Category: Seattle, Washington Local News

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In a Wedgwood House decorated almost exclusively with frogs, six Maple Daddies sit around a table.

“I have acquired the four bags of lizards,” Darrin Schultz says.

“I didn’t make it to Spirit Halloween,” Courtney Heuer says. She needed pitchforks and a tiny hat. She’ll try again tomorrow. She did have at least one success, though. She reported she had started the homunculus costume. According to 16th-century alchemy, a homunculus is a miniature person. Heuer’s homunculus so far was two sweatshirts sewn together with two face holes. She still needed to sew pants together, but then it would be done. Which was a good thing because there was so little time until the show.

The 26th annual SketchFest Seattle, the longest-running sketch comedy festival in North America, was the following weekend. The Maple Daddies only had this night to rehearse ahead of the show. (Since the Seattle sketch comedy scene is small, many of them are also running the festival.)

One of the longtime Dads, Sophie Schwartz, who loves bones and goths and must be the one responsible for all the weird creature sketches the Dads do, drove all the way up from Portland to run through everything. Rehearsal via Zoom works well enough when there’s no big show coming. But the show was coming, and Schwartz needed to rehearse her song about a deadbeat demon dad in person for the first time. She said she would probably turn around and drive back after rehearsal. She only moved from Seattle recently, but didn’t want to stop performing.

The scene here is one of the only art forms in Seattle that’s “entirely ground up,” Cassia Ward, another Maple Dad, says. The three to four active sketch groups in the area began as a group of friends. “We do it through our own will,” Ward says. “We’re not really beholden to any money or anything. None of us get paid. We often pay to do this.”

“Yeah, I did buy four bags of lizards for this,” Schultz says.

The sketch comedy scene these days is a far cry from the 1990s when Seattle sketch show Almost Live! aired, becoming the rising sketch comedy tide to lift all the sketch comedy boats. Since then, Seattle sketch has ebbed and flowed. It’s still in a post-COVID lull, but local groups remain optimistic it will continue to grow. SketchFest is a big part of that.

For the rubes, sketch comedy is pretty much Saturday Night Live. Or, for those slightly more with it, it’s like Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave or Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. A sketch performance usually features back-to-back (hopefully funny) vignettes.  “I like to think of it as micro theater with a comedy slant,” Ward says.

From September 11 through September 14, the Unexpected Productions theater in Pike Place is hosting a sketch comedy bonanza. Groups from Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles are flying in—on their own dime, Ward emphasized. Solo acts including one performer all the way from Toronto, Canada, will perform.

Only a few years ago, the scene used to have way more groups, according to Nick Kruger, another Maple Dad who moved to Seattle in the mid-aughts. Much of it had to do with a space in Greenwood that used to be a karate dojo.

“I called the Pocket our comedy church,” Kruger says.

From 2014 to 2019, the Pocket Theater became sketch comedy’s home in Seattle. A local comedian, Clayton Weller, started the theater after working as SketchFest’s artistic director.

While organizing the fest, Weller realized there was no real local scene. He wanted to boost the local talent in the festival—it wasn’t enough to see sketch from elsewhere, he wanted to see Seattle represented. Weller began renting out venues and hosting sketch comedy months. He spent his own money and saw actual returns. He realized he might be able to do this for a living. Weller started a Kickstarter campaign. It reached its $8,000 goal in 8.5 hours.

“The Pocket showed that there was a demand for a place to do weird new works,” Weller says. There was no performance fee, no rental fee. Weller helped nurture those works.

The Pocket birthed many local sketch groups, including the Maple Daddies, through something called Sketch Summit, Kruger says.

Sketch Summit was an incubator. Anyone interested in doing sketch comedy put their name into a hat. Then, the Pocket staff created randomized sketch teams and paired them with a mentor. Over a month or two, the teams wrote and edited scripts together and put together a sketch showcase.

Weller said the SketchFest organizers would scout out the Pocket for talent to put in the festival. He had created a blossoming local scene.

But then the reality of Seattle in the late 2010s struck. Comedy wasn’t paying the bills, and the rent kept rising. In December of 2019, the Pocket closed.

“We say the Pocket died of natural causes,” Kruger says.

The scene hasn’t been the same since. It’s still small and the talented people end up leaving for bigger things.

“The reality of the Seattle comedy scene is it’s a slow drip of the talented people to LA, New York, and Chicago,” Kruger says. There’s a ceiling here because Seattle doesn’t really have an entertainment industry. Once local talent starts succeeding, there’s nowhere for them to go.

