Welcome to The Stranger’s… wait, what is this issue about? *checks notes* We don’t have a theme? All year long, since enthusiastically establishing a monthly print cadence in February, we have based every issue on some kind of theme. February was the Love & Sex issue, of course, and March was our fab Spring Arts issue. We did a Transit Issue and a Food Issue and a Queer Issue and a Climate Issue, and while it was fun to dig into the city with a curated eye, we also miss the days of just putting together a really solid collection of stories about whatever it is we’re currently obsessed with.

Like getting to the bottom of grocery-store pumpkin pie. Yes, on page 57 we pretend for one glorious afternoon that the Trump administration isn’t shooting our democracy into the fucking ever-hotter sun and set out on the self-appointed mission to find the best store-bought pumpkin pie in Seattle. The winner may surprise (and anger) you. Also related to the holiday season, we compiled an actually useful gift guide, should you want to treat your favs without lining billionaires’ pockets.

But that’s where the holiday content stops! This is not a holiday issue! This is a Dean Johnson issue, a history of women’s soccer issue, and a haunted puppet-show issue. There are interviews with Seattle rock legends Heart, writer/filmmaker Miranda July, and local author/style maven Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore.

Plus, as we’re wont to do, we’ve packed the Things To Do Arts Calendar, with hundreds of listings, so you can sit down at a coffeeshop on a rainy afternoon, get that phone out of your hot little hand, and circle all the concerts and art shows and film screenings you want to go to over the next month. We maintain that leaving the house is what will get us through The Gray Season.

The Stranger has been back in print for more than two years now, but it’s been a slow climb back into people’s lives. Every month we’re experimenting with who we are as a newspaper in 2025. It’s finally starting to feel like we’re hitting our stride, finding our confidence. We don’t need a theme. We’re The Stranger, goddammit! That’s our fucking theme.

COVER ARTWORK

Jen Ament

From the show Headtrip
October 30–December 20
at Spectrum Fine Art

 

This Issue Brought to You by: 

Merriam-Webster’s social media presence (and also literally
Merriam-Webster)
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Whoever is putting “This sticker is racist” stickers on all the racist stickers in Greenwood
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A fistful of Cadbury Micro Mini Eggs
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Having a bigger dick than the devil
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Orange cats
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Hayley Williams threatening to fight Morgan Wallen at Whole Foods
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Noel Fielding’s sweater collection
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The asbestos from the East Wing
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Intending to watch horror movies, but looking out the window instead
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Taylor Swift’s “too straight and kind of pathetic” new album
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Wasting $15 at a coffee shop to feel alive
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Spending $11 on a juice and having it not prevent the flu
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Pete Hegseth’s bleached asshole
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Going to the MedSpa for a soul transplant
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Travis Kelce becoming a Six Flags “activist”
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Emotional battery (being a Mariners fan)
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Chu Minh Tofu’s spicy lemongrass “chicken” sandwich
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Knitting at the Turnstile concert
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Nerds Gummy Clusters
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Voting, we hope
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Pear Wyld gummies
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A chihuahua in pink booties
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All 3 hours and 13 minutes of CĂŠline and Julie Go Boating
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Richard Nixon’s ghost telling us Watergate looks kind of minor now
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Relatedly, Howard Dean’s 
“Dean Scream”
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The dapper Louvre jewel-heist “detective”
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Owning the Libs (destroying rural America)
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Fedora branding
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Mort Garson’s The Unexplained: Electronic Musical Impressions of the Occult
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Problematic least favs