The Stranger September 2026 by Noisy Creek

IT ’S T H E

2026

GENIUS AWA R D S , DA R L I N ’!

SEPTEMBER 2026 • THESTRANGER.COM

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SEPTEMBER 2026

4 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

was going to write this whole bit about the Genius Awards from the perspective of a Costco sheet cake, but then fucking Dolly Parton died, so fuck jokes. She was 80 years old. Older than old enough to die, yet I’m somehow shocked and devastated. The great, especially the great who are good, remain forever too young to die. “Genius” is a complicated word, both because we as a society can’t define genius and because it introduces a troubling concept for anyone who has so much as had a creative idea: People have “it” or they do not. If genius is a rare and supernatural quality woven like a golden thread into the double helix of our DNA, we mere mortals with threads of tin, copper, silver, and plain string are doomed, because our potential is limited. Or is there hope? Does “genius” crawl up the arm of one’s life like a radioactive spider and transform us from ordinary to extraordinary with a single bite? Is it hidden somewhere in the stack of books a person has read, or the music they have listened to, or the art they’ve seen? Is it Mommy and Daddy’s money? The sweat from our brow? Is it the closest thing on Earth to magic, or the only alchemy humans can perform without the assistance of a Large Hadron Collider? I say “all of the above,” but if I had to make a comparison—and this is writing, so I should—I’d compare it to chemistry.

A chemistry of thoughts, experiences, and art exploding from the beaker of one lucky soul for the benefit of many even luckier souls. (Money? Money helps.) Only chemistry could explain Dolly Parton. But defining her genius, or scribbling down the formula? Impossible. Still, our country—divided over the difficult question of whether to have a horrible country or a plain bad one—somehow came to the consensus that this woman was a genius. Probably because she had a spooky power to make us feel, but I don’t recall us taking a vote on her “genius.” Uncomfortable with ambiguous questions of human potential, we at The Stranger have simplified matters. We decide whom the geniuses are, or at least, who we are willing to crown as a Genius and lay $10,000 at their feet. Not that selecting these bold few was easy. The best we can do is guess at genius. The Genius Committee, of which I was not a part (too stupid), spent months deliberating on who deserved the kudos and cash and why they deserved it. They hit on something great— in these times, a true genius uses their talent to bring people living in our disconnected, lonely world together to remember what is easy to forget: that community is what makes life worth living. —Vivian McCall, Interim Editor in Chief

This Issue Brought to You By… Merriam-webbdawg VH1 Divas Live 1998 The all new Hyundai Elantra Dreaming of Luigi during open enrollment Late in life Virgos

Flying first class once and being ruined forever

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Saiga antelope and their big dick noses

your Substack about how

Amtrak Special Operations Command

Hating the game, loving the player

Eight 12” x 16" cakes weighing 9.5 pounds each

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Gushers, Lemonheads, Twizzlers, to name a few candies that should sponsor us

Your drama, not my drama

Getting rear-ended with a cake in your car

Subterfuge

My circus, my monkeys

Emergency cake surgery

Press-ons

Big congrats to Dave Caplan on his retirement. THANK YOU for everything you’ve helped us with (and for putting up with all those late nights). We’ll miss you!

6 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

Henry Bischofberger Violins Third Generation Violin Maker

Schedule an Appointment to PLAY! KirklandViolins.com Call/Text: 425-822-0717 SALES

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8 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

TABLE OF CONTENTS Last Month This Month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 All the Assassins, Dead Chimpanzees, and Floating Asylums You May Have Missed in August

I, Anonymous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Two-Sided Trail Fail

What Does the “Mamdani Moment” Look Like in Seattle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Instead of Speculating Like Everyone Else, We Asked the Local Democratic Socialists of America

The Lunch Lawyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Attorney Who Picks Fights With Seattle’s Most Famous Restaurants

Guest Rants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Vote No on the Anti-Queer I-001 and the Anti-Trans I-638

Where to Scream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Protests, Rallies, and Other Ways to Get Involved in September

The Stranger’s 2026 Genius Award Winners . . . . . . . . 30 These Artists Literally Take the Cake (and $10,000 Each)

Film: The Beacon Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Plus: Six More Film Faves

Food: Chef Lisa Bi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Plus: Six More Food Faves

Literature: Anastacia-Reneé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Plus: Six More Literature Faves

Music: Kay Redden/Den Tapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Plus: Six More Music Faves

Performance: Betty Wetter & TUSH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Plus: Six More Performance Faves

Visual Art: Actualize Artist in Residency . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Plus: Six More Visual Art Faves

Culture & Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 We Had to Add One More Category for the Hard-to-Categorize

Things to Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Music! Visual Art! Literature! Food & Drink! Film! Performance! This & Also That!

Laugh While You Can . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Comics and a Genius Crossword Puzzle!

10 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

Alchemy Art Center is San Juan Island’s Non-Profit Community Art Center! Located on two enchanting rural campuses on San Juan Island.

* Classes * * Artist Residencies * * Community Studios * * Music and Performances * * Public Art Activities * * Gallery and Farm Store * Fall Weekend Class Highlights: Plant-Based Film Developing Saturday, 9/19 - Sunday, 9/20, 10am-2pm Dyeing with Fresh Leaf Indigo Saturday, 9/26, 3:30-6:30pm Milk Carton Intaglio Printmaking Sunday, 10/4, 12-3pm Leathercraft: Make Your Own Wallet Saturday, 10/24 - Sunday, 10/25, 3:30-7:30 pm Intro to Batik Friday, 11/13 - Sunday, 11/15, 2-6pm

Make something handmade and treasured together.

•

alchemyartcenter.com

SEPTEMBER 2026

I Saw U…

Buying Brussels Sprouts at Safeway, Eating Pizza at Central Cinema, and Walking Your Dog at the Strawberry Festival ILLUSTRATIONS BY AYA BORUCKI

id you recently share a ~*moment*~ with someone while riding the bus, dancing at the club, or standing in line at the supermarket? Do you want to try to reconnect? Submit your own I Saw U at TheStranger.com/ isawu, and maybe we’ll include it in the next roundup! Look for a new batch of I Saw U messages every week on TheStranger.com. Playboy Bunny Boy Picking up Trash I saw you on the corner of 43rd and University Way. I giggled to myself the rest of the night because you were so attractive to me in your mask.

Cute Scruffy dog named Napoleon, even cuter Human We chatted about flash tattoos at the Vashon Strawberry Festival. You and your friends were so nice but I was nervous to ask you to a coffee! Cutie with the brussel sprouts at the Safeway on Madison You complimented my shirt while we waited for the light, I was lost in a song and should’ve asked your name! Maybe I can try again over drinks? Umpqua Hot (for you) Springs Fully naked, you offered the best conversation and company. A fellow solo adventurer and hot sauce enthusiast. I hope your niece enjoyed her 1st bday! Ballard Market Flower Line Guy You were buying flowers. Dark cuffed jeans, tote bag, and we kept catching each other’s eyes while I waited for my friends. Save a stem for me?

the screen. You smiled at me, and the comedy became a romance. Dropped earbud Monday. Outside Poquitos. You were on your bike checking your phone. I was talking on mine. You dropped your earbud because you thought I was talking Biking Up Pike Street on Your Peregrine You were on your Singular Peregrine, I was on my Gunnar. We agreed having one drink and biking home is perfection. Would like to finish the convo!

Monkey Grind coffee on 8/6 You: stunning, grey streaked pony tail, tattoos, white tank top, patterned cloth pants. Me: shaved head, glasses, sleeves, w/ very full latte. #1 Sailor at Sloop Tavern Aug 10th. In line for a drink. You: Handsome Sailor, first place team called “PANIC” Me: Short brunette in front of you wanting to know more. Drinks? High Divide Loop Passed you and friends early in the day. We talked about your backpack. That was it. People’s Soccer Match - security dreamboat You were focused on keeping protestors safe. Grey hat, pretty eyes, stache, name starts with D? My competence kink wants to buy you a drink.

I was your first dance at Parkchata Your name starts with a V. You were lovely to dance with, and we went for another song! I was wearing a white suit and sunglasses. Let’s dance again?

Three guys, three dogs, and a “platz” at Temple Pastries You asked me to watch the smallest pup while you went inside. Wish I’d introduced myself. Remind me of the pups’ names? Coffee sometime?

Cutie At The Movies Sat next to you at Central Cinema. You had pizza & rosé. Your eyes shined brighter than

Is it a match? Follow The Stranger on Instagram and leave a comment on our weekly I Saw U posts to connect!

12 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

LAST MONTH THIS MONTH

All the Assassins, Dead Chimpanzees, and Floating Asylums You May Have Missed in August

In the most devastating blaze since the burnings of Alexandria and Rome, three runaway wildfires ravaged the cultural center of the Western World. We’re talking, of course, of Spokane, the city you’ve been huffing for a month. *** Can we recommend a remedy for the toxic fumes? It’s called glutathione, a scientifically unproven supplement with no known benefits and several potential harms, as it was recalled by at least two pharmacies due to bacterial contamination that may have caused fever, chills, severe headaches, and other symptoms. The International Association of Fire Fighters union warned that consumers should be skeptical of claims that glutathione can prevent disease, even if a group of fake doctors offered the substance to fire fighters minutes after they’d inhaled a three-car garage.

*** The crew of expert sailor Mark Zuckerberg’s mega-yacht do not know the rules of the high seas, like how you should rescue a vessel in distress when the US Coast Guard asks you to. The Launchpad crew claim they didn’t hear the call to help the

wasn’t the first time editors had protected him from humiliating himself. Calkins had penned a column questioning whether the US women’s soccer team were discrim*** If jerking off has felt routine, allow us a inated against in their battle for equal pay with the men’s team. He also third recommendation, courFuck!! wrote some pro-cop bullshit tesy of law enforcement: elecamidst the George Floyd tric gloves, which are perfect protests in 2020. Finally, for grabbing yourself, or women Calkins can claim the and children, inappropriately. crown editors denied The US government plans him: King of Bad Takes. We look forward to hearing him as a regular on Brandi Kruse’s podcast. *** We are big fans of men humiliating themselves, even men we love. Never in Seattle Mariners franchise history have the M’s gotten their plump, juicy, brand-sponsored asses kicked as hard as they did at American Family Field in Milwaukee. They lost to the Brewers 22-0 as 36,870 cheerful fans watched.

/ FOX URY

YI TT GE

Fuck!

*** This sucks, because we were going to bet The Stranger and all its assets against the now withdrawn Katie Wilson recall petition put forth by a Bruce Harrell voter and her Bruce Harrell–voting husband who are perturbed that the mayor hasn’t solved homelessness or gun violence in eight whole months. *** If you’re hooked on gambling, young man, and your hypos are getting the better of you, it’s about time you take to sea where Washington’s petty laws cannot touch you. We’ve got a second recommendation, and it’s called the Navy. Benefits: nine uninterrupted months with your besties in the beautiful Arabian Sea. Drawbacks: You’re all losing your heads. The USS Abraham Lincoln (named after a man who lost his head, at least part of it) spent

BY NATHALIE GRAHAM AND VIVIAN McCALL

the Joker without Batman? Just a clown with nothing to do. Well, we can think of one thing he can do…

T 20TH CEN

*** The good news is that maybe some of you took the over on how many lives the Spokane fires would destroy and made it big on a soulless prediction market. Hope it was a good one! Washingtonians’ days of betting on tragedy with Kalshi may be through. A judge has barred the company from operES ating in the state, ruling that Kalshi violates our anti-online-gambling laws.

over 250 consecutive days at sea with no port stops. The stinking ship drove sailors to suicidal thoughts. But now they’re going to Thailand, so that’s nice.

small vessel adrift near Alaska and, by the time they did hear the call, a nearby cruise ship was already on it. *** Everyone’s favorite alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione, pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges and admitted to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown hotel in 2024: “I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan,” he said in federal court. “But it was super cool,” he didn’t say. *** Sorry if this is not very helpful right now, but Joe Biden is dying (and Mangione had nothing to do with it). It’s cancer, so hopefully he has good healthcare. But please think of Donald Trump as Donald Trump does: as the victim. What is

to spend $20 million to supply ICE agents with these special gloves. They are powerful and dangerous enough to kill a man in a Kentucky jail, a tagline the glovemaker, Compliant Technologies, rejected before they fired us from our jobs on their crisis communication team. We could’ve had the world at our electric fingertips, guys. *** On the topic of jerk offs, Seattle Times columnist Matt Calkins resigned from the Blethens’ passion project after editors wouldn’t publish his column about the co-owner of the Seattle Storm blowing off post-loss steam by allegedly yelling at some anti-trans teens protesting in support of the Fever’s Sophie Cunningham. In a Substack post, Calkins revealed that this

*** America is a voyeur’s wet dream. The US revealed it spied on the protesters it didn’t shoot during the protests surrounding the Minnesota ICE raids. The Department of Homeland Security infiltrated both leftist and anti-ICE protester groups in Minnesota. They sent undercover operatives to meetings, snuck into group chats, and subpoenaed financial records for groups like labor unions and nonprofits. This came to light in records the Department of Justice submitted in its criminal case against 15 Minneapolis protesters accused of “conspiracy to impede” ICE agents during this winter’s ICE crackdown in the area. *** Something is rotten across the toxic pond in jolly old England. The water. A new Environment Agency report found that every single body of water in England is polluted by toxic chemicals. Those chemicals range from “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS, to microplastics. Only 14.3 percent of surface water has “good” ecological status. Blimey! *** Yet there are even stupider problems in the United Kingdom. According to the BBC, a £430 million cable built to bring electricity to the people of Northern Ireland (good of the English to get around to it) had to be diverted due to the fantasies of transphobic children’s author J.K. Rowling. It’s hard to

14 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

wrinkles, back pain, seeing your mother/ Tacoma. Here’s what we know” is a mas- movement, but in any event, a private father in the mirror, etc.)—for light rail to terclass in headline writing by the Tacoma arbitrator ruled Attiah was wrongly terconnect us with our western News Tribune. If this headline were written minated, and she’s back on the job, the New brethren. That’s five years by the Seattle Times it would read some- York Times reports. later than the day vot- thing like “This popular ocean attrac*** Here’s an American tale: ers were promised tion was found wrong-side up A congressional in 2016—many at a local harbor.” Anyway, candidate salutes things were the whale might have grandfather promised in been struck by a “ w h o g av e 2016—and three cargo ship in Comhis life for years after the mencement Bay, his country,” updated “realign- and NOAA says which was ment” date. But, the corpse does Nazi Gersure, it seems to be not look bloated many. Most happening. Along with the enough with gases of the time to risk exploding, per delay, Sound Transit also /G POV: You ate lettuce. *** ET TY when Western announced it has a $465 the Tribune. Would they move cable and IM AG ES politicians praise million “right of way” budEarth if a real sweet little *** their Nazi families’ guy died? The first chimpanzee ever res- get to buy up the 55 properties that stand Karen Attiah didn’t quite get We hoped for rebellion. war service, they have the message that local book cued by Cle Elum’s Chimpanzee Sanctu- in the way of those future tracks. the good decency to depository magnate and CIA ary Northwest passed away late last month *** “surrounded by both her ‘human friends If you can’t wait, say, decades for transit, maybe contractor Jeff Bezos was reflagging the hide it behind a veil of anti-communism and her chimp family,’” reports Ellens- you’d be willing to wait for the late 8, which Washington Post as a right-wing news- so that everyone is too distracted thinkpaper to please Trump for money when ing about the Soviet menace to rememburg’s Daily Record. Negra, “the Queen of became the hate 8, which is now, she posted, after Charlie Kirk’s ber the Holocaust. But brave New York the Cle Elum Seven,” was captured in the maybe, the greatest 8. Mayor assassination, that she State Sen. Peter Oberacker needed no wild in the 1970s and survived decades Katie Wilson extended “[refuses] to tear my such nuance when he posted a Facebook of hepatitis C testing. We have also the bus-only lane clothes and smear photo of his Nazi grandfather who died now been introduced to the term “surplus along Denny Way ashes on my face fighting the United States with the capchimpanzees,” which is absurd. No chim- to free up more in performative tion “I debated on whether to post this panzee is surplus. If anything, we have a bus space and mourning for a picture, my Grandfather Ludwig Oberget things movshortage of apes. white man that acker who gave his life for his country. I ing. The auto*** e s p o u s e d v i o - salute all who served.” They’re funding the West Seattle light philes aren’t *** lence.” Management rail! And the currency is time! Ha. No, happy! R Dolly Parton, the world’s greatest counlikely would not have / it’s actually just seven billion dollars. It GE *** TT YI try singer , and Tim Curry, the world’s fired her had she praised feels like we should add value to the years, In lighter news, MA G ES a slain leader of America’s greatest character actor, both died at 80, though. It’s going to take nine more of “There’s a big dead Why are you a moose? white supremacist youth dimishing the world’s luster. them—until 2035 (imagine all your extra whale in the Port of T AS M

I EK STOCKTR

parse the details of the story from the foreign language press, but apparently the cable was originally planned to cross a monument to a fictional evil child’s elfin slave named Dobby and was instead rerouted to pass closer to a documented Bronze Age burial site (“typically associated with human AS / burial,” but it could be GETTY IM AG ES another elf ). Sorted then.

S GE MA

U RE OG OTT

I, Anonymous Two-Sided Trail Fail ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEVEN WEISSMAN To the unapologetic mom and child who made me fall off my bike at Seward Park, I think your kid should learn better trail etiquette before being able to ride a bike in the middle of the trail, if they can’t follow “on your left!” Not to mention, barely even staying for a moment to check in after I could finally get up from the ground after avoiding ramming into your child and falling into trees instead, bending my handlebars and my knee. You should ALSO know I was training for a triathlon, was NOT ABLE TO DO THE RACE this past weekend, and my knee is still healing. Four weeks later, and I cannot walk for more than 15 minutes. Seward, have better biking etiquette and trail signage for those kids who don’t know what they’re doing yet. Parents, do better at educating your kids before they go on trails and potentially cause accidents. You never know what’s going on in someone else’s life and how your ignorance could impact them. Sincerely, Woman who fell off her bike and didn’t receive an ounce of empathy

To adults riding their bike in a public space who would rather yell at children and crash their bike than slow down, Please slow the fuck down. “On your left!” does not absolve you from the need to be aware of other people in a shared walking and bike path in a public park. No one gives a shit if you are training for a triathlon; slow the fuck down if there are people around. If you are going so fast that you hit a tree and bent your handlebars in Seward Park, you need to slow down. You received no empathy because you were being extremely reckless and endangering that child and yourself. You are an adult in full control of your body, and the child that you are yelling at is a child learning to ride their bike. While my kids have never been involved in this situation, I have actually seen this happen more than once, and it is ridiculous and absolutely the fault of the adult every… single… time. Sincerely, Biker Dad who is tired of seeing adults blow past children on their bikes and then crashing

Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous, and maybe 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. Read more I, Anonymous letters every week at TheStranger.com.

16 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

FREE ADMISSION Open TUES through SUNDAY, 10am–4pm

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SEPTEMBER 2026

What Does the “Mamdani Moment” Look Like in Seattle? Instead of Speculating Like Everyone Else, We Asked the Local Democratic Socialists of America WORDS AND PHOTO BY HUNTER PAULI

eattle’s media and political classes have inundated readers for months now with dubious stories about what the election of socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a slate of aligned New York legislators means for left-wing politics in Seattle. What none of these analyses have done is talk to the local affiliate of the nationwide socialist organization Mamdani and his slate are members of and owe their victory to, the Democratic Socialists of America. In the journalistic tradition of gathering information from people who know what they’re talking about, The Stranger sat down with the cochairs of Seattle DSA’s Electoral Working Group, who coordinate the organization’s efforts to win on the ballot. What’s been the immediate effect of the Mamdani media circus on the organization? For starters, a large bump in membership over the past three months, says cochair Carlos Jimenez Guiza, from 2,000 to roughly 2,500. “So we’re looking at like a 25 percent increase, which I think has been like the fastest spurt I’ve seen in the two years I’ve been here,” he says. Jimenez Guiza is fairly new to DSA, first getting involved during Rep. Shaun Scott’s successful 2024 legislative campaign while living in Capitol Hill. Scott was the first DSA member elected to the Washington State Legislature. “Starting to organize to elect my own representative seemed like a kind of an organic way to get started,” Jimenez Guiza says. While Seattle DSA has a number of working groups and committees devoted to socialist organizing across the community— from labor to Palestinian solidarity—most Americans experience politics through the lens of elections, and Jimenez Guiza credits electoral work as a specific tactic to attract and mobilize new members. “It’s just like the lowest hanging fruit to engage with people about politics and changing the world,” he says. Livey Beha, the Electoral Working Group’s other cochair, joined Silicon Valley DSA in 2019 and has been with the Seattle branch since 2022. She says that for people not paying attention to DSA, it may seem like the party’s big wins in New York came out of nowhere, when they were actually the result of years of electoral organizing and gradual victories. Seattle DSA wants to mimic that strategy and duplicate its success.

In addition to Seattle DSA, the city also has a chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of Washington. Like youth wings in every political movement, they don’t always see eye to eye with the mothership. YDSA endorsed Katie Wilson for mayor, while Seattle DSA voted not to. “We literally have a document that we reference as we train up our volunteers, from New York City, about their strategy, and it was written eight years ago, and we still reference that as like this is what they’re doing, and we’re trying to replicate, and we recognize we’re a few years behind,” she says. In general, the idea is to devote member resources to a smaller number of winnable elections and use those victories to attract new members. When that document was written, Mamdani was just another new DSA member working on unsuccessful election campaigns. But within a few years, he was one of nine DSA-endorsed candidates elected to New York’s state legislature. After helping Mamdani get reelected to his seat twice, NYC-DSA made a bid for the mayor’s office, and voters elected Mamdani in 2025, making him a household name. Beha says that some of the group’s electoral strategy was “xeroxed over from New York to a certain extent” and helped them be strategic in how they approach races and choose candidates. “We’re not trying to

win just one election. We’re trying to build a political machine,” she says. After a long losing streak stretching back to the organization’s rekindling after Donald Trump’s election in 2016 (they had roughly 50 members at the time), Seattle DSA is going into the general election with

They’re winning elections after years of stumbling, and added 500 new members in 3 months. two sure-thing legislative campaigns, doubling the number of socialists in the legislature within two years of electing their first representative. Some of its success stems from the organization voting to amend their endorsement policy in early 2024 to focus solely on materially supporting candidates willing to get with DSA’s program and eschewing endorsements signalling general support

to left-wing candidates outside the organization. A DSA endorsement isn’t just a sticker for a campaign flyer anymore. It is a commitment to join the organization and be accountable to its members in exchange for an army of organized campaigners. Even if for practical purposes trial and error has shown it’s critical to still run on the Democratic Party ticket, to construct a political machine, one must act like a party. “We still want to run principled socialist campaigns, but we’re going to do what we can to make sure that they win, because that’s what actually drives growth. And I think those are just aspects of what’s kind of been emerging as a basic electoral strategy, diffusing initially from New York,” Jimenez Guiza says. After years of losing elections, Seattle DSA won its first major victory in 2024, successfully mobilizing canvassers to first place a minimum wage increase on the ballot in Renton, and then getting voters to pass it. “With Raise the Wage Renton, that was really our first big independent win, independent of too much outside support,” Beha says. She says the first thing organizers have to

18 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

Held Together Form Over Function 2026

Featuring Becca Fuhrman, Kimberly Trowbridge, Kelly Bjork and more.

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SEPTEMBER 2026

do well is talk to voters—”Do you think the minimum wage should be higher? Why is it $4 less in Renton than it is in Seattle?”—and that the extended canvassing campaign in Renton informed their strategic door-knocking efforts and contributed to Shaun Scott’s subsequent win in the 43rd District. What does this new endorsement process look like in practice? A recent example can be found in Seattle DSA’s vote to endorse Jaelynn Scott for the 37th Legislative District in the Washington House of Representatives this year, but not Katie Wilson for mayor last year. The organization’s endorsement process is quite transparent. First, candidates fill out a detailed questionnaire. Then the Electoral Working Group questions them and offers a recommendation to members, and those members hold a Q&A with the candidates before a member-wide vote. Records of the process are posted online. Jaelynn Scott was willing to go along with DSA’s requirements, she got the nod from the Electoral Working Group, and members voted to endorse her.

“We’re not trying to win just one election. We’re trying to build a political machine.” Katie Wilson’s application for an endorsement went quite opposite. According to Seattle DSA’s public records, Wilson wouldn’t commit to a number of key expectations of a DSA-endorsed candidate: She wouldn’t join DSA, identify publicly as a socialist in campaign materials, cross-endorse other DSA candidates, share election data such as volunteer lists and voter databases with the chapter, or commit to meeting with the Socialists in Office Committee that keeps DSA-endorsed candidates accountable to the organization (as Rep. Shaun Scott does on a regular basis). Wilson’s policies on homeless sweeps, police funding, and Palestine were also out of alignment with the organization, according to the EWG Steering Committee’s recommendation not to endorse. A resolution by elected chapter leaders recommending Seattle DSA not endorse Wilson also mentioned that the Transit Riders Union—cofounded and led at the time by Wilson—“sent an email encouraging its members to join Seattle DSA for the purpose of supporting Katie Wilson’s endorsement” (they weren’t thrilled by this). In the chapter-wide vote, members chose not to endorse Wilson, though Seattle DSA still encouraged members to vote for her, and many members volunteered for her campaign. Come the general election, Wilson barely squeaked by with a 2,011-vote margin. Seattle DSA has since published a number of communiqués criticizing her sweeps of the homeless and flip-flopping on surveillance cameras. As for the independent socialist mayor’s stab at political endorsements (which many commentators compared to Mamdani’s), both her candidates lost badly in the primary election, while Seattle DSA’s won easily. Despite years of support during elections

from DSA, Seattle’s longtime socialist city council member Kshama Sawant also did not receive an endorsement from Seattle DSA for her congressional campaign, which did not survive the primary. “Sawant was very clear that she was not interested in that type of endorsement,” Beha says. A more recent application for endorsement was filed by 37th Legislative District candidate Kelabe Tewolde, a young progressive who beat long-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos in the August primary. Seattle DSA had scheduled endorsement Q&A meetings with Tewolde in late August, but he rescinded the application before they were held. Considering he’s in a good position to win the general election based on his primary performance, it could have been a good get for DSA to secure a third state legislator. (The group will be door-knocking in the 37th District for Jaelynn Scott anyway.) “Shortly before he withdrew, he told us it was not the right time, and that he hopes to work with us in the future. We’re not really sure of the exact reason beyond that, so we don’t really want to speculate,” Jimenez Guiza says. “But just speaking for me, I hope that he just continues to engage with the organization in a way that hopefully in the future both he and our members think an endorsement is the right move.” Asked by The Stranger why he rescinded his DSA endorsement application, Tewolde did not offer a direct reason. “It’s exciting to see a generation of young, progressive leaders win primaries, and elected office nationwide. I’m inspired by these diverse voices, and the diverse viewpoints they bring to urgent policy and political discussions. Some of these leaders seek formal DSA support, and some do not. My campaign is building a broad-based coalition that is growing every day. I welcome support from all who want to be part of our growing movement for change, and I appreciate the support from DSA and others in this effort!” Tewolde wrote in an email. So if Shaun Scott and Jaelynn Scott are both shoe-ins, and they’re not mobilizing to support Tewolde, what is Seattle DSA’s army of door-knockers going to do ahead of the November general election? While there will still be a field campaign for Jaelynn, members also voted to oppose hedge fund manager Brian Heywood’s right-wing ballot initiatives, so Seattle DSA members will be out fighting to preserve the Millionaires Tax and defeat the anti-trans agenda alongside the establishment left. All of it is useful experience building capacity for bigger campaigns down the line and creating a base of DSA-friendly voters in the 37th Legislative District, Jimenez Guiza says. Seattle DSA is also planning to run a city council candidate during next year’s election—the first with ranked-choice voting— though there’s been no endorsement yet. “I think the thing that gets me every time I just think about our work together is that it’s all volunteer,” Beha says. “Like, we are just normal people, like bartenders, bus drivers, office workers, who are just spending our evenings doing this together, and we’re up against folks who are professional politicals or the political class, and that we have seen some wins. To me, that is pretty astonishing.”

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SEPTEMBER 2026

The Lunch Lawyer

The Attorney Who Picks Fights With Seattle’s Most Famous Restaurants BY HARRY CHEADLE PHOTOS BY BILLIE WINTER

Would a normal, boring lawyer recline in his tennis shoes? No, he wouldn’t.

f you work in the restaurant industry and your boss shorts your paycheck, you have limited options. You could quit, with or without sending your boss a nasty message, and start looking for a new gig. You could file a complaint with the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries or Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards, though the investigatory process typically takes months to complete. Or you could file a lawsuit, a choice that may lead you to the cramped, single-room office of Steven Toff. Toff is the founder of Bread & Roses Law Group, a firm that specializes in employment law. He sues employers for discrimination of various kinds, for wage theft, and for denying workers mandatory breaks. Bread & Roses has taken on big employers like Boeing, Tesla, Whole Foods, and Thomson Reuters, but after Toff filed a class action lawsuit against the fine-dining restaurant Canlis in 2023,

he became a go-to resource for restaurant workers in Seattle. He’s sued restaurant owners, helped workers file complaints, and assisted employees looking to unionize. To him, it’s all an extension of his prior career as a labor organizer and union advocate; he wants to provide a way for workers in a precarious industry to claw back a few of their rights. Restaurants, he says, are “where you see many of the problems I care most about: low wages, unstable schedules, tip dependency, informal (and often abusive) power structures, retaliation, and workers who often know something is wrong but have very little practical ability to enforce their rights alone.” Anyone who’s ever worked in the service industry has likely run into routine violations of employment law. Toff himself remembers working at a pizzeria as a teenager in Tucson, Arizona. The owner habitually shaved hours off time cards

to avoid paying them for work done after closing time; he also cornered a girl in the walk-in fridge to hit on her, Toff recalls. The experience “informs everything I do as an attorney,” he says. Toff is tall and a bit scruffy for a lawyer, even one in the Pacific Northwest. He has more tattoos sprawling past the sleeves of his quarter-zip than the typical lawyer, too, traces of his time as a globe-trotting union advocate who’s lived in Brazil and Germany. Not that he’s left the bargaining table behind. When employees at Renee Erickson’s critically acclaimed Sea Creatures group unionized last year, Toff agreed to aid contract negotiations for free. (This summer, the union won contracts at the Walrus and the Carpenter and at General Porpoise.) The union, which does not collect dues, would never have been able to afford representation, says United Creatures of the Sea organizer Ford Nickel. “Immediately upon meeting him,” Nickel says, “we

realized that, like, this guy is a lawyer, but he is an organizer and supporter of workers and workers’ rights first.” Before Toff was a lawyer or an organizer, he was a “punk-rock kid” from Tucson, getting his first sniff of left-wing politics through bands like Berkeley’s Crimpshrine. He moved to the Bay Area in the ’90s— ostensibly for college but really to play in bands, he says—and was further radicalized by the raw inequality he saw during the height of the dot-com boom. “At the time, I had never seen that kind of homelessness,” he says. “I remember counting the number of people I saw living on the street, on the bus, on the way home.” For Toff, the labor movement provided a way to address this sort of injustice. He majored in labor studies at San Francisco State and, in 2001, organized the Berkeley city recycling plant under the banner of the International Workers of the World. After college, he worked for a number of unions throughout the West, including

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the American Federation of Labor and bill. This is what makes Bread & Roses’ tify instances of workers not getting the Congress of Industrial Organizations business model possible. service charge money they were due. This (AFL-CIO). He organized farm workers Toff mostly works on contingency, experience inspired Gallo to enroll in law in California’s Central Valley, paper mill meaning his clients don’t pay him unless school after the case concluded; he now workers in Oregon, and airline employees they win a settlement. The simplest way works as Toff ’s legal assistant. The suit, in Phoenix, living in hotel rooms and vis- this works is that Toff sends an employer though, was divisive among the Canlis staff, iting potential union members at home a demand letter informing them they owe Gallo says. Some workers regarded Canlis to explain the benefits of unionization. a such-and-such amount in unpaid wages as a great place to work and disagreed with There were long days. And a lot of driving. to his client, and that they also owe his fee, the decision to sue. (Another plaintiff says He became interested in international which might be $2,000 at that point. “So that they lost friends on the Canlis staff trade unionism and moved to Berlin for pay by Friday, or we will file a wage lien who sided with Canlis management.) After grad school, then wound up working for against your home in Bellevue and then going through mediation, Canlis settled the National Nurses United in New York. In file the lawsuit shortly thereafter, and we lawsuit for $1.45 million in 2024. It did not hopes of getting a leadership position at will win, and you will owe a shit-ton more, admit any wrongdoing. a union, he attended law school at North- because you will owe the attorney’s fees, Toff launched Bread & Roses not long eastern University, then served as coun- which at that point will not be $2,000, they after that. He says the Canlis suit was “one sel for the New York State Nurses Asso- will be $50,000,” Toff says. This can be a of the cases that confirmed for me that there was real need, and real opportunity, ciation. During the pandemic, he and his compelling threat. family moved to Amsterdam to work for Toff ’s most famous suit was the class for a workers’-rights practice focused on an international labor organization. They action against against Canlis, which he led things like wage theft, including in indusmoved across the world again when his while working at the local employment law tries like restaurants where violations can then-wife got a job in Seattle, a city Toff firm Maloney O’Laughlin. Filed on behalf of be widespread, but individual workers didn’t know at all. all non-managers at the fine dining restau- often do not have enough economic power When he arrived, Toff switched to private rant, it accused Canlis of requiring hourly to bring claims on their own.” practice to normalize his working hours and spend more time with his kids. He began volunteering with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a Democratic Socialists of America–sponsored project that supports electrical workers in difficult-to-organize workplaces with tiny workforces and high turnover. Unionizing tends to be a long and complicated process: Workers have to decide among themselves that they want to form a union—often by signing cards—then hold an election, then be formally recognized by management, then negotiate with management on a contract that will govern the new conditions of work. The entire process can drag on for years, especially if an employer stalls and fights the union at every step. As an example of how difficult this journey is, hundreds of Star- Nothing is more “former punk-rock kid” than buttons. bucks coffee shops have voted to unionize since 2021, but not a single one has workers to perform an initial unpaid “stage” These lawsuits are sometimes an completed a contract. These long timelines shift in order to be hired and for not dis- imperfect vehicle for workers’ grievances. are partly why restaurant work is largely tributing all the money it collected via its The Canlis employees who came to Toff non-union—with so much staff turnover, “service charge” to the staff, as its menus had complaints that went beyond the serorganizing is borderline impossible, and the claimed until mid-2022. vice charge language—it was just that the restaurant in question may close by the time Evan Gallo, a former server and one of service charge issue provided a pathway a contract is signed. the named plaintiffs, says that in the run-up to legal action. Some of the electrical workers Toff Workers in the notoriously chaotic talked to through the Emergency Workrestaurant industry don’t really have place Organizing Committee were in simmany other options when they’re unhappy ilar straits; unionizing wasn’t really a viawith management, as evidenced by how ble way to address grievances with their few restaurants in Seattle have unionized. bosses. But if their bosses were breaking (After Capitol Hill diner Glo’s unionized in 2023, workers voted to decertify the the law, they didn’t need a union. They could sue. union months later after some staff turn“Steven sees angles and opportunities to the suit, some employees had circulated over.) Organizers at the Sea Creatures that a lot of people might not see, because a petition asking for higher wages. Man- restaurant group did succeed in securing he has such an open and creative mind,” agement declined this request, claiming contracts at the Walrus and the Carpensays Carol Igoe, a labor advocate and law- they wanted to keep prices relatively low ter and both locations of the General Poryer who has known Toff for two decades to be within reach of the non-super-rich, poise doughnut chain after workers went according to Gallo. Dissatisfied with that on strike, but haven’t gotten a contract at and works with him at Bread & Roses. The angle he saw in the electrical work- response, the workers looked into suing. the Capitol Hill steakhouse Jeffry’s. ers’ case was that in Washington State, Gallo called several lawyers but “got Another obstacle restaurant unions face nearly every employment law statute has the best vibe from Steven,” he says. “He’s is that sometimes these businesses don’t “fee-shifting provisions.” That means that very motivated to fight for the little guy.” make enough money to give employees subif a worker sues their employer and wins, Gallo helped sift through the timesheet stantially more wages or benefits. (Restauthe employer is on the hook for their legal records Canlis sent to the law firm to iden- rants generally have profit margins under 9

“He’s very motivated to fight for the little guy.”

percent, and a recent National Restaurant Association report found that 42 percent of restaurants weren’t profitable.) That’s what unionized workers at Sea Wolf Bakers learned last year when management opened their books during negotiations. Instead of an hourly wage increase, the two sides eventually agreed to let workers accept tips for the first time. Similarly, in the contracts negotiated by United Creatures of the Sea, unionized workers agreed to lower base pay rates and fewer benefits in exchange for the service charge model being scrapped in favor of receiving more tips. Could there be some middle path between piecemeal lawsuits and high-effort union drives? Toff wonders if some restaurants could adopt simplified collective bargaining agreements that spell out basic pay and working conditions. “At a union restaurant in Seattle, there’s a 20 percent service charge and 100 percent goes to the workers,” Toff imagines, “and a sticker goes in the window that says, ‘This is a union restaurant.’” In progressive Seattle, where plenty of restaurant owners want to be seen treating their employees well, maybe something like that could work. Canlis is far from the only Seattle restaurant to have been sued over its service charge language. Upscale diner chain Skillet and Tom Douglas’s restaurant group were targeted by similar lawsuits; like Canlis, both settled rather than going to trial. Some restaurant owners have privately complained to me that these suits punish them for technicalities. They argue that restaurants tend to shift to service charge models in order to address pay inequities caused by tipping; service charge money really does go to workers. But when a restaurant says that all of a service charge is distributed to workers, it has to meticulously track where every dollar goes or face legal liability. As a result, Seattle restaurants tend to adopt safer language. Canlis’s menu now reads, “A 20% service charge will be added to your final bill. 100% of this service charge is retained by Canlis.” Toff thinks a service fee that doesn’t go to workers is “disingenuous,” and that in practice, restaurants are “just artificially deflating the cost of things on [their] menus.” He has a punk’s instinctive hatred of hypocrisy: Why can’t restaurants just work all of their costs into menu prices? If they won’t raise those prices out of fear of driving away customers but are really paying a living wage, why not just list the employees’ hourly pay on the receipt? Given his background, it’s no surprise that Toff has no problem simply asking waiters how much they make. One time he did this and the server wouldn’t tell him. It eventually came out that the server was also the owner. “And I said, ‘Oh, how much do the workers make?’” Toff says. “And he said, ‘I’d rather not answer that question.’”

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hile most parents provide loving, supportive, safe environments for their children, the sad reality is there were 117,000 reports of child abuse or neglect in Washington in 2024 alone. Voters need to be aware that I-001 on November’s ballot, an initiative backed by MAGA mega-donor Brian Heywood, threatens to put even more kids at risk. I-001 would restore Let’s Go Washington’s so-called Parents’ Bill of Rights—a deeply flawed piece of legislation the Legislature had to fix in order to align with existing state law—and discourage students facing domestic violence, sexual abuse, or bullying at home from seeking help from trusted teachers and school counselors, who would be required to release students’ confidential records to their parental or guardian abusers. It would also force schools to knowingly put LGBTQ+ kids in increased danger of violence and homelessness by outing them to abusive families. That’s why the Washington State Nurses Association, WA Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, law enforcement, doctors, teachers, dozens of parents’ organizations, and school counselors oppose this measure. I-001 further endangers already vulnerable child abuse victims by forcing schools to hand over sensitive information to parents under criminal investigation for raping, abusing, or otherwise harming their own child, according to a legal analysis from Pacifica Law.

n the last day of Pride month, the US Supreme Court upheld state laws in 27 states banning trans girls from participating in youth sports. That means that, under the US Constitution and Title IX, these states are allowed to discriminate against trans kids playing sports. Though the ruling does not require the remaining states to pass similar bans, federal law does not prevent them from doing so. Washingtonians will soon have an opportunity to decide whether our state should follow the same path. Let’s Go Washington’s Initiative IL26-638, which is slated to appear on ballots statewide as part of the November 2026 General Election and is spearheaded by the group’s millionaire hedge-fund-managing leader, Brian Heywood, mandates that “students compete in athletic activities consistent with the gender assigned at birth.” If approved by voters this November, it would overturn Washington’s longstanding, trans-inclusive school sports policy, and ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. As part of the team that challenged Idaho’s ban, we at Legal Voice are now urging Washington voters to reject an effort to pass our state’s own ban. Once you take a cursory look at how these laws work, you soon realize that they don’t just target transgender athletes. In practice, they threaten the well-being and dignity of all women and girls. To determine who is a “real” girl, children in Washington’s K-12 schools could be subjected to genital examinations. That means putting children as young as 11 or 12 through an invasive process just because they want to compete in a sport or play with their friends.

SEPTEMBER 2026

I’m Voting No on I-001 Because My Counselors Saved Me From Abuse BY GABRIEL NEUMAN But let me tell you why I’m going to vote No on I-001. I spent my high school years in Washington’s foster care system. Prior

I-001 would discourage students facing domestic violence from seeking help. to that, I relied on school nurses and counselors to support me through the trauma I experienced at home.

My mom was physically and emotionally abusive, thanks in part to alcoholism. It was just the two of us; I didn’t have another adult I could talk to about what was happening. When I was in middle school, my teachers noticed something was wrong and that I needed help. They connected me with a school counselor named Mr. Parrot. (Yes, I still remember his name, but with a name like that, who could forget?) He was the first person I could talk to about my situation without fear it would get back to my mom. The counselor gave me information about Al-Anon, an organization that operates peer support groups for people who are impacted by another person’s alcoholism, and sources for confidential therapy.

s t e u G ants R Vote No on I-638 to Keep All Women and Girls Safe BY TIFFANI LENNON It should be obvious: Children should not be required to have a medical provider look at or touch their genitals just to participate in school sports. The only alternative is genetic or hormone testing, expensive lab work that gathers sensitive medical information. These requirements may be enough to dissuade countless girls and their families from even trying to join a team at their school. Laws like these are designed to divide communities by falsely painting trans girls as dangerous or possessing some magic testosterone-laden power that gives them an unfair advantage, despite the science stating otherwise. For an idea of what this could look like, look to Florida. After the state passed its anti-trans sports ban, police investigated a 15-year-old junior varsity volleyball player after an anonymous caller reported to the athlete’s school that she was trans.

Local officials compiled a 500-page report detailing her medical history, body weight, and anatomy. Facing immense pressure from both law enforcement and the county school board, she ultimately withdrew from school and enrolled online. Idaho’s ban provides another warning. That law allows coaches, parents, and even spectators to dispute the sex of students participating on girls’ and women’s teams. Legal Voice, along with the ACLU and Cooley LLP, sued Idaho to block that law. We saw the case as a critical component of our decades-long effort to expand access to women’s athletics. Our first case, filed in 1979, secured equal access to sports facilities and programs in Washington State, and we’ve since gone on to advocate for girls’ and women’s teams across the Northwest. In our challenge to Idaho’s trans athlete ban, we argued that the law violated equal

This was a pivotal moment in my life. Accessing a safe space with school counselors gave me confidence that I could talk to people and take steps to get out of a bad situation. Without having an adult on my side, I would have probably stayed in an abusive household, and who knows how I would have ended up. Knowing my abusive, controlling mother, if she’d had the option, she would have used the provisions of I-001 to get notes my school counselor took to better understand and support me through my situation, which would have severely exacerbated my circumstances at home. For me, my identity wasn’t a factor when I sought help. But for kids who are gay or trans, or questioning who they are, I-001 will have a chilling effect during a time when more and more youth are experiencing serious mental health issues due to isolation during the pandemic, academic pressures, and social media. While I don’t have children of my own right now, I’d like to be a foster parent someday. When you are trying to decide how to vote on this poorly written, harmful ballot initiative, I hope you’ll keep in mind the thousands of young children in our state who will be put at greater risk of harm, and even homelessness, if it passes. Gabriel Neuman is policy and advocacy director at the GSBA, Washington State’s LGBTQ+ and Allied Business Association.

protection guarantees by discriminating against athletes on female teams while imposing no comparable requirements on athletes participating on male teams. The lower courts agreed and blocked enforcement against our client before the case, Little v. Hecox, reached the US Supreme Court. The Court’s recent decision in Hecox makes it easier for states to discriminate against transgender youth in sports and will embolden the legislative and cultural effort to push trans people out of public life, and the broader political project to police gender. They also send the message that some young people deserve participation and belonging while others must prove they are worthy of inclusion. Come November, Washington voters will face a question that is much larger than sports. Will we continue Washington’s tradition of equal opportunity and inclusion, or will we embrace a policy that excludes transgender youth while inviting invasive scrutiny of all girls? Wielding youth sports, an important rite of passage into community life, as a weapon in Washington would exclude transgender girls and subject all girls and women to invasive scrutiny—risking greater privacy violations, discrimination, and harm for the very athletes it claims to protect. Washington can choose the right path and protect the dignity of every child. Tiffani Lennon is the executive director of Legal Voice, a Seattle-based nonprofit that fights for gender justice through impact litigation, policy advocacy, education, and coalition building. Legal Voice was counsel for Lindsay Hecox in Little v. Hecox.

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O S T C E R R E E

Protests, Rallies, and Other Ways to Get Involved in September BY MEGAN SELING Solidarity Day with Eugene Oregon Melting ICE

Sept 5 Eugene Oregon Melting ICE and La Resistencia will gather outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma to show their support for detainees on Saturday. La Resistencia, which started in 2014 to “end immigrant detention and deportations in Washington,” regularly hosts vigils outside the detention center and monitors deportation flights out of the King County International Airport. Just last month, more than 140 immigrants detained at NWDC participated in a hunger strike over poor food quality. Stranger contributor Guy Oron reported that GEO Group, which owns and operates NWDC, agreed to new menus, improved food quality, and larger portions. Many of La Resistencia’s calls to action are posted the day that they’re happening. Follow them on Bluesky (@laresistencianw. bsky.social) and Instagram (@laresistencianw) to get their alerts. (Northwest Detention Center, Tacoma, 1–3 pm)

Walking Tour: Seattle’s Infamous Red Line

Sept 5 Merlin R. Rainwater’s historic walking tour will show how redlining—in which banks required higher interest or flat out refused to make loans to customers who lived in historically Black or more racially diverse neighborhoods—impacted the Central District, and caused segregation, wealth gaps, and gentrification. Rainwater will also encourage participants to consider how they “fit into this story past, present, and future, and find ways that [they] can engage to produce positive change.” A self-guided version of the tour is available at seattleinfamous.org. (RSVP at troublemakerscommunity.org for location, 10 am–noon)

Rapid Response Training

Sept 9 For 10 years, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN) has organized rapid response efforts throughout the state and supported immigrants and

refugees through mutual aid and legal resources. If you’re wondering what to do if you think you spot ICE in your neighborhood, catch one of WAISN’s free virtual training sessions. They’ll teach you what to look for, how to safely assess the situation, and quickly convey information to legal and immigration experts who can help. (Virtual, 6–8 pm)

Crush ICE: Drag Show

Sept 18 What exactly is involved in an anti-ICE drag show? You’ll have to go to Kremwerk to find out! Riot Tops Productions has put together an all-Latinx cast for a night of drag and burlesque performances. There will also be a fundraising raffle, with proceeds benefiting the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network. Activism can be fun! (Kremwerk, 7 pm, 21+)

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor with Mayor Katie Wilson

Sept 24 Authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor will stop by Town Hall to discuss their new book End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World (out September 15) with Mayor Katie Wilson. This isn’t so much an opportunity to scream as it is a chance to form single-file lines during the inevitable Q&A session and politely wait your turn to ask the mayor any burning questions. One thing to consider: While her time in office has been a bit bumbly, it’s only been eight months. Any reports of her popularity allegedly plummeting are due, in part, to unfair and misogynistic criticism from mainstream media. (Town Hall, 7:30 pm)

Pints and Postcards

Multiple dates Defund Musk hosts several letter-writing parties around town, and that effort is ramping up as we near the November midterms. Join in every Tuesday on Capitol Hill, every Thursday in Ballard, every other Thursday in Lake City, and every other Sunday in Greenwood. Visit DefundMusk. com for the specific dates and locations.

Want to tell us about an event? Email us at WheretoScream@TheStranger.com. Find more listings on our sister site, EverOut.com/Seattle.

SEPTEMBER 2026

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6 2 0 2 s ’ r e g n a r t S e h T g n i t n e s e r P

R A W A S U I GEN

LIE W PHO T OS BY BIL

INTER

SEPTEMBER 2026

! S R E N N I W RD AND WE’RE BACK!

he Stranger’s Genius Awards began in 2003 as an attempt to recognize our favorite artists, and, crucially, to give them money. The awards changed shape over the years, then disappeared altogether after 2016. A decade later, we wanted them back. I knew that meant two things: That it was going to feel so good to put real money* into the hands of artists making this city more interesting, and that choosing them was going to be excruciating. What even is genius? The Genius Committee—Stranger staff writers Julianne Bell, Amanda Manitach, Charles Mudede, and Audrey Vann, as well as contributors Katie Lee Ellison, Jas Keimig, Bess Lovejoy, Dave Segal, Meg van Huygen, and Michael Wong—set off to find out. We began this (hard!) process by making long (long!) lists across the Film, Food, Literature, Music, Performance, and Visual Art categories.

The criteria we’d been thinking about were something like: Who is creating work we can’t stop thinking about? Who is making this city stranger, cooler, sharper, more beautiful, or more alive? Who is building something that would leave a sad hole if it disappeared? We weighed and pondered. We researched, compared notes, advocated, reconsidered, made cases, changed our minds, and went around and around. Someone would make an airtight case, and then someone else would make another. The lists grew shorter, then somehow longer again. But then we knew. And when we knew, we knew. We’re fucking thrilled with where we landed. On these next pages you will find a fantastic group of six Actual Fucking Geniuses. We’re also aware that six winners cannot possibly contain the amount of excellent work happening here, so you’ll find a small assortment of groups and projects we love right now. Not finalists, really, but other folks from our lists who prove just how much is happening here. After all, it’s never too early to start plotting Genius 2027! The Genius Awards are a work in progress. So is Seattle. But we ride hard for this city’s artists, and it feels very, very good to be making a huge fuss about them again. Come make one with us September 12 at the Moore Theatre. There will be giant checks, trophies, drag, music, and dancing (see more about the event on page 75). Dress up! Or ELSE. —Emily Nokes, Arts Editor

*A Genius Award comes with $10,000, and that money comes with no strings attached. They can blow it on [redacted] on a beach in [redacted] for all we care—they deserve to spend it like rich people spend money, without anyone asking for proof of whatever afterward, and without being means-tested or sent through a bureaucracy hell maze to begin with.

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

32 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

THE BEACON CINEMA is a small,

independent theater whose adventurous repertory programming, rare finds, and obsessive curation make it one of Seattle’s most distinctive movie houses.

SEPTEMBER 2026

The Beacon Cinema FILM

BY BESS LOVEJOY

he Beacon Cinema earned my devotion one night at the tail end of 2023. My obsession with the mid-century British writer of “strange stories” Robert Aickman had led me to the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas, a small-screen tradition of adapting classic ghost stories each December. That Christmas Eve, the Beacon was showing 1968’s black-and-white Whistle and I’ll Come to You, an adaptation of an M. R. James ghost story that is often cited as the inspiration for the BBC series. At the beginning of the show— lights dimmed, house packed—Beacon co-owner Tommy Swenson strode down the steps of the small theater holding a flickering candle. Face aglow, he read an invocation that summoned the correct spirit(s) for the evening, then warned us, gently, not to laugh at the film’s ending. Everyone obeyed, and the depiction of a scholar’s mind coming completely undone was allowed to We’re also big fans of their graphic design. unspool just as it should. I was hooked. Here was this idiosyncratic Swenson and Shayna Nowicki), but it does masterpiece I would never otherwise see begin with a quote by Karl Marx and goes in a theater—the kind of thing only a select on to “declare fidelity to a cinema utopia in few weirdos care to know about, but those which our struggle for collective liberation who care, really care. Since then, I’ve been is bound up with all the unrealized possible back to the Beacon for giallo, Czech new futures woven through the forgotten histowave, Czech gothic fantasy, Japanese magic ries of film.” The Beacon desires to do nothrealism, Soviet horror, and other types of ing less than wrench back our experience magical horror fantasy. I don’t even really of time itself from the jaws of the endless consider myself a film buff. But in a culture doomscrolling present. increasingly engineered to be frictionless— The third of those pillars—Montage—is optimized, algorithmically recommended, key to how Swenson (a veteran of Scareand scrubbed of troublesome edges—it’s crow and a former programmer at Alamo a balm to the soul to have this bastion of Drafthouse) thinks about his job. darkly wonderful highbrow-lowbrow taste, “Film is montage. It’s various images set together. So proalways so unapologetically itself. The pillars of the Beacon, as set out in a gramming is sort of taking program celebrating their fifth anniversary, that to the next necessary point where you’re taking are these: multiple images, multiple films, and putting the films I. IMAGE together so they’re in converII. SOUND sation with each other. I always III. MONTAGE think you can show one movie and it’s IV. DURATION incredible.... But then you put two movies V. ARMED STRUGGLE VI. SEX together, now they’re in conversation. Now VII. BLOOD there’s friction, now there’s sparks.” VIII. KUNG-FU Friction and sparks come up a few times IX. A WOMAN LOSING HER MIND when I talk to Swenson and Nowicki. X. REVELATION Both are loath to pin down their tastes, but Nowicki says she knows what it feels That’s part aesthetic manifesto, part like when she finds something she doesn’t provocation, and part extremely accurate want to show: “It creates no interesting feeling, no interesting friction with the description of what happens on-screen. Their six-paragraph About page will current moment.” not tell you the year of its founding (2019) Although plenty of movie theaters or the names of its co-owners (currently organize programs around one director

or genre, the Beacon also gets much more thematic. “When you start thinking conceptually about what connects movies, it gets so much more expansive and exciting. ’Cause you can connect themes and ideas from a movie in, like, Soviet Russia in the 1920s to films in Paris in the ’60s, or now being made in California in a guy’s bedroom.” The two current longer-running programs at the Beacon are Shadowland (“the emotional otherworlds of classic cinema”) and Time as a Symptom (“slow cinema and its reverberations”). Other recent programs have covered American dreams and nightmares, squatter’s cinema, “Super Krime,” “Self-Destruction and Mutual Annihilation as a Transcendental Art,” and “The Market Has a Mind and It’s Dreaming of You,” the website for which is illustrated with a quote from Jean Baudrillard that describes “a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.” (It goes on and gets even better.) How many places are there in Seattle where you can encounter Baudrillard in the wild? And the thing is, it works. All this could sound like a recipe for a tiny, fiercely admired theater whose screenings are attended by the same dozen initiates.

