

When asked if doing this makes him feel like an ancient person from a thousand years ago, Güldal frowns. “No! I believe we should still do these things today, not just in ancient history. I actually think everything has gotten too modern, too easy. I think we’re losing the fun part.”

Güldal takes a beat to admire his handiwork, then nods solemnly. “This is the fun part.”

Court documents show that behind the scenes, Sophon and chef Karuna Long struggled financially for years, resulting in bounced paychecks, late payments to vendors, unpaid rent, and lawsuits. by Harry Cheadle

On February 10, Sophon—one of Seattle’s hottest, hippest restaurants—announced on its Instagram stories that it would be canceling its dinner service that night. It stayed closed through Valentine’s Day weekend, one of the industry’s busiest stretches, because of financial difficulties and tensions between Sophon’s staff and owner, Karuna Long, that were spilling into public for the first time.

Employees were refusing to come to work because they hadn’t been paid. Long put up, and then deleted, an Instagram post admitting he owed money to staff and vendors. "I have no idea what I'm doing and cannot seem to figure what's up and what's down," he wrote. Days later, in a series of Instagram posts, general manager Moni Mitchell announced that the staff had resigned and accused Long of “documented financial mismanagement.”

This is a shocking turn of events for anyone who knows Sophon’s reputation. One of the only Khmer restaurants in Seattle, it is the kind of place that gets included on every “best of” list, renowned for its Cambodian-influenced cocktails and dedication to uplifting Khmer culture. But court documents, and interviews with Long and six of his former employees, show that behind the scenes, both Sophon and Long’s nearby, now closed bar Oliver’s Twist struggled financially for years, resulting in bounced paychecks, late payments to vendors, unpaid rent, and lawsuits. The former employees quoted in this article all asked to remain anonymous because of worries about professional repercussions.

Before Sophon, Long made a name for himself in the bar scene with Oliver’s Twist, a Phinney Ridge bar that he bought in 2017. During the COVID pandemic, he experimented with serving food influenced by his Khmer heritage. When that food was a hit, he announced Sophon, his dream project, which has been a pillar of the Seattle dining scene since it opened in 2024. 

Long’s compelling vision for a restaurant drew the exceptional people to staff it, and soon his vision became a reality. He struck many of them initially as charismatic, funny, and progressive, former staff said. “He came off very kind and warm,” says one former employee. “A lot of us were really excited about Sophon’s story.” 

But Long also had a way of “sugarcoating” things, as one former employee put it. Multiple employees say that he would often make excuses for missing scheduled meetings or why payments were late or why the refrigerators went out.

They were picking up on a pattern that Long himself was aware of. In an email to The Stranger, Long said that he’s dealt with “a personal internal battle for 30 years having to do with my clinical depression and ideations of suicide. When I’m overwhelmed, I unfortunately tuck my head in the sand and have avoided issues.”

Long’s financial troubles started before Sophon. In 2021, Long brought in two business partners, Joel Robinson and Waylon Puckett, who invested tens of thousands of dollars into the newly reopened Oliver’s Twist and the opening of Sophon. 

Last year, Robinson and Puckett sued Long for breach of contract and fraud. They allege that Long forged Robinson’s signature on contracts with restaurant vendors, failed to contribute promised money to the business (where Long was the majority owner), and used the business bank account to pay for his personal life, which, the suit alleges, “included withdrawals to pay for online gambling as well as paying his personal utilities.”

Long says he wasn’t taking any salary when Sophon opened and was in the habit of using Oliver’s Twist money to pay his expenses when he owned the bar by himself. He says he “failed to remember that I now have partners, therefore, any cost of living/personal utilities should go through proper processes.” Long also admitted to forging Robinson’s signature on contracts with vendors, however, writing in an email that “I made a lapse in judgment in doing so because my partners were unavailable.” But he denies lying to his partners or not contributing funds to the partnership. (Robinson and Puckett declined to comment on the contents of the suit.)

The suit also claims Long hid his debts from his partners. Attached to the lawsuit is a 2024 letter from a debt collection agency saying that the business owed $1.1 million as a result of an unpaid $879,000 COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan that had accrued interest and fees. Among the other debts incurred by the business was the approximately $30,000 it owed to a financial services company after selling a portion of its future receipts; that company sued Oliver’s Twist for missed payments and won the case in 2023. In May 2024, according to the lawsuit, the three partners met and agreed that Oliver’s Twist should enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but it is unclear if that ever happened. Long declined to comment on the bankruptcy.