What has stuck around, however, is delightfully weird and very Seattle. Because the performances aren’t tied to anyone’s livelihood or career aspirations, there’s a freedom to be… strange. That’s what you’ll see in the local showcase, Kruger says.

“You’re gonna see some fun, interesting, weird stuff that is not trying to cater to the entire country,” Kruger says. “It’s more free, more avant-garde, and it’s people doing it for the love of it rather than a means to an end.”

That’s why his group can do sketches about a Family Feud game where all the survey answers come from 100 lizards. Or how, in a past SketchFest, Kruger spent hours using parts from two bikes to build a prop for one sketch. It was a medieval blowjob machine.

For now, the scene remains small, but Kruger is optimistic it will grow. A member from a different local sketch group, Good Crash, is dead-set on starting another public access comedy show akin to Almost Live! Kruger says they’d been in talks with Cascade PBS to possibly make that happen, but the effort is currently dead in the water. What Seattle sketch really needs is a home like the Pocket.

Kruger believes the path to having a Pocket 2.0 is to partner with one of Seattle’s multiple improv theaters. In the last few years, improv has exploded in the city, filling the sketch vacuum the Pocket left behind with more “Yes, And” than anyone really wants (I do improv comedy locally so I can say this).

If sketch and improv can live together once again in Seattle, the scene could really grow, Kruger says. “Seattle has a unique voice in sketch comedy, and I think it’s worth supporting and cherishing.”

One of the ways to really do that? Go to SketchFest. You may get some lizards thrown at you.

SketchFest runs through Sunday, September 14, at the Market Theater.

Get ready to raise your steins and shout “Prost!” because White Center is gearing up for its first annual Oktoberfest this Saturday, September 20th. From 2 PM to 8 PM, the streets of White Center will transform into a vibrant Bavarian celebration, promising a day filled with laughter, delicious food, local brews, and plenty of fun activities.

This isn’t just any festival; it’s a “Rat City Oktoberfest”, complete with its own charming rat mascot in Lederhosen, ready to welcome you with a hearty “Guten Tag, B******!”. Get ready to “waltz and Prost” your way through participating businesses, as they pull out all the stops for this exciting community event.

A Pub Crawl of Epic Proportions! The heart of the celebration is a fantastic multiple brewery pub crawl. Grab a wristband to unlock exclusive access to samples from an impressive lineup of local breweries, including Bale Breaker Brewing Company, Fort George Brewery, Icicle Brewing Company, Reuben’s Brews, New Belgium Brewing Company, and Future Primitive. Many participating bars will offer discounts or samples with your wristband, ensuring your mug stays full.

Games, Giggles, and Glorious Grub! Prepare for a variety of games with prizes throughout the day!

• At Can Bar, you can test your skills with a bobbing for fish game and enjoy a beer sample.

• Head over to Lariat Bar for a lively pretzel toss at 5 PM.

• If you’ve got the arm strength, Future Primitive challenges you to a stein hoist at 6 PM, offering $1 off tap beer to those with a wristband.

• For the foodies, Bavarian-inspired food and German food specials will be abundant. Don’t miss the Sausage food specials at Lumberyard, which also hosts a sausage contest (not food related, mind you!). And for classic Oktoberfest fare, Blu Grouse will be serving up Brats by Meat the Butcher.

Contests and Charity! Think you’ve got the best lederhosen or dirndl in town? Prove it! The day will culminate with a “Best Dressed” contest at 8 PM at Lariat Bar, so start planning your most festive German attire now!

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Get ready to make a splash for a good cause at the dunk tank, running from 2 PM to 8 PM at Blu Grouse. Watch as local bartenders and business owners bravely volunteer to be dunked, all in the name of charity!

More Fun Around Every Corner:

• 2 Fingers Social promises to be “doing fun stuff”.

• Buho will feature Happy Hour Icicle Leavenworth Festbier and a $10 Old Cabin Old Fashioned with a wristband.

• Lumberyard will offer $10 beer flights featuring 5 ciders and 5 beers.

• Tim’s Tavern will host a Reuben’s brewery sample.

So mark your calendars for Saturday, September 20th, and get ready to experience the inaugural White Center Oktoberfest. With local breweries, delicious German food, exciting games, and a vibrant community spirit, this is going to be fun.