Instead, shows at the Beacon regularly sell out. Since Swenson and the original co-founder Casey Moore opened the 50-seat theater in a former yoga studio in 2019—and somehow carried it through the pandemic— Seattle audiences have responded with remarkable enthusiasm. “It is great to see,” Swenson says. “I think what surprised me more than anything is people’s openness—to the unknown and to new experiences.” When the Beacon opened, Swenson says, its programmers made more attempts to lure audiences with familiar favorites. But the screenings that succeeded were often the weirder propositions: Do you want to see something you’ve never heard of? “People do want to have discoveries,” he says. “They want to go on adventures. They want to have new experiences.” That appetite is not limited to rediscovering neglected classics. The recent Cece’s Interlude, about a trans girl who becomes pregnant, featured what Nowicki calls “an unheard-of filmmaker and totally unheard-of actors.” Both screenings sold out. “It was amazing, and everyone loves it,” Nowicki says. Although the Beacon is far from the only

Face aglow, he read an invocation that summoned the correct spirit(s) for the evening, then warned us, gently, not to laugh at the film’s ending. successful micro-cinema around, programming around deep cuts and rarities isn’t the usual formula for theaters in general. Nowicki says: “It’s something you hear in programming, that you’re not supposed to program according to your taste. But I think if you don’t, then you’re not passionate about the things that you show, and it is very apparent.” Part of what audiences respond to at the Beacon is the passion, which is maybe another way of saying the conviction. Most screenings have those personal intros, which welcome theater-goers and provide a context backed by thought and research. The staff (which includes front-of-house crew Jasira Andrus and Marc Palm, both of whom also help with programming ideas and trailer editing) cut many of

34 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE their own trailers, and even some of their own films. Being small and scrappy allows the Beacon to pivot quickly so that, for instance, when David Lynch died, they could put together a wonderful tribute of archival footage and interviews and show it within a matter of days. In an age when so much is available via streaming services, there’s something special about going to the theater. “There’s a real ritualistic component to it,” Swenson says. “You have to take the time. You have to commit. But then you go into the dark space, and lights go down, and a light comes on. And I think it’s primitive. It’s primordial. You’re at once alone there and experiencing it directly to you, but you’re also part of this social collective that only exists in this moment. And so there’s energy, there’s feeling. … [And] you get to have your focus dedicated, which is

so rare, so difficult to maintain.” For a few hours, the Beacon makes sustained attention feel possible again. Their success has become a kind of feedback loop, too, in which people have learned to trust their choices, which keeps them coming back for more. “It’s not so much that we are the ultimate experts who are telling you what is worth watching,” Swenson explains. “But someone is making the choice.… And there’s a risk-taking to it. There’s an opening up to it, and you’re just like, ‘Let me see something new. Let me have a new experience.’ “It’s almost liberating, where you’re constantly inundated with scrolling and updates and everything, to just take the time to go into the dark room and look up at the bright light and just sink into time. Experience time as a feeling. Let it come into you.”

Short List

Six More Film Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

eattle may not be the first city people name when they talk about the movie industry, but there is an incredible amount of weird and wonderful film culture humming along here anyway: theaters held together by volunteers and sheer force of will, obsessive programmers creating found-footage fever dreams, curators who stretch what a moving image can even be, editors who find the pulse inside a pile of footage, actors who keep turning up in the best local productions, and filmmakers making work that could only have come from this corner of the world. The talents here remind us that cinema is both an artform and an ecosystem.

SEPTEMBER 2026

CELIA BEASLEY

he truth of the matter is films succeed or fail in the editing room. If a director is saddled with a weak editor, then no matter how well they shot a film, no matter how perfect the performances, it will certainly miss the mark when it hits the screen. And what is the key to a great film editor? A strong sense of visual rhythm. The editor is to a movie what a drummer is to a band. (If you’re wondering: The director is the lead singer; the cinematographer is the lead guitar; the art director is on the keyboards.) The editor is all heart and soul.

The best film editor in Seattle is, without a doubt, Celia Beasley. She was raised in Oakland, educated in NYC, and spent some time in Paris (her mother is French). After accumulating experience as a photojournalist, she settled in Seattle in 2001. Beasley entered film editing in the middle of this century’s first decade by way of documentaries, TV shows, and short films. She eventually made her mark in the following decade with three highly regarded, locally produced films: S. J. Chiro’s Lane 1974 (2017), Lynn Shelton’s Outside In (2017), and Megan Griffiths’s Sadie (2018). During the present decade, she has worked primarily with Griffiths—I’ll Show You Mine (2022) and Year of the Fox (2023), as well as Penelope, an eight-episode TV show produced by Mark Duplass. All of these works benefited from what I can only describe as Beasley’s soulfulness. Her ability to smoothly move the transitions between shots (the drum) and form sequences (the beat) is music to my eyes. CHARLES MUDEDE

f you’re wondering why Cadence Video Poetry Festival isn’t slotted under literature or visual art or “difficult to classify,” you’re not wrong. Hell, if you’re wondering what video poetry even is, you’re also not wrong. Video poetry is both exactly what it sounds like and surprisingly difficult to define. The visually sumptuous byproduct of two disparate art forms, the video poem was born in the late ’70s and has continued to gain popularity and expand in range of approaches, styles, and formats—some pieces shot on phones, others on 16 mm film. Definitely a poem, but also very unlike reading Keats. Cadence Video Poetry Festival co-directors Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San define video poetry as a literary genre that blends moving image with text. Since 2018, Werner-Jatzke and San have worked tirelessly to bring video poems to Seattle through Cadence Video Poetry Festival, an annual screening that takes place each April at Northwest Film Forum. Like so many good things in Seattle, Cadence is a labor of love—this one born from a dream conceived over a bowl of pad thai at Little Uncle on Capitol Hill one day in 2017. Both Werner-Jatzke and San are artists who continue to work day jobs while simultaneously running their nonprofit. This past April, Cadence Video Poetry Festival mounted its ninth program, screening dozens of pieces by local and international artists. Beyond its annual festival, Cadence facilitates generative and collab-

CADENCE VIDEO POETRY FESTIVAL MAX KRAUSHAAR

orative workshops, runs an artist-in-residence program that fosters new work by local artists, and curates satellite screenings at venues around the city, including Seattle Art Museum and the Frye. If you’re curious to dip a toe into video poetry, start with Good Symptom: A Serial Anthology of Time-Based Disturbances, co-curated by Werner-Jatzke and San and published by the 3rd Thing, an independent press dedicated to providing year-round video poetry subscriptions delivered to your device. Thanks to these two, you will never be without a video poem, whenever and wherever you need one. AMANDA MANITACH

36 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

COLLIDE-O-SCOPE

BAO TRAN

he wonder is that Bao Tran has not directed another feature film since his debut, The Paper Tigers, dropped in 2020. The martial arts film/comedy caught many viewers and critics by surprise because it was so hard to place. And that’s because its place—though it produced the greatest martial arts star in the history of cinema, Bruce Lee—is hardly on the martial arts map. The Paper Tigers is

or 16 years, Collide-O-Scope founders Shane Wahlund and Michael Anderson have been pumping out the wildest, most delightful video montages woven together with splices of vintage media you’ve either loved, totally forgotten about, or never seen before. To make their movies, Wahlund, a former Stranger staffer, and Anderson, a freelance video editor for the paper, spend hours sifting through their vast archive, finding thematic threads throughout bits of documentaries, cult and B-films, commercials, corporate training videos, obscure music videos, bits of vintage

set in Seattle and concerns three middle-aged men who rejoin forces to do what martial arts films often boil down to: “You killed my master, so I’m going to kill you.” And it’s a hoot! And it has a whole lot of heart. Only Seattle could produce such a singular and highly entertaining Asian American concoction. Tran, who also edited Jackpot (2015), which Vietnam submitted as Best Foreign Language Film in the 88th Academy Awards, was raised by Vietnamese immigrants in Olympia and Shoreline. Part of his film education occurred in Vietnam, where he edited a variety of films. But Tran names the Hong Kong icon Jackie Chan as his primary inspiration. Now, anyone who is familiar with martial arts AL’N DUONG films knows that the genre is as much about coordinating complicated fight scenes as editing them. And this is what you see in The Paper Tigers: a director who can also expertly cut the chaos of live-action combat into something that’s as graceful as a dance sequence in a musical. There is a good reason why Chan holds Gene Kelly in such high regard. One hopes editor/director Tran makes another local film soon. CHARLES MUDEDE

newscasts, and other oddities to create short films that are as transcendent as they are silly. (They’re also the perfect thing to watch while stoned out of your gourd.) Wahlund and Anderson’s fascination with visual culture started early— for decades they recorded everything that came on TV, archiving it away on VHS tapes and DVD-Rs. They’d put together edit reels of all the weird, funny, and strange stuff they found to show one another and friends. In 2010, the pair debuted Collide-O-Scope at Re-bar, where they amassed a cult following of open-minded media enthusiasts who similarly love the visual

’ll begin with a disclosure: Annette Toutonghi starred in a film I directed, Thin Skin. Indeed, she provided the best performance in the work, a performance I feel deserved more attention than it received. Also, directing her was nothing but pure joy. She mastered her character, an American who raised two racially mixed children after her Nigerian husband abandoned her, and added a lot of her own genius to it. Most importantly, she never required more than four takes to produce a shot that met all of the film’s editing needs. But who is Toutonghi? Firstly, she comes from the stage. That is her artistic home: ACT Theatre’s hit The Women (2007), Seattle Rep’s You Can’t Take It With You (2008–09), and the like. But her impact on local cinema is considerable. Along with Thin Skin (2020), she performed in Guy Maddin’s locally produced Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), S. J. Chiro’s soulful Lane 1974 (2017), Bao Tran’s iconic The Paper Tigers (2020), Wes Hurley’s autobiographical Potato Dreams of America (2021), and HBO’s surreal TV series Three Busy Debras (2020–22). As a performer, Toutonghi can range from electric (as in

ack in 1970, Seattle’s longest-running movie theater, the Grand Illusion (then called the Movie House), opened in a former University District dentist office, becoming the city’s first sanctuary for old movies, arthouse films, and world cinema. In 2004, the Grand Illusion became an independent arts nonprofit when it was bought by a group of passionate volunteers and supporters, making it the only fully volunteer-operated nonprofit cinema in the US. Then, in 2023, the building they’d occupied for 50-plus years (pictured here) was sold, and the new owner declined to renew their lease. I will forever miss that tiny little theater, draped in red velvet curtains

THE GRAND ILLUSION

detritus of mass culture. After Re-bar closed during the pandemic, they’ve now settled their monthly show at Clock-Out Lounge in Beacon Hill. Over the years, they’ve lent their video expertise to drag icons like past Genius Award winner Dina Martina and BenDeLaCreme, and they routinely sell out their annual Halloween screenings. Through it all, the pair says their creative partnership has been an animating force. “It’s a 100 percent collaborative effort between the two of us,” says Wahlund. “Whatever little magic we think we find, it comes from just working together on it. That’s a precious gift to have.” JAS KEIMIG

Thin Skin) to deeply somber (as in Lane 1974). Indeed, I didn’t even recognize her in the latter film until I saw it a second time (she plays the grandmother of a young girl neglected by her hippie mother). To top it all off, Toutonghi is an educator and a theater activist. The city is blessed to call her one of its own. CHARLES MUDEDE

ANNETTE TOUTONGHI with its funky floral theater seats. (They were incredible, I don’t care how uncomfortable they were!) This was also a huge loss for the U-District, which has since closed the doors to the remaining neighborhood theaters, AMC Seattle 10 and Varsity Theater. Despite being without a home for the past three years, the Grand Illusion hasn’t stopped its brilliant programming. While they raise money and scout out a new space, you can catch pop-up screenings at SIFF Film Center, Central Cinema, and Northwest Film Forum. (In September alone, they’re screening Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses in 35 mm, and the rockumentary Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt.) AUDREY VANN

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

38 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

CHEF LISA BI is the

chef behind Ba + Me and Béo Béo, where Vietnamese home cooking, pastry, memory, and wide-ranging influences meet in wildly inventive ways.

SEPTEMBER 2026

FOOD

Chef Lisa Bi BY MEG VAN HUYGEN

“

o, they have this Ukrainian market in Fife,” Lisa Bi explains as she sets down an elaborate, herb-strewn ice cream sandwich, the dessert on her August pop-up menu. “It’s called Emish Market,” she goes on, “and they have delicious, delicious butter. I love their selection of butter. All of them—the Ukrainian butters are so rich and incredible.” In 2022, while working as an EMT in Atlanta, Bi launched Ba + Mẹ (“Dad + Mom” in Vietnamese) as a way to reconnect with her family through cooking Vietnamese cuisine. Her experiences as an emergency worker during the COVID-19 pandemic “prompted me to reflect on my own relationships,” she says, “particularly with my parents, which had been strained. And I recognized that their love language was food.” In 2023, Bi brought the whole operation to Seattle, to our city’s immense fortune. Her pop-ups aim to build community and celebrate Vietnamese culture through both her monthly menus of absolute bops and her vivacious, funnyas-hell personality. Presently, she’s in residency on Monday nights at Human People Beer in Roosevelt. She also supplies Pioneer Square’s Parlour with pastries from her other pop-up, Béo Béo Bakery. The latter features breakfast-type fare and displays Bi’s skills as a pâtissière, while Ba + M ẹ is her way to showcase “Vietnamese home food”— meaning Viet dishes that we don’t usually see at restaurants in the US—which she then improvises upon using stylings from Southern food, modern American food, fast food, PNW produce, and whatever the hell else she feels like. Back to that ice cream sandwich: It’s hiding a surprise. I pick up one half, to reveal a bright golden blat of jackfruit milk on a pool of blueberry sauce, looking like a big purple-and-yellow fried egg. Bi has confettied the whole thing with snipped-up Thai basil and flakes of chamomile flowers, “so you get a little floral whiff as you’re biting into it.” There are three different ice creams in play here: vanilla bean, jackfruit, and brown sugar, all layered on top of each other to form stripes when it’s cut in half, like the stratified face of a desert mountain. It’s a whole hell of a thing. Bi has more to say about it. “And the piece of cake on either side is ooeygooey cake, from the South! Which is like powdered sugar—too much powdered sugar, honestly—and cream cheese, all whipped up with a bit of that rich Ukrainian butter.”

The richness is a theme in her life, Bi says—so much that the name of her pastry pop-up, Béo Béo, is the doubled-up word for “fatty” or “creamy” in Vietnamese. (Béo béo is also a euphemism for a chubby person.) “When I would bring some pastries home to my family, it was always a sign of approval from the OGs when their response was ‘cũng béo béo.’”

Vietnamese chicken curry that I later nicknamed “chickeny Ding Dongs.” Since then, she’s been out here coming up with total fucking jams like: A Southern-style chess pie made with sesame and Ovaltine. An extra-buttery cover of a Hot Pocket filled with chả trứng hấp (a Vietnamese meatloaf made from pork, scrambled eggs,

Find Bi’s pop-ups at Human People Beer in Roosevelt and Pioneer Square’s Parlour. “I always try to make my food pretty rich,” Bi adds, “and then every once in a while, someone will be like, ‘Wow, um, so… this has a lot of fat in it?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, is that an issue??’ That’s what I always go for: extra spices, extra fat, extra flavor. Extra everything!” That ice cream sandwich is just a jumping-off point from the current menu, of course. Bi is a perpetual motion machine who continually cranks out dazzling food ideas on an endless throughput: a new menu every month for Ba + Mẹ and new pastries every week for Béo Béo. My first encounter with Lisa Bi was in 2022, at Ba + Mẹ’s first night popping up at Capitol Hill pasta-’n’-cocktail bar Donna’s, when she served what ended up on my list of the best things I ate that year: buttery, flaky handheld pot pies filled with

wood ear mushrooms, and vermicelli). A cheesecake made out of chè thái, a Vietnamese dessert made from jelly cubes, fresh fruit, and coconut sauce, replete with a parrot cracker crust (IYKYK). A silky Vietnamese-style egg custard

“It was always a sign of approval from the OGs when their response was ‘cung béo béo.’” made into a savory breakfast sandwich, anointed with soy-saucy onion jam, pickled mustard greens, and American cheese on a housemade Hong Kong–style milk bun. A sticky-rice hash-brown patty wherein Bi takes Yukon Gold potatoes and hash-

mashes them up with crispy sticky rice, presses them into the iconic McD’s oval hash-brown silhouette, adds Maldon Salt, fries ’em, and serves ’em with various Viet-adjacent dipping sauces and accompaniments, depending on her mood. (It’s inspired by the Shanghainese dish cí fàn gāo—chewy grilled rice cakes served at street markets.) But then sometimes it’s the simplest thing. Béo Béo’s debut menu had a jasmine cruller on it, with jasmine flowers in the doughnut glaze, as well as a quiche “inspired by the breakfast my dad made, with eggs and tomato, topped with puffed rice.” And a madeleine made with chrysanthemum tea and passion-fruit curd. And something that included zhug—a green Syrian hot sauce—made with rau ram, aka Vietnamese coriander. So simple and so super smart. Bi knows how to keep it old-school, too. A few months back, she did a bánh canh— sometimes called Vietnamese udon— entirely from scratch, including the super thick rice/tapioca noodles that she handpressed just for us, the porky collageny broth, and even the fish cakes and sausage, just to see if she could. Which leads us to her current menu. At press time, her star dish has been a juicy classic roast chicken, and it’s like nothing you’ve tasted. Dressed with a honey/fivespice/soy-sauce elixir before it meets the fire, the chicken’s crisp, bacony skin gives every bite that eye-rollingly succulent quality. If that weren’t flavorful enough, the side of tangy green chili dipping sauce—tương ớt xanh, made with Viet sea salt, fresh lime juice, sugar, serranos, and green bird’s eye chilis—is the kinda stuff you want to take home a bottle of and slather your whole life in. “It keeps coming back month after month because people keep asking for it!” Bi laughs. Ba + M ẹ ’s August menu also featured an urban speciality, chả cá lã vọng: a turmeric-marinated pompano fillet that’s been transformed into crispy deep-fried nuggets and served over chewy rice noodles with galangal, dill, puffy sesame rice crackers, and a bright, funky sauce called mắm tôm made from fermented shrimp. The dish is a nod to the century-old Hanoi restaurant of the same name, and Bi follows the assignment carefully here. That shrimpy funk is ancient and powerful by itself, be warned, but there’s something about the rice cracker that distributes and transforms the pungent shrimp sauce into an ingredient within a dish, rather than the overwhelming omnipresent flavor. Like Roquefort and pears, the components balance each other out, and it all comes together harmoniously. Alchemy. I could go on. Chef Lisa can’t serve a

40 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE dish without zapping it with her colorful, innovative brilliance, changing up at least one detail in some ingenious way you’d never have dreamed of if it were you behind the stick. She’s also leveled up times a bazillion since starting her residency at Human People— now that she doesn’t have to make everything in advance and lug it around in her car and can keep equipment and ingredients on site—and I can’t wait to see what she does next. “This food is for the kid who was embarrassed by the fish and durian her parents packed,” Bi tells me. “The kid who threw it in the trash so no one could smell it, just so she can have a ham and cheese sandwich to make others comfortable. It’s for the elders who made themselves small to assimilate but never stopped aching for balut and century egg. And it’s for everyone still figuring out where they stand in this culture, the bold, the unapologetic, the ones learning that there’s no single way to be Vietnamese.

I’m cooking for all of them. Especially the kid I used to be.” While currently running two different pop-ups at the same time, Chef Lisa Bi is dreaming of something bigger down the road. “The plan,” she says, “is to have a place in the future that is part small restaurant, part deli, and part bakery. So one side is Ba + Mẹ with Viet comfort food, and the other side is a Viet American deli and bakery, aka Béo Béo.” She also hopes to use her future restaurant to showcase textile and ceramic artists. I’m sincerely sorry for Atlanta for losing Chef Lisa Bi, but am also so smugly, selfishly thrilled that we get to watch her flourish here in Seattle. It’s one thing to have a never-ending stream of wacky-fantastic food ideas flowing through your brain, but this lady then turns around and does them. She makes them. We get to eat them. We’re rich.

Short List

Six More Food Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

s food art? We deem it so. Some of our city’s culinary maestros are cranking out menus, comfort food, and experiences that are nothing short of conceptual gustatory art. In our newest Genius category, we’re celebrating the thing that— perhaps above all else—brings people together: the stuff that nourishes and delights us, contains the DNA of memory and culture, and gives us a reason to break bread and talk shit. Seattle’s food innovators are excavating tradition, scrambling expectations, and obsessing over the details, all while telling stories through flavor and color on the plate.

SEPTEMBER 2026

ANBAI

ounter-service spot Anbai takes its name from a Japanese word that can refer to a balance of seasoning, a state of affairs, a person’s health status, or the competent management of a situation. The term originates from a time when food was seasoned solely with salt and umezu (a liquid drained from salt-pickled plums). Because there were only two ingredients, proportions were of the utmost importance, and the slightest variation could make a vast difference. It’s not hard to see why this is a fitting moniker as you watch owner Fumiyo Mukohata weave through the tiny space in Chophouse Row, deftly tucking rice into nori sheets, patting plump onigiri into shape, and sprinkling dishes with a precise, practiced pinch of salt. As a certified fermented food and drink sommelier, Mukohata specializes in ingredients that benefit gut health and creates meals that are

balanced in both nutrition and taste. This includes vegetarian and pescatarian miso soups made with different koji, as well as bento boxes and onigiri made with white or probiotic-rich enzyme brown rice. A chalkboard sign advertises the daily specials and “sea salt of the day,” sourced from Japan. The bento is a jewel box of harmonious flavors and textures, each bite a note in a symphony—tangy pickled purple cabbage, miso-marinated eggs, earthy mushrooms, tender shio koji–marinated salmon, and a petite cube of cake. The onigiri are warm, toothsome bundles of rice with fillings like ume (salted sour plum), chicken curry, and tuna with shoyu koji ume mayo. Everything tastes pure and nourishing. Anbai exemplifies a singular vision executed with artistry, craftsmanship, and high standards of excellence, offered with generosity and a sense of pride. JULIANNE BELL

CHU MINH TOFU

sk anyone who the angel of the CID and Little Saigon is, and you’ll hear “Auntie Tanya” time and time again. For good reason. With her Chu Minh Tofu businesses operating in Little Saigon and Othello, Auntie Tanya (aka Tanya Nguyễn) and her small team set out each day to feed a community with love. First, Chu Minh Tofu makes exceptional Vietnamese cuisine without any animal products (though prepared in such a way that even your most carnivorous uncle may not notice at first). Second, the service also includes caring for the houseless folks who frequent the areas around her businesses. In fact, the last time I was visiting with Nguyễn, she paused our bánh-mì-making lesson to put egg rolls and water in the hands of a neighbor in need. This isn’t for show, it’s just how she lives—

VEE HUA

since 2018, as her website states, “Tanya and a growing group of volunteers—now known as the Eggrolls—have been serving free meals every Sunday in Seattle’s Little Saigon. More than just food, it’s a stand against dehumanization and a choice to build community with compassion, trust, and dignity. We believe in care over punishment, and action over fear. This is harm reduction, and this is love in motion.” This spirit of moving with love and compassion truly guides her steps, her hands, and her words. And it inspires anyone who gets a chance to taste that love, or experience it firsthand by spending time with Auntie Tanya, whose family has been making soy milk and tofu for the community for decades. If the Seattle Freeze is real, Tanya is our best example of an exception. MICHAEL WONG

42 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

D LUPO/ STEVIE’S FAMOUS

hen I spoke to baker Mayra Sibrian in September 2025, she told me that eating a particularly good concha changed her life. “A light bulb went off in my head. I was just like, damn, this is where it’s at,” she said. “It started the journey of me connecting to my roots. It just lit a flame inside me.” That journey led her to open her smallbatch panadería Pan de La Selva (formerly Selva Central Goods) in 2020, baking pan dulce inspired by Mexican and Central American traditions from her apartment and delivering them to customers’ homes. From there, she began to sell her pastries at pop-ups and farmers markets across the city. In 2025, she opened a temporary storefront inside City Hall through Seattle Restored. The shop closed earlier this year, but Sibrian is raising funds via GoFundMe to find Pan de La Selva a long-term home. Someday, she hopes to open a hub where chefs of different backgrounds could teach workshops and help feed the community. Sibrian’s pillowy pastel conchas, chubby pig-shaped puerquitos, and laminated pastries are edible works of art, perfected through her tenacious recipe-testing process. They also capture her unique point of view as someone

LENOX

id you know that the two best pizza places in town are owned by the same restaurateurs? Shane Abbott and Justin Harcus are the geniuses behind Lupo and Stevie’s Famous. Lupo, short for Bocca al Lupo (Into the Mouth of the Wolf ), has been Fremont’s chandelier-lit, date-night haunt since 2018. Their naturally leavened, Neapolitan-inspired, wood-fired pizza is made with fresh ingredients sourced primarily from Washington and West Coast producers, with dishes crafted in their little 175-square-foot kitchen. My go-to is their cacio e pepe pizza, which is simple yet decadent, with the holy

with Mexican and Salvadoran heritage living in Seattle. Pan de La Selva means “bread of the jungle” and is a reference to the rainforest landscapes of Mexico and Central America, as well as to the lush abundance of the Pacific Northwest. Sibrian maintains a close relationship with the farmers markets as a longtime vendor and employs local ingredients, including flours from Cairnspring Mills and Shepherd’s Grain, fruit from Collins Family

PAN DE LA SELVA

BILLIE WINTER

Orchards and Hayton Farms, and corn nixtamalized by Milpa Masa. Sibrian told me she prioritizes “catering to the Latinx diaspora” and wants her baked goods to evoke “emotion, curiosity, and connection” in the person eating them, reawakening memories and sparking reflection. “I’m just trying to make you feel something,” she said. “That’s what it comes down to.” JULIANNE BELL

trinity of cheeses: Samish Bay mozzarella, soft pecorino, and shaved grana. Lupo has a strict three-topping rule, so don’t expect any gimmicks—just the classics on a bed of delicate sourdough crust (a good reminder that pizza doesn’t have to be complicated to be special). It should also be known that I think about their olives on a daily basis—a fresh medley of warm orbs marinated in oil peppered with orange zest and fennel. Stevie’s Famous is Lupo’s less glamorous, but just as impressive, little sister, slinging New York–style pies in Burien, Beacon Hill, and Phinney Ridge. I have it on good authority that Ste-

’90s screenwriter couldn’t come up with a better meet-cute. Two Seattle-area culinary science nerds both secure internships at the so-called greatest restaurant in the world—that’s Noma in Copenhagen—within months of each other. Both are studying zymology, the science of fermentation. They pass as ships in the night, never making contact. Then they meet each other back in Seattle, fall in love, start up a fermentation-themed fine-dining pop-up, and eventually marry. Michelle Westing, a first-gen Russian American originally from Bellevue, has a bachelor’s in culinary arts and restaurant management from Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France. When she returned home upon graduating, she began selling fermented condiments like miso, shoyu, hot sauce, and fantastically smooth, flavorful vinegar at local farmers markets. (Her squash garum hot sauce is hoard-worthy.) Idaho-born Jaimon Westing ’s been a fine-dining chef around town for about a decade (Tilth, Single Shot) and has a degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Portland. As Amino, the couple does ticketed dinners at places like the National Nordic Museum; fascinating, sciencey, and very veg-focused dishes abound on their menus. Meanwhile, they co-run Symbiotic Cultures, their farmers-market side operation selling their koji-based ferments. Some

orn in Harlem and raised in Seattle, Chef Jhonny Reyes got his start at neighborhood red sauce joint Pizzuto’s Italian Cafe and grew up to be a protégé of the hat man, Chef Thierry Rautureau. He’s an alum of such widely heralded Seattle restaurants as Roux, the Innkeeper, Art of the Table, and JuneBaby, to name a paltry few. Today, in his dream restaurant, Lenox, Reyes dovetails his decades of experience with his Nuyorican and greater Caribbean heritage in hyper-creative dishes like the Tres Hermanas salad, which is barely recognizable as a salad and could easily be a veggie entree. It features a ridge

vie’s is the real deal—someone who used to live in the Big Apple told me that they make the closest thing to a real NY slice. It’s also one of the few places you can get a ball of burrata on the side (!!) to dissect on top of your slice for an experience nothing short of heavenly. Lupo and Stevie’s aren’t just nailing it with pizza, but also with their housemade ice cream, offered at both stand-alone locations with rotating seasonal flavors. Whether you are grabbing a quick slice, bringing home a full pie, or treating yourself to a fancy meal, Abbott and Harcus provide all types of customers with pizza that feels truly special. AUDREY VANN

highlights of their fermented portfolio so far include carrot “pepperoni,” which is a vegetarian charcuterie comprising cured carrots, squash garum-accented relish, warm Comté cheese, and a mysterious fermented “magic powder.” Clever as hell. There’s also the amazake sorbet—a scoop of white sorbet made from sweet fermented rice (amazake), topped with a compote of acidulated (pickled) blackberry and fig leaves, along with a touch of kelp granita. Both Amino and Symbiotic Cultures are perhaps the coolest, most delicious possible crossovers of science, art, and food. Most importantly, everything they’re making out there is super weird, inventive, and heavenly to eat. MEG VAN HUYGEN

AMINO/ SYMBIOTIC CULTURES

of roasted corn, squash, green beans, pickled cherries, and farmer cheese, all curved around a lake of a creamy Green Goddess dressing and dotted with intense herb oil. Or a rockfish sandwich, which Reyes coats in bacalao, then fries and serves with shaved onion and sofrito tartar sauce on a fresh roll from Ben’s Bread Co. Yes, he batters his fried fish with fish. Now, some may be reluctant to celebrate someone who’s already so well celebrated—Lenox was named one of Bon Appétit’s best new restaurants in the US in 2025, and it’s been a darling of Seattle’s food writers (this one included) since its early food truck days—but

the praise that Reyes gets could not be more deserved. Chef Jhonny is a major, very beloved player in Seattle’s culinary world, which scans because he’s pretty much the nicest dude you’ve ever met. That’s not what puts him on this list, although it helps. It’s the unique spin on the cuisine that Lenox provides—as much as the imaginative flavor combos, off-the-charts deliciousness, dedication to local sourcing and sustainable quality ingredients from the PNW, and an impeccable, genuinely smile-faced hospitality toward his guests—that qualifies Jhonny Reyes as a total innovator. And a very Seattle innovator at that. MEG VAN HUYGEN

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

44 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

KAY REDDEN is

the founder of Den Tapes, the fiercely independent Seattle cassette label that has released more than 100 albums and become a cornerstone of the local music underground.

