The Virginia Inn Isn’t Closing This Sunday: The oldest restaurant in Pike Place received a last minute eviction reprieve from the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) and will resume “business as usual,” the Inn posted on Facebook. The PDA told King 5 that the current tenant will operate the restaurant until September while working with the PDA to find someone to take over.

ICE Arrested Kennewick Food Truck Operator Married to US Citizen: According to Gabby Cerdio, ICE took her husband Sergio Cerdio Gomez into custody during an interview about his pending citizenship application. Shortly after marrying in 2022, the couple filed a I-130 petition, which allows US citizens to ask that their loved ones can stay in the country while pursuing a green card (and then citizenship). Together, Cerdio and Gomez have three children and own a hibachi food truck in Kennewick. Gomez has not yet appeared before a judge, according to the Tri-City Herald.

Irish Woman with Green Card Held by ICE in Tacoma: ICE first detained Cliona Ward, 53, at the San Francisco airport. She’d just returned from Ireland, where she and her stepmother had visited her sick father. They questioned her about a 2007 drug conviction for simple possession of methamphetamine and then released her to collect proof that it had been expunged. But at an administrative meeting, she was detained and sent to the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. “When she got off the plane in Tacoma, officers handcuffed, shackled her, and escorted her through the airport like a hardened criminal,” her sister wrote in a GoFundMe. “She was mortified, shamed, and demoralized.”

Deadly crash blocked I-5 in both directions this morning: The semi-truck crashed into a barrier in Tacoma, rolled over and burst into flames. The driver died, according to the Washington State Patrol. The Washington State Department of Transportation did not say when lanes would reopen.

Trump Tracker: Sen. Patty Murray and Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro released a new tracker showing the $430 billion in federal funds that President Donald Trump has frozen, cancelled, illegally impounded and “slow-walked” in the last 100 days.

Trump Signs Three Executive Orders on Immigration and Policing: One directs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to publish a list of sanctuary cities that aren’t cooperating with his deportation plan and pursue “all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures” against them. A second directs his administration to provide legal resources to police officers accused of wrongdoing, take restraints off law enforcement like federal consent decrees, further militarize police departments, and throw the book against local officials “unlawfully prohibiting law enforcement officers from doing their duty.” A third order would require commercial truck drivers to pass English literacy tests. 

Liberals Win in Canadian Elections: Mark Carney is still Prime Minister and his rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, lost his seat in rural Ottawa. While the Liberals won, it’s still not clear if they’ll hold an outright majority in Parliament. Just a few months ago, the conservatives were 27 percentage points ahead. Then Trump started talking tariffs and annexation and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down.

Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a propaganda briefing exclusively for “new media,” or a bunch of pro-Trump influencers who asked nice questions and clapped like children at the end. When America First Policy Institute ambassador Kambree Nelson asked Leavitt what she should cover, Leavitt thanked her for being an independent voice.

The EPA Says It Will Limit “Forever Chemicals”: At least PFAS (aka per- and polyfluoroalkyl) chemicals are bad. They make our things stain resistant and non-stick, but unfortunately may give us cancer and in all of our blood (a sticky and stain-y thing). What this ban means materially no one knows. This administration never spoils a good surprise, especially on policy. Environmental groups want to know if the administration will enforce a Biden-era regulation tasking utilities with removing PFAS our water. It seems to give more of a shit about chemicals in straws than the water they’re sitting in, but we’ll see! Last week, the New York Times reported on Trump admin plans to cancel tens of millions in grants to scientists studying environmental hazards to children in rural America, including the buildup on PFAS in our food.

Taking the Just Out of Justice: Civil rights lawyers are running in a screaming mass from the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which was created specifically to protect civil rights and has pivoted hard from the concept (too woke). The deadline for federal workers to resign and get paid through September ended late last night, and resignations came flying in. We know about this exodus partly because the division’s new leader Harmeet K. Dhillon told Glenn Beck on his podcast this weekend. Dhillon, a Republican activist, has pivoted away from silly things like racial discrimination to focus on what’s important: anti-Christian bias, transgender athletes, and ridding this world of DEI (can’t spell Devil without it). The department’s civil rights division always swings when another party takes over, but this shakeup has been more “extreme” than usual if you can believe that.

Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the pollsters who are wrong. Everything sucks, so President Donald Trump’s approval rating is sliding like an unattended, drunk baby down a black diamond slope. It must be “election fraud,” says Trump. Polls from the The New York Times, ABC News, and The Washington Post were the work of “negative criminals” suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome” who ought to be investigated for lying to their readers when anyone can see he’s winning so tremendously bigly. “THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing.”

Trump Admin Releases “Fact Sheet” About its Work Outlawing Gender-Affirming Care for Youth: It declares that all evidence for trans healthcare is bunk and that agencies should cull all references to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s standards of care. The report also notes that Health and Human Services will publish an “evidence-based” review of the literature (that will certainly be top-notch science) and that Attorney General Pam Bondi has already prepared guidance to prosecute doctors who treat trans kids. 

I’m Hearing Yakety Sax: On April 22, rescue workers airlifted a 27-year-old man with altitude sickness from the top of Japan’s Mount Fuji. Four days later, he went back to get his phone and got so sick he had to be rescued from the mountain AGAIN, this time carried down. It’s not a crime to hike in the off-season, but people on social media in Japan are calling for this guy’s head. I hope he does a very funny thing.

They say April showers bring May flowers, but you can also expect top-notch events from Denzel Curry's Mischievous South Tour to Mereba and from the Seattle Erotic Art Festival to Seattle Opera's Tosca this week.

MONDAY

LIVE MUSIC

Mereba
If you're waiting around for Solange to release a follow-up to 2019's When I Get Home, resist the urge to send her passive-aggressive Instagram comments that she will never see and instead find yourself some artists with a similar sound and ethos—Alabama-born singer, songwriter, and rapper Mereba is just that. Like Solange, her sound pulls inspiration from neo-soul, jazz, reggae, poetry, and electronic music for profoundly reflective ethereal songs (listen to the track "White Doves" to see what I mean). Don't miss her on tour supporting her latest album,The Breeze Grew A Fire. AUDREY VANN
(The Showbox, Downtown)

Photos by West Smith

My grandpa, who was a bit on the uptight side, took my mom to see the musical Hair when she was a kid. At the end of the first act, the performers came out onto the stage naked. My mom remembers his face was “mortified.” My grandfather said he wanted to leave immediately, missing the second half and the show's crescendo “Let The Sunshine In.”

If he wasn’t already dead, I think my grandpa would have died the moment he walked into the 2nd annual Seattle Fetish Ball this weekend at the SoDo Showbox.

The Fetish Ball was the main event of the weekend-long list of fetish-forward activities, which included a Fetish Cruise that embarked on Lake Union on Friday and concluded with a Decompression Brunch at The Unicorn on the Hill on Sunday. Vancouver, BC, has had a world famous Fetish Weekend for decades now, and with Seattle’s fetish scene growing and feeling bigger than ever, