Category: Arts

Arts

Four Fun Things for February 9, 2025

Theories about Severance, a gorgeous (and versatile) tortilla press, a different kind of non-alcoholic Amaro, and more.

1. r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus

After three years waiting for the twisty scifi office mystery Severance to return, I’m finding myself looking forward to Thursday nights not just for the show—which ventures into new territory this season, and finally answers some questions—but for the online discussion after the show on the Severance Reddit, which briefly became the most popular subreddit last week.

As soon as the show ends every week, I head right over to Reddit to find out what the most popular theories are this week (my biggest current question: Why are the goal people so unkempt and hostile?) and see all the stuff I missed—from a coded message in a woodland dream to a name in the credits that might, but probably doesn’t, portend something about a certain character. (Any fact about Severance might be a spoiler.) I also look forward to seeing fan art — one person took a watercolor portrait of Mark/Adam Scott to [site redacted] from last week’s final scene—and fan edits that attempt to shine a light on what really might be going on.

Severance is a much better show than Lost (a show I love, but come on, there’s no comparison), but its compounding mysteries scratch a similar itch, and Reddit is where you’ll find every imaginable theory (AI? Clones? Nah, it’s never clones) about what’s really going on.

On Reddit

2. Masienda tortilla press

Could this reasonably be called a gentrification tortilla press? Absolutely. It’s stylish, slick, and at least twice as expensive as your standard round cast-iron press. They also want you to buy special liners at 5 for $7.50, which is just silly. But let me tell you, this thing works incredibly well—easily smashing masa into tortillas of consistent thickness—while looking great. It’s heavy, with a handle that can lock down for maximum pressure, and can make much larger tortillas than most round presses because of its greater surface area. As long as you’re making gentrification tortillas, might as well buy some gentrification masa—in Seattle, anything other than standard bags of Maseca is hard to come by, and Masienda’s white, yellow, red and blue corn masas come highly recommended (including on r/mexican food!); just skip the spendy liners and use produce bags like your abuela did.

Order tortilla press and masa from Masienda.

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3. Doctor Zero Zero non-alcoholic AmarNo

With an ingredient list that begins (after water) with sugar and caramelized sugar, Doctor Zero Zero is sweeter than most other nonalcoholic apertifs, trading some of the orange-pith bitterness of amaro-style beverages like Phony Negroni and Uncle Willard’s for a more balanced sipping liqueur, sans liquor. The anise overtones are balanced by the tiniest hint of olive brine, like a lightly salted licorice. Have it over ice in your fanciest glass, with a twist of orange.

Cone and Steiner, 532 19th Ave East in Seattle; or order here.

4. Wilco’s online merch store

This may be my most niche recommendation ever, but if you are even a casual fan of the band Wilco (or just like fun band merch), do yourself a favor and go over to Wilcostore.com, where you’ll find much more than just the usual tour shirts, posters (although I would happily cover several walls with theirs), and albums like the new special-edition 9-LP edition of A Ghost is Born. A small sampling of what’s on sale:

• A pair of socks that says “I’ve Got a Sock Full of Letters” (those letters? W I L C O);

• A car air freshener with the cat from the Star Wars cover;

• A chip clip that says “I am an American Potato Chip Eater”;

• Cherry ghost pajamas, after a line from the song “Theologians”;

• A 3D viewfinder;

• A font?!?!?

And much more. Personally, my finger has been hovering over the “buy” button for this Kay-Settes Starring Butchers Blind t-shirt all weekend.

Wilco Store

Arts, Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things: January 12, 2025

Brutalism in 3D, a Movie About Love and Grief, and Sparkling Water on Tap

By Erica C. Barnett

1. Drive My Car; streaming on multiple services

Recently, I found myself complaining—about an author I really want to like—that I would be a hundred times less likely to throw his books across the room if he would stop being so fucking weird about women.

By the end of this book—which had some really cool ideas in it, and the kind of unresolved ending that tends to make people, though not me, really mad—I was anticipating the introduction of each new female character with dread. “Here comes her breasts, boobing boobily,” I’d mutter, and indeed: The newly introduced woman (or, disturbingly, prepubescent girl) would have breasts that were lush and ripe, or taut and firm, or the cause of a “massive hard-on” that the protagonist, naturally, just “couldn’t help.” In the book I just read, a man commits murder to protect a cat, but an unambiguous rape scene is written, sympathetically, from the perspective of the rapist.

Then, a few weeks later, I watched a movie that was based on the work of the same author—one my household had put off watching because it was three hours long. Knowing who wrote the source material made me wince at some scenes—the dead woman who propels the action of the male protagonist, who we first see naked in a flashback, can only get ideas for screenplays after sex with men— but I found these flaws less glaring in the film, which—I’ve confirmed—is more humane to its female characters than the story on which it’s based.

The book I read over the holidays was “Kafka By the Shore,” by Haruki Marukami, and the movie was “Drive My Car.”

The story, in brief: A playwright and former actor, Yūsuke, who’s grieving over the death of his wife, Oto, gets hired to direct a multilingual adaptation of “Uncle Vanya” at an artists’ residency in Hiroshima. While there, Yūsuke learns that he won’t be allowed to drive his beloved red Saab because of an unnamed mishap that happened during a previous residency. Instead, he’ll be driven around by Misaki, a young, working-class woman who is fleeing her troubled life in a village on the other end of Japan. During their drives, Yūsuke listens to Oto’s “Uncle Vanya” recordings and recites the dialogue out loud. To play the grizzled, embittered Vanya, Yūsuke chooses a young man, Koji, who he knows was having an affair with his wife. An incident of unexpected violence propels Yūsuke into the title role—a role he hasn’t played since Oto was alive, when she recorded the dialogue onto cassettes so he could memorize it in his car.

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This is a movie of tense, quiet set pieces, not direct confrontations, and it’s filled with moments of uncomfortable intimacy. In one indelible scene, Yūsuke and Koji are discussing Oto, who was always struck with screenwriting inspiration just after sex. Stuck in a kind of trance state, she told the stories she came up with to both men, who would recount them to her the following day, when she would no longer remember what she’d said (That’s right—she was literally dickmatized.) In this scene, which takes place in the back of Yūsuke’s car, the camera lingers on each man’s face for a long, long time, settling on Koji as he describes the final chapter of one of Oto’s stories, which Yūsuke hasn’t hard. In this moment, neither man is right or wrong, and neither owns Oto’s memory or the right to mourn her with more intensity. They’re both the imagined main character in their own version of Oto’s story.

Misaki (whose breasts Murakami indeed described in the short story “Drive My Car”; SIGH) reveals her own grief in halting, reluctant intervals, but the bond that eventually develops between her and Yusuke allows both of them to move on, in an ending I found ambiguous—has Misaki managed to dupe her wealthy, somewhat sheltered patron, or have both these unhappy people actually moved on?

2. The Sparkling Water Fountain at Macrina’s Aloha Café

I’ve been dreaming for many years about a fountain that delivers sparkling water when you press the button. (Plain water is for chumps. You heard me.) And while science has not yet produced the water fountain of my dreams, Macrina Bakery on Capitol Hill has something that may be even better: A tap that, when you press it, produces a refreshing pour of beautiful, bubbly H20. Now, I’m not suggesting you go to Macrina and only use this magical tap—if nothing else, do yourself a favor and buy literally any of their gorgeous crusty loaves to take home or treat yourself to a gorgeous tart or crisp, perfectly laminated pastry. But after you’ve done that, mosey on over to the water taps in the back, and enjoy a compostable cup or two of water in its finest, most delicious form—fizzy, ice-cold, and fresh from the tap.

Macrina Aloha Café, 746 19th Avenue East Seattle, WA 98112

3. Brutal Poland (Zupagrafika)

My fondness for Brutalism started out, like so many true passions, with disgust: How anyone love an architectural style whose most famous Seattle example was the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a hideous double-decker freeway that used to run along the downtown waterfront? Disgust turned into curiosity, which turned into fascination with this photogenic—yes, photogenic!—20th century style. Eventually, I got interested in all types of concrete buildings, from the spomoniks of the former Yugoslavia to the massive modular apartment blocks you can see all over Central Europe. (Also the King County Administration Building. Fight me.)

