Our new writer Hunter Pauli is a hometown boy. Most recently a reporter for The Inlander, he was born and raised in Seattle. After graduating from the Center School, he served two years in AmeriCorps before attending J-school at University of Montana.

He’s done all kinds of jobs in various newsrooms, but he’s mostly been a roving investigative reporter, covering everything from tar sands pipelines, local Nazi collaborators, to the corrupt Russian oligarch in your backyard. We’re pleased to have him, and asked a few stupid questions to celebrate his arrival.

You’re from Seattle, but you’ve spent your youth travelling The West. Are you coming home to rest?

I wish. There’s no jobs left in the interior that pay a living wage now that housing is almost as expensive in places like Montana as it is in Seattle without the high wages to compensate. I’m all your problem now (again).

Has Seattle gone to the dogs since you’ve been gone? Yes or yes?

Seattle was struggling with spiraling inequality and unaffordable housing when I left during the Recession, but luckily the city fathers fixed all that while I was away. 

Once, you were turned away from a restaurant in Montana because you were so dirty after the rodeo. Do you still get this dirty?

Journalism is a far dirtier industry than rodeo. The stains never really come out, the maitre d’s can still smell it on me.

Tell us a rodeo secret.

If a steer snaps its leg they turn up the volume on the arena’s audio board so you don’t hear the gunshot. 

You’ve shot a lot of people, on video. Who stands out?

Dolores Huerta was the most inspiring, Gavin Newsom the least. Shaq stands tallest of all.

Share your worst opinion.

Seattle’s business class should force taxpayers to subsidize the reopening of the old Brooks Brothers on 5th Avenue so people here stop dressing so unprofessionally in the workplace. 

Do you kill spiders, ask others to kill spiders for you, or are you one of those sick people who trap house spiders under cups so you can release them to die of exposure?

I kill without hesitation.

A Google search revealed that, in 2014, you tried marrying your straight male friend to prove a point about discriminatory laws. Were you influenced by I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, or by an internal sense of social justice?

My ethics are a 50/50 split between what I learned from Happy Madison Productions and what I learned in Seattle Public Schools.

Are you still, as USA Today put it, one of the most in-your-face student journalists reporting and writing today?

Technically I graduated long ago but I’m still quite direct in my reporting and writing.

Your great-great-great-grandfather helped found BYU. I know you’re not Mormon, but do you enjoy their loaded sodas?

No, I am a grown-ass man.

Where do you think the Garden of Eden is?

The Garden of Eden is in Discovery Park, I’ve seen it.

Do you know the location of the golden plates?

That part is apocryphal.

Do you have other interests?

I have no hobbies.

Which Seattle public official should be the most scared that you’re in town?

When I was in AmeriCorps NCCC it was Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss’ responsibility as a team leader on watch to catch me drinking underage in the barracks in Sacramento. He failed. I won’t. 

Should the Sonics return?

As a card carrying member of the International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600 I think the NBA’s return to Seattle would create a groundswell of good-paying union jobs, and now that Howard Schultz is gone it would be too poetic not to.

Fuck, Marry, Kill: Harborview, Virginia Mason, and Swedish?

Fuck Virginia Mason, Marry Swedish (they delivered me), kill Virginia Mason.