Robinson and Puckett attempted to settle the case through arbitration, according to court records, but are now seeking a default judgement against Long because they haven’t been able to schedule an arbitration sessions, the records show. Long declined to comment about the current status of the lawsuit or whether he is being represented by an attorney.

Oliver’s Twist had also fallen behind on its rent. By May 2024, the bar owed its landlord over $120,000, according to court records, and after Long renewed the lease he missed more payments. In December, the landlord initiated eviction proceedings against Oliver’s Twist. By then, the bar had been closed for two months. 

According to Long, Oliver’s Twist closed because “business was too slow and rent was too high.” (He also characterized the closure as temporary in an interview with the Seattle Times, saying the bar was “on its way to closing” permanently.) 

Former employees say the bar wasn’t paying vendors on time. More than one say that it went through stretches of not serving any food beyond popcorn, which they worried was against Seattle law.

One bartender says that after multiple missed paychecks, the Oliver’s Twist team began to leave until he was the only one left. He went over a month at a time without getting any pay himself, he says. “It ended up being kind of a social experiment for myself, because I had nothing better to do, to see what it's like to go work in the industry as a bartender without getting any compensation,” he says. “Because no more candles were being delivered, I was actually taking up candlemaking as a hobby and recycling the paraffin wax and making more candles. And I was actually having a pretty good time by myself.” 

Long eventually paid him the wages he was owed, he says. Former employees say, and Long admits, that there were two cooks who had not been paid for their work as of February.

Despite Sophon’s high-profile success, it had similar problems. 

In the spring of 2025, five former employees say, the restaurant switched from a direct deposit system to distributing checks every pay period. But workers soon began complaining their checks were bouncing or being placed on hold by their banks, according to screenshots of text messages and photos seen by The Stranger, and the complaints intensified into the summer. 

“There was an extended period of time where by the time another two week pay period came to an end, multiple employees were still waiting for their previous paycheck to be deposited, or waiting for the hold placed on them to expire,” said one employee in a statement to The Stranger, adding that by August, workers were demanding cashier’s checks because they assumed regular checks wouldn’t clear. (Long says that the cashier's checks were costing him $8 apiece.) Former employees also said that Long was slow to repair broken fridges—including a CO2 leak in the keg cooler, two employees say—stopped paying for the city to pick up recycling, and that W-2 tax forms for the 2024 year didn’t reflect their correct hours. In one case, an employee emailed Long to say that she only made a third of the income that was listed on the W-2.

Mitchell, the general manager, has accused Long on Instagram of allowing employees’ health insurance coverage to lapse, even though they continued to have premiums taken out of their paychecks. In one instance, according to screenshots seen by The Stranger, an employee found out about the lapse from a letter from their insurance company, after they'd already sought medical care.

Tensions came to a head when Mitchell went on a trip to Cambodia in January, leaving it up to Long to process payroll. Two staffers say they did not get paid but worked the first weekend of February anyway; one former employee says that Long told them he wouldn’t have the money to pay them unless the restaurant re-opened. “At this point, we've been through so many things with him,” one employee says. “We're not feeling like we're going to get paid, and it's the last straw, and the communication is really bad.”

On February 10 and 11, Long decided to close Sophon, this employee says. He also told the staff that there was a hold on the business account, former employees say. When some employees tried to sign up for unemployment, they discovered that they couldn’t, because their hours had not been properly reported to the state. (Long says this resulted from a “lapse in taking care of my tasks accordingly.”)

In the midst of all of that, most of the staff went on “strike,” as they put it, demanding Long fix their paperwork so they could collect unemployment and pay employees what they were owed, including the two former cooks at Oliver’s Twist.

Long and his staff met on February 17, and he handed out about $20,000 in cash (so Long could avoid cashier’s checks fees). Long says that he has updated the paperwork with the Washington State Employment Security Department and that former employees should be able to collect unemployment. But with the cooks unpaid and Long not communicating with the employees to their satisfaction, most of the staff resigned February 20. “As far as we are concerned, the employment relationship is severed due to his breach of contract and labor laws,” Mitchell wrote in an email.