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Photos by Billie Winter

For nearly two years, every sunrise in Gaza has brought more death, destruction, and dislocation. To be Palestinian today is to live under unrelenting bombardment, displacement, and starvation, your community rendered a target by an Israeli regime that openly declares its intent of eradication. It is to watch American leaders respond not with outrage but with plans envisioning luxury “Gaza Riviera” resorts and surveillance states on the same land where children’s bones are visible from hunger and their bodies are charred by US-funded bombs. This is not a natural disaster. It is a human-made horror.

And yet, to be Palestinian is also to persist. To insist on life in the bowels of doom. To keep organizing, cooking, singing, teaching, and loving because to surrender your humanity is to surrender what can never be taken by force. There is no greater defiance than the will to live, to dance, to gather, even when the world seems indifferent to your existence. 

The Palestine Will Live Forever Festival takes place Saturday, September 13, from noon to 9 p.m. at Volunteer Park. Tickets are available here.

This is the second year of this festival. Every day we’re seeing new horrors in the headlines and on social media. For you all, what was the onus to make sure this happened again? Why was it important to participate—whether organizing, performing, or bringing performers? What was the impetus for doing year two?

Maher Joudi: That’s a layered question, man. Personally, even leaving last year, the calls started coming in within a week—people asking if it would happen again. I assumed we’d try to run it back at the start of this year. Then a lot changed with the election of President Trump. We had real conversations about whether it should happen, especially from a safety perspective—this was around when Mahmoud Khalil had just gotten taken.

There was a lot to weigh. Ultimately, as a team, we decided it was necessary. Then we talked about intentionality—what this year should look like—because the horrors in Palestine had only gotten worse. And here in the US, our people—Palestinian, Black, Latino, immigrant—were getting taken too. The need for a day like last year’s had grown so much that it felt necessary.

Gabriel Teodros: The need to gather—and to normalize resistance—became really clear, especially around the election. Rights were getting stripped at an exponential rate: undocumented people getting snatched, transgender people getting arrested for trying to use the bathroom. The list goes on. If we were going to do the festival—and we should—we wanted it to be about collective liberation, to model how our struggles are connected and our pathways to liberation are bound together. That’s the direction we took.

Lexi Peterson-Burge: To be transparent, we as organizers have varied identities, backgrounds, and lived experiences. That informed tough discussions about whether to move forward with a second year. We had hours of conversations about protecting communities and ourselves; about what kind of organizing meets the moment; [about] whether centering joy and a celebration of culture and resistance was appropriate and safe.

We asked if it would fill the organizer cup for everyone involved—because our communities were experiencing different kinds of harm at the same time. We landed on this: The source of our communities’ struggles—oppression, genocide, etc.—comes from the same place. The festival could say this isn’t one community’s fight; it’s a collective fight against imperialism and capitalism and all the forces fueling the many ways our communities are being oppressed, historically and now.

It gave us a chance to model cross-racial, cross-cultural, cross-movement solidarity—and to center joy as resistance while keeping our people as safe as possible. It took a month or two of serious, hard conversations. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Nikkita Oliver: I actually stepped back from organizing for a couple months to be sure I was in alignment about why I was participating. “All of us or none of us” is key for me. What’s happening to our communities is due to empire, colonialism, capitalism—rooted in anti-Blackness. Our organizing has to target those structures so we don’t end up with a world where some of us get free at the expense of others.

Art and culture are resistance—doing them out loud is resistance. But we have to go further: have present organizing bodies people can plug into. We need not just mobilized communities, but organized communities. So the festival centers intersectionality, resistance, and joy while bringing in those doing hyper-local, national, and global organizing—so when people leave, they have places to plug in. It’s more than a day; it’s a galvanizing moment that feeds the uncelebrated work between the big moments. Having organizers, vendors, and movement workers present helps make that real.

There’s so much heaviness, locally, nationally, internationally. How do you balance that while planning an event that centers joy, uplifts, and mobilizes? What has that process been like?

Teodros: Helping organize has been a constant reminder of what’s possible—and that we don’t get through this time alone. I’m looking at a screen full of graphics, with Zahyr [Lauren]’s beautiful art staring back at me—what they captured is a reminder of what it’s like when our movements come together. Working on the festival has helped me get through this year emotionally. It’s that daily reminder: it’s collective liberation or not at all. “All of us or none of us”—it’s right there in the name.