In addition to brief descriptions and photo essays about each of the nine buildings featured in this book (three of which I’ve seen in person), the book includes die-cut models of each building, complete with graffiti, satellite dishes, and window A/C units for an authentic experience of post-Soviet realism. The book series, from the publisher Zupagrafika, also includes Brutal East I and II, Brutal London, and Brutal Britain, plus many other titles that I’m planning to add to my collection.

Arts, Three Fun Things

Three Fun Things for December 22, 2024

Rethinking downtown spaces, a “dry” bottle shop, and a bar that treats non-drinkers like adults.

1. STÖR/Rethinking Downtown Spaces

Mayor Bruce Harrell has expended a tremendous amount of public funding and civic energy on the idea that downtown Seattle is on the verg of dying, and that the only solution is pouring money into police (to prevent “disorder” and arrest addicts), plug-and-play park activations (giant Connect Four games, government-approved buskers) and graffiti eradication efforts.

PubliCola’s office is in Pioneer Square, where, last week, several local gift shops were bustling and an affordable Korean restaurant saw a steady flow of customers. That’s the part of downtown I see most often—and it isn’t dying. But what about the other end of the center city?

Last week, I stopped by an art exhibit in the former Bergman Luggage storefront—a place I never had reason to visit when it was open, pre- or post-pandemic. The exhibit that’s on now, STÖR, is a surreal, anti-consumerist (ish) version of IKEA where, instead of mass-produced BILLY bookcases, the goods on offer include an inflatable fireplace (FLUFHARTH) and a lamp cheerfully shaded in a sheath of blond hair (HÅRIG). Like the Swedish retailer, the show has directional arrows to guide visitors through a series of blind corners, a setup that had me whisper-shouting “look at this!” every few steps as I stumbled on a torn cane chair “repaired” with sparkly beads, or a “Mini-STÖR” filled with tiny replicas of the furniture for sale.

For a year or so, the massive old luggage storeroom—a business that was arguably obsolete before the pandemic took it out—has been the site of public art exhibits courtesy of BaseCamp Studios, which took over the space in 2023 and recently received a boost of funding from the Allen Foundation. The show gave me a reason to take a walk around Belltown—an area some of its residents seem to believe has been destroyed by graffiti—and put some money into the local economy (I got this kitschy glass nightlight), something I never did when the space was an expensive suitcase store.

STÖR, through January 10, 1901 3rd Ave. Details about current and upcoming exhibits: BaseCamp Studios

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2. Cheeky and Dry

How did it take me so long to visit Seattle’s only non-alcoholic bottle shop? One reason, I suppose, is that it’s way up on Phinney Ridge, a place I don’t frequent unless I’m making a pilgrimage to Windy City Pie (with a stop at Phinney Books before or after). About a year after it opened, I finally stopped by a couple weeks ago, and was blown away by the sheer variety of n/a beverages packed into such a tiny storefront. They have many of my favorites, sure—for me, Pathfinder and Wilderton are the gold standard for “adult”-tasting nonalcoholic cocktails—but also tons of unfamiliar labels, from whiskey substitutes to 0-proof sparkling wines to n/a beers I haven’t seen in other Seattle stores.

Aesthetically, Cheeky and Dry reminds me a bit of Boisson, the (now-bankrupt) chain of bottle shops that spread across New York City over the last few years. Vibes-wise, though, it’s a closer sibling to Manhattan’s Spirited Away, which bills itself as “America’s first booze-free bottle shop”: Both stores offer tastings, encourage questions, and are eager to educate you on the pros and cons of different options, which are often different than their alcoholic counterparts in ways you might not anticipate.

Want something that tastes more like a “real” drink? Go with Pathfinder or one of the tequilas spiked with capsaicin for a booze-like burn. Looking for a bottle of wine for dinner? You basically can’t go wrong wirh a dry white or rosé sparkling bottle, but stay away from the still reds and whites, which just aren’t there yet. Better yet, don’t listen to me—go to Cheeky and Dry and ask the experts.