SEPTEMBER 2026

MUSIC

Kay Redden/Den Tapes BY AUDREY VANN

he’s the mind and muscle behind three hours away to Austin. “There was the cassette-only label Den Tapes, something deep inside of me that always the manager of Sonic Boom knew there was something here for me, I Records, the assistant booker at just didn’t know what.” the Sunset Tavern, and a KJ at Her first three years here—spent living Hattie’s Hat—all of which is why she was in Lake City and commuting to work at a once called “the unofficial mayor of Ballard” Whole Foods in Bellevue (“nobody told by this very publication. She’s a musician, me how far Bellevue was, nobody tells you a photographer, a lifelong fangirl, and a local music champion. She’s Kay Redden, and she’s a fucking genius. “Do you like working ?” I asked her last month, mystified, on the eve of the fifth annual Den Fest. “I do,” she responded. “It helps keep the demons at bay.” Redden grew up an only child in Garland, Texas, the town that inspired King of the Hill (she deeply relates to Bobby, BTW). Asked when her love of music emerged, she says, “When I landed on Earth, probably, or when my parents were… [makes thrusting motion].” We chuckled. Her father was a music obsessive and cassette collector who taught her to scour garage sales for tapes. “I would play a tape like 1,000 times until it sounded like hell, and we had to find another copy.” Like most 30-somethings, Redden developed her musical taste through music videos on TV and internet rabbit holes. She upheld the sacred Den makes a strong case for keeping your tape deck. ritual of following a musical family tree: poring over liner notes, biogra- that”)—weren’t the indie-rock dream she phies, music magazines, and online forums hoped for. Though she attended as many to find the roots and branches that connect live shows as she could, she found the bands to their inspirations, labelmates, and side projects. For example, Redden discovered that Doug Martsch, frontman of Built to Spill, was in the band the Halo Benders with Calvin Johnson, the vocalist of Beat Happening and founder of K Records. From K Records sprouted a million more branches. (Kay and I both have tattoos of the K Records logo, as did Kurt Cobain.) A young Redden noticed Built to Spill had plenty of PNW tour dates, but only one stop in Denton, Texas. She had spent years looking longingly at her Seattle skyline desktop background until she finally crowds standoffish. Nobody, even those got the guts to make the move in 2012. “I who seemed into the music, wanted to thought, if I don’t take the leap now, will I chat. “If you were not already in the know, ever?” Everyone in her family was support- people did not want to talk to you.” She ive except for her grandmother, who was found the stand-up-comedy community “pissed” that Redden wouldn’t just move far more welcoming.

“Running this label is fucking lovely. People who did not know each other previously have all melted into this beautiful thing.”

Then her world shattered. Her mother died unexpectedly, at the age of 56. “When she died, I felt truly stronger than ever,” Redden explains. “It was a very weird feeling—I could feel her, as if she left the good things about herself with me.” The grief expedited answers to a question that had long haunted her: “What am I here for?”

and were still relatively cheap to make. “I don’t think I’d start a tape label in 2026,” she admits, “But I could definitely start one in 2015.” The first Den Tapes release was a stand-up comedy set from friend and comedian Albert Kirchner. She copied 25 tapes, one at a time by hand, with a Sony cassette deck in her Lake City living room. I n 2 0 1 6, R e d d e n m e t longtime friends Willy Walker and Dan Spaulding, who helped her run the label—staying up all night copying tapes, watching movies and cartoons, and smoking weed—for the next four years. “I met them at a [Wimps and] Pony Time show,” she says. “We were the only people dancing.” B y 2 0 2 0, Wa l ke r a n d Spaulding had moved away; Redden continued operating the label on her own, but outsourced the time-consuming duplication process to Canadian company Duplication. “They’ve always been good to us,” she says. “And they sound so good.” But running the label is a massive undertaking. When you order a tape, Redden drops it off at the post office. If you send Den Tapes an email, Redden responds. She not only organizes the twoday Den Fest that showcases bands on the label, but also COURTESY OF KAY REDDEN holds down the merch table. Along with all this, she also Redden remembers the birth of Den avidly attends shows and hunts for new Tapes in vivid detail: A few weeks after bands to sign. “More often than not, I disher mother’s memorial, she was lying on cover bands through friends or friendsthe couch, feeling untethered from Earth. of-friends—but I don’t want that to sound She was unhappy in her relationship and cliquey,” Redden explains. “I like that the was just beginning to realize it. “You know circle keeps getting bigger and that the when you’re in that fucked-up part community keeps growing.” of a relationship where nothing In 2019, Redden began prifeels good?” I had an epiphvately writing and recording any that I don’t have to wait music as Bog Star (an ode to for things to happen,” she the wetland flower, as well tells me. “I was like, ‘I’m not as the ’70s power-pop band, fucking happy doing what Big Star). She didn’t drop I’m doing. I’m gonna break up her first tape, the beginnings, with this stupid fuck and start until last year. “I guess the older I’ve gotten, the more ‘fuck making tapes.’” Though she’d wanted to be more involved it’ I’ve gotten,” she explains. “A large part in the local music scene, Redden had never of starting the label was that I didn’t play seriously considered running a label. But music—I was just a longtime deep appre2015 was the right time for tapes—there ciator,” she tells me. “It was weird to was a growing interest in the format, think about me doing it.” the beginnings is which had not yet reached the mainstream sweetly somber, lyrically complex, and

46 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE deeply personal. Redden’s voice has the quality of the Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker or Beat Happening’s Heather Lewis (two of my all-time favorite vocalists). Her use of drum machines, electric guitars, and diaristic confessions reminds me of Kathleen Hanna’s 1998 solo project, the Julie Ruin. Since the start of Den Tapes 11 years ago, Redden has released more than 100 albums by local artists. Like K Records or Kill Rock Stars, Den Tapes has become synonymous with the great PNW artists of our time: Zookraught, Tomo Nakayama, Coral Grief, Versing, Linda From Work, Beverly Crusher, Wild Powwers, Bad Optics, Don Piano… the list goes on. “It’s unfathomable to me most of the time what Den Tapes has become,” says Redden. “Labels and communities like these are all the things I looked up to my entire

life, and now I’m like, ‘Oh, I did it.’” Redden has never made money from running Den Tapes, and she has no expectation of doing so. All profits are funneled back into the label to release more tapes and sprout more musical branches. But just before the fest, when money was tight, Redden was asking herself if people even cared. Den Fest brought her out of that headspace. “Running this label is fucking lovely,” she says. “The fact that all these people who did not know each other previously have all melted into this beautiful thing makes me tear up when I think about it.” That the community she built after her mother’s passing calls her “Mama Kay” is not lost on her. “It’s funny,” Redden says, “Of course I wish she was still here, but I really don’t think any of this would have happened without gaining that strength from my grief.”

Short List

Six More Music Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

e’re a music city, baby! But the talent runs way deeper than the excellent indie/rock/punk canon you may already know and love. Whether reimagining hip-hop, composing for film, pushing electronic music into places no synth has gone before, or running a record store out of a living room, these musicians are building on the city’s history while laying tracks for whatever comes next. Shapeshifters, sonic obsessives, epicurean tastemakers, underground legends, and cult heroes: These are some of the people making us pay attention.

SEPTEMBER 2026

fter getting his start in the Seattle music scene playing with unorthodox noise-rockers Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death, Corey J. Brewer has developed into one of Seattle’s preeminent film composers. Along the way to his current status as one of the city’s go-to movie-scoring musicians/ conceptualists, Brewer has created some brilliant, idiosyncratic works that hint at his cinematic obsessions. The Destroyer Has a Master Plan (2013) comes off like a weirder Tindersticks, with Brewer’s Ian Curtis– like croon lending a loamy undertow to his dark pop sensibilities. Old Dark House’s Welcome Home (2021) is a suite of lugubrious, darker-than-thou gothic art songs written with the great synthesist/drummer Andrew Crawshaw, featuring Brewer’s baritone vocals and absolutely no corniness. Velvet Vampire (2022) is a paragon of spooky trip-hop, tenebrous krautrock, and eldritch ambient. But Brewer really began to make inroads into the film-music world with The Overlook Hotel (2017), which reimagines the soundtrack for John Fell Ryan and Akiva Saunders’s psychedelic “backwards and forwards” revamp of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (which Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind originally scored). It’s a deeply chilling, remorseless piece of sonic

COREY J. BREWER COURTESY OF COREY BREWER

sorcery. Getting meta with a far-fetched backstory, Brewer linked up with Stranger 2016 Music Genius Erik Blood under the name Blutbraüer in order to produce two soundtracks for imaginary, top-shelf European horror flicks. At once progressive, propulsive, and macabre, these albums will thrill the Goblin lover in your life. In addition, at various times and venues this year, Brewer teamed up with yet another Stranger Music Genius, cellist Lori Goldston (who won the award in 2012), to create a live soundtrack to the 1911 silent film L’Inferno. If there’s any justice, Brewer will soon start receiving commissions to score films for whoever’s the next David Lynch... or for the current Kane Parsons. DAVE SEGAL

ne of the most compelling electronic music producers on the West Coast, enereph (aka Connie Fu) is a relative newcomer who’s been making huge gains in her creativity, culminating in 2024’s Immortal Mirth. On a sheer sonic level, her music is dazzling, whether heard at home on headphones or in a massive club. As with the output of IDM and drum ‘n’ bass legends such as Autechre and Photek, enereph’s complex, unconventional music is danceable if you’re flexible and clever enough, yet also enjoyable as a pure listening experience. Her sound is perfectly poised between physicality and braininess. As someone who’s been listening to electronic music for nearly 50 years, I think that enereph has the potential to become a generational musician, destined to play important international festivals. A classically trained pianist, Fu is also proficient with synthesizers to the point that she was employed at Seattle’s revered, now-defunct synth shop Patchwerks. She’s also a devotee of Kaivo, a semi-modular software synthesizer manufactured by Seattle-based instrument company Madrona Labs. Renowned for

ENEREPH TWYLA SAMPACO

its ability to help forge unprecedented sounds, Kaivo makes for a powerful pairing with enereph. Fu’s skills don’t end with music; she also produces film photography in collaboration with Twyla Sampaco and is proficient at weaving. Regarding the latter, Fu told me, “I’m toying with this idea that the loom is an instrument that I’m playing, which is essentially silent, but the music it would make is the music that I’m writing. It makes fabric that’s almost like a score. What would the musical output of something like the loom sound like?” DAVE SEGAL

48 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

MORGAN HENDERSON MATIJA SMOJVER

here hasn’t ever been a rapper from Seattle quite like Oblé Reed. The 25-year-old hails from North Seattle and has carved out a niche for himself as a lyrically dexterous emcee with an expansive, alternative sonic palette. Since dropping his first single in 2023, Reed has hit the ground running. His fantastic debut album, LINDENAVE!, earned a top spot in Seattle Times’ music critics poll, and last year he headlined Neumos for the release of LINE LEADERS, a mixtape jam-packed with features from some of the hottest names in hip-hop. But this past December, Reed was forced to stop performing after a bout of strep throat led to a heart infection that sidelined him for eight months. The downtime, however, hasn’t completely stopped Reed’s roll. While he’s had to take a step back from performing, he’s been producing and writing new songs that he plans to drop later this fall. He released a collaborative Evergreen State Kit with the Seattle Sounders (Reed attended the inaugural Sounders game as a 7-year-old) and took on his first acting gig as a humorously inept cashier in a Lil Woody’s commercial.

errick Brown (aka Vitamin D) has history. For one, he played a central role in the development of what we now call the “Seattle Sound”—a hip-hop that smoothly blends soul and jazz textures with classic boombap and conscious raps. This approach became the foundation from which, at the beginning of the present century, Blue Scholars, THEESatisfaction, Macklemore, and more emerged. He also produced beats for very big names: Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, De La Soul, and the late Gift of Gab. In fact, Gab’s album 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up (2004)— which Vita produced with another

eattle multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson has played baroque folk-rock to hundreds of thousands all over the world with Fleet Foxes and held down the low end with hell-raising post-hardcore cult faves the Blood Brothers, reflecting his tremendous range and ability to adapt. Despite these high-profile gigs, Henderson still remains below many folks’ radars. He still isn’t a household name, though the bands for whom he plays bass, cello, bass clarinet, and saxophone are. Not that this situation bothers Henderson. He’s too busy creating compelling music in several projects that—to me, anyway— are more enjoyable than his better-known groups. At various intervals, Henderson seemingly

As he starts to make his way back to the stage, he’s aware that a lot rests on his shoulders. “I watched people bring Seattle to the world and rep it in their way and tell the story of the city. Now it’s my turn to be able to do the same,” says Reed. “To be able to take it on, take that responsibility of repping the city—it’s an honor to have folks back me and see that I love the city, and the city loves me back. That’s everything.” JAS KEIMIG

OBLÉ REED

local legend, Jake One—is a classic of underground hip-hop. Vitamin D also possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of not only hip-hop but music in general. It is just staggering. Talk with him for 30 minutes, and you will leave the exchange with your head glowing like kryptonite. He knows it all: the samples used in this-and-that beat, the players on a given record—and which of them have real talent and which don’t. I recall once bringing up Patrice Rushen (the R&B genius behind “Forget Me Nots” and “Remind Me”) during a conversation. I asked if he knew about her early jazz records. Vitamin D then said

DAQUAN TERRENCE

has at least four bands going, and his discography is vast, involving several Northwest underground-music acts, including J.R.C.G., Seven Colors, and Spencer Moody’s jazzy/funky quirksters the Blind Seekers. Perhaps foremost right now is OC-EN (pronounced “Ocean”), a duo he formed with fellow saxophonist/synthesist Joel Cuplin. Their improvisational live sets flow logically while hitting upon weird strains of ambient, jazz, dub, and IDM. They’ve opened for Colin Stetson and Go Kurosawa and held their own. Henderson and Cuplin are currently working on their debut album; the two tracks I’ve heard flow in the minimalist, neo-avant-jazz stream that’s burgeoning nowadays.

or about a quarter century, Raica (aka Chloe Harris) has ranked among the Pacific Northwest’s most versatile and interesting electronic-music producers and DJs. In the latter role, Harris has gone from touring the world with progressive-house superstar DJ John Digweed and playing left-field techno, electro, and IDM in underground clubs to curating phenomenal ambient sets for the esteemed Humano Studios YouTube series. The wide range that Harris exhibits behind the decks extends to her own recordings. Her productions reveal a facility for both the cerebral and the physical, with an emphasis on darkness instilled in Harris by an early infatuation with industrial-music avatars Skinny Puppy. Having seen Raica perform dozens of times, I can report that every live set is different and fascinating in its own distinctive way. That’s rare. Raica’s last two releases, The Absence of Being and If Not Now, When (both 2025), contain some of the most emotionally resonant ambient music of the decade. The former LP was inspired by and dedicated to the premature deaths of her mother and youngest child, and it captures intense feelings of loss without descending into the maudlin.

something that utterly surprised me: “She had to quit jazz because her left hand isn’t that good.” Her left hand. O n a n o t h e r o c ca s i o n , h e described to a friend and me the brilliance of an obscure New York City producer, Paul C, who died at the age of 24 in 1989. He is like that. And if you deep-listen to his music, you can hear his vast musical knowledge at work, beat after beat, bar after bar. Vitamin D, who is also an educator and can often be found DJing local events around South Seattle, is a producer’s producer. Did I mention that he made the theme song for the TV show Power? CHARLES MUDEDE

For OC-EN, Henderson uses an Octatrack MIDI controller that interfaces with two synthesizers—a Moog Sirin, which creates the bass sound, and a Nord Drum that, Henderson says, “fits between rhythm and tonic sounds.” Cuplin uses a looper and effects units to correspond to Henderson’s moves. Wo w - w o w , H e n d e r s o n ’s cross-country duo with NYC-based Pollens member Jeff Aaron Bryant, might be his most fascinating project. Their hypnotically rhythmic, bizarrely textured instrumentals sound like ritualistic South Pacific Island pieces plugged into an organic techno matrix. A key part of Seattle’s music scene for over a quarter century, Henderson creates music that gets deeper and stranger as he goes. DAVE SEGAL

RAICA

The latter evokes the psychedelic innerspace travel of the headiest IDM. Harris is also co-owner (with her husband) of the online music retailer Further Records, which is run out of their home and powered by the couple’s epicurean tastes. For several years, they managed a label under the same name, releasing music by globally renowned figures such as Conrad Schnitzler, Donato Dozzy, Jo Johnson, and Rrose. Harris recently played the revered Movement Music Festival for the first time—here’s hoping that it won’t be the last. DAVE SEGAL

VITAMIN D

CHARLES MUDEDE

50 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

BETTY WETTER (center) leads TUSH, the beloved bimonthly drag show comprising (clockwise from top left):

Angel Baby Kill Kill Kill, Beau Degas, Pussy Willow, DJ Dark Wiley, Amora Namor, Miss Texas 1988, Stasia Coup, and Moscato Sky.

SEPTEMBER 2026

PERFORMANCE

Betty Wetter & TUSH BY JAS KEIMIG

f you’ve ever found yourself squished into the nearly always sold-out audience of TUSH at Clock-Out Lounge on Beacon Hill, you’ll know that you need to expect the unexpected. You might see a drag queen do a beautiful rendition of a Beach House track, or another queen literally “ski” across the tables of the bar while “Chariots of Fire” blasts over the speakers. Either way, make sure you tip. Led by Seattle powerhouse Betty Wetter, TUSH is a bimonthly drag- and burlesque-fueled show that continually feels fresh. The show’s cast is venerated, but the members aren’t precious or pretentious about their work. Rather, you get to see performers at their best and most experimental, playing around with ideas both silly and serious to a rapt crowd. It’s become a space where some of the coolest performance is happening right now. And, fuck, is it so much fun to watch. Officially established in 2018, TUSH has assembled a boisterous cast—everyone brings something different to the party. There’s Miss Texas 1988, who’s been a cast member from the beginning and is a consistent kooky presence (she’s also a Stranger contributor and will cohost the Genius Awards). Pussy Willow ups TUSH’s raunch factor, and Moscato Sky brings burlesque and vocal prowess to the stage. Beau Degas (who, famously, beat then-future Drag Race competitor Bosco for her spot on the cast) marries high drag with deeply weird ideas, while Angel Baby Kill Kill, a bona fide storyteller, incorporates the freakiest touches to her numbers. Amora Namor serves fabulosity on a platter, and Stasia Coup—winner of a six-month residency via the 2026 CompeTUSHion—always has the most intricately unhinged set pieces. Resident DJ dark wiley is behind the decks, fomenting a musical atmosphere that toes the line between nostalgic throwbacks and full-on turn up. And, of course, leading the chaos is Betty, the mistress of ceremonies, anchoring the show with her trademark wit and gay commentary. As TUSH’s ringleader, she conducts the madness in a way that makes the audience feel well taken care of, whether she’s asking the crowd to whoop for queens or giving everyone a political action item to do once they get home. Behind the scenes, Betty encourages her TUSH bedfellows to do whatever brings them joy. “There’s no theme, I don’t push

OLIVIA ZAKES GREEN

We can see your tonsils from here. anybody in any direction—I want them to chase the ideas they want,” says Betty. “I truly think that’s the core of what makes everybody so good.” But TUSH’s definition of queer performance extends well beyond drag. TUSH brings art to its audience that they might not have come out for otherwise. Over the years, Clock-Out’s gold-curtained stage has welcomed all manner of queer performers including the Drama Tops, Woody Shticks, ATM, Quincy Yeoman, and 2015 Genius Award winner Cherdonna Shinatra. On a recent night, I watched dance duo the Bonnies roll around with cucumbers in their mouths, twirling on platform shoes made of pickle jars. It was as confounding as it was entrancing, an inspired, offbeat performance nestled perfectly amongst all the drag and burlesque numbers surrounding it. That freewheeling approach to curation depends on a solid sense of trust between

TUSH and its audience. “They’ll go with you on a journey, and I think this show has pushed me more than any other show,” says Miss Texas 1988. “They’re so supportive. I constantly want to do my best for them.” That support is palpable at every show— the crowd is engaged, regularly hollering at the stage, tossing ones into the tip buckets that go around, and laughing their asses off.

Rather than gesturing to this idea of “community” and calling it good, the TUSH cast takes their platform seriously. Their attention is its own presence in the room, empowering the performers to go out on a limb. It’s perhaps no surprise that this respectful, engaged crowd—hungry to be

challenged—consists largely of lesbians and trans people. (More than once, I have gone to a TUSH show and felt like I’ve stepped into a vortex of friends’ exes and people who have ghosted me on Tinder.) “Drag caters to white cis men so often. I would honestly say that they are the minority and the most picked on at our show,” says Betty. “Obviously everybody is welcome, but the lesbian and trans community have really lifted us up. And in return we want to make sure that they’re welcome and have a space to be and to see good entertainment.” That attentive support has led to financial stability for the cast that’s often hard to find at other drag gigs. While they are by no means paid what they are worth (every queer performer deserves $1 million a year and free health care for life, full stop), a TUSH gig means consistent tips, merch sales, and sold-out shows at a venue that wants them to succeed. That stability and renown have expanded TUSH’s reach outside of Clock-Out and into other parts of the community—you may have seen TUSH at

52 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

GEORGETOWN EAT, DRINK, SHOP & ART IT UP IN CREATIVE, FASHIONABLE, DELICIOUS, HARD-WORKING GEORGETOWN.

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54 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE a Seattle Reign FC game, a Seattle Storm game, or Pride in the Park, spreading the gospel of queer performance to the masses. “We’re in a place where we’re continuing to grow every month,” says Moscato Sky. “You ask [the audience], who’s new? And it’s constantly a loud roar of people screaming at you. I think that’s so beautiful.” Rather than gesturing to this idea of “community” and calling it good once they take their final bows after each show, the TUSH cast takes their platform seriously. In 2024, Betty, along with Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue of Drama Tops, started the Queer Sick Pay Fund (qSPF), an organization that pays Seattle-area queer performers who have to miss their gigs due to illness or injury. Nightlife is a space with little in the way of a safety net, and artists routinely have to push through illness, injury, and

burnout in order to make enough money to live. Finding a fiscal sponsor in Velocity Dance Center, qSPF is an effort to fill that gap, compensating queer artists for income lost when they need to take time off. TUSH regulars have been some of the biggest supporters and donors of qSPF, Betty says. That support helped the organization to launch another community effort—the Gender Affirming Care Grant. Every quarter, qSPF gives out one $5,000 grant and five $1,000 grants to trans folks actively planning a gender-affirming surgery or procedure. So far this year, qSPF has raised nearly $40,000 in donations. “It gives us a foundation to work off of. We constantly talk about having a platform, like, what do I do with this?” says Betty. “For myself, I don’t want to be famous. I just want to keep using it to do cool stuff.”

Short List

Six More Performance Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

rom classical ballet and avant-garde burlesque to puppetry and gay Bigfoot, Seattle performers take pleasure in disrupting whatever kind of programming you think you might be getting, turning a genre on its head, or throwing the whole damn stage out the window. More than simply entertainers, these performers are dramaturgs and world-builders whose work blurs the boundary between theater and visual art, dance and installation, ritual and nightlife, the viewer and the viewed. These are the provocateurs who will not let you be bored in your seat.

SEPTEMBER 2026

incredible athleticism of overdraft’s improvisational choreography, that is utterly intoxicating. A little kinky and terrifying, too. Wyatt and Simmons both started out in ballet. Wyatt dropped out of school in sixth grade to study ballet full-time, going on to dance professionally in New York. Simmons followed a similar trajectory, performing with ballet companies in Frankfurt and Boston before moving to Seattle. They found themselves dissatisfied with ballet for similar reasons. “It can be a struggle to exist holistically, as queer people, inside this—at least on the surface—super-heteronormative structure with really strict gender roles,” Wyatt says. “[In ballet] there’s a tendency toward erasure of any body type complexity. There was FRANK CORREA a lot of self-erasure.” it Wyatt and Hannah Simmons, the duo Though he earned a degree in dance behind atm/overdraft, seem to be every- dramaturgy and dabbled in modern dance, where all at once, suddenly. It’s notable, Wyatt was often bored and frequently since they only began performing as “over- “retiring.” Things clicked, finally, when draft” a few months ago (and have been get- he discovered the Academy of Burlesque ting a lot of calls ever since—Bumbershoot is in Seattle. Simmons, who holds degrees up next). Their debut at Once Removed 02 in both dance and mathematics, also disthis past June took place in an empty house covered burlesque in Seattle. When the in West Seattle, where they moved like appa- two were paired together for a burlesque ritions in ponytails, ripped tights, and yellow Christmas show in 2022, the chemistry heels—passing through hallways, wedg- was instantaneous and atm was born. ing into doorways, and contorting across Four years and a lot of ass, titties, and kitchen counters in a slow-motion ballet. money later, their offshoot “overdraft” was For a few hours, their bodies became part of conceived as a family-friendly version of the site-specific art, forcing visitors to step their act. But overdraft feels like more than over them or stare back into the big, unblink- that. It’s a new kind of embodied, site-responing eyes painted on the mesh covering sive performance art that’s weird and fresh. their faces. There’s something about those It turns voyeurism on its head and turns dismasks, as well as the boudoir aesthetics and comfort into titillation. AMANDA MANITACH

ATM/OVERDRAFT

e’ve all had scary and frustrating experiences on the road, whether screaming in psychic agony behind the world’s worst driver or nearly being clipped by a distracted motorist while riding a bike on one of Seattle’s busy roads. The experience of getting around in a big city is fraught, whether on foot, two wheels, or four. No one is better at communicating that tension than Kara Beadle, movement artist and lead collaborator of Heap Troupe, an interdisciplinary performance group they cofounded with musician Andy Zacek. Featuring a rotating cast of collaborators, Heap Troupe’s performances build an alternative dystopian universe where bikes, cars, and humans all meld into one another. A typical Heap performance is interactive and site-specific, calling attention to the space taken up by cars while imagining a different reality. Their props help, too, whether it’s tiny toy cars, hub caps used as fans, or bikes artfully lifted into the air like dancers. Beadle’s fascination with car culture grew out of their Texan upbringing, where commuting in a motor vehicle was a way of life. Frequently carsick, Beadle moved to the bicycle haven of Seattle nine years ago, and it opened their mind to a different world. After suffering multiple accidents as cyclists just trying to share the road with cars, Beadle and Zacek were inspired to

HEAP TROUPE ERIC HANSON

start making art that investigates the ways that car supremacy has taken over cities and our lives. Their biggest project to date is HeapRide, a three-hour guided group bicycle ride where audience members hopped on bikes to watch pop-up performances along a route that wound its way through Seattle. For Beadle, the investigation and embodiment of various modes of transportation involves a mix of humor and sincerity, at once balletic and aggressive, to open a deeper dialogue about the seriousness of a corporate-fueled culture that worships cars. “I wanted to get back to humor,” says Beadle, “so that people can look at a kind of caricatured abstraction of what they might do in their car, see that reflected back in themselves, and think, oh, like, why am I doing this?” JAS KEIMIG

56 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

SCOTT SHOEMAKER BRONWEN HOUCK

hen people are familiar with Scott Shoemaker’s work, it’s usually via his signature Ms. PakMan [sic] character. Since the show ’s 2014 Re-bar debut, Shoemaker has taken Atari’s prima donna to the stage on the regular, recasting her as a late-stage Judy Garland–esque barfly who’s more interested in eating pills than dots and is forever teetering on the brink of her cabaret comeback. Others may know him best for his drag-burlesque Halloween show, Uncle Basement’s Attic of Horrors!, which debuted last year at Theatre Off Jackson and will return this fall. There’s also Scott Shoemaker’s War on Christmas, reprising for the ninth year this December and

he Seattle-based shadow puppetry and projections duo Shadow Girls Cult uses old-fashioned 2D shadow puppets, overhead projectors, human silhou-

ELING was awarded the 2025 Henson Foundation Workshop Grant and toured nationally. UNRAVELING used hundreds of layered shadow puppets and blended elements of sci-fi, noir, and classic horror into a kind of surrealist smoothie that explored what happens when things fall apart. This year, the Cult has been developing a new full-length show, Water Is Easier to Swallow, while creating shadow worlds for Theatre Battery’s Jar of Fat and Washington Ensemble Theatre’s Blood/Sucker (both look dagger-sharp). They’re also developing an interactive installation for Base Camp Studios 2 in the fall, so watch this space. Bray and Exactly ’s impact extends beyond their own productions. As coproducers of Fussy Cloud Puppet Slam, they have helped cultivate one of Seattle’s most distinctive homes for puppetry and experimental performance. Their work draws from a deep well ETHAN CHIEM of theatrical traditions while speakettes, and other analog tech to create pup- ing directly to the fragmented, image-satupet phantasmagorias that make you feel as rated, emotionally complicated moment we though you’re watching a dream unfold in happen to be living through. Few artists are real time. Last year was a big one for the creating work that feels so handmade and Cult, also known as Cass Bray and Zane so strange—or so perfectly suited to the Exactly. Their full-length show UNRAV- weirdness of the now. BESS LOVEJOY

SHADOW GIRLS CULT

any people have religious baggage, but Timothy White Eagle took his and turned it into something profoundly beautiful. As a mixed-race infant adopted into a conservative white Mormon family in rural Washington, White Eagle has spent a lifetime negotiating identity, belonging, and the spirit in the sky. His multidisciplinary work reflects that journey and spans genres, from immersive performance and installation to photography, sound, and other unclassifiable genre-bent forms of storytelling. Binding his hybrid practice is the thread of visually striking ceremonial ritual—the kind that fascinated White Eagle as a child

TIMOTHY WHITE EAGLE SUNNY MARTINI

packed with comedy, songs, dancing, video shorts, nudity, and whatever fresh cultural grievance can be squeezed into a holiday special. Or maybe they know him from Scott Shoemaker’s: Probed! (the colon is pronounced aloud), involving gay Bigfoot, gay ghosts, and gay aliens, while sprinkling in nods to Star Trek and Unsolved Mysteries—slated to return to the Intiman Cabaret in the spring. Maybe it’s all of them. Since Shoemaker has spent more than 20 years performing in Seattle’s underground theaters, we have plenty to remember him by. The man is dramaturgically prolific. Working alongside longtime life partner Freddy Molitch, aka Freddy King of Pants,

Shoemaker’s Shoes and Pants Productions constantly cooks up hysterical, fucked-up concepts born of absolute whims, all loaded with old-school pop-culture references, tons of improv, detailed set design, original musical numbers, and fabulous, high-production-level costumes! They’re jaw-achingly, feels-like-you’re-havinga-stroke funny, with one-liners that’ll linger in your skull for… well, in my skull’s case, decades. The best part is that all of this queer, marvelous Kafkacity is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more inside the maze of Scott Shoemaker’s bizarre brain, and we get to live in the same city where he’s unraveling it all, in song, on stage, all for us. MEG VAN HUYGEN

ric M. Acosta is the sweet and twisted mind behind unpoetry, a curated multi-artist, multidisciplinary monthly performance series that has run a little shy of four years now. I’ve been lucky to watch unpoetry evolve from its infancy into the fleshed-out and artistically realized beast it is today: a platform for disembodied poetry and writing, performance, dance, noise music, and other weird shit Acosta cooks up with his featured artists. The first unpoetry got its start in a bar and has since taken place at Jack Straw Cultural Center, in coffee shops, and in galleries. Poets have read work in front of taxidermied animals. Noise musicians have gotten down on the floor with dancers to let the mic catch what it will. Installations of recordings have lived alongside intricate lighting in spaces intersected by labyrinthine semi-walls of sheer curtains. Another way Acosta has defined it: “unpoetry is art practicing art.” Over the years, unpoetry has held regular performances at the Frye Art Museum, during which local artists are asked to respond to the museum’s current exhibitions using ekphrastic techniques. The next Frye event, on September 17, fea-

tures sound artists Tom Scully and María Dolores A. Matienzo, dancer Noelle Chun, and videographer Eyerot. Now unpoetry even has a sibling series, _poetry lab, which features performances by interdisciplinary artists and is hosted regularly at Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar. A filmmaker, musician, and poet in his own right, Acosta has two collections

available, Motion Flesh and underbelly, and another, Celestial Dentist, on the way in October, published by Idle Hands Press. If you’ve seen a show at 12th Avenue Arts or the Broad lately, he’s likely had a hand in building stage settings or any of the dozens of things that go into making a show a success. He’s constantly creating, and he’s constantly helping others create. KATIE LEE ELLISON

in the Mormon church, and that he later explored as a student of spiritual practices taught by Indigenous mentors, radical faeries, and a pagan community who laid the foundation of an artistic practice grounded in openness, healing, and some very irreverent nightlife. In 1995, he opened the Coffee Messiah, a Capitol Hill coffee shop by day and home for freaks by night that hosted the dusk-till-dawn, avant-garde Cabaret of Despair. His performances and installations have been presented at On the Boards and Town Hall Seattle, at La MaMa and the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival in New York, as well as internationally through his collabo-

rations with renowned performance artist/ playwright/singer-songwriter Taylor Mac. Last year, White Eagle was named the inaugural Green-Duwamish Artist in Residence for a pilot program developed by the EPA. During his yearlong residency, he and a group of collaborators developed an expansive body of work culminating in Once Wild River. The exhibit didn’t merely skim the history of the Duwamish; White Eagle walked its banks, gathered its medicine, documented its Indigenous caretakers, and performed rituals of wildness, sickness, and healing. Icon, queen, faerie, mystic, reformed Mormon, class clown trickster-goofball, sage: White Eagle is an artist who broke all of God’s molds, and we’re richer for it. AMANDA MANITACH

ERIC M. ACOSTA/UNPOETRY CORBIN LOUIS

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

58 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

ANASTACIARENEÉ is a poet,

playwright, visual artist, educator, and former Seattle Civic Poet whose genre-spanning work and mentorship have helped shape Seattle’s literary community.

PHOTO BY LUCIANO RATTO

SEPTEMBER 2026

LITERATURE

Anastacia-Reneé BY KATIE LEE ELLISON

ne evening in 2016, Anastacia-Reneé took me by the shoulders on a specific Capitol Hill dance floor during Lit Crawl, both of which no longer exist, and spoke loudly into my face, “Finish your book!” I had moved to Seattle the summer before and ventured into Hugo House, when it was still a house, where I witnessed Anastacia on stage many times. As a Hugo House Fellow in 2016, I got to workshop with her and she cheered me on from the start. It meant everything; it still does. Just months ago, I overheard her say nearly the very same thing to a mutual friend, and it reminded me of the many people Anastacia has been rooting on: taking the time to hold us up while she prolifically produces her own work. She cares about us, about our work, and about our hearts. She wants us to win. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Anastacia fleshed out her multi-hyphenate mind in Seattle as a poet, playwright, director, visual artist, educator, curator, and cross-genre writer whose work has never obeyed one form. She moved here about two decades ago to raise her children Brandin (also known by their drag persona, Hoochie Papa) and Indigo (a fashion designer). During that time she found her partner, poet Naa Akua, with whom she’ll celebrate 10 years of marriage this summer. She also became the city’s second Civic Poet, served as a Jack Straw curator, won numerous awards and residencies, and taught and mentored generations of writers in classrooms, workshops, and arts organizations. She’s published eight books, with two more on the way—a novel and a collection of poetry called Shuffle Cut Pull. Her most recent publication, 2024’s Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere, is a hybrid collection of poetry, flash fiction, and Afrofuturist sci-fi. Even with a formidable resume, Anastacia is still learning and exploring. I asked her what it felt like to receive this award, and she confessed she had trouble taking it all in. “I have been the other, the afterthought, the fill-in so many times. It can mess with your worth. Somebody [reading this] who might be [in that position]: Know that you are amazing.” We need Anastacia winning because her spirit is the bedrock of a community she helped build in this city and beyond. She is an emblem for exactly where Seattle needs investment, and this award can be a beautiful beginning.

Anastacia has lived in New York City since 2022. But if the Genius Awards hadn’t disappeared for a decade, it’s hard to imagine we wouldn’t have celebrated her much sooner. This award recognizes the enormous body of work she made here, the literary community she helped shape, and the generations of writers she encouraged, taught, challenged, and made room for along the way. When Anastacia left Seattle after 15 years, she spoke publicly about needing a new environment for the next stage of her personal and creative growth. She was also candid about the difficulties of making a life and career here, particularly as a Black artist. Multiple things can be true at once: You can love a place and help make it what it is, and eventually need to leave it in order to grow. But her investment in Seattle remains: Anastacia is still here every month; some of her nearest and dearest are here. And her influence is everywhere. There is a larger Seattle story here, too. The literature ecosystem has thinned considerably over the past decade: the city has become extraordinarily expensive, while many of the institutions and opportunities that once helped artists build sustainable lives have disappeared. Anastacia knows wht that can cost. “[Seattle is] losing some of our most creative people, because they cannot sur-

“I didn’t feel like I knew Seattle and how to fit within it as a young Black queer poet until I met Anastacia.” vive,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how well they paint, it doesn’t matter how well they sing, how many books. If you don’t have your basic needs, you cannot be creative.” Still, Anastacia is a success story because, as she says, “If you lay down a list of everything that the powers that be are against, I’m at least six or seven things on that list, and I’m still working. I’m still writing.” The return of the Genius Awards is the return of one opportunity to celebrate what’s long fed the city we love. Shining a light on a brilliant mind that helped shape this city is

to also shine light where more investment is needed and overdue. If you make art in Seattle, know that Anastacia boldly opened a door for you a long time ago because she wants you to make what you’re making. Be inspired; know you’re standing on strong shoulders. And in her name, make room for those coming up behind you. I could spend thousands of words on Anastacia-Reneé’s work and describing the impact of her mentorship on this city’s writers. Instead, I’ll let them speak for themselves about how she inspired them: Anyone who’s seen Anastacia perform live will agree with me— it’s like a religious experience, it will knock the wind out of you. They are a uniquely embodied writer, one of the few writers I’d actually consider visionary. –Max Delsohn, author of Crawl Without A, I don’t know myself as a poet, I don’t know Seattle as a literary city. She demonstrates a dexterity in craft that is only made possible because of the unique blend of heart and intellect she possesses. To be in the rigorous light of her work is to know another, better world is possible. I would fight anyone to bring that world a little closer to bear. –Dujie Tahat, Seattle Civic Poet I owe Anastacia everything. I would not exist as a poet, as a person, without A’s genius; without their care. A is my model. I wanna write like them; I wanna show up like them; I wanna work as hard as they do. She really is one of one and the absolute best of us. –Quenton Baker, author of Ballast Like many literary luminaries, Anastacia-Reneé is a translator. She interprets politics through poetry, power dynamics through performance, and divine lesson through psalm. And her humor! She’s so funny it hurts. Her brilliance is for the ages. She’s one of those rare beings who makes the heaviness of our times a little easier to bear. –Jen Soriano, author of Nervous Anastacia is family to me, someone who understands that the creative spirits within you (yes, plural!) need to be fed, hugged, and lathered in laughter. We always text each

other: “What did you eat today?” A literal and metaphorical question. As a teacher and mentor, she has changed the path for so many writers, including my students. I adore her and everything she writes, makes, teaches, dreams up; I’m so lucky to be making art alongside her, now and forever. –Jane Wong, author of Overpour and Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City By the time I met Anastacia-Reneé as a colleague through Writers in the Schools in 2015, they were already an icon. I learned quickly, as a transplant to Seattle, that most of the writers I knew were mentored by Anastacia. They were the warm, life-giving engine of the Seattle writing world. Their genre-busting prose and poetry set the voice of the Seattle literary world which to this day remains genre-expansive, collaborative, and affirming. Anastacia was constantly crashing through a white and constrictive ceiling in this city, from their one-woman performance getting banned and then reclaimed, to fighting for fair pay for teaching artists, for holding non-profit literary orgs to the basic standard to walk their diversity talk. Anastacia is someone that shows what is possible as both an activist, artist, and educator: that our writing can fuel our activist movements and keep us alive and nourished while our hearts break, and that it is in this broken place that we find and share our joy. –Corinne Manning, author of We Had No Rules I met Anastacia when she taught a poetry class at Seattle University. I didn’t feel like I truly knew Seattle and how to fit within it as a young Black queer poet until I met Anastacia. Her recent exhibition “PIECES OF YOURSELF (THERE)” created a space that boldly faced the tragedy and yet also held and exemplified the spiritual resistance Black women and Black people uphold against domination. Anything Anastacia does bears fruits from the deep roots of her own poetic prowess and kindness—I feel lucky as a previous student and mentee to be a beneficiary of both. –Serena Dokuaa, poet and AI policy expert How do you describe someone who enters every room as sunshine personified? That alone should be enough, but not for my

60 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE mother, Anastacia-Reneé. I’ve had the pleasure to watch her love, engage, and inspire people my entire life. An opportunity that I will never take for granted and one that I am in constant disbelief I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from. Anastacia is not only talented, but also holds a level of joy that is her not-so-secret ingredient. I’m forever in awe, proud, and filled with love knowing her, and being able to call her my mom. –Brandin, Anastacia’s kid

I have always been so inspired by my mom’s seemingly endless well of joy and artistic ability. I see the ways that she pours the entirety of her being into every piece of work she creates and it makes me want to do the same in my life and in my own creative pursuits. She’s a bright light, a brilliant mind, and a pillar of the community in Seattle. I couldn’t be more proud of her in every single way! –Indigo, Anastacia’s kid

Short List

Six More Literature Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

e’re a book-hugging, libraryloving, list-topping literary city, and no matter how much New York comes calling, we are proud that so many writers call us home. Like so many of the artists we’re celebrating in this issue, these literary wizards do more than merely spill their lifeblood and life stories on the page, they’re individuals who have proven pivotal in building and nurturing our cultural communities from the ground up, as booksellers, mentors, activists, and educators. They’re unafraid to start a conversation, and they refuse to let the literary arts become a solitary pursuit conducted in an ivory tower or the basement.

SEPTEMBER 2026

cultural critic tackles race, culture, health equity, and the politics of work with a mix of sharp humor and intimacy. She can also write about art in a way that’ll bring you to your knees. Burey’s interest in public health began academically—she holds a degree in the subject—and grew through years of corporate and nonprofit work. It became deeply personal in 2018, when she was diagnosed with a spinal tumor. Her treatment and recovery pushed her work toward the intersections of health, identity, trauma, and systemic inequity, including her podcast Black Cancer. In her 2021 TEDxSeattle talk, “The Myth of Bringing Your Full, Authentic Self to Work,” Burey unpacked SYLVIE ROSOKOFF the common corporate demand that ne night in March, I squeezed into a employees—particularly those from marginstanding-room crowd at the Royal alized groups—bring their “authentic selves” Room to experience the sixth iteration to work, challenging the idea that authenticof Lit Lounge: The People’s Art. The prose ity is inherently liberating and can magically and poetry salon, founded by Jodi-Ann Burey, fix inequity. The talk became the foundation draws readers from around the country—nov- for her first book, Authentic: The Myth of elists, memoirists, and poets dripping with Bringing Your Full Self to Work, published awards, from Pulitzers to PENs. It feels like last year. A 2026 Washington State Book more than your run-of-the-mill reading event: Award finalist in the category of creative nonthe excitement is as buzzy as a concert, and a fiction/memoir, Authentic showcases Burey’s buffet-style spread awaits guests. Burey takes dexterity as both storyteller and cultural the stage and instructs attendees to turn to critic, weaving memoir, interviews, criticism, strangers and strike up a conversation. On and research into a piercing interrogation of one side of me was a poet; on the other, a book superficially progressive corporate language. rep from one of the Big Five publishers. Though Burey has a stubborn love for Finding the sweet spot where beauti- NYC and calls it her forever home, we’re ful words intersect with real life is one of happy to claim her as our own—even if, for Burey’s gifts. The Jamaican-born, New now, it’s mostly the snowboarding keeping York–raised Seattle writer, speaker, and her here. AMANDA MANITACH

JODI-ANN BUREY

here is not much that is more precious to me in this destitute world than queer people, books, or the intersection thereof. Charlie’s Queer Books has made that intersection their life’s work. The business is one of only a handful of exclusively LGBTQ+ bookstores currently operating in the US. As Stranger contributor Lindsey Anderson detailed in a profile in 2024, literature helped owner and bookseller Charlie Hunts get through an injury that left him bedridden for over a year. While working in print and marketing, he began to collect all the LGBTQ+ books he could get his hands on, especially ones that reflected his experience of being trans. In the summer of 2023, he debuted a sparkly disco-tiled mobile book cart, which received such an enthusiastic reception that he and his wife, Madeline Burchard, opened a brick-and-mortar in Fremont that November. The shop is an inviting pink and purple haven stacked with queer books of all genres, for readers of all ages—Hunts told The Stranger in 2024, “We’ve had people brought to tears in our kids’ nook because they wish they had those stories when they were kids, or they find them just so healing.” In addition, Charlie’s provides a much-needed queer third space that caters to all ages and doesn’t revolve around alcohol, hosting events like book clubs, craft nights, and drag queen story

CHARLIE’S QUEER BOOKS

BROOKE FITTS

hours. They also hold donation drives for the Seattle-based nonprofit Books to Prisoners. In a time when LGBTQ+ stories are increasingly endangered in America, the urgency of Charlie’s mission can’t be overstated. The American Library Association reported that of the 4,235 unique book titles banned in 2025, 39 percent concerned LGBTQ+ people and people of color. This fabulous little bookstore’s work is truly essential, and I hope it continues to bolster our community for years to come. JULIANNE BELL

62 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

TAHA EBRAHIMI

KELLY O

n 2017, I was invited to a literary event at University of Washington Bothell that included the speculative fiction/Afrofuturist writer Nisi Shawl. At that point, I had no idea that they lived in Seattle and had not read any of their work. As thousands of crows descended on a forest next to the school’s auditorium, Shawl read a short story or an excerpt from a novel. I was mesmerized by the quality of their writing and imagination. It was of the first order. In 2013, the Genius Award for literature went to Neal Stephenson, also a writer of speculative fiction. Shawl is of the same caliber as Stephenson. His 1992 masterpiece Snow Crash is matched by Shawl’s 2016 masterpiece Everfair, which is an alternate history of 19th-century Congo that blends steampunk and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A line from Everfair: “Color crept into the sky, blue soaking through the black. Then the sun appeared to rise out of the east—at first silently, but soon accompanied by a faint, droning hum. Louder, louder. Blinded by the dawn, they couldn’t see the aircanoe until it had come so near that many of its details were also suddenly visible: brown mottling the swelling red sides of what looked like a giant gourd…” This is superb stuff. The depth, the density, the poetry, the timing, the vividness, the vision. Writers like this are not a dime a dozen. And there are times when read-

his singular talent has written or edited 14 books, most recently Terry Dactyl (discussed in an interview with me for The Stranger in November 2025), as well as Touching the Art, The Freezer Door, and Sketchtasy. She’s the new editor at BUNNY (an imprint of Fonograf Editions), with her first project coming from Corinne Manning for release in early 2027. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore has poured herself into this city, and participated without fanfare in many rooms where young or burgeoning Seattle writers were chosen; she’s also spoken loudly, powerfully, and hilariously into microphones and on pages next to other luminaries like Alexander Chee, Dean Spade, and Maggie Nelson. She’s a friend to writers in this city, and she’s also been featured, reviewed,

es, trees are lovely, but did you know they are also little outposts of meaning on our city ’s streets? Each one has a story, in terms of both its botany and its history, whether it’s the Japanese snowbells near my QFC in West Seattle or the monkey puzzle trees near Volunteer Park. In fact, I only just five minutes ago, after admiring their snowy blossoms all spring, figured out what those Japanese snowbell trees were when I saw them on the Trees with Taha Instagram page. As for those monkey puzzle trees, they may date to the 1962

World’s Fair in Seattle, when monkey puzzle saplings were given out as party favors. I know that last fact because of the handsome little green book Street Trees of Seattle: An Illustrated Walking Guide. The book grew out of a passion project that Taha Ebrahimi began during the pandemic when, like many of us, she took long neighborhood walks and began appreciating our tree canopy anew. Despite not having a background in botany or illustration, she grew frustrated with the city’s street tree data and took it upon herself to enrich and

T NISI SHAWL ing their work feels like you’re looking at an abstract African sculpture made with machine parts, and this is no accident. Shawl is closely associated with Afroturism and has written essays on its key figures, Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler. As for the latter, Shawl edited Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars. This work is indispensable for those who, like myself, treasure serious examinations and rich encounters with a Black science fiction writer whose last world happens to be Shawl’s present world: the Pacific Northwest. CHARLES MUDEDE

interviewed, and generally adored by Lambda Literary, Kirkus Reviews, Publisher’s Weekly, the Seattle Times, Brooklyn Rail, and countless other institutions, publications, and editors of note and of lore. She’s also an activist and organizer, and that work comes through in her writing, fiction or not. If you don’t see her at the protest, know she was there for ACT UP in the early ’90s, Fed Up Queers in the late ’90s, Gay Shame, and many other movements that have defended the health and freedoms of our queer communities. There isn’t a color she can’t or won’t wear. This artist dances in our parks, communes with our trees, and can tell a story better than anyone I know. I hope to see her get all her flowers in the coming years. KATIE LEE ELLISON

he years the Genius Awards have been away mean there’s a long line of incredible art makers that have been overdue for recognition, and Jane Wong is certainly one of them. To cover some of the basics, she has a PhD and an MFA; she teaches at two universities; and she is the author of three books, two poetry (Overpour and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything) and one nonfiction (Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City). For the release of her memoir, she created wongmom.com, then picked up a Washington

JANE WONG

GRITCHELLE FALLESGON

expand it in a way that led to this book. Somehow, she’s managed (in her social media and tree walks as well as the book) to make street trees feel extra special, not by focusing on them as abstract concepts we need to “preserve,” but by focusing on their fascinating idiosyncrasies and contributions, whether that’s in the form of shade, flowers, bark, nuts, or something else, like the many health benefits they provide. We’re very lucky to have such a treed city, and lucky to have a tree expert as alive as her subjects. BESS LOVEJOY

State Book Award in 2024, but the thing about Wong is there’s little she hasn’t won. She’s a Fulbright Scholar, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a TEDx speaker, and there’s hardly a prestigious publication, residency, or workshop to which she hasn’t been invited. Wong is also a prolific visual artist. She is food- and fruit-obsessed and makes beautiful pottery in the shape of persimmons and lychee; dumplings and pieces of Napa cabbage; and also tiny plates, beautiful bowls, and vases, all of which you can see if you look up Restaurant Baby Ceramics. If you’ve been in Seattle since 2019, you probably will never forget her installation of altars, sculptural poems, and personal effects at the Frye, After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly, a product of her receiving the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award for Washington artists. Her bio is so impressive and extensive, but it must also be said that Wong is a passionate supporter of other writers and artists. Her other project, the Poetics of Haunting, holds up a slew of poets. Everything she does is at the highest level, so when she’s on your side, you’re in good hands. Wong is a light in this city, and literature in Seattle wouldn’t be what it is without her. Keep an eye out for her next poetry collection. KATIE LEE ELLISON

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE

DOROTHY EDWARDS

2026 GENIUS AWARD WINNER

64 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

VISUAL ARTS

Actualize Artist in Residency BY AMANDA MANITACH

SEPTEMBER 2026

“

here are 300 football fields of vacant commercial real estate in the downtown Seattle area. That leads to a lot of issues, but we’re also benefiting from it. We wouldn’t be able to do this 10 years ago. We wouldn’t be able to negotiate such a low, low rate—a savings we’re able to pass on to the artists.” Kate Bailey is talking about Actualize Artist in Residency, the women-led, artist-run arts nonprofit that has, in three short years, persisted against all odds and obstacles to become one of the city’s hottest, most energetic, and exciting orgs. Actualize was born out of frustration over the lack of artist studio space around town—a common lament and a catch-22 in

a space-rich city where incentives for property owners to lease vacant real estate are practically nonexistent. Bailey kept trying anyway. The seeds of Actualize were planted in 2023, when the former Microsoft employee negotiated partial use of the gutted and graffitied Rite Aid located just south of the terminally troubled intersection of Third and Pike, which had been transformed by C. M. Ruiz into a nomadic art space called Nii Modo. Where racks of hygiene products once stood, Bailey and a handful of artists put up walls for 10 studios. When that opportunity came to an end, philanthropists Shari D. Behnke and Edie Adams (whom Bailey knew as a coworker at Microsoft) supplied seed funding to

secure Actualize’s next physical space at the Coliseum Building. More temporary walls went up, this time creating space for 35 studios, offered at no cost to artists for an entire year. When that arrangement ended, Bailey hustled to raise funds and sift through the city’s glut of vacant space to find owners willing to work with them. Last September, they landed a lease in the Prefontaine Building in Pioneer Square, where 35 studios currently fill nearly three of the building’s six floors. The overarching vision of Actualize is to provide stable studio space—one of the foundations of a stable career. But Actualize is much more than just studios. The ground floor gallery has become one of First Thursday’s buzziest stops. A recently opened gift shop sells members’ work. (Members keep 100 percent of all sales.) Soon, they’re launching member-led workshops. “I think what we’re doing is a very Seattle thing to do,” says Bailey. “The kind of DIY energy that this city is notorious for— bringing people together to build something out of a labor of love, creating the thing you want to see in the world.” She cites Vera Project as a huge inspiration. “We want to see more of that energy rekindled. We would love for people to see Actualize as a model, as proof that you don’t necessarily need a big donor—even though that was incredibly helpful for us to get started.” Since pivoting to their Prefontaine home, Actualize has been finding ways to make the operation sustainable, from corporate sponsorship and monthly patronage programs to renting out their gallery space. Studio fees are worked out on a sliding scale; artists can volunteer time to the organization in exchange for a studio or pay up front if they have the means but are short on time. Whether you’re fresh out of art school, have a full-time job, or have kids, they’ll find a way to make the residency work. Co-directors Bailey and Judy Anderson are proof of concept: in addition to being an artist, Bailey worked for 17 years designing hardware for Microsoft, including prototypes for the Surface tablet. She’s currently the lead designer on a team building products for Vale, a Pioneer Square–based matcha company. Anderson is a curator and mother of two, and is currently enrolled in the Arts Leadership MFA program at Seattle University. Bailey notes that many artists with fulltime jobs can’t afford to take weeks, months, or years off from work to accommodate traditional residencies and other programs designed to advance an artist’s career to the next stage. Actualize is designed to accommodate artists at any point in their life and get actual eyes on their work.