Long says that he is working on paying the Oliver’s Twist employees. He reopened Sophon last Tuesday with mostly new hires along with some employees who did not go on strike, he says. Mitchell describes the current staff as a “skeleton crew,” writing in an email that “the entire original team that built the restaurant’s reputation has walked away.”

Those who quit may not miss the chaos, but many will miss one another. 

“We supported each other through a lot of hard, personal stuff,” says a former employee who began working at Sophon not long after it opened. “That’s a piece of it—this community and these beautiful relationships that I'm walking away with, which feels like the silver lining. And I think the other piece is a lot of sadness and a lot of anger and grief. I feel like we had something really special. This restaurant could have been perfect.”

In 1984, American science fiction writer William Gibson defined “cyberspace” (a term he coined) as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators” in the near-future world of his novel, Neuromancer, where human consciousness drifts through a blinding data-world of corporate geometries.

More than three decades later, the English documentarian Adam Curtis traced how that hallucination became reality in his BBC documentary HyperNormalisation: “Over the past 40 years, politicians, financiers, and technological utopians—rather than face up to the real complexities of the world—retreated. Instead, they constructed a simpler version of the world in order to hang onto power, and as this fake world grew, all of us went along with it, because the simplicity was reassuring.”

Today, this “simpler version of the world” fits into our pockets. The average American now spends around five hours per day—about 2.5 months per year—on their smartphone. Most artists now depend on social media for visibility, and a small handful of tech companies now determine how culture is discovered and monetized. Whether you experience this moment as a dystopian technocratic existence, an interconnected digital wonderland, or some incredibly boring third thing, technology doesn’t just permeate most every facet of life, it intercepts substantial chunks of the day, warps tastes, and short-circuits human interaction.

It’s true that within many artistic fields, digital tools have made an extraordinary amount of art possible and accessible, but there is also the reality that the hyper-integration of technology has left the door open too wide for manipulation by powerful corporations, and has encouraged isolation between artists and audiences.

“Take Spotify, for example,” says Aaron C. Schroeder, owner and recording engineer of Pierced Ears Recording Co.—a tiny yet wondrous basement studio in the Ballard neighborhood. “They bury musicians that don’t pay them money to get promotions on playlists,” he says, referring to the streaming service’s forcing of lower royalty rates on artists to be included on “Discovery” playlists, a practice that bears striking resemblance to the radio “payola” schemes that were outlawed by Congress in 1960. “I just don’t like having someone else in control. And then how do you get people to hear you in a digital space? Well, now you have to promote in a digital space, so now we’re stuck on social media constantly. A false reality of a sort, or a second reality. And I’m analog.”

On a recent Sunday morning, Schroeder invited me to his studio to show me the workings of his Presto 8N vinyl lathe, an original from the 1940s. It “cuts” records in real time, a process in which a Van Eps Duotone cutter head—a needle-like device on an adjustable arm—carves sound vibrations into a soft vinyl disc (or record blank) in the form of the continuous spiral grooves, which your home record player needle then traces back into sound.

“You can really record any sound onto the record,” he explains. We discuss his ideas for hosting pop-ups around town where anyone can record anything they want on the spot and take home the record, and his ideas for bespoke groove patterns, like recording the record from the center outward, or in sequential spirals.

Schroeder uses a mix of digital and analog recording technologies, and maintains a website for his studio and business-only Instagram and TikTok accounts for minimalist marketing (“It’s like Backpage”), but he talks of tech devices and programs as though they are only one kind of tool among many, the amount of importance we have placed on them being unfortunate. The idea that a platform could change their business model or simply close shop if profits dried up, essentially deleting the most visible evidence of musicians’ artistic output, is also a possibility that haunts Schroeder. If that happens, “who’s to say you ever existed?”

Kelly Froh, executive director of Short Run Comix festival-turned-nonprofit, is among the many people I spoke with who think physical media—things like handmade books, visual art, hand-drawn comics and zines, vinyl records and cassette tapes—and the communities they spawn provide a necessary counterbalance to tech domination in the arts. “Why do any of these smaller festivals exist if we can just buy whatever we want online? It’s so you can show up, and you can actually look into the eyes of the artist, and talk to the artist, to the person that made these books.”