Peterson-Burge: This year’s been harder for me—energy-wise, emotionally. A lot of organizers burn out, especially those with layered identities who are directly impacted by what’s unfolding. There’s a push-pull: The push is knowing you have to do something to stay whole and authentic, to show up for resistance, joy, and cultural preservation. The pull is that doing this month after month while witnessing harm drains you. Then there’s capitalism—families, bills, survival.

Still, I feel obligated to show up for my people. And a big reason I can is this group. We’re honest when something hits hard—“I need a day or two”—and we show up for each other. Without this group, I don’t know that I could keep doing something at this scale right now.

Oliver: Last year, the energy to do it came easier—even though it was exhausting. Now it’s a daily barrage: executive orders, neighbors snatched by Gestapo, worsening prison conditions, targeting of gender-expansive trans and queer people, the invisibilizing of Sudan and Congo—so much to hold as an organizer and conscious person. It’s overwhelming.

What’s kept me in it is that we’re having the hard conversations—crying with each other, sometimes at each other—and practicing principled struggle. Some won’t see the value because arts and culture are central. I’d argue without arts and culture, we don’t exist—that’s where our stories, histories, poems, relationships live. We engage culture every day—from clothes to music to what we read. Doing principled struggle in a space of art-as-resistance makes me want to keep going, even when it’s exhausting.

Also, hearing folks’ energy for it is a reminder of how important gathering is. It’s not always a 3,000-person festival—sometimes it’s dinner, a Zoom, a walk. The constant gathering matters. I’m looking forward to being in community with people who share our values and take this as a call to make our movements as intersectional as possible.

Joudi: I agree—this year is harder. I’ve probably had one-on-ones with everyone here saying that. It makes me emotional to hear it out loud.

Last year, I was excited—everything was new and fast, and I didn’t have time to grasp the magnitude. This year, with more time and intentionality, I feel pressure: to show up right for our organizing team, my community, and the global community, and to represent ourselves well. I’m the oldest or second oldest on this call, but the youngest in organizing. Every day, I’m learning how to show up with intention and authenticity.

I hoped Palestine would be at least a little better by now. It’s 10 times worse. And once you peel back layers, you can’t unsee them. Days are tougher—and organizing becomes a second job.

But to Nikkita’s point, the energy from artists, vendors, and community—people asking to be involved—has been real. Only recently did I feel the full magnitude of what this means to the community. That gives you your second, third, 10th wind when a small team is wearing a ton of hats. Knowing what this day will mean to everyone is what keeps me making calls, finishing docs, hopping on Zoom—grounded in why we’re doing it. This is the only group I could do this with—the one that teaches, gives grace and support, and helps us grow together.

We’re seeing mobilizations globally and nationally—marches, strikes, flotillas, and more. How do you see this festival in conversation with those acts of solidarity?

Oliver: Shout out to Gabriel and Maher for the lineup ideas—that’s where intentional solidarity shows up. Who we invited and why had everything to do with the messaging artists already live in their art and movement work. The lineup alone speaks to how we aim to operate in solidarity. Palestine is at the center of why we came together, but we’re also clear that we’re resisting larger structures. We want folks to leave with a deeper analysis of what we’re fighting and how.

As an artist and cultural worker, I think about music, poetry, visual art—even the food we choose—as ways to bring us back to each other. Actions like the flotilla aim to break a siege, meet basic needs, and galvanize organized response to empire’s violence. The festival does parallel work: supporting HEAL [Palestine]’s care for children who’ve lost limbs; the Transgender Law Center’s protection of our trans siblings; La Resistencia’s frontline organizing at the Northwest Detention Center. These are tangible, often hyper-local ways to show up.

Choosing beneficiaries like Water Protectors, the Black Panther Party, and BLM Washington reflects that our struggles are interconnected. Palestinians benefit from La Resistencia’s work; Black queer folks benefit from the Transgender Law Center and the Panthers. We’re showing up in multifaceted ways—care, organizing, resistance—and that starts on stage. No matter who you hear, you’ll get that message. Deepening our analysis deepens our resistance and commitment. I hope people leave with their cup filled and a fire to act.

Peterson-Burge: I remind myself: Showing up in the streets is as important as showing up for cultural preservation, togetherness, breaking bread, teaching dances, eating the foods we’ve missed. All of it matters so we don’t lose ourselves while we fight for everyone. Creating space to preserve ourselves and our cultures is powerful, transformative, revolutionary—and necessary.