Despite Anderson and Bailey’s administrative titles, Actualize has always been about the body, not the head. “We wouldn’t be able to run the organization without the support from the artists,” says Bailey. “Two people couldn’t have done this alone. From the very beginning, we were bringing everyone together to literally raise the walls that we would put art on.” “We want to run Actualize with just enough of a grip that we’re still allowing it to become whatever it wants to become,” says Anderson. One of the striking things about Actualize, as you walk through one of their open house nights during art walk, is how porous it all is. Photographers, sculptors, painters, designers, and performers working in every conceivable medium mingle with the closeness and comfort of a big family. Not quite a cult; maybe cult-adjacent. “We’ve tried a ton of things that didn’t work out and we had to pivot over and over,” says Bailey. “I think that willingness to try, and the grace the artists give us, is a huge component of this. They understand we’re building the plane as we fly it, and they’re on board to experiment with us and try things that haven’t been done before. You need a community that’s willing to catch you if you fall.”

“I think what we’re doing is a very Seattle thing to do—creating the thing you want to see in the world.” They’re not slowing down. Actualize is looking to take over another block of office space in the building in the fall, opening up 15 more studios. They’re also on the hunt for an executive director. “It’ll be a game-changer for the organization,” says Anderson. “It’s a huge consideration for us as we grow: how to remain artist-led and experimental, with the goal of not putting the weight of the organization on the backs of the artists. We want to make sure that even the artists who are volunteering full-time and not paying anything aren’t overextending themselves, so that they still have the bandwidth to make their art.” “The moment we’re in right now has a lot in common with New York and the Lower East Side in the ’70s,” says Bailey. “All of a sudden there are just huge amounts of space available, in a very desirable location. That sparked an entire artistic movement.”

ACTUALIZE ARTIST IN RESIDENCY is an artist-run nonprofit

transforming underused downtown space into affordable studios, exhibitions, and real opportunities for Seattle artists.

66 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

Short List

Six More Visual Art Faves on Our Radar

YASIMAN AHSANI

ur city’s grown up a lot in the past 10 years, and with it, our visual art scene. As with the other categories, it’s hard to try to narrow it down, so here are just a handful of the brilliant folks raising the bar in Seattle— artist-led projects curating the hell out of our city to make platforms for more artists to shine; artists forging highly personal, political, and innovative work within their respective genres; artists hijacking late capitalist bullshit; artists peeling back the layers of the cosmos, making a wormhole and inviting us in. Seattle used to be a place visual artists left, but thanks to people like these, that story has changed.

MARY ANNE CARTER AMBER FOUTS

SEPTEMBER 2026

DANA BLUME DOMINIC NIERI

ana Blume’s body of work is often populated with freaky characters like snails, dead fish, sentient blobs, and, most notably, a long-nailed amorphous blue figure. Many of Blume’s paintings seem like moments from a larger, disconnected story, like a single panel of a graphic novel. A slug determinedly heading somewhere. A dark figure stealing a pie left to cool on a windowsill. A naked blue dude holding a translucent egg. Despite their narrative feel, the San Diego-raised, Seattle-based painter hesitates to explain or decode the goings-on in his work. Blume has nurtured a lifelong fascination with pareidolia, the human brain’s tendency to perceive meaningful images, patterns, or symbols from random visual stimuli like a cloud, wine stains, or a rock formation. In a similar way, his works are designed to be associative and evocative, putting the onus of meaning back onto the viewer. The thematic murkiness is the point. “I want to not know for as long as possible,” says Blume of his creative process, “so there can be some Freudian slippage or something.”

There’s a trippiness to Blume’s paintings, an overture to counterculture that culls inspiration from underground comix scene legends like R. Crumb, as well as compositionally complex history paintings from guys like Peter Paul Rubens. Part of his work’s appeal lies in the tension he creates, between the sluggishness of subject and grandness of its size, underscoring the dissonance between the two. He balances the abstractness of his pieces with a cheeky, nostalgic sense of humor. I remember having a hard time sussing out the thick brushstrokes of Blume’s largescale Doom Cloud when I first saw it. But slowly, the scene revealed itself to me—a delicate, lone flower just barely visible against the blue and purple chaos of a huge cloud. Kinda like the dainty aftermath of an Acme explosion in a Looney Tunes cartoon. “It’s the idea of taking something [like history painting] that has like all these classical notions of beauty or heroicness and transforming it into something that is like just so not that,” says Blume. “I have an affinity towards things that are grotesque or awkward.” JAS KEIMIG

on Earth used to be Disneyland. But now it feels like, for millennials, it’s IKEA,” she writes. “When thinking about bridging Seattle’s wealth and sometimes lack of art patronage, it felt like, Well, maybe we help people by giving them a familiar layout, so they feel invited to shop.” Not only is Carter an expert fabricator and installation art whiz, in 2024 she also cofounded Wishbone Industrial Arts with Bradley Sweek and Jack Bennett, a design studio that produces furnishings, lighting, architectural amenities, and art objects that prioritize both form and function. In an age of cheaply made, disposable home goods delivered on your doorstep, Carter highlights the importance of beautiful, long-lasting objects made with care—conscious consumerism that supports local creators and actually sparks joy. AUDREY VANN

ll hail the queen of art objects! In Mary Anne Carter’s maximalist world, accessories are giant, plates of food are hung on the wall, cars have 10 wheels, and anything can be a balloon. Working with textiles, glass, wood, and printmaking, Carter creates immersive environments that pull you in with their candy-colored whimsy, but hold your attention by sparking serious contemplation about consumerism, marketing and messaging, and waste. In 2024, she dreamed up (with collaborator Lilia Deering) STÖR, a parody of a certain Swedish mega-retailer with delicious meatballs. More than just an immersive experience, STÖR functioned as an actual marketplace, featuring handmade goods and work by over two dozen artists. (In three months they saw over 10,000 visitors and over $50,000 in art sales!) “The happiest place

68 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

P PRISCILLA DOBLER DZUL AJ LENZI

BASO FIBONACCI KELLY O

aso Fibonacci—a name borrowed from the Zen Buddhist and an Italian mathematician—has become more than a pseudonym. It’s the identity of one of Seattle’s preeminent living painters. Baso grew up at the foot of Tiger Mountain near Issaquah, surrounded by lush natural life. As a teenager, he fell in love with the city, too—its underbelly, overpasses, and street culture—as a graffiti artist. You can still find his work on the streets, if you know where to look. An accident while painting put him in a wheelchair and shifted the course of his life and work. The studio practice that unfolded reflects an affinity for nature: Deer, raccoons, bears, and florals are rendered in

riscilla Dobler Dzul traces the networks connecting land and people, people and other beings, beings and resources, resources and power. When those connections take shape in red-clay sculptures, intricately embroidered tapestries, or fantastical blown-glass vessels, their force is palpable. At Dobler Dzul’s first solo museum show, Water Carries the Stories of Our Stars, at the Frye earlier this year, I was drawn across the room to gape at her tapestries. They seduce with vibrant colors, shimmering fabrics, exquisite stitching, and mythological beings, but the stories woven into the surface tell of brutality: skulls shoveled into pits, men with machine guns, cyclocopters you can almost hear hovering overhead. These are stories of cultural and ecological

florid patterns of precise, energetic brushstrokes that hover between representation, decoration, and abstraction. He paints city life with just as much care. His documentation of Seattle’s downtown fire hydrants—a nod to Morris Graves—is a testament to his dedication to the overlooked. Over the past decade, Baso’s documentarian impulse has increasingly turned toward the sociopolitical, bringing the same close attention to homelessness, addiction, displacement, and death. In 2021, he painted the portraits of 20 Washingtonians who died of COVID-19. In 2023, he began So Far, a two-year project memorializing individuals who died from fentanyl overdoses downtown, using statistics from Public Health—Seattle & King County as his guide. For the series, Baso painted over the wrinkled, shimmering small squares of discarded fentanyl foils, covering the brown burn marks with bone-white gouache—a painting of one skull per foil, each representing a reported death. Taking in the whole series, skulls clustered in a tightly packed, asymmetrical grid across a single wall, delivered something data cannot. More recently, his lifesize portraits of unhoused, disabled, and otherwise marginalized Seattleites bring parts of the city into focus from which most of us would rather look away. His gift to the city, to lovers of art, is something that runs deeper than the images he paints. It’s the way he teaches us to see. AMANDA MANITACH

S ONCE REMOVED

destruction that don’t generally find homes in hallowed institutions. But there are stories of creation here, too. Many draw on Maya cosmology; Dobler Dzul now lives in Tacoma, but was born in the Yucatán and maintains strong ties there. Her labor-intensive practice often involves months—sometimes years—of research with scientists, anthropologists, and Maya elders. She spent seven years studying the ecosystem surrounding the henequén plant (a type of agave that holds historical significance for the Maya) and the endangered bat that pollinates it. It’s particularly thrilling to encounter these stories told through embroidery—long diminished as mere craft or “women’s work”—or clay, but Dobler Dzul also works with newer technologies. Her video The only thing that

existed, was the movement of the waters and the skies documents the destruction of Wetland 296 to make way for South Tacoma’s Bridge Industrial Warehouse Project. Last year, she participated in an unsanctioned augmented-reality intervention at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, covering Thomas Crawford’s 1848 marble Mexican Girl Dying with the virtual puma pelt. Dobler Dzul understands that she exists within a web of connections, too. Last year, she secured funding to start Wayak Chuy, a textile collective based in the Yucatán that helps Maya women artists preserve and pass on traditional embroidery techniques in danger of being forgotten. Her immense talent lies not in merely drawing connections, but in making them stronger. BESS LOVEJOY

irports are generally considered sites of stress, overpriced snacks, and endless waiting—not spaces to see cool art. Thankfully, Tommy Gregory doesn’t see it that way. Since 2018, the indefatigable artist and curator has worked as the senior project manager at the Port of Seattle, rapidly growing the Port’s world-class art collection at Seattle-Tac. Under Gregory’s purview, SEA has become a place to see work from innumerable local and global artists just on your way to check-in. Perhaps you’ve spotted Rachael Comer’s bronze cake and platter sculptures balancing on the security bollards on the way to Departures or been wowed by John Grade’s monumental Boundary while riding the escalators to the N Gates. Collectively, these pieces and hundreds of others serve as a unique introduction of our fair city and the artists who call it home. “I like letting people make art,” says Gregory. “I like letting them make work that actually adds value, adds a little bit of wonder for somebody who’s wandering through the airport.” Outside the airport, Gregory stays busy with a personal art practice that encompasses neon-bending, glass-blowing, and turning detritus like condom wrappers and single-use coffee cups into sculptures

eattle has a thing for tearing down beautiful old houses and throwing up multi-story McModern boxes in their place. Lucky for us, gallerists Zoë Hensley and Sammy Skidmore decided to turn soon-to-be-demolished houses into the art event of the year—if just for one night. It started as a flicker of an idea last summer when Hensley and Skidmore (whose day jobs are at Foster/White and Traver Gallery, respectively) were introduced by mutual friends. They quickly realized their common interests include not only working at high-profile commercial galleries, but also wanting to show the kind of messy, experimental art that would

TOMMY GREGORY PORT OF SEATTLE

made of bronze. He is also deep in the mix of the local art scene, curating group exhibitions across Seattle, as well as in his home state of Texas. Recent exhibitions include a group show of banned words rendered in neon at the Factory and Grand Gesture, a selection of work from the Port’s extensive art collection brought into the city, exhibited at RailSpur. For Gregory, bringing the Seattle art scene together is of paramount importance. “We can’t stay in our corners,” Gregory says. “We have to get together, we have to share ideas.” JAS KEIMIG

never make it into those spaces. An empty house not long for this world seemed like the perfect location. Their first was a bungalow in Greenwood. They found a developer willing to give them the keys, and over the course of five frigid days in February, they filled the empty house with sculpture, video, and installations. Then, for one night only, the project was opened to the public; a band and DJ played as onlookers explored the rooms and took in the art. The second iteration was staged in a mid-century house in West Seattle this past June. Once Removed 03 is currently in the works, this time in Georgetown, where Hensley and Skidmore are collaborating with Watershed Com-

munity Development and Equinox Studios to take over a cluster of properties slated for demolition to make way for affordable artist housing and studios. The site includes a lot with three derelict houses and a condo overrun with foliage. “It’s very apocalyptic looking, like the last place on earth,” Skidmore says. The crowds showing up at Once Removed’s doorstep prove there’s an appetite for unconventional art in nontraditional places. Hensley and Skidmore prove that if you care enough—and are just a little crazy enough to work your ass off in a house with no heat in the dead of winter—you can turn anything into a stage for art. AMANDA MANITACH

70 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

Culture & Community Six Bonus Faves

COMMON AREA MAINTENANCE & COMMON OBJECTS COURTESY OF TIMOTHY FIRTH

C YASIMAN AHSANI

ou know we had to add one more category for folks who are hard to categorize! If you hadn’t caught on by now, community is the engine driving so much of Seattle’s art. The city has a long, unruly tradition of artists deciding that if the institution they need doesn’t exist, they’ll just build it themselves. Our history of artist-run spaces, grassroots organizations, DIY venues, and iconoclastic experiments runs rich and deep: and/or, SOIL, CoCA, 911 Media Arts, On the Boards, Consolidated Works, the Vera Project—to name just a few—are all part of the blueprint. Here are some of the people who continue to show that often all it takes is one restless poet, derelict storefront, or Instagram account to spark the kind of movements that keep our cultural ecosystem resilient and perpetually capable of surprise.

ommon Area Maintenance has a new writers’ program through their newer space, Common Objects, and it is THE PLACE to find connection to the writing scene in this city. No matter your experience level, genre(s) of interest, or anything else, Common Objects is where writers connect and hang out, work, listen, and play. Come for the bookstore, the clothing swaps, the gallery, the events. You probably heard that earlier this year CAM negotiated a landmark deal to purchase the El Rey, a historic landmark building in Belltown slated for demolition. Thanks to their diligence and advocacy, now it’s become an extension of CAM, serving the evolving and critical needs of Seattle artists, like affordable space for gathering, for performances, for events, for classes, and for housing. What’s happening at CAM, Common Objects, and the El Rey

has been a salve for the spirit in a post-pandemic landscape that has caused many to lose faith in our city’s institutions. CAM stays standing, a beacon of hope. For this, we have to thank the many members of the community whose combined efforts—strategy, management, time, money, admin—made it a reality. Over the years, Whitney Bashaw, Amy Hirayama, Jane Wong, and so many others alongside CAM founder Timothy Firth have helped make these spaces what they are today. Dujie Tahat, our Seattle Civic Poet, has facilitated conversations with Mayor Katie Wilson at Common Objects. Eric Acosta, founder of unpoetry, worked onsite for weeks creating art during his fire watch residency, while he kept an eye on the El Rey overnight. We can’t wait to see what’s next. KATIE LEE ELLISON

ost places in this city want something from you. A Resting Place, tucked away in the CID, just wants you to sit down. Its creator, Derek Dizon, describes it as a community center for people who have experienced loss, but I think that undersells what he’s pulled off: an open, free, no-strings-attached community space in the center of Chinatown where grief gets to take up space in public. He of all people understands what such a space requires. Dizon is a queer Filipino American artist and grief therapist, with over a decade of experience with anti-violence work at API Chaya. He is also a survivor of homicide loss. In creating A Resting Place, he built the room he himself needed and left the door open for others to join. Entering from the bustle of the block and the chaos of the city, this space truly feels like a refuge: it’s soft and cozy, inviting in the same way your couch is after a long day’s work. When I first visited, I planted myself in a seat and took it all in. A sizable library with dozens of books to help navigate grief and loss, beautiful wood furniture keeping the space warm, altars teeming with photos of loved ones, and hundreds of handwritten notes griev-

DEREK DIZON/ A RESTING PLACE MADISON KIRKMAN

ing visitors have pinned to the walls. This space represents so much of what Dizon holds dear and knows to be critical to personal and collective health: the understanding that grief deserves a no-cost space to exist, and that those experiencing grief should have a soft place to land. With so many spots that feel “Seattle” going by the wayside, it’s more important than ever to patronize and support the kind of community work that people like Dizon have built for us on King Street. MICHAEL WONG

72 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

SEAN HERRERA/ EMERALD CITY TILE CLUB

DIANE NUNEZ

n music retail, trying to be all things to all people usually consigns businesses to history’s dustbin. The owners of Lake City’s Hex Enduction Records & Books figured that out a while ago, and now they’re approaching seven years of peddling exactly what they want to music and literature aficionados who value non-mainstream art. Owners Dean Whitmore, Gabi Page-Fort, and Tom Ojendyk have discovered that a retailer—if their aesthetics are righteous enough and their instincts savvy enough—can thrive simply by selling merchandise in which they 100 percent believe. What a concept. But beyond being one of Seattle’s most interesting music and literature retailers, Hex Enduction is a bona fide multimedia empire, albeit one on a shoestring budget. It has expanded its reach to include publishing books and a quarterly zine, releasing records,

hosting live music and readings/author interviews, and serving as a gallery for local artists. The guiding principles behind Hex Enduction, as Whitmore related in a 2019 interview with The Stranger, are “representing artists that we love and respect. Primarily underground artists, local artists, forgotten artists, and artists operating on the margins. I’m hoping the shop will be a great place for music discovery and not just a place to pick up things that you already know you like. But we have some staples, as well.” Those values continue to guide Hex Enduction. For people of rarefied sensibilities, Hex Enduction’s stock is dangerously seductive and likely to inspire splurges. But it feels damned good to drop your money in an establishment that prioritizes cultural enlightenment and human interaction over profit. Hex Enduction is the antidote to soulless capitalism. DAVE SEGAL

HOLLY STEVENS

here would we be without Vanishing Seattle? In a city that’s always on its way to becoming something else, Vanishing Seattle has become a space for collective mourning and remembering. Seattle’s many ghosts float through its Instagram posts full of photos, signage, art, and memorabilia from beloved venues, businesses, and cultural touchpoints, reminding us that spaces are about more than just their four walls. They are also capsules of community, and of the kinds of connection and experiences that make living in a city worthwhile. One would be justified in imagining that Vanishing Seattle is powered by a fleet of historians, researchers, and pigeons carrying messages across the city, but really it’s just one woman who grew up here before a latte was $10: Cynthia Brothers. Since its 2016 inception as a humble Instagram account, Vanishing Seattle has grown into a

visited for a number of the nights, I saw it. What makes it most special is less the event itself than the atmosphere Herrera has curated. On any given ECTC evening, you’ll see the coolest Asian kids you know swirling tiles with OGs from Chinatown, or line cooks from your favorite shop gathering to play. Half the people in attendance don’t know a thing about the game, and the other half are eager to teach. At moment of peak AI slop, the analog nature of Herrera’s welcoming mahjong nights feels truly radical. It’s exactly what Seattle needs right now, and I can’t help but get excited about whatever Herrera does next. MICHAEL WONG

HEX ENDUCTION RECORDS & BOOKS

PHOEBE WAHL

n 2026, in the city of Seattle no less, I consider assembling hundreds of cool kids in a gathering space twice a month a heroic act, period. But to center mahjong? Next-level. And Sean Herrera, the proprietor of the Emerald City Tile Club (ECTC), knows he’s brewing something important at his biweekly gatherings at Stoup Brewing. He sees it when folks bring their friends and make new ones, or when people bring their dates or even their physical therapist—all to play games of mahjong. When his parents, Tita Cherrie and Tito Beboy, traveled all the way from Herrera’s childhood hometown of Clanton, Alabama, to witness the fruits of his labors, he saw it. Having

ellingham-based writer, illustrator, artist, and designer Phoebe Wahl has made children’s books cool again. Her self-illustrated picture books tackle important, yet overlooked topics like gentrification (The Blue House), the natural life cycle (Sonya’s Chickens), hidden worlds (Backyard Fairies), and anti-capitalist self-care (Little Witch Hazel). Not only are these works invaluable for shaping young minds, her illustrations are vivid and inviting, enveloping readers of all ages in her worlds filled with magic and love. In 2023, Wahl released her first work of young adult fiction, Phoebe’s Diary. Based on her teenage diary, the partially illustrated novel chronicles a young Phoebe mavigating friendships, crushes, insecurities, and consuming a potent weed brownie at senior prom.

business that has produced a film series, two books (with a third on the way), numerous podcast appearances, guided city walks (some with author Taha Ebrahimi, see pg. 63), variety shows, a line of merch, and more. The animating force is not a preserved-in-amber nostalgia with a preservationist cast, but Brothers’s fierce love for the city that acknowledges its many moods and expressions. It’s full of celebration, too—periodic “Not Vanishing” posts spotlight community stalwarts that have survived, as well as beloved landmarks like Pike Place Market. It’s easy to complain about the things in Seattle you don’t like and moan about how it used to be so much better. More challenging, and far more interesting, is to remember what made certain spaces so magical and to carry that magic forward into new creations. We’re always dying and being reborn; Vanishing Seattle helps us remember where we’ve been. BESS LOVEJOY

BILLIE WINTER

This book would have changed everything for me if I had read it as a teenager. Wahl depicts the life of teens with radical honesty and vulnerability, and she doesn’t skimp on the messy parts—it’s as much about the selfishness of young adulthood as it is about creativity and growth. Earlier this year, Wahl entered the performance sphere, adapting Little Witch Hazel into a live show with original music, dancing, painted sets, and handmade puppets. During a time of rapidly changing technology, Wahl understands and embraces the need for DIY productions. She told the Cascadia Daily News, “We wanted this to be something that needed to be made by hand and needed to be experienced in person.” She continued, “In that way, it is a political show; in that making handmade art and clinging onto our humanness right now is a political act.” AUDREY VANN

VANISHING SEATTLE SEATTLESERENDIPITY

74 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

We do our best for accuracy, but please check venue websites for updates and more information, as event details may have changed since press time!

Housekeeping note: We have ceased to include pricing information, unless the event is free or sliding scale. (This is mostly due to third-party ticket vendors, like Ticketmaster, who have a monopoly on pricing that is not only unfair, but also confusing, due to varying fee structures. We hate them, and so should you.)