Cheeky and Dry, 6120 Phinney Ave., Seattle, ,website for hours and product list

The Nonalcoholic Menu at Liberty Bar

3. When I quit drinking in early 2015, there really was no such thing as a sophisticated adult beverage for non-drinkers; the best most bars could muster was soda water with a dash of bitters—maybe a fancy flavor like black walnut if they had it on hand for other, “real” drinks.

These days, though, it’s possible to go out with friends to a regular cocktail bar (no Hecate in Seattle, yet) and get a thoughtfully constructed beverage, dreamed up and developed by an actual bartender, for about the same price as a “real” cocktail.

(There’s a whole discourse online about whether bars charge “too much” for n/a drinks. The answer is that, generally, they don’t, especially if they’re stocking up on nonalcoholic spirits, which can retail for $40 or more. Even if I am paying a bigger markup for, say, a shrub and soda than my friend who ordered a complex Manhattan, it’s worth it to be treated like an adult, not a child asking for a juicebox. If you’re gonna charge me $5 for soda water from the gun, though, I’m never coming back).

Liberty, on Capitol Hill, has a rotating menu of five n/a options, all between $12 and $17, and only one is a shrub and soda. I recently tried the Jennifer N-Aniston (“lemon and lime juice, fig syrup, peach bitters, and topped with ginger beer,” per the menu) and the Blacker the Berry (“Wilderton lustre, brambleberry syrup, and lime. topped with Jøyus sparkling rosé”); both were complex, worth savoring slowly, and made me feel welcome at a cocktail bar—a welcome evolution from the blank looks I got from many bartenders just a few years ago.

Liberty, 517 15th Ave. E, hours on website

Arts, Courts, Crime, Mayor Harrell

“Illegal Vandalism” Is “Not Art”: Prosecutors Announce Felony Graffiti Charges
“Not art,” according to prosecutors and Mayor Bruce Harrell

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, King County Prosecutor Leesa Manion, and City Attorney Ann Davison announced charges against 16 people for graffiti in and around Seattle. According to Manion, it cost more than $100,000 to clean up graffiti by the 16 charged individuals.

One tagger whose name came up frequently in the charging papers, Joseph Johnson—best known by his tag GRIDE—died earlier this year.

The investigation took more than a year, according to Manion, who declined to estimate the cost of investigating, arresting, jailing, prosecuting, and potentially imprisoning the 16 charged individuals.

“I can tell you that I’m sure that it cost way less than $6 million for us to bring this case, but we know that in the city of Seattle alone [it costs] $6 million to remove graffiti, and that does not consider the expenses that private business owners have to spend,” Manion said.

According to Harrell’s office, the $6 million includes all annual expenditures for an interdepartmental team that includes the Office of Arts and Culture, Seattle Center, Finance and Administrative Services, Seattle City Light, the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Public Libraries, Seattle Parks and Recreation, and Seattle Public Utilities. It’s unclear how much of that is direct graffiti abatement. Harrell’s “One Seattle Graffiti Initiative”  includes 11 full-time employees in the parks department, including executive-level staff and nine “graffiti rangers.”

Charging documents show that much of the evidence collected over the past year stems from a publicly available documentary called “Make It Rain,” posted on Youtube in June. Investigators watched the video (which is dedicated to Johnson’s memory) and compared it to publicly available images on Instagram and mug shots of the featured taggers, most of whom had arrest records already. In addition to the videos, some of the charges stem from arrests made as far back as 2021, as well as messages and videos on phones seized by police.

Ewing and Clark president Tom Graff: “How would you feel to go to your favorite restaurant and the glass has this caked film on it and is scratched to death? You would not feel safe and it would no longer be your favorite restaurant.”

Tom Graff, president of the Ewing and Clark real estate company and the head of the group Belltown United, told reporters that graffiti has made his neighborhood, and the condo tower where he lives, feel unclean and unsafe.

“How would you feel if your garage door was spray-painted [by] a tagger?” Graff said. “That happened on my tower. … How would you feel to drop off your child in a school that has its front door covered with a graffiti image? You would not take your child there, and we expect the people who live and work downtown to put up with it, and it is unacceptable, and it has to stop.”

Manion is charging all 16 suspects with second-degree malicious mischief, a Class C felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $10,000. She said her primary goal is to make the taggers pay restitution to all the property owners they have harmed.

“We are seeking accountability for what amounts to felony- level behavior, so it is appropriate to file felony charges,” Manion said. “It is not the jail time and the incarceration that we think will make a difference. It is getting folks to pay for the damage that they have caused.”

MSP tag on a billboard that previously read “Cool Cats, Happy Homeowners”; from “Make It Rain”

During the press event, officials repeatedly offered their own definitions of what is, and isn’t, “art.”

Manion insisted that there is a “clear distinction between art” and “illegal vandalism.” Art, she said, includes government-sanctioned wall murals displayed in “appropriate outlets for talented artists and appropriate places for them to display public art,” like the county-funded murals visible to light rail riders in SoDo.

Art, Graff added, is an officially sanctioned mural that “the landlord approved,” like 12 city-funded murals in Belltown that received city funding. “The artist was assigned this wall,” Graff said. “It is not done randomly, and it doesn’t damage the property.”

Art, Harrell said, might include a freeway wall that, with approval from the state Department of Transportation, might be used as “a canvas that can be painted by an artist, some of our beautiful sunsets, sunrises, or some of our Native American art.”

What isn’t art? Manion gave a few examples. “Dangling above freeway lanes to tag a traffic sign is not art,” she said. “Destroying a mural in Kent with a tag is not art. … Tagging Metro buses and Sound Transit cars is not art.” The charging documents say graffiti tags exist for two purposes, and art is not one of them: They can either be “ideological”—a category that includes hate speech—or designed for “fame and glory.”

The history of government officials deciding what is and what is not art has, shall we say, a long and ignominious history.

But even assuming officials’ definition of “art” (to summarize: pre-approved murals; sunsets and/or sunrises; “Native American art” generally) is partial and not didactic, Seattle has an obsession with graffiti, cleanliness, and the need for “order” that warps city spending and serves as cover for cracking down on people whose ideologies (or existence, in the case of encampment “cleans”) conflict with official government priorities.

Arts

Three Fun Things for June 30, 2024

A new film from Julio Torres, an essay on anti-nostalgia, and a guide to getting outside.

1. Problemista (streaming on Max)

Shortly after watching Problemista, I listened to a podcast where the hosts asked, “where can Julio Torres go from here?” The implication was that Torres—the Saturday Night Live alum behind the wonderfully weird, prematurely canceled series Los Espookys—needed to do something bigger, or more broadly appealing, than crafting kooky art-project fantasies for fans of surrealistic comedy with DIY sensibilities. (Torres’ most famous SNL sketch, “Wells for Boys,” is echoed and expanded in Problemista, with toys that include Cabbage Patch dolls with phones that deliver disturbing messages and a truck with a tire that slowly deflates, reminding children that they’re running out of time). To me, the question “but how will you make it bigger?” is particularly off point, since Torres’ carefully constructed Cornell-box worlds are precisely the right scale for his specific talents.

Torres stars in Problemista as Alejandro, a shy, awkward young man who grew up protected from the outside world by his mother, an artist in El Salvador. Fired by his job at a cryogenics facility in New York City, he needs a sponsor for his visa, and quickly—his dwindling legal status is represented by an hourglass on a shelf alongside hundreds of others, and in this world, when time runs out, immigrants vanish into thin air. Alejandro goes to work for an blithely privileged art dealer, Tilda Swinton, whose increasingly capricious demands largely involve the impenetrable database software Filemaker Pro. Since he can’t earn money until he has a visa sponsor, Alejandro dips into the shadowy world of Craigslist, hilariously personified by Larry Owens—AKA Jacob’s boyfriend on Abbott Elementary. I laughed a lot, but the jokes are mostly growers (another toy: A snake can that apologizes for scaring you but says it was the only way to escape the can); as a fan of visual art who often struggles to explain why a piece of art makes me feel the way it does, I’m not too proud to say the ending, which I won’t spoil, made me cry.

Problemista is for you if you’re a fan of slow-burn jokes, off-kilter vibes, and Tilda Swinton’s whole thing—perfectly cast as an abusive, emotionally labile boss, she plays to the rafters. If it isn’t for you, that’s fine. Not everything has to be for everybody.

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2. “The Motel Room, or: On Datedness,” by Kate Wagner

The popular blog McMansion Hell, by a serious architecture critic with an incisive sense of humor, usually focuses on outrageous examples of exurban excess, but last week, Wagner took some time to explore the concept of datedness, which inspires a kind of nonspecific anti-nostalgia. Staying in an anonymous hotel room that hasn’t been updated in a couple decades conjures an image: “My father puts his car keys on the table, looks around and says, ‘It’ll do.’”

Datedness is not a choice but an inevitability. Because it is not a choice, it is not advertised except in a utilitarian sense. It is kept subtle on the hotel websites, out of shame. Because it does not subscribe to an advertiser’s economy of the now, of the curated type rather than the “here is my service” type, it disappears into the folds of the earth and cannot be searched for in the way “design” can. It can only be discovered by accident.

Read the post (and discover the rest of McMansion Hell, if you haven’t had the pleasure) here.

3. Hiking season

I went for a hike near Seattle recently and for the first time in the more than 20 years I’ve lived here, there was absolutely no room in the huge parking lot for our trailhead. No matter: We kept driving and eventually found a spot along the road, from which we picked our way to a different, unplanned but equally gorgeous, walk in the woods. Hiking season in the North Cascades has just gotten started in earnest, and is fleetingly short for those who prefer not to slog through rain or snow.

The Washington Trails Association has a customizable hike search tool that you can use to select hikes by distance, difficulty, grade change, and other factors, along with recent reports from hikers. Summer is short; I recommend using at least some of it to get out of the city and onto a trail.

Arts, City Council, homelessness, Mayor Durkan, Parks, Transit

Council Amendments Would Stall Downtown Streetcar, Preserve Laurelhurst Community Center, and Defund Salvation Army Shelter

Laurelhurst Community Center

By Erica C. Barnett

The battle over police funding may be the marquee issue at Thursday’s final public city council budget meeting, but the council will also be taking up dozens of other changes to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposed 2022 budget. Here are a few we’re tracking as the council winds up its deliberations over next year’s budget.

• A proposal by Councilmember (and perennial streetcar opponent) Lisa Herbold to cut $2.4 million that would re-start planning for the long-delayed downtown Seattle streetcar and reallocate that money to help improve Seattle Public Schools’ bus routing technology and to fund a citywide hiring incentive program.

Herbold noted earlier this month that there are currently vacancies across all city departments, not just SPD, and suggested funding incentives to fill those positions as well.

• Two amendments, both by Councilmember Tammy Morales, that would strip $5.1 million in federal funding from a Salvation Army-operated emergency shelter in SoDo and use the money to fund land acquisition for cultural space through the city’s Cultural Space Agency, to purchase a separate piece of land in SoDo for transitional housing to be run by the Chief Seattle Club, and to develop a new “City-run social housing acquisition program.” The Cultural Space Agency is a public real estate development agency established last year with a mission to create new, community-based arts and cultural venues and spaces in Seattle; an infusion of $1.1 million would allow the agency to set up a land acquisition fund.

Social housing is a somewhat loftier notion; according to Morales’ amendment, $2 million would be enough to hire a team that would “research portability of social housing acquisition program models currently operating in cities like Berlin, Paris and Vienna,” but any expansion of the program would require ongoing funds in future years.

PubliCola is seeking more information about the transitional housing project.

UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, all three of Morales’ proposals to repurpose funding for the SoDo shelter failed; two, the transitional and social housing proposals, failed for lack of a second vote to put them up for discussion.

In her budget this year, Durkan proposed eliminating the creative industries director position altogether and demoting the city’s creative industry policy advisor to a lower-level “creative industries manager” job overseeing various special events and permitting staff.