Froh is a firm believer in real-life settings where you can meet the artist at the point of purchase, and likely come away with personal artist recommendations, a newfound knowledge and appreciation for the time and techniques that go into the art form, and make any number of person-to-person connections—all weaknesses of the digital marketplace.

The online environment also gives the false sense of infinite choices and egalitarian platforming, when in reality, online algorithms (not to mention governments) suppress many artists and voices if you don’t follow their guidelines, both stated and unstated, before the general public even has a chance to click on them.

With physical media, however, “there’s no need to censor yourself,” Froh says. “If you were to promote something on the internet, you would have to block out certain words so the post doesn’t get buried. I don’t want to think about any of that shit. Just do your own thing.”

Froh also sees organizational potential in physical formats for off-the-grid information sharing in times of political or social turmoil: “Zines are untrackable in that way, and they’re not gonna be blocked by some evil algorithm.” She continues, “For people who feel helpless as our democracy is crumbling, guess what? They’re screen printing posters, they’re making pins and buttons, they’re making zines and fliers, posters on poles.” Indeed, at a recent anti-ICE rally on Capitol Hill, organizers were handing out keychain whistles packaged with a zine that outlined the whistle’s uses and whom to contact if officers are spotted; on a recent trip to Hex Enduction Records & Books in Lake City, I left with a tour guide zine for safe small-town queer hangouts, and leafed through an impressive hand-bound book about anarchism and “settler socialism.”

James Ballinger, who ran the influential heavy-rock-focused Seattle music zine The Seattle Passive Aggressive during its decade-long run in the 2010s, agrees that physical media is an important part of the social ecosystem. “It keeps things true, and it keeps things away from [that] kind of outside influence, or a fear of saying things that’ll make people upset, or [come off as too] political. I print it, I can’t go back and change it, or delete it. I can’t go back and edit that typo, it’s out there. Technology’s weird, and social media has made people weird as far as what they feel they’re free to say. So I think zine culture is important, because you can say what you need to say, get it out there.” Ballinger also takes issue with the thoughtlessness that social media rewards through ambiguous reposts and bandwagon “likes.” Conversely, physical media “allows you to not just say what you want to say because you’re passionate about it; you have to collect your thoughts and say things intelligently.”

Across town at Concuss Creations screen printing, local musician and artist Rob Castro prints band merch on the same press as protest swag. “Since I print my own shirts out of my own shop, I can basically print anything I dream of. If I want to flex a run of protest tees before a march, I can do that.”

Kay Redden, founder and operator of Seattle cassette-tape label Den Tapes, likens the choice to interact with physical media to shopping local, given the increasingly competitive attention economy of today: “It’s kind of like voting with your dollar, like when you’re opting to support a local business rather than go to Home Depot or whatever.” In this way, devoting time to the making or consuming of physical art can be seen as a net positive in the war over our time and data points—each non-technological activity we participate in has become an act of micro-revolution.

Back in the Pierced Ears studio, Schroeder is walking me through the process of folding a zine. Using scissors, he cuts a slit across the middle of a halved 8”x11” piece of paper, then accordions it into eighths. The result is a miniature flipbook complete with quirky yet informative diagrams showing the step-by-step process of recording a record on his equipment. He puts one in the sleeve of each record he cuts.

“It is a problem in every aspect of Western civilization,” he says. “We use tools to try and make things we consider to be beautiful, but I think we have corrupted the concept of beauty. The natural world is what’s actually beautiful, a manicured lawn, not so much… I’m a fan of music with edges.” I suggest that an ideal metaphor may be a Zen garden, where humans manipulate natural elements with tools, but the tools aren’t pesticides that are supposed to kill any imperfections.

After thinking for a moment, he answers, “We’re just doing an odd beautification ritual. I don’t think everything looking the same is the correct answer.”

The Stranger's Morning News Roundup by Charles Mudede

Lilli Moreno, I did not know it was you who was killed by a car on February 16, 2026, until a friend showed me a photograph at a bar not far from where you died. I instantly saw the Lilli who once asked me to explain the actual meaning of Schrodinger’s cat. A few months later, I also saw you operating a table at the late night art market at Bad Bar. We were, in time, close to the final hour of August 11, 2024. I bought one of your small metal matchboxes (this one decorated with a picture of a flower) for $11. We talked a little, we laughed a little. And later I was in the psychedelic bar watching one of my favorite scenes in Star Wars on a very flat TV screen above the bottles of spirits: the setting of the two suns on the parched planet Tatooine. I will still have your matchbox. It will live among my books.