Shabazz Palaces Sept 12, Moore Theatre

PATRICK O’BRIEN SMITH

MUSIC Slayyyter, Pearly Drops SEPT 4 With a sound described as “Charli XCX on whippets” and a look modeled on the MySpace-era aesthetic and Y2K bimbo queens, Slayyyter is the bratty, trashy-fabulous diva that the chronically online gays have been waiting for. The “anti-pop star” and former Cookie Monster pajamas girl’s third studio album, WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, is a no-skips wonder that sounds like it’s been freshly ripped from a hot pink iPod Nano, inspired by her teen years in St. Louis. The lead single “Beat Up Chanel$” evokes, as the lyrics go, “drunk high school nights in parking lots, hanging at the skate park watching the boys, longing for designer items I couldn’t afford,” while “Brittany Murphy” expresses Slayyyter’s suicidal thoughts and her identification with the late Uptown Girls actress. The Showbox stop on her world tour is an

= Genius adjacent event, read more on pg. 30. opportunity to see an unstoppable artist at the top of her game—plus, a dollar of each ticket sold will be donated to local LGBTQ+ organizations. (Showbox, 8 pm, all ages) JULIANNE BELL

This Heat drummer Charles Hayward) was sampled by Björk and Post Malone. The new Movement might be Masin’s most diverse album yet, shifting from luxurious languor to enigmatic, beat-driven chillouts to laid-back, jazzy house. Arrive early for Cole Pulice’s float-y sax-and-electronics set. (Trinity Episcopal Parish Church, 8 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Reflections: Gigi Masin, Cole Bumbershoot 2026 Pulice SEPT 5–6

SEPT 4 It seems like a glorious dream that Seattle’s finally hosting Gigi Masin—in a First Hill church yet. The Italian musician is revered for his ambient, jazz, and electronic fusions as a solo artist, in the group Gaussian Curve, and in collaboration with heavies such as dub-techno great Rod Modell and sublime jazz/library-music keyboardist Greg Foat. Masin’s 1986 debut album Wind introduced his preternaturally pretty and calm melding of piano-centric ambient and mellow, ECM-esque jazz, like a European spin on Harold Budd, but with occasional forlorn vocals. Fun fact: The beautifully pastel composition “Clouds” from Les Nouvelles Musiques de Chambre, Vol. 2 (with

Phew! Another music festival? But it’s September! Isn’t it time to go back to school and drink hot cocoa under a cozy blanket and pretend to care about football? No! There is still summer fun to be had, as exhausted as you may be, because Bumbershoot is taking over the Seattle Center September 5 and 6 with two days of music, comedy, art, wrestling, fashion, and so much more. (Like, literally there is a mermaid???) We know how overwhelming festivals can be, and this year’s Bumbershoot lineup, while smaller than previous iterations, is still loaded with so much good shit. Bikini Kill! De La Soul! Noname! Peaches! So we did your homework for you and wrote up every! single! band! playing over the weekend, as

well as all the fun arts and culture and cat stuff. We crammed it all into an exhaustive guide that you can pick up around town, at the festival, and online at TheStranger.com. Sleep is overrated anyway. (Seattle Center, times vary, all ages) MEGAN SELING

MEZZFEST: Fan Club, Sux, Ononos, Dish Pit, Scott Yoder, and more SEPT 6 Esteemed Italian restaurant Mezzanotte’s end-ofthe-summer block party is back for the third year in a row! Take a “Georgetown pause” and come check out this all-time lineup of staff, friends, and locals as Mezzanotte’s garden patio sonically transforms to rival even the sounds of passing planes. For the cost of $20 (a Seattle fiver), there are eight bands—Fan Club, Sux, Ononos, Dish Pit, Scott Yoder, Brat, Microfoam, and Understater—and it starts at 4 p.m. and wraps up around dark (take that, Zoo Tunes), so you can be in bed early Sunday night. All ages are welcome, and kids get in free. (Mezzanotte, 4 pm, all ages) DYLAN BUECHE

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MATT WINKELMEYER / GETTY IMAGES

JPEGMAFIA, redveil, Matt Proxy SEPT 17

JPEGMAFIA has experienced enough of America to feel warranted in sending spitballs at the populace from the back of the class. From a childhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where his brother was shot, to formative years in Alabama, to serving overseas in (and being honorably discharged from) the US military, the life of the rapper/producer born Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks reads as fabled source material. In turn, Hendricks has chosen violence; his weapons: culturally referential industrial glitch production and machine gun-cadence raps that are more often than not screamed at the audience live. As his moniker suggests, he is both ’net savvy and iron(y)clad in his devotion to ruffling feathers on topics political, racial, and those related to posers and/or your girl. While nimble on the mic in a Donald Gloverdoing-Death Grips kind of way, his production—where jagged SOPHIE-style e-dustrial meets punk meets tweaked sample candy flipping—has proven the most durable, both in headphones and live. Suffice to say, any JPEGMAFIA experience is a maximalist one. Enter at your own risk. (Showbox SoDo, 7:30 pm, 18+) TODD HAMM

The Stranger Genius Awards w/Shabazz Palaces SEPT 12 The Genius Awards is a ceremony where we give six big-ass checks to Geniuses of Film, Food, Literature, Music, Performance, and Visual Art! There will be drag (the event is hosted by Miss Texas 1988 and Lady GuGu), there will be DJs (past Genius-Award

winner Erik Blood is in town; La Mala Noche closes the evening with a basement dance party 10–11 p.m.), there will be trophies (hand-made by local art wizard Mary Anne Carter). Past Genius Award winners Shabazz Palaces will headline; their lead single “Ahh World (I Won The Alpha Bet)” off their excellent upcoming album, It’s a Style Sport, says to “put your money where your mouth is”—our thoughts exactly. A party, a ceremony, a show, all in the name of CELEBRATING ART. What more could you want for

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10 bucks? Speaking of style, do you have a special or weird thing in your closet that you never get to bust out? Now is the time! Personally, I’m aiming for something between an opulent magician and Miss Scarlet from the 1985 Clue movie. (Moore Theatre, 6:30 pm, all ages) EMILY NOKES

Chelsea Wolfe Sept 18, Moore Theatre

R Day: Dehd, Telehealth, Kadabra, Lace Cadence SEPT 12 Seattle’s annual Line Fest is here! Roll down to Georgetown to stand in a line to stand in line for another line to run into 30 people you know and not really catch up because they’re in a different line and neither one of you really wants to forfeit your spot in line. I certainly hope drinking beer doesn’t make you have to pee. The R stands for Rows of people standing in a line. You’re going to go no matter what because it’s free, there is beer, and quality bands are playing— Dehd and Seattle’s own Telehealth—but you should at least know what to expect. (The Old Rainier Brewery, 4 pm, 21+) DYLAN BUECHE

Container, J.R.C.G. SEPT 18 Working out of the overlooked electronic-music hub of Providence, Rhode Island, Container (aka Ren Schofield) has been releasing gripping technoise records for 15 years. His albums and EPs on prestigious labels such as Spectrum Spools and Alter abound with tracks that zip and zigzag with a pent-up fury. The splenetic beats splat with an unpredictability that’ll have you dancing spasmodically while the abrasive textures will trigger huge adrenaline spikes. The latest Container album, Yacker, might be the wildest yet. Basically, Container is techno for noise-rockers. So it makes sense that Tacoma’s fiercest and greatest band, J.R.C.G., will co-headline this show. Led by drummer/vocalist Justin Gallego, they fuse aggressive rock, rugged funk, ornery electronic music, and feisty Latin rhythms into exhilarating soundtracks for end times. (Black Lodge, 7 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Chelsea Wolfe, Jonathan Hultén SEPT 18 Chelsea Wolfe is at her best when her songs take a turn for the unexpected. See: the shocking rush of tempo change at the end of her 2017 track “Twin Fawn” that could jump-start a car, or the gorgeous, floating-into-the-light arpeggios that bloom amidst the vampirish “Sick” from 2013’s Pain Is Beauty. Something similar happens halfway through the late album slow-burner “Death Is Not the End” from her recent The Dark LP, when a wall of distortion installs itself inside of a quiet moment that, in Wolfe’s world, has become too quiet for comfort. In the absence of such moments that grab hold of the listener, however, Wolfe’s songs have the tendency to meander aimlessly through the still life of her American Gothic scenes, or worse, become predictable. Aside from the above moment, The Dark is her first solo effort (we won’t speak of her Converge collaboration) to fall into such pitfalls, with the added knock of an overly clean production, which saps the caught-in-the-woods allure of her previous recordings. Wolfe’s catalog runs deep, though, so there should still be plenty to be scared by. (Moore Theatre, 8:30 pm, all ages) TODD HAMM

Gouge Away, Cherub Chains, Foxglove SEPT 22 Florida, the syphilitic penis rotting the brain of our country, has given us a plethora of cathartic, captivating punk rock through the years. Against Me!, Hot Water Music, Less Than Jake (lol jk), and Gouge Away, a band that simultaneously sounds like it sprouted from the Washington, DC post-punk scene circa 2001 while also recalling the more guitar-driven

BEN CHISHOLM

wall of noise aspects of the coincidentally vaginal bands Mannequin Pussy and Perfect Pussy, with GA vocalist Christina Michelle’s lung-purging hollers hitting just as hard as Meredith Graves’ famous distorted rage. Also on the bill are Seattle’s Cherub Chains, a hardcore band Asian Verified columnist Michael Wong turned me onto when he described seeing them live for the first time thusly: “The sound was raw, thunderous, a wall of riffs that collapsed into screaming urgency. [Vocalist Molly Nguyen] let out the kind of rallying cry that is hard to make out among the chaos, but the emotions are indelible. You feel it in your chest before your brain catches up.” (Substation, 7 pm, 18+) MEGAN SELING

Mike D 5D SEPT 28 For the last 15 years, Michael Diamond has been laying low musically, with the Beastie Boys’ Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011) being the rapper/ drummer’s last substantial appearance on record. You could be forgiven for thinking the 60-year-old hip-hop icon had retired to a life of playing basketball and listening to obscure jazz LPs in his California mansion. So, the release of the exciting new Thank You album under the Mike D 5D handle might be the music-biz surprise of the year. Mike roped in sons Skyler and Davis, Medicine bassist Eddie Ruscha, and a few high-ranking pop/R&B session musicians to help him realize his comeback. Diamond’s still funky af, and he’s fused electronics with big rock energy, occasional troubadour sincerity, and Ian Svenonius-style testifying for a varied batch of mature, party-igniting bangers. Special kudos for the stinging electro-funk rager “Crypto,” which lambastes the dubious financial platform. (Showbox, 8 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Tricky SEPT 30 Tricky’s trip-hop classic Maxinquaye (1995) is a kind of ruins of the ’80s pop sound. Fragments of Trevor Horn are here, shards of Grace Jones are over there, and tremors of the Bomb Squad are felt everywhere— indeed, this is the “Aftermath.” One can also read Maxinquaye, which became associated with the Bristol Sound (Portishead, Massive Attack) as a kind of electronic mirror erected not towards the future but to the past, the last world. What we see by feeling this album, and also his masterpiece, Nearly God (1996), is that of the 20th century setting along the landscape of the ’80s. The song “Feed Me,” at the end of Maxinquaye, best expresses this essentially British dusk. Martina Topley-Bird, one of Tricky’s greatest discoveries, sings: “Feed me when I’m hungry drink me till I’m dry / The dream of yesterday becomes another lie / you feed me lies—distortion—the English disaster / no one is free from love for one master.” Tricky’s second album, Pre-Millennium Tension (1996) extended, to the point of utter darkness, the dusk in “Feed Me.” Tricky is a living legend. (Neumos, 7 pm, all ages) CHARLES MUDEDE

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Show Me the Body, Whispers, Lip Critic, Truck Violence SEPT 28

New York progressive punk trio Show Me the Body has always cut their art like a skater with a pen knife. Their early shows often took place under bridges, in basements, or on a whim if a kid on the internet invited them across state lines to do a flop-house show during a tour off-day. Their recorded material is equally raw collage work. Imagine heavily distorted punk played with banjo/bass/ drums, spoken word ruminations surprisingly smoothly interlaced with hardcore tracks; imagine feeling fulfilled by the result. The trio has never compromised their cutting edge, even when introducing electronic elements or swapping in drummers; in fact, pushing the envelope has become a core tenet (see: Corpus I and II, their electropunk/rap mashup duology). Their latest, Alone Together, contains all of the above and horns, breakbeats, and pigeons. (El Corazon, 7 pm, all ages) TODD HAMM

Nick Hakim, Arima Ederra OCT 2 Nick Hakim, the bard of the Outer Boroughs, has the voice of an angel, and most often, a vision to match. His songs, never in a rush to sensationalize his talents as a singer or guitarist, hit a sweet spot between Helado Negro, the often name-checked D’Angelo, and Bon Iver, and like those artists, his ear for slightly warped production and progressive song structures is where his soul shines through. Not everyone gets all gushy about the wispy tendrils of song Hakim provides, though—in fact, many a critic has accused him of staying too far in the pocket. “For godsakes, Nick, let your star shine!” they say. I will point you in the direction of a song called

“Endlessly Waiting,” and let you decide for yourself. The track, from this summer’s I Can See, presents a haunting, dissonant piano line splashed upon itself, rolling on the ebb and flow of a hi-hat tick as Hakim’s aching lines are swallowed in a cave of reverb. If you also find yourself happily melting into each patiently stretched fiber of the song, I’ll see you there. (Neumos, 8 pm, 21+) TODD HAMM

Tame Impala, Dominic Fike Sept 2, Climate Pledge Arena, 7 pm, all ages Osees featuring Brigid Dawson, Traps PS Sept 2–3, Neumos, 7 pm, all ages on Sept 2 and 21+ Sept 3 Black Ends, Zastava, Radium Girls Ultra Sept 3, Black Lodge, 7 pm, all ages

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Arlo Parks

Sept 21, Showbox SoDo

JOSHUA GORDON

Deck’d Out: Riz Rollins, Kid Hops, Brit, Supreme La Rock Sept 3, Monkey Loft, 7 pm, 21+

Lady A Sept 18, Rabbit Box Theatre, 7 pm, all ages

Pond, Painted Vein Sept 3, Showbox, 8 pm, all ages

Bexley, Marble, Tiny Monsters Sept 18, Baba Yaga, 8 pm, 21+

Mini Trees, Coral Grief, Exiter Sept 3, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

King Youngblood, Long Dark Moon, the Great Ooze Sept 18, Sunset Tavern, 9 pm, 21+

Southern Culture on the Skids, Poi Rogers Sept 4, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Bobby Bare Jr., Hoist the King Sept 19, Tractor Tavern, 1:30 pm, 21+

Sam Weber Sept 5, Rabbit Box Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Real Don Music, Eric Howk, Timmy Booth Sept 19, Sunset Tavern, 5:30 pm, 21+

Trash Sound Conglomerate, Big Smack, Ol’ Doris Sept 5, Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+ AC Slater Sept 5, Substation, 10 pm, 21+ Kelela Sept 8, Showbox, 8 pm, all ages Bettye LaVette Sept 8–9, Triple Door, 7:30 pm, all ages Brandon Flowers Sept 9, Showbox, 8 pm, all ages Haute & Freddy, Rubin Brothers Sept 10, Neumos, 7 pm, all ages Sean Downey, ff00ff, Queen Shmooquan, Last Eye, DJ Firedrill Sept 10, Baba Yaga, 8 pm, 21+ Cowboy Disco: Henry Mansfield, Vanilla Abstract, Rae Sept 10, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+ Red Touches Yellow, Lonelygirl15, Gored, Dolls Die Twice, Depiction of Man Sept 11, the Black Lodge, 7 pm, all ages Den Tapes Presents: Pitschouse, Luxury, 222 Sept 12, Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+ Weezer, the Shins, Silversun Pickups Sept 13, Climate Pledge Arena, 7 pm, all ages Pallbearer, Ordh, Heldscalla Sept 13, Substation, 8 pm, 21+ Boys Go to Jupiter, Alt Bloom Sept 14, Baba Yaga, 8 pm, all ages Dogstar, the Backfires Sept 15, Showbox, 8 pm, 21+ Public Image Ltd, Plague Vendor Sept 15, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Hildegard 26: Crystal Beth, Mt Fog, Leeni, Alice Does Computer Music, Old Man of the Woods Sept 16, Vermillion, 7 pm, 21+ The Music of Studio Ghibli with the Seattle Symphony Sept 16, Benaroya Hall, 7:30 pm, all ages Dark Thoughts, Fan Club Sept 16, Black Lodge, 7 pm, all ages Manchester Orchestra, Brother Bird Sept 16, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Pasatono Orquesta Sept 19, Kerry Hall, 5:30 and 7:30 pm, all ages Opening Night with Yuja Wang Sept 19, Benaroya Hall, 6 pm, all ages The Bad Things with Mister Ink Sept 19, Rabbit Box Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Melanie C Sept 19, Showbox, 8:30 pm, 21+ Man Plus, Midnight Crescendo, Straight to Video Sept 19, Slim’s Last Chance, 8 pm Thievery Corporation Sept 20, Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, 21+ Journey Sept 21, Climate Pledge Arena, 7:30 pm, all ages Arlo Parks, Baird Sept 21, Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, all ages Sleep Sept 21–22, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Radiator Hospital, Dusk Sept 23, Vera Project, 7 pm, all ages Sweeping Promises, Eraser, Casual Hex Sept 23, Baba Yaga, 7 pm, 21+ Lily Allen Sept 24, Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Xian and James Ehnes Sept 24–27, Benaroya Hall, times vary Big Thief, Porches Sept 25, Remlinger Farms, 6 pm, all ages The B-52s, Devo, DJ Cummerbund Sept 25, Climate Pledge Arena, 7 pm, all ages Candlebox, Sweet Water, Sponge Sept 25, Paramount Theatre, 7 pm, all ages Sondre Lerche Sept 25, Triple Door, 7:30 pm, all ages Chat Pile, Soul Glo, Virga Sept 25, Showbox SoDo, 7:30 pm, all ages Portrayal of Guilt, NØ MAN, Smirk Sept 25, Vera Project, 7 pm, all ages

Good Flying Birds, Stoneyard Sept 16, Vera Project, 8:30 pm, all ages

Alok, Whatever Mike Sept 25, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Carsie Blanton, the Burning Hell Sept 17, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Peter Hook & the Light Sept 25, Showbox, 8:30 pm, 21+

Stephen Wilson Jr., the Lone Bellow Sept 17–18, Paramount Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages

Heavy Bloom, Desperate Electric, Biddadat Sept 26, Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+

Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds Sept 18, Climate Pledge Arena, 8 pm, all ages

Chance the Rapper Sept 26, Paramount Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

The Front Bottoms, GDP, Nite Wave Sept 18, Showbox SoDo, 8 pm, all ages

Champagne Bubblebath, Annie J Sept 26, Hidden Hall, 9 pm, 21+

Zookraught, the Snares, Acapulco Lips Sept 18, Add-a-Ball, 8 pm, 21+

Ceremony, Dry Socket, Verity Den Sept 27, Substation, 5 pm, 18+

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190 Sunset Avenue S | Edmonds, WA 98020 Wednesday - Sunday, 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. www.CascadiaArtMuseum.org

SEPTEMBER 2026

Brian Fallon & the Painkillers Sept 27, Neumos, 7 pm, 21+

paper are deliciously wry, erudite, and kind of

Michelle Branch Sept 27, Showbox, 8 pm, all ages

and subtext—like linocuts and lithographs printed

Forbidden Feline Festival 2026: Faunix, Student Nurse, Skullkat, Trash Panda Go Kart, Negative Passengers, guests Sept 27, Slim’s Last Chance, 2 pm, 21+

on actual pages of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Tristen, guests Sept 28, Sunset Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

punk rock all at once, often involving layers of text

Learn from my mistake and take one home. (Greg Kucera Gallery) AMANDA MANITACH

She & Him Sept 29, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Lizzie Steiner Sept 29, Good Shepherd Center, 7 pm, all ages

Colleen Louise Barry: Safety Dance Sept 3,

The Hayley Williams Show, Magdalena Bay, Rico Nasty Sept 30, White River Amphitheatre, 7 pm, all ages

I Can See It From Here—Hank Reavis Sept 5–27

Hologram Gallery with opening reception Sept 5, noon–7 pm, Mini Mart City Park

Alicia Witt Oct 1, Rabbit Box Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages

MORE PAINT: Graffiti, Growth, Homelessness, and

Casa Sueño, Vinta, Quid Quo Oct 1, Tractor Tavern, 8 pm, 21+

Who the City Is For Sept 16, Town Hall, 7:30 pm Melissa Messer Sept 24–Oct 31, with artist reception

Dave Hause & the Mermaid, American Steel, Dead Bars Oct 2, Sunset Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+

Oct 8, 6–8 pm, Spectrum Fine Art Annual Artist Attic Sale Sept 26, Maple Leaf Fairview

Dave Hause & the Mermaid, American Steel, Tim Hause Oct 3, Sunset Tavern, 7:30 pm, 21+

Church, 10 am–3 pm

Deer Tick, Presley Haile Oct 3, Neumos, 8 pm, 21+ Creed Bratton from The Office Oct 3, Nectar Lounge, 5:30 pm, 21+

Ongoing

Jungle, Rio Kosta Oct 3, Climate Pledge Arena, 8 pm, all ages

Through Sept 5, Actualize AiR

Actualize AiR Summer Showcase: Recollections Moomins’ Sea Adventures & Tove and the Sea

VISUAL ART

Through Sept 6, National Nordic Museum

Becca Fuhrman: Eat It All

Through Sept 17, AMcE Creative Arts

SEPT 3–22 Becca Fuhrman’s vibrant, color-dense imagery often centers on female protagonists—a celebration of feminine strength, sensuality, and balls. There’s also a thread of the autobiographical peeking out from the nip slips and opulent patterns. In Eat It All, Fuhrman’s first solo Seattle show, the autobiographical punches through as a “rebellious act of survival born from living in the pressure-cooker of beauty culture,” and a protest against the consumerist edict to do anything but grow old. This new body of work is about bodies, our relationship to mortality, and the intensity of being alive. Supple flesh, skulls, a roll of the dice, and fallen flowers are traditional vanitas motifs given a fresh spin as they weave throughout paintings and sculptures, like little defiant Easter eggs screaming fuck you to the patriarchy. (Hometeam Gallery) AMANDA MANITACH

WALK DONT RUN SEPT 19 What’s not to love about 200-plus artists spread across 20 city blocks of downtown Seattle? It’s free and dog-friendly, too! During last year’s inaugural art marathon, brass bands burst onto the streets, dancers mobilized on rooftops and sidewalks, and videos were projected inside a sunken parking garage. This year, the route is reversed, kicking off in Westlake Park at 11 a.m. and ending at Occidental

Self. Reflexive. AMcE Creative Arts

Lost & Found: Searching for Home Through Sept 14, Wing Luke Museum Self. Reflexive.: Ian Brownlee, Gegam Kacherian, Michael Lazarus, and Kaoru Mansour

Tom Barnes: The road goes on forever and the party never ends

Tom Lloyd Through Sept 20, Frye Art Museum

SEPT 3–OCT 1

Jonathan Lasker: Drawings and Studies

He may have been the most 86’ed man in Seattle—a fact that puts a smile on the faces of his closest friends and chosen family. Capitol Hill lost a legend earlier this year, when Tom Barnes departed this earthly plane for the party in the sky. Barnes was well-rounded as a bohemian, in both romantic and problematic ways. Above all, he was an artist and documentarian who painted the world with pure fascination and unbridled pleasure. As a barfly and resident artist at Cha Cha Lounge, he documented the characters and tipplers passing through, rendering figures in big, inky, explosive color and scribbly scrawl that somehow marries on the page to communicate something like pure, incandescent poet energy. Barnes left behind over 800 works of art; come visit the retrospective and raise a glass to the legend at a community memorial on September 5 or during Capitol Hill Art Walk on September 10. (Vermillion) AMANDA MANITACH Square. One caveat: Last year’s wayfinding was a little tricky. If that’s the case again, my advice is to study the route beforehand and plot a path so you don’t miss artists like Dez’Mon Omega Fair, one of my favorite performance artists in town; Charmi Shah, who is hiding collectable, baseball-card-size collages along the route for participants to find and keep; and Jesse Higman, whose interactive paintpouring technique, performed around a massive tilting table, is mesmerizing. Or just wander blindly and let the art happen to you, because the magic of this event is that you get to experience the city in a completely new way. (Various locations throughout downtown, 11 am–7:30 pm) AMANDA MANITACH

William Kentridge SEPT 3–OCT 24 I regret all the William Kentridge prints I never bought at Kucera Gallery—which have been all of them, unfortunately. Kentridge is a renowned South African contemporary artist whose utterly prolific work ranges from opera productions and animated films (made by repeatedly erasing and redrawing the same palimpsest page) to sculpture and drawing. The work is often rooted in sociopolitical critique of apartheid and industrial exploitation, but also delves into the intimate ineffables of time and memory. His works on

Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time Through Sept 27, Frye Art Museum Let There Be Light Through Sept 30, Cannonball Arts Samantha Yun Wall: What We Leave Behind Through Oct 4, Seattle Art Museum Through Oct 11, Frye Art Museum Artists’ Choice with Guest Curators Through Oct 11, Frye Art Museum Boren Banner Series: Chloe King Through Oct 11, Frye Art Museum Eric-Paul Riege: ojo|-|ól Through Oct 25, Henry Art Museum Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan Through Jan 17, 2027, Seattle Art Museum A Room for Animal Intelligence Through Jan 2027, Seattle Art Museum Day-to-Day: Rhythm, Routine, Resistance Through Jan 3, 2027, Henry Art Gallery The Kondō Family: Storytellers in Clay Through Jan 3, 2027, Seattle Asian Art Museum Ten Thousand Things Through May 2, 2027, Wing Luke Museum Joiri Minaya: To Hell With Hibiscus Through May 2, 2027, Henry Art Gallery Chloë Bass: Soft Services Through Aug 2027, Volunteer Park Pioneer Square Art Walk Every first Thursday Capitol Hill Art Walk Every second Thursday Georgetown Art Attack! Every second Saturday Chris Kallmyer: Song Cycle Ongoing, Seattle Art Museum Gossip: Between Us Ongoing, Tacoma Art Museum Legacy: Highlights from the Permanent Collection Ongoing, Tacoma Art Museum Qiu Zhijie: Map of the History of Science and Technology Ongoing, Olympic Sculpture Park Ash-Glazed Ceramics from Korea and Japan Ongoing, Seattle Art Museum Rebels + Icons: The Photography of Janette Beckman Ongoing, MOPOP

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LITERATURE unpoetry at the Frye SEPT 17 Is Seattle in its poetry era? Over the past couple years, small poetry and performance events have been popping up all over the city, and this collaboration with the Frye Art Museum offers extra collaborative flavor by blending in visual art. Using a form called ekphrasis (I had to look it up, too), artists will craft their work in direct response to specific pieces

SEPTEMBER 2026

on display. This iteration intermingles with Lotus L. Kang’s I hear the hollow boom of time, a sculptural installation that, in its own way, responds directly to Frye’s architecture. The presenters of the evening include dancer Noelle Chun, intermedia artist María Dolores A. Matienzo, and guitarist Tom Scully. (Frye Art Museum, 6:30 pm) NICO SWENSON

Black Ocean Press 20th Anniversary Sept 6, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm Rachel Gillig: The Knave and the Moon Sept 9, Third Place Books, 7 pm Jack Marchbanks with Bill Radke Sept 9, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm

Margeaux Feldman

JOY NEWELL

SEPT 24

You might know multidisciplinary artist and educator Margeaux Feldman from their Instagram meme account @softcore_trauma, which often pairs captions about healing with images of Calico Critters and cuddly animals. As a queer person living with chronic illness and complex trauma, their mission is to promote mental health via various platforms, including visual art, writing, and workshops. Their debut book Touch Me, I’m Sick: A Memoir in Essays demonstrates how we can embrace queer forms of care, intimacy, and community in a fractured world that stigmatizes illness and mental health. The collection weaves together theory, personal narrative, and cultural criticism, investigating “the lengthy history of branding girls, women, and femmes—and their desires—as sick.” Feldman will join queer activist and writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore for a conversation at local treasure (and Genius Awards Short List!) Charlie’s Queer Books. (Charlie’s Queer Books, 7 pm) JULIANNE BELL

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come from a combination of Filipino mythology and the horrific state of public education. What could be scarier than that? (12th Avenue Arts Mainstage, times vary) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Anthony Jeselnik: Wrath of Man SEPT 11

Emily St. John Mandel Sept 22, Town Hall

LAURA BARISONZI

Daniel Tam-Claiborne: Diaspora & Belonging Sept 10, Seattle Public Library Douglass-Truth Branch, 6 pm Rae Armantrout, fahima ife Sept 11, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm Evelyn Iritani: Safe Passage Sept 12, Central Library, 2 pm Richard B. Simon: The Dolphin Ambassador’s Daughter Sept 13, Rabbit Box Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages Sarah Longwell: How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time Sept 15, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 7 pm Artist Talk and Studio Visit: Jo Cosme Sept 17, Central Library, 6 pm Larry Crane with Geoff Stanfield Sept 17, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm Silent Book Club Sept 17, Charlie’s Queer Books, 6 pm Jaipur Literature Festival Seattle Sept 17–20, various locations, times vary Jaipur Literature Festival Seattle Opening Night Sept 18, Central Library, 7 pm Emily St. John Mandel Sept 22, Town Hall, 7:30 pm Dave Zirin with Jesse Hagopian Sept 22, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm Susan Stryker with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore Sept 23, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm Seattle Reads: Sara Nović discusses True Biz Sept 25, Hugo House, 7 pm Taylor Tomlinson: Actually, Nevermind Sept 25, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, 7 pm Kevin Dettmar with Christine Harold: Punk in 50 Pieces Sept 25, Third Place Ravenna, 7 pm Jason Dove Mark with Lynda Mapes: The Earth Said Remember Me Sept 25, Town Hall, 7:30 pm Lauren Napier Sept 28, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7 pm George Saunders with Claire Dederer Sept 28, Benaroya Hall, 7:30 pm Amy Bowers Cordalis and Katie Campbell Sept 29, Central Library, 6:30 pm Claudia Castro Luna: The Flowers Along the Way Sept 30, Central Library, 6:30 pm V. E. Schwab Oct 5, Town Hall Seattle, 7:30 pm