The Salvation Army shelter receives additional funding from the city and county, but the loss of $3.1 million in annual funding would force the agency to close the shelter in 2023 or find funding elsewhere. The shelter, located in a former COVID isolation site inside a former Tesla dealership, enabled the Salvation Army to consolidate several existing shelters in one location, freeing up other spaces for use during weather-related emergencies. The building, which has a special air-filtration system, served as the city’s only smoke shelter during the 2020 summer wildfires.

• Morales has also proposed restoring a position at the Office of Economic Development to support and promote film, music, and other creative industries in Seattle. Over her term, Durkan has steadily chipped away at this longstanding city function, first by neutering the Office of Film and Music (whose director, Kate Becker, left for a job as King County’s first-ever Creative Economy Strategist in 2019 and was never replaced), then by attempting to eliminate the city’s nightlife advocate, and, finally, by bumping OED’s Creative Industries director position further and further down the OED org chart.

Currently, the Inclusive Creative Industry Director job is vacant; the city’s website describes the job of the office as helping creative workers “transition into middle and higher earning jobs,” promote economic recovery, and “Better connect businesses and workers with the creative skills that will be in high demand in the Network Economy,” whatever that means.

Laurelhurst is a wealthy area that ranks among the least diverse in Seattle. In his pitch to trade the parks workers’ pay increases for the community center, Pedersen argues that the center serves an important race and social justice purpose because it is “connected by a bridge to the adjacent [Laurelhurst] elementary school, where 45 percent of students are Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) and 31 percent of students’ families are low income.”

In her budget this year, Durkan proposed eliminating the creative industries director position altogether and demoting the city’s creative industry policy advisor to a lower-level “creative industries manager” job overseeing various special events and permitting staff. Morales’ resolution wouldn’t reverse the demotion, but it would place a hold on the money to fund the manager position until OED provides the council with a “Creative Sector Action Plan” and a description of how the office will “reorganize so that this position can focus solely on policy development and implementation related to the creative industries and not be responsible for staff management.”

• Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who frequently talks about the need to treat “mom and pop landlords” differently than big property management companies, wants to set up a special “small landlord and tenant stakeholder group” at the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections. According to Pedersen’s proposal, “The group should propose a definition of ‘small landlord,’ estimate the population of small landlords with units in Seattle, make findings about how current regulations and market trends impact small landlords and their tenants, and identify whether those impacts are disparate.”

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The plight of smaller landlords came up frequently during the COVID pandemic, when many tenants who lost their jobs were unable to pay rent. Landlord advocates argued that the eviction moratorium and other tenant-friendly laws and policies put smaller-scale property owners at risk of defaulting on their mortgages.

• Pedersen is also behind a proposal that would eliminate pay increases for some salaried parks employees to fund the reopening of the Laurelhurst Community Center, which Durkan’s budget proposes closing and turning into a “premier rental facility” like those at Pritchard Beach and Golden Gardens. Durkan’s budget uses the money saved by shuttering the center to pay for a mobile recreation and playground program called Rec’N the Streets. The city’s parks department shut down all 26 of the city’s community centers last year because of the pandemic, and has reopened only nine.

Laurelhurst, a waterfront neighborhood in Northeast Seattle, is a wealthy area that ranks among the least diverse in Seattle. In his pitch to trade the parks workers’ pay increases for the community center, Pedersen argues that the center serves an important race and social justice purpose because it is “connected by a bridge to the adjacent [Laurelhurst] elementary school, where 45 percent of students are Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC) and 31 percent of students’ families are low income.”

However, the community center is one of the smallest in the city, lacks a gym, and does not offer child care, limiting its usefulness to families with school-age children. Across Seattle, community centers serve the entire surrounding community, not just nearby elementary school students, and are especially critical in lower-income areas where residents may lack the ability to pay for private sports lessons, child care, after-school activities, homework help, fitness classes, and other types of programming that community centers provide.

The Laurelhurst Community Club, a private organization that runs a beach club that’s open only to property owners in the neighborhood, has been a vocal advocate for reopening the community center, where the group has historically held its meetings.