Joudi: At the core, these movements are the same: people from all walks of life standing against oppression. Forty-plus countries supporting a flotilla is all of us understanding we must stand for all of us. That’s what we embody—through many avenues. Cultural preservation is huge. Speaking as a Palestinian, erasure includes stealing our culture—claiming hummus, rewriting our history. Supporting Palestinians isn’t only about Gaza and the West Bank—there’s immediate need, yes, but Palestine lives forever by preserving our culture. That’s true for every community represented here. Preserving who we are is how we win.

For folks new to this movement or who didn’t attend last year, what do you want them to take away after attending?

Joudi: For my community: the need for collectiveness. I’ve shouted for Palestine my whole life, and I “got” interconnectedness—Ferguson in 2016—but I hadn’t truly connected the dots on intersectionality and riding for each other. Our heroes have been telling us: Leila Khaled said 50 years ago there is only one oppression. The Panthers visited Philistine and stood with Palestine. Kids in Gaza held “I stand with Ferguson” signs.

Our movements fall apart when we’re convinced to battle each other for attention. I want folks to understand it all needs to be discussed and fought for at the same time—it’s the same fucking move. The music, speakers, vendors are dope—we’ll feel good—but I need everyone to leave knowing we’re all connected against them. If you’re with them, you’re not with us. If you’re with us, you’re with all of us.

Teodros: As a musician, I want artists to walk away less afraid and less alone in speaking up for Palestine. Somehow calling a genocide a genocide is still controversial. We intentionally booked people already making bold stands for humanity. I want that—and collective liberation—to become the norm.

Culture helps by modeling it and building our own stages when others won’t book this—we have to do it ourselves. Also, let’s name it: Live Nation’s second-largest shareholder is BlackRock; Ticketmaster is part of that ecosystem—there are corporate interests in silencing artists. We can’t let them dictate culture. We do that—community, people, artists.

Oliver: It would be easy to assume we had every resource from day one. We didn’t. We showed up finding resources as we went. You can have a big vision and then call your homies and make it happen—that’s how this happened. If we want more control, we have to build it. Our communities have long built institutions outside government—mutual aid networks, survival structures—out of brilliance and necessity.

I hope folks leave thinking: We have the capacity to build our own structures for self-governance. Many hands make light work. And I hope the Black community sees our trans siblings as central to Black struggle; that we see immigrants’ fights against ICE and Indigenous fights for resources as ours too. There is no single-issue struggle. We can build what we need, together.

Peterson-Burge: I want everyone to leave feeling, “I really needed that—and I got it.” To have been in space with our people and felt joy. And then I want folks to plug into an organizing home—consistently. If you don’t have one, find one: a book list, political education classes, places to learn our intertwined histories. I want cross-pollination—Palestinian homies connecting with the Black Panther Party; Black queer siblings pulling up with La Resistencia.

Also, as a fundraising person, sustaining our movements means mobilizing the masses to support them. The festival is a vessel to move resources to under-resourced movements so our people can keep doing the work. If we can give a small grassroots org two more months of budget to keep stopping detentions, that matters. If five more people give $10 so they can buy water for volunteers, that matters. Our beneficiaries span different movement spheres to reach widely, rooted in intersectionality and collective struggle. I hope folks take action.

Is there a moment from the past year of putting this together that represents the hope of what this festival means?

Teodros: From an artist’s perspective: seeing artists meet through the festival and then collaborate. Even before the first one, watching Desirée Dawson—a Black woman in Canada—covering Samer, a young Palestinian artist’s, song, and sharing it online. Seeing Bambu and the Neighborhood Kids meet at the festival and then collaborate on music and a series of events. Maher was involved in events around the country with lineups that mirrored ours. Bringing folks together and watching them keep working—that’s meaningful.

Joudi: Those moments were heartwarming. Where it really clicked for me—this isn’t just an event, it’s moving a movement forward—was in the last week or so. Vendors reaching out: “I missed the deadline, but I need to be there.” Artists asking to get on the lineup. Those are hard conversations—we want to keep it fresh and platform new voices—but the community’s feedback at every level has been powerful.

Even on logistics calls—like with the video wall folks—people who weren’t involved last year were hyped because of the cause. Last year, stage staff told us how grateful they were to work the festival—we’re feeling that again. Stepping outside myself, I feel grateful and blessed to help make this happen, no matter how hard the work is, knowing what it means to people and what it will do for the community.

Oliver: Two moments. First: Last year, a homie brought his elementary-aged son. I was stage-managing and saw them dancing together during Native Guns’ set. Afterward, he told me it was a transformative moment—passing down the cultural work of artists who politicized him, and watching his son be politicized by the same art, in joy. That’s joy as resistance—creating space to pass down resistance through art.

Second: During Whodinii’s set, the Palestinian community—and comrades—broke into a big circle dance. Organizers and volunteers literally lost themselves in that moment, because they knew we built a space where we care for each other. You didn’t need your head on a swivel like at a protest. It was unbridled, embodied resistance. That’s what the festival is about—and the world I hope we get.

Peterson-Burge: I was going to name that dance moment too—seeing Palestinians and other Arab folks teaching others how to do it was beautiful. Two other (selfish) moments for me: walking into the grounds that morning and seeing the banner and stage set with last year’s image—realizing, “We did that.” I had to walk off and cry. It represented weeks of late nights, fundraising, calls, crying, arguing—the whole thing—becoming real.

Then at the end, bringing all the organizers onstage, arms around each other, taking a deep breath: “Dang, we did that.” Most of us didn’t know each other closely before last year—we put that first festival together in six to eight weeks. Now these people are my family. They’re coming to my wedding. That kind of relational, transformational organizing—where I can have hard conversations and be heard—was what I needed. It’s a huge reason I’m doing this again. If my people are doing something, I’m showing up—tired or not—because I know they’ll show up for me.

Suspect Arrested for Charlie Kirk Shooting: President Donald Trump announced the arrest on Fox and Friends early this morning. Later, at a news conference in Utah, officials identified the suspect as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. They’d arrested him late Thursday night in St. George, Utah, about 250 miles from the site of the shooting. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Utah Governor Spencer Cox began. “We got him.”

What Led to Robinson’s Arrest? Cox says a family member of the suspect contacted a family friend and that family friend contacted a sheriff’s office. The family friend alleged that Robinson had confessed to shooting Kirk, or suggested he’d carried out the assassination. On Fox and Friends, Trump suggested the family friend was a minister involved with law enforcement. Details are scant at the moment.

What Evidence Did Officials Present? Cox said video surveillance allegedly showed Cox arriving near campus in a Dodge Challenger about four hours before the shooting. Officials say physical evidence and Discord tie him to the shooting.

Was the Ammo Actually Engraved? It was, Cox said. But none related to “transgender ideology” as the Wall Street Journal erroneously reported yesterday. The unfired casings allegedly read: “Hey fascists! Catch!” with five arrows (possibly an input for a videogame), “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO” and “Oh bella caio, bella caio, bella caio caio caio” a possible reference to the Italian anti-fascist song. On the fired casing, a meme: “Notices bulges owo what’s this?”

What Is Known About Tyler Robinson? At this point, very little. This story is developing.

How Are Things in America? A day after Kirk’s assassination, a series of threats to at least seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) led to shut downs, lockdowns and cancelled classes. Nobody was hurt. The FBI said it was taking the “hoax threat calls” very seriously. In a statement, the Congressional Black Caucus said the threats were “not only vile–they are a chilling reminder of the relentless racism and extremism that continues to target and terrorize Black communities in this country.”

VP Vance Flew Kirk’s Body to Arizona on Air Force Two: A video posted to social media shows Vance carrying his casket. Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who said Tuesday that Democrats owned this shooting, plans to introduce a resolution allowing his body to lie in the Capitol Rotunda “should the Kirk family wish.” Republican Congresswoman Paula Luna suggested placing a statue of Kirk in the Capitol.

Smooth Move: Two people detained and released after Kirk’s shooting death are still facing threats. “They were never suspects, they were people of interest,” Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason said. Huh, where’d they get that impression? From his department’s joint statement with the FBI on Wednesday that named them and said they’d been taken in as suspects? Releasing the names of people who have only been detained is dangerous, but the FBI has probably fired everyone who knew that.

Land of the Free: State Department Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau warned “foreigners” on Thursday that they were not welcome if they praised, rationalized, or made light of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Seems like an attack on their free speech. I’m sure Republicans will leap to their defense.

Home of the Brave: Far-right influencers, violent extremists, and an anonymous website are identifying people for allegedly celebrating or glorifying Kirk’s death. The usual suspects are in play—including LibsofTikTok’s Chaya Raichik, unofficial Trump advisor and influencer Laura Loomer, and former Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio—but the hunt mostly revolves around the website “Charlie’s Murderers.” They’re exposing people’s names, jobs, locations, and social media accounts. Many of the highlighted posts did not glorify or promote violence, WIRED reported.

Pardoned Insurrectionists Calling for Civil War: One extremism expert told Mother Jones Kirk’s killing may “energize the far-right to intensify political violence, from street clashes and armed paramilitarism to calls for racist terror.” That said, a lot of these people are grifters. “These people cry civil war when Cracker Barrel changes their logo,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Mother Jones. He doesn’t think they’re going to swarm DC tomorrow. But the messages could inspire lone actors, experts said.

Political Violence: Authorities said the 16-year-old who shot two students at Evergreen High School in Colorado had been “radicalized” by “some extremist network” they didn’t name. The Denver Post reported that he expressed white supremacist views and showed an “interest in mass shooters in the days before the attack.”

No Drills? Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez proposed blocking funding for mandatory school shooter drills unless parents of students under 16 can opt out their kids. In Washington state, schools conduct drills once a month. Data from Everytown for Gun Safety, which pushes for gun control, says there is no data to support they reduce shootings, reduce injury, or prevent death. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended keeping children out of “high-intensity drills and exercises,” and supports the active consent of students.

On the Run? Bellevue Police are still searching for a man wanted for killing and robbing 54-year-old Jason David Clark. The men were drinking when a fight broke out over the $3,000 he was carrying, police say. Detectives believe the man may have left the state.

Capitol Hill Crisis Center: The King County Council advanced plans for the 24-hour crisis center, part of a broader countywide plan. Nathalie and I wrote about it in May.

Well-Laid Plans: Friday is the last major public hearing about Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan—the blueprint we use to decide how the city will grow over the next 20 years. Council members have introduced more than 100 amendments to the plan, which is about as unhinged as it sounds, but The Urbanist made a helpful cheat sheet for the most important ones. You have two chances to tell City Council how you feel: One that starts at 9:30 a.m. for remote speakers, and one that starts at 3 p.m., for in-person commenters. (You can register here.) If you want to listen to what your neighbors have to say, you can spend your day in City Hall, or watch the live stream on the Seattle Channel. Watch along for angry (but totally not racist) NIMBYs, wonky urbanists, and Sara Nelson resenting every second that the public gets to speak in that hall.

Weather: It’s cloudy, but the sun will come out eventually. Expect a high near 71 today.

Jealous? Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro of plotting a failed coup d’état to overturn the 2022 election, disband courts, hand power over to the military, and assassinate the then president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro could go away for 27 years if his ticker doesn’t give out first (given the 70-year-old’s heart condition, his lawyers are likely to ask for house arrest). Brazil has seen 15 coup attempts since overthrowing its monarchy in 1889. Until now, a plotter had never been convicted.

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8/3, after 1ish— Westlake Station

You got on the Lynwood link— you have curly hair and a bike. You smiled at me on the Link — the first time that’s ever happened. I was having a rough day. I hope everything you dream of finds its way to you.

Dead Baby Tall Bike Runner

You: running your tall bike in the tall bike race. Me: yelling how that was genius and you were robbed. Should’ve gotten your number.

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

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

Hark — Do you hear it? That’s the sound of sweater drawers being slid open all over town. And while it’s not quite time to break out the heavy woolens, there’s nothing wrong with peeking in on your furry friends and nudging them awake from their long summer’s nap. 

For another immersion in warmth and fuzziness, head to the Burke Museum for the new exhibit Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving (Sept. 13 – Aug. 30, 2026). 

Art x NW (formerly ArtSEA) is a weekly arts and culture newsletter from Cascade PBS. Read past issues and subscribe for more.

A fascinating and fresh look at Native weaving traditions past and present, the show makes clear that practicing this art form requires year-round dedication. That’s because there’s a seasonality to gathering materials (such as huckleberries, red cortinarius mushrooms, cattail fluff and mountain goat hair), spinning the wool, dying it and finally, weaving. 

“I just got a text last night,” Kelly Sullivan (Port Gamble S’Klallam) told me with excitement at the press preview. “It said the alder cones are turning brown.” Alder cones are key to Coast Salish wool dying, as they’re plentiful — and don’t require a hike high into the mountains. “You can pick them up from your driveway,” she said with a laugh.

Sullivan is part of the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center, which worked with the Burke Museum over the past five years to develop the exhibit. Six Coast Salish co-curators visited cultural museums all over the country, seeking examples of Northwest weaving that they could replicate and learn from. “This stuff lives in drawers,” Sullivan said. “We want to bring them out and keep teaching the techniques.”