The world has not changed one bit since you left, Lilli Moreno. In fact, it’s getting worse.

We may be gutting our urban forestry program but fear not, Washington State is still funding the construction of new urban highways.

www.khq.com/legislature/...

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Today will be cool (low of 42) and rainy. It’s the kind of day that’s made for the charmingly melancholy jazz of Bill Evans. At this point, however, we can forget about any kind of snow falling upon the living and the dead. We can also expect, when summer temperatures arrive, which might be as soon as next month, an explosion of rats and bugs because winter proved to be hospitable. Indeed, I can remember when Seattle winters were so cold that rats would climb into car engines for warmth or shelter only to freeze to death. Those days are more and more receding into the past in our warming world.

Dem superstar Rep. Jasmine Crockett lost Texas’ Democratic Senate primary to populist and God-loving Rep. James Talarico (and it wasn’t even close—53% to 46%). The race between Attorney General Ken Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn was close and, as a consequence, is headed to a runoff election on May 26. Expect the battle between these hyenas to get very, very ugly. 

Greedy defense contractors have sold the US government very expensive and clumsy interceptor weapon systems. The whole dismal story is in a report posted this week by Bloomberg: “Iran's Missile Math: $20,000 Drones Take on $4 Million Patriots.” The drones are called Shahed-136, which are basically “small, rudimentary cruise missiles.” It’s estimated that Iran has about 80,000 of these weapons, and can manufacture about 500 of them a day. Also, Shaheds can be transported by a conventional truck to any launch site in the country. The US, on other hand, uses cumbersome missiles that cost millions to hit just one of these cheap-ass drones. The fear on the US side is that, because our defence contractors can produce only 600 or so of these expensive weapons a year, their stock will soon be depleted by the constant swarm of inexpensive drones, which have the power to destroy buildings or badly damage military bases.

Qatar's Patriot interceptor missiles will last four days at the current rate of use, Bloomberg reported. Qatar has requested help countering drones, which have proven a greater threat than ballistic missiles, while the UAE has requested medium-range air defense assistance. #MiddleEast

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— NOELREPORTS (@noelreports.com) March 2, 2026 at 9:58 AM

The US has known about these Iranian drones for years but failed to make needed cost-effective adjustments because, arguably, there’s no money in making and selling cheap stuff to US taxpayers. Defense contractors want the US to buy state-of-the-art shit, even if they are impractical and ineffective.

Realizing the great disadvantage the Iranian drones present, the US is now making an exact copy of the Shahed, called LUCAS, in Arizona at $35,000 a pop. The factory began operation last year; meaning, the US had until then no idea how to make cheap missiles. They had to steal the technology from the Iranians. And what can we conclude from this fiasco? The US’s military certainly has the biggest budget in the world by far ($1 trillion annually), but it might be filled with expensive junk. China, on the other hand, has the second-largest budget ($250 billion annually), but that money might purchase or manufacture weapons at reasonable or state-controlled prices. If this is the case, then China has, due to a lack of super-greedy defense contractors, the superior arsenal.

If the Iranian drones do the trick, if they hit regional American military bases and oil production sites on the regular, then the US consumer can kiss goodbye to cheap oil forever. It will take years to repair the damaged infrastructure, busted bases, and restore confidence in the US’s ability to protect Gulf assets.

I read somewhere that some ants send their elderly to fight wars. Apparently, the young are too precious to waste on deadly conflicts. With humans, the old tend to start wars and send their youth to fight them. It seems we humans have it backwards. Those who declare war must be handed the guns and armour (or an exoskeleton developed by Elon Musk) and head straight to the battlefield. That includes Captain Bone Spurs.

Who knew? The pigeon that hangs out in Beacon Hill Station actually has an Instagram account. Presently, the bird only has  27 followers. All humans. I have seen this pigeon several times while waiting for a train in one of America’s deepest subways. The bird walks around with an air of total calm. No predators down here. No rain. Some food. And generally nice people going this way and that.

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Let’s end AM with a compilation that was released 30 years ago and launched Seattle’s post-Sir Mix-a-Lot hiphop, Tribal Music’s Do the Math.