Anthony Jeselnik’s entire standup-comedy career has been one big trigger warning. It’s hard to think of another comic who can repeatedly drop shockingly offensive punch lines with the methodical elegance of this 47-year-old American. He’s a master of hilarious misdirection and his chiseled, darker-thanthou material repeatedly makes you say “Holy shit, I cannot believe he went there.” Maybe if Jeselnik weren’t a handsome devil with perfectly coiffed hair, his edgelord-y jokes wouldn’t slap as hard as they do or audiences wouldn’t laugh so hard at them—he even gets women to chortle at his misogynistic zingers. But here we are, doubling over at the most mordant material in this tragically flawed country. Listen, it’s difficult to cancel a comedian when you’re crying with laughter. (Moore Theatre, 7:30 pm, all ages) DAVE SEGAL

Suns Out, Ones Out SEPT 16 Seattle does a great job of supporting queer artists, but end-stage capitalism does not. That’s where fundraising can help, and this one is packed with talent! Suns Out, Ones Out raises money for the Queer Sick Pay Fund (qSPF), an organization that provides sick pay to queer, contracted performers when they need to miss a gig due to illness. qSPF has also begun offering gender-affirming care grants for the greater Seattle area. Even if your goal wasn’t to donate to such an awesome cause, you’d still want to go just to catch the show! Featuring drag, music, and comedy, the lineup includes Moscato Sky, Taylar Elizza Beth, CHAD, Emma Schmuckler, DJ dark wiley, and qSPF co-founder, Betty Wetter. The evening will also include a silent auction, raffle, and raise the paddle. Who doesn’t like a good paddling?! (Clock-Out Lounge, 8:30 pm, 21+) NICO SWENSON

Emerald City Kings Ball SEPT 17–19 The Kings are back in town! Summoning a whopping 60 performers from drag scenes across North America, this annual festival enters its fourth year with a jaw-dropping, swoon-worthy, swashbuckling explosion of brilliant entertainment. Rusty Hammer is on the bill, and I have a crush on his five-o’clock shadow alone. The festivities span three days of vendors, headliners, featured local talent, and a fierce competition for the ultimate title of High King Supreme. My favorite thing is when they release application statistics as teasers. This year’s top submitted act themes were “gender liberation, religion (the pope), musical theatre, and devils.” Sign me up! (Broadway Performance Hall, 8 pm, ASL interpreted, 18+) NICO SWENSON

PERFORMANCE Seattle Sketchfest SEPT 24–27

Blood/Sucker THROUGH SEPT 21 September is a time for school, and it is a time for horror. What if something thirsty for blood was lurking in your high school’s walls? It’s a brave question asked by Blood/Sucker, a new play by Anamaria Guerzon and directed by Sophia Franzella. The play starts with a history teacher trying to save his Asian American history class in the wake of a doxing campaign. Meanwhile, there’s that thing in the walls, and something is off about the students. But Blood/Sucker isn’t all gristle and guts. Its thrills

The longest-running sketch comedy festival in the US and a certifiably good way to spend an evening underneath Pike Market, Sketchfest 2026 has everything from deranged live sketches to musical numbers and celebrity impressions from local and touring groups. Unlike improv, sketch comedy somewhat mercifully involves skits that have been rehearsed, and someone has actually checked that they are funny and cohesive before performing them live in front of strangers. It’s hosted at the Unexpected Productions Market Theater in Post Alley, and features 20-plus different acts across four nights including solo performances by touring comedians like Cam Wyllie and sketches by writers/ producers of The Daily Show and The Tonight Show! (Unexpected Productions, times vary) DYLAN BUECHE

90 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

Elton Bennett (1910–1974) Original hand-screened silkscreen artwork from the artist’s estate THE ELTON BENNETT SHOWROOM AT WHISPERWOOD GALLERY 633 East Pioneer, Montesano, Washington 98563 Open Tuesday–Saturday and by appointment

For information call the artist’s daughter Barbara at 360-532-3235 www.eltonbennett.com

SEPTEMBER 2026

Clayton Lee: The Goldberg Variations

KENNETH KOO

SEPT 17–19

From the larger-than-life personas to the homoerotic lore and campy costumes, there’s something about pro wrestling that is just inherently queer, which is why it makes perfect sense that Canadian curator, producer, and performance artist Clayton Lee has chosen it as a backdrop for examining his sexuality. This deeply personal performance marries Lee’s childhood fixation on legendary professional wrestler Bill Goldberg with Bach’s classical compositions known as the Goldberg Variations, resulting in an exploration of power dynamics, desire, and identity. Lee is the artistic director of Fierce Festival in Birmingham, UK and served as the director of the experimental Rhubarb Festival in Canada from 2019– 2023, so you can trust him to get real weird with it—the On the Boards website describes the show as “unhinged” and “thoroughly unconventional,” and executive and artistic director Megan Kiskaddon says it “brings toxic relationships to a new level.” (On the Boards, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Jurassic Parking Lot Through Sept 24, Seattle Public Theater, times vary Hannibal Buress Sept 4, Neptune Theatre, 7 pm, all ages

Duncan Trussell Sept 4–6, Emerald City Comedy Club, times vary Much Ado About Nothing Sept 10–26, Theatre Off Jackson, times vary

Queen Andrew Scott: Rhythm & Horror Sept 4, Triple Door, 7:30 pm

TUSH: Chance Hazard, Queen Andrew Scott, Quincy Yeoman, Miss Texas 1988, Amora Namor, Angel Baby Kill Kill Kill, DJ Dark Wiley Sept 10, Clock-Out Lounge, 7 pm

Francesca Fiorentini and Matt Lieb Sept 4–5, Laughs Comedy Club, times vary

Leah Rudick Sept 11–12, Laughs Comedy Club, 7:15 and 9:30 pm, 21+

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SEPTEMBER 2026

Pacific Northwest Ballet Presents Serenade Sept 25–Oct 4, McCaw Hall

ANGELA STERLING

Off Book: The Improvised Musical Sept 12, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Seattle Rep Presents: Eureka Day Sept 24–Nov 15, Leo K. Theater, times vary

The Lauren & Mary Show! Sept 14, Emerald City Comedy Club, 7 and 9:30 pm

Pacific Northwest Ballet Presents Serenade Sept 25–Oct 4, McCaw Hall, times vary

Conscience Sept 16–Oct 17, Taproot Theatre, times vary

The Ghost of Buena Vista Past: Shadow Theater and Songs by Michelle Lassaline Sept 26–27, Rabbit Box Theatre, times vary, all ages

Leslie Liao Sept 17–19, Emerald City Comedy Club, times vary The Chinese Lady Sept 17–Oct 11, ArtsWest, times vary Luke Severeid Sept 18–19, Laughs Comedy Club, 7:15 and 9:30 pm, 21+

Hokus Pokus Live! Sept 27, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Josh Thomas Sept 19, Neptune Theatre, 7:30 pm

Peter Antoniou Sept 29, Emerald City Comedy Club, 7:30 pm, 21+

Union Arts Center Presents: Hamlet Sept 19–Oct 11, Allen Theatre, times vary

Chris O’Connor Sept 30, Emerald City Comedy Club, 7:30 pm, 21+

Cynthia Brothers and Shannon Koyano Present: The Vanishing Seattle Variety Show Sept 15, Clock-Out Lounge, 8 pm, 21+

References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot Oct 1–17, Center Theatre at the Seattle Center Armory, times vary

A Chorus Line Sept 15–27, 5th Avenue Theatre, times vary

Pete Holmes Oct 2, Moore Theatre, 8 pm, all ages

Chrissa Sparkles Sept 20, Emerald City Comedy Club, 4 pm, 21+

Jim Gaffigan Oct 2–4, Paramount Theatre, times vary

Double Indumbnity: John Coons and Jonah Wheeler Sept 20, Rabbit Box Theatre, 7 pm, 18+ Open Michael: A Storytelling Stand Up Strangeness Open Mic! hosted by Emmett Montgomery Sept 22, Rabbit Box Theatre, 6 pm, all ages Honey Pluton and Spike Einbinder Sept 23, Clock-Out Lounge, 7 pm, 21+ TUSH: Betty Wetter, Beau Degas, Honey Wong, Ruby Mimosa, Moscato Sky, Pussy Willow, DJ Dark Wiley Sept 24–25, Clock-Out Lounge, times vary Dylan Carlino Sept 24–26, Emerald City Comedy Club, times vary, 21+ Eulogy or How to Play Your Own Funeral (And Have Fun Doing It!) Sept 24–Oct 11, PONCHO Forum, times vary

Brian Posehn Oct 3, Neptune Theatre, 8 pm, all ages Rocky Horror Drag Brunch Oct 4, Emerald City Comedy Club, 3 pm, 21+ Seattle’s Funniest: Finals! Oct 4, Emerald City Comedy Club, 7 pm, 21+ Ilana Glazer Oct 6, Moore Theatre, 7 pm, all ages Water for Elephants Oct 6–11, Paramount Theatre, times vary

FILM Local Sightings Film Festival 2026 SEPT 18–27

Assets & Liabilities at Local Sightings Northwest Film Forum

Local Sightings, Seattle’s most dedicated hyperlocal film festival, is back with a bunch of standout works from local filmmakers you may not have heard of just yet, but absolutely should. One must-see is Marjorie Conrad’s The Joyless Economy, which is making its North American premiere after first screening at the Cannes Film Festival. An experimental documentary about desire, cinema, and a Seattle woman whose life was reshaped by her relationship to the movies, The Joyless Economy is a purposefully challenging, captivating vision. The fest lineup also includes other local gems such as Again Again, Assets & Liabilities, and The Life We Leave, the documentary about local human composting company, Return Home. It proves once more that the Pacific Northwest may often be imitated (eat your heart out, Vancouver), but nobody can replicate the filmmakers themselves. (Northwest Film Forum, times vary) CHASE HUTCHINSON

FOR WHICH IT STANDS

The Many Threads of the American Flag Through Nov 16, 2026

MOHAI.ORG/FLAGS

94 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 2026

2026 HUMP! Film Festival: Fall Season SEPT 24–OCT 3 The world was very different when Dan Savage introduced an amateur porn film festival to curious Seattleites in 2005. That same year, George W. Bush began his second term as the President of the United States, North Korea announced they had nuclear weapons, and Hurricane Katrina devastated the US Gulf Coast. That was also the year the first video was uploaded to YouTube. Online streaming services were distant glimmers of possibility. In fact, all HUMP! submissions that year—Savage remembers receiving about 50 total—were sent to the Stranger offices via mail on VHS tapes, and all evidence was destroyed after the final screening. Now, HUMP! is held twice a year and shown in more than 40 cities around the globe. Participants have upped their production and imagination, and, once COVID-19 hit, they also signed release forms allowing their work to

be shown in a streaming library so fans can HUMP! at home. (And yup, they get a cut of the profits.) The 2026 fall lineup, running into October at On the Boards, is all new from anything ever shown before, with films featuring everything from a dim sum table to LEGOs and… Frankenstein’s monster? (On the Boards, times vary) MEGAN SELING

Film Series: God Hath Given You One Face and You Make Yourselves Another: Movies Without a Face Through Sept 11, the Beacon, times vary Film Series: There Is No Need to Build a Labyrinth When the Entire Universe Is One: Infinite Recursion, Ontological Vertigo, and the Territory Yielding to the Map Through Sept 26, Beacon Cinema, times vary Film Series: Shadowland Through Sept 28, Beacon Cinema, times vary Truth to Fiction: Baby Doe Sept 3, Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm

Céline and Julie Go Boating SEPT 6

In French New Wave director Jacques Rivette’s delightful 1974 film Céline and Julie Go Boating, magician Céline (Juliet Berto) and librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) cross paths in a park in Paris and instantly form a playful bond. Soon, the pair stumbles upon a haunted house that replays a murder-mystery melodrama in an incessant loop, and they become entangled in its repetitive narrative. Rivette worked closely with his two stars to create the film, which ranks at #78 on Sight & Sound’s list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. (Fun fact: It partially inspired the 1985 buddy comedy and Madonna vehicle Desperately Seeking Susan.) At 193 minutes long, this movie isn’t for those with short attention spans, but dreamers will definitely fall under its spell and shouldn’t pass up the chance to see it screened at our film Genius Award winner, the Beacon Cinema. (They’ve also got a bunch of other cool stuff scheduled for this month, including Jess Franco’s 1988 Eyes Without a Face remake Faceless, Charlie Kaufman’s debut Synecdoche, New York, and the Bette Davis melodrama The Little Foxes—check it out!) (Beacon Cinema, 6 pm) JULIANNE BELL

96 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

t s e w h Nort

Seattle Center Armory (On the first floor near the food court. 305 Harrison St.)

W O H S D R O C RE F

h, 2026 t 8 1 r e , Octob SUNDAY :00pm 5 – m , 10:00a ecords s of r 5 table nd CDs!!! 6 r e v O sa LPs, 45

Cost: $3 or $2 if a can of food is brought to benefit Northwest Harvest.

Early Admission at 8:00am: $15 Please help Northwest Harvest collect food for local food banks.

New Local Music Podcast WATCH NOW

SEPTEMBER 2026

Rebels of the Neon God Beacon Cinema

SECS Fest Presents: In the Realm of the Senses in 35mm Sept 3, Northwest Film Forum, 7:15 pm

Brailled It Sept 20, SIFF Film Center, 4 pm

The Room Sept 3, Central Cinema, 8 pm

Samba Traoré Sept 20–24, Beacon Cinema, times vary

The Best of Betty Boop! Sept 3 and Sept 10, Northwest Film Forum, 7:30 pm

Nouvelles Femmes: Jules and Jim in 35mm Sept 23, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7:30 pm

10 Things I Hate About You Sept 4–9, Central Cinema, times vary

The Grand Illusion Presents: Hundreds of Beavers Sept 24, Central Cinema, 8 pm

Memento Sept 4–9, Central Cinema, times vary

Rebels of the Neon God Sept 27, Beacon Cinema, 5 pm

Pazuzu’s Wings: An Exorcist II Double Feature Sept 5–6, Northwest Film Forum, times vary Five Minutes to Live! Sept 7, Beacon Cinema, 7:30 pm Seattle Scare Society Presents: The Craft Sept 7, Central Cinema, 7 pm Blue Velvet Sept 8, Seattle Public Theater, 7 pm 100 Years of the Uptown: Faust with live music by the Invincible Czars Sept 9, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7 pm Found Footage Festival: Porcelain VHS Treasures Sept 10, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7 pm Collide-O-Scope Presents: Once Upon a Time in Seattle Sept 11–12, times vary Georgetown Super 8 Fest Sept 11–12, Georgetown Steam Plant, 6 pm The End of Summer Sept 11–13, Northwest Film Forum, times vary The Brother From Another Planet Sept 11–16, Central Cinema, times vary SFCS at 10: The History of the Seattle Mariners Sept 13, Northwest Film Forum, 4:30 pm The Pain and the Power with a live Q&A with Logan Lynn Sept 13, SIFF Film Center, 7 pm SIFF Movie Club: Serial Mom Sept 14, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 6:30 pm Collide-O-Scope Sept 14 (every second Monday), 8 pm SEA-Nordic Film Festival Sept 15–19, National Nordic Museum, times vary WTF with STUFF: Neptune Frost Sept 16, Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm Nouvelles Femmes: Breathless Sept 16, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7:30 pm

Silent Movie Mondays: Metropolis Sept 28, Paramount Theatre, 7 pm The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love Sept 29, Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm Nouvelles Femmes: Cléo from 5 to 7 Sept 30, SIFF Cinema Uptown, 7:30 pm The History of Concrete Oct 1–6, Northwest Film Forum, times vary Chronovisor Oct 2–6, Northwest Film Forum, times vary

ac opr odu c t i onwi t hYu nT h e at r e

Seattle Film Society’s Film Discussion Group Every second, third, and fourth Wednesday of the month, Northwest Film Forum, 7 pm

SEP T EMBER1 7OCT OBER1 1

FOOD & DRINK

T HE

Cocina Barelas

CHI NE SE L ADY

MULTIPLE DATES When former Shins guitarist Dave Hernandez moved to the Northwest after the band was signed to Sub Pop, he yearned for the elusive flavors he grew up with in Albuquerque, New Mexico, including Hatch green chiles, carne adovada, and sopaipillas. Over the years, he also fell in love with trying regional specialties and street food while touring the country. Those memories have converged to form Cocina Barelas, Hernandez’s “New Mexico comfort food” pop-up. Hernandez roams around town, slinging his

Barbara Forever Sept 16–17, Northwest Film Forum, 7:30 pm

T HET RUEST ORYOFAF ONGMOY

Baron Von Terror Presents: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors Sept 17, Central Cinema, 8 pm

SEASON2026-2027| AVI SI BL EEXI STENCE

She’s the Man Sept 18–23, Central Cinema, times vary Tombstone Sept 18–23, Central Cinema, times vary SECS Fest Presents: The Raspberry Reich Sept 18, Beacon Cinema, 10 pm

o we dIn CHI NE SE Sn L ADY T HE

Ghostbusters in Concert Sept 19, Paramount Theatre, 8 pm

wr i t t e nby

VHS Über Alles Presents: 1987 Sept 19, Beacon Cinema, 10 pm Community Screening: North By Northwest Sept 20, SIFF Cinema Downtown, 11 am

B yL l o y dS u h

Don’t peek! Puzzle on pg. 102.

Cor i nnePar k Buf f e l e n &Mat he w Wr i ght

mus i cby

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LEARNMOREATARTSWEST. ORG

OR THE M I S-EDUM ACATI ON OF DORI AN BELLE

T E A RR A N C E A R V E L L EC H I S H O L M

98 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

VISIT LA CONNER! 3 great museums, lots of local shops and great restaurants

SKAGIT COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

Preserving and presenting the history of Skagit County “for all people, for all time.” Thursday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. 501 S. 4th St., La Conner | 360-466-3365 skagitcounty.net/museum This project received funding from Town of La Conner Hotel/Motel funds

NEW SEASON. NEW FANTASIES. NEW FILMMAKERS.

THE BEST DIRTY LITTLE FILM FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD

GET TICKETS:

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ROXY THEATRE

BREMERTON | SEP 26

ON THE BOARDS

QUEEN ANNE, SEATTLE | SEP 24 - OCT 3

THE LUMBERYARD BAR

WHITE CENTER, SEATTLE | OCT 22 & 29

THE GRAND CINEMA

TACOMA | NOV 6

WASHINGTON HALL

CENTRAL DISTRICT, SEATTLE | NOV 13 - 14

SEPTEMBER 2026

signature melty quesotacos, carne adovada, Frito pies, breakfast burritos (available on weekends only), and other nostalgic favorites. New Mexican cuisine is notoriously difficult to track down in Seattle, with the exception of Bang Bang Cafe in Belltown and its Othello sibling Bang Bang Kitchen. Whether you’re a Hatch chile virgin or already a devoted fan, Hernandez’s menu is definitely worth seeking out. (Various locations, follow @cocinabarelas on Instagram for dates) JULIANNE BELL

Rose Levy Beranbaum SEPT 30 Referred to as the “Diva of Desserts” by the Washington Post and “the most meticulous cook who ever lived” by food writer Amanda Hesser, Rose Levy Beranbaum changed the game for home bakers with her groundbreaking 1988 cookbook The Cake Bible. The book introduced the method of “reverse creaming” for a tender, velvety crumb for the first

Alexis Nikole Nelson

JB DOUGLAS

SEPT 14

Known as “BlackForager” on Instagram and YouTube and “alexisnikole” on TikTok, Alexis Nikole Nelson has charmed millions of followers with her joyful approach to foraged foods, not to mention her sense of humor, adorable forest fairy princess outfits, and fun plant-based recipes. Although her videos are light-hearted, Nelson is serious about foraging: She often delves into the cultural and historical context of the pastime, especially as it relates to Black and Indigenous communities, and she ends many videos with the half-joking warning, “Happy snacking, don’t die!” That catchphrase is also the title of her new debut book, which takes the guesswork and intimidation out of foraging with identification photos, tips, safety information, and seasonal recipes ranging from rosewater baklava to oyster mushroom “chowdah.” Her first book tour stop is at Town Hall and is sure to inspire audience members to scrounge for treats among the natural bounty of the Northwest. (Town Hall, 7:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

100 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

SATURDAY SEPT 19 • 6:00 - 10:00pm ART • MUSIC • FASHION • INTERACTIVE BOOTHS FOOD • BEER • WINE • 21+

@nightmarketontheave

SEPTEMBER 2026

Bat Talk

Sept 4, West Green Lake Beach

DANIEL WILLIAMS / GETTY IMAGES

time, as well as listing weight measurements for ingredients in addition to volume for increased accuracy. Now, the three-time James Beard Award-winning author is getting personal with her memoir, Ma Vie en Rose: My Sweet Life, which details her path from “food-averse” child in New York to culinary icon, while also tracking the culinary history of the time. Beranbaum will drop by Book Larder for a conversation, audience Q&A, and signing. (Book Larder, 6:30 pm) JULIANNE BELL

Northwest Chocolate Festival OCT 3–4 I mean, it’s a chocolate festival. Why wouldn’t you go? Nearly 100 vendors from around the world bring their best bars, truffles, sauces, and candies, and lay them all out for endless sampling. And we’re not talking cheap shit like Hershey’s. Think Dandelion Chocolate from San Francisco, Dick Taylor from Eureka, CA, Fjåk from Norway, and Fran’s from right here in Seattle. If you want to get smart, experts are on hand to explain the intricacies of their art—cacao beans are a lot like coffee in that everything from the region to the soil type can impact flavor notes. Some advice: Take it slow. I left my first Northwest Chocolate Festival feeling physically ill because I went all Augustus Gloop on the samples the minute I arrived. Don’t make the same mistake. (Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, times vary) MEGAN SELING

Soup Stand Sept 5, Book Larder, 11 am–2 pm Mushroom Foraging Class Sept 10, Skål Beer Hall, 7 pm Author Talk: Maria Koutsogiannis Sept 14, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Author Talk & Demo: Carla Hall Sept 15, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Author Talk: Tanya Sichynsky Sept 16, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Taste of the Sound Sept 17, Fishermen’s Terminal, 5–8 pm Fremont Oktoberfest Sept 18–20, Fremont, times vary Author Talk: Clarissa Wei Sept 20, Book Larder, 4:30 pm Author Demo & Trivia Night: Chelsea Cole Sept 22, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Author Talk & Demo: Kristen Morita Sept 24, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Northwest Tea Festival Sept 26–27, Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, times vary Laminated Pastries Intensive Sept 27, Pastry Project, 10 am–2 pm

Author Talk & Demo: Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer Sept 28, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Author Talk & Demo: Leah Koenig Sept 29, Book Larder, 6:30 pm Soup Stand Oct 3, Book Larder, 11 am–2 pm U-District Chow Down and Street Party Oct 3, University Way NE, 11 am–8 pm Author Talk & Demo: Adrianna Adarme Oct 5, Book Larder, 6:30 pm

THIS & THAT Bat Talk SEPT 4 The perfect way to spend a late summer evening is to gather at Green Lake at dusk and learn all about Seattle’s local bat species. Bats Northwest is hosting this informational talk. The length of which depends on the weather and the bats. You can bank on it lasting at least 1.5 hours, though. You will leave as a bat expert. The event is free. But it is a BYOC (bring your own chair) event. (West Green Lake Beach, 7:15 pm) NATHALIE GRAHAM

Seattle Indies Expo 2026 Sept 6, Hilton Motif Seattle, 11:30 am–9 pm, all ages After Hours: Octopus’s Beer Garden Sept 10, Seattle Aquarium, 5:30 pm, 21+ Washington Home Show Sept 12, Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, times vary Live Aloha Hawaiian Cultural Festival Sept 13, Seattle Center, 11 am ArtsFund: Celebration of the Arts Sept 17, McCaw Hall, 5 pm Sea Mar Fiestas Patrias Sept 19–20, Seattle Center, times vary Punk Rock Flea Market Sept 15–27, Quality Flea Center, times vary Choma Fest Global Experience Sept 26, Magnuson Park Amphitheater, 1–7:30 pm, all ages Festa Italiana Italian Festival (With a Grape Stomp!) Sept 26–27, Seattle Center, times vary, all ages Base 2 Space Sept 27, the Space Needle, 7:30 am–noon Seattle Kraken 2026-27 Season Home Opener Oct 4, Climate Pledge Arena, 6:40 pm

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102 THE STRANGER’S GENIUS ISSUE

CURATED BY CORIANTON HALE

MARIE HAUSAUER

That’s Genius BY NATE CARDIN 8. “Seasons of Love” musical 9. Computer operator 10. Watch a neighbor’s feline while they’re away 11. “Oof! The worst!” 12. Chinese zodiac rodent 13. Dumbbell abbr. 21. Tai ___ 22. Reunion attendee 26. Brings into alignment 27. Like a dive bar 28. Dark volcanic rock 29. “Safe” place from a storm 30. Fill-in-___-blank 31. Put quarters in, as a meter 32. Wild guess

“I’m sorry but you’re just not what I’m looking for right now.” DEREK SCOTT

33. Promote a new album on the road 34. Foreboding UFO quality 38. Forensic TV franchise 39. “Eureka!” 40. Cheerios grain 43. Can’t-miss proposition 45. “Viva ___ Vegas” 46. Shape-fitting arcade game

ACROSS 1. Walked nervously back and forth 6. Spiritual teacher 10. Bottom-row PC key 14. “Remember the ___!” 15. Poems of praise 16. “Moby-Dick” captain 17. Piece of rosemary or holly

25. Grocery shoppers’ aids

48. GPS guess

67. Uses needle and thread

28. Promising (genius!) time ahead

49. Musician’s asset 50. Uno + uno

68. Change for a $5 bill

53. Identify in an Instagram photo

69. Midterms and finals

32. T-bone, for one 35. Throat-clearing sound 36. Actor’s prompt 37. Fingers of the foot 38. Gave in under pressure 40. Signed off on

DOWN

60. “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself” org.

1. No longer in style

54. Farmland measure

2. Omega’s opposite

56. BLT condiment

3. Jeweler’s weight

57. “Preach on, brother!”

62. Love, in Spanish

4. Middle Eastern ruler

58. Repetitive learning method

41. Mystical ambience

19. Body art, briefly

42. ___ /her pronouns

63. Friend to Disney’s Thumper and Flower

5. Place for off-leash frolicking

20. Stark (genius!) difference

43. Full of back talk

64. Theater stage item

44. Sparkle-maximizing (genius!) diamond faceting

65. Abominable snowman

6. “Get ready for a deep throw!”

66. Bert’s “Sesame Street” roommate

7. Thick Japanese noodle

24. “Kung Fu” actor Philip

51. Round-the-world trip 52. Overhead expanses

55. Witty (genius!) wisecrack

18. Sole

23. “Dig in!”

47. Hot Wheels toy 50. Criticizes “with faint praise”

53. Faucets

59. Female horse 61. Jumping skills, in basketball lingo Answers on p. 97

LOCAL COMIC ARTISTS! ILLUSTRATORS! DESIGNERS! SHOW ME YOUR STUFF! artdirector@thestranger.com

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