Art forms that were traditionally performed by women, such as weaving, have historically been undervalued as “crafts.” That means the long legacy of Native weaving techniques wasn’t largely documented, collected or written about, and contemporary weavers are still figuring things out. 

“It’s like solving a puzzle,” Sullivan told me. “In our research, we’ll find one sentence in a book that says something was dyed with alder cones and urine … We have a lot of questions!” 

Displays include the results of the contemporary weavers’ research, including beautifully woven vests, tunics, braided skirts and tumplines (intricately woven straps to help carry heavy loads). You’ll also see the last existing example of a woolly dog pelt — prized by Coast Salish weavers who relied on their fur before they went extinct. On loan from the Smithsonian, where he’s lived since the 1850s, is what remains of “Mutton” the woolly dog.

“In the Pacific Northwest, carvers get the spotlight,” said Katie-Bunn Marcuse, the Burke Museum’s curator of Northwest Native art. “This exhibition helps bring balance back to the history of Indigenous art traditions.” 

Season 2 of Art by Northwest continues, this week highlighting esteemed Walla Walla artist Keiko Hara. I first encountered Hara’s work in 2022, when I visited the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at WSU in Pullman during a fall road trip across the state. (Recommended! The museum is beautiful and currently exhibiting vibrating ink-blot prints by British sculptor Anish Kapoor.) 

Back then, as curator/director Ryan Hardesty walked me through Keiko Hara: Four Decades of Paintings and Prints, I was struck by both the massive size of many of her abstract works and her powerful use of color. Hara’s paintings and prints hint at landscapes, with glints of light and organic shapes, but something deeper is humming inside — something that eludes strict definition, like a dream or foggy memory. 

At that point I had no idea I’d get to spend two days with Hara in her beloved Walla Walla, where she’s lived for 40 years — and which she talks about with more gusto than a visitor’s bureau. “The sky!” she exclaimed on our visit. “The beautiful wheat fields!” 

Born in North Korea to Japanese parents, Hara grew up largely in Japan before moving to the U.S. in 1971. As a child she used to love walking by the sea, and finds a similar oceanic quality to the rolling hills of the Palouse. Often expressing “topophilia,” or love of place, her immersive works invite viewers to step inside and connect with their own relationships to closely held spaces. 

The Art by Northwest crew and I jokingly dubbed this episode “Chasing Keiko,” because Hara raced us all over town — and into the rolling hills above it — with boundless energy and enthusiasm.

We visited her incredible art storage unit (a former WWII artillery bunker built the same year she was born), and her gloriously paint-spattered studio (a former barracks on the same air base). 

She took us to her print studio across town, to Walla Walla’s historic Pioneer Park, to the revered Walla Walla foundry, and even to a good coffee shop — though she preferred getting back to painting to sitting around sipping java. 

Now in her 80s, the recent Twining Humber Award winner is rushing around for a reason. “Life is going so fast,” Hara told me, shaking her head in disbelief. “Really, so fast.” She’s making art at a pace to keep up with it. Watch the episode. Note: The video narration contains an error, stating that Hara was born in Japan. We regret the error (a lot!) and are working to correct it.

Catching up on Season 2 of Art by Northwest? Check out our recent profiles of ceramic installation artist Io Palmer and printmaker/basket weaver/fused-glass artist Joe Feddersen.

Another harbinger of fall: the enormous rush of arts events currently overloading my inbox. Here are just a few Fall Arts happenings, with many more to come.

< The Seattle Symphony kicks off its new season with new music director (finally!) Xian Zhang. Opening night (Sept. 13) is very close to sold out, but soon after she’s also conducting Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (Sept. 18 and 20). 

< The Black and Loud music fest returns to the Crocodile with retro headliner Living Color plus beloved Northwest rockers including King Youngblood, Paris Alexa and Black Ends.

< Local contemporary dance company Whim W’Him is back with a Fall ’25 program showcasing three compelling California-based choreographers: Chloe Crenshaw, Genna Moroni and Lea Ved. (Erickson Theater, Sept. 12 – 20; get a glimpse on the company’s Instagram.) 

< Seattle theater veteran David Armstrong discusses his new book, Broadway Nation: How Immigrant, Jewish, Queer, and Black Artists Invented the Broadway Musical, at Elliott Bay Book Company (Sept. 12). 

< And speaking of Broadway musicals, Seattle stages are heating up this season, including with the touring production of the Tony Award-winning Some Like It Hot at the Paramount (Sept. 16 – 21).