You may have noticed that this issue doesn’t have a theme. It’s not the Spring Arts Issue or the Transit Issue or our issue cataloging every complaint we have about our city.
But sometimes an issue makes its own theme. And this time, when we stepped back and looked at the ideas that we explored, the people we celebrated, and the reporting that we dug into, so much of this issue is about space. Space to pass through, space to create art. Reclaiming spaces or carving out new ones.
Let’s start with the big one: our photo essay on Seattle’s liminal spaces. Photographer Billie Winter and writer Julianne Bell take you on a tour of the uncanny in-between in our city. The places that feel frozen in time and space. Places that we only pass through. And places that feel abandoned, but, at the same time, could be filled with life at any moment.
Outside of the uncanny valley, we take you to a space that we’ve all mourned this year: the Egyptian movie theater. The space has been abandoned for months, unused and just barely recovered from last year’s flooding. But this month, for just one weekend, we’ll be able to get our feet back into those four walls for a Latin American punk film festival.
Along the edge of Boeing Field, photographer Marcellus Bonow-Manier is transforming an “industrial cathedral” into canvas for the steam plant’s supernatural lore. In Michael Wong’s Asian Verified column, he found a space that’s a real-life Pokémon training gym. And Hannah Murphy Winter dug into the many spaces that the vaudeville-circus-dinner-theater-fiasco that Teatro ZinZanni has called home over the past three decades (because sometimes a roving 25-sided spiegeltent from 1920s Belgium is all you need to feel like you’re home).
Of course, not everything falls into our accidental theme. Deputy news editor Nathalie Graham dug into our upcoming State Supreme Court elections, where an unprecedented five seats are in the air. Stranger contributor Megan Burbank found out what happened to our state’s stockpile of abortion pills. We have a dispatch from Olympia, where three right-wing commentators sued for press passes in the State House.
And as always, we have an arts section full of photographers you shouldn’t miss (pg. 28), cocktails worth your hard-earned money and a calendar full of amazing excuses to get off your couch this month.
See you out there in the uncanny valley.
This Issue Brought to You By…
Three bleaks
Moxibustion
Angela Carter
Roadside Research
The wild bunch of oats
The U-Haul Corporation
“Several people are typing”
Hoping they’re doing well
YouTube face
Judas, belting it
Grunge is butt rock in beta
That’s the thing, ass and butt
Computer, become an expert in everything
The Kidz Bop cover of “Padam Padam”
The Hanson Murders
Spague Neeble
Mr. Pope
ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron
Croissants for men
Colonel’s Favorite Jellybeans, specifically the fried chicken flavor
Too much kale
18 emails already?
Life in the Zo lane
Alt-weekly on alt-weekly violence
Pills
Getting a little too stoned at the Seattle Aquarium
Finding god at the jellyfish tank
US-Cuba relations
Tiny yogurt spoons
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache
The Gay Beatles
Tennis elbow
And for the lady, just needing to lie down
COVER ARTWORK
Scott Musgrove
April 10–May 2
Roq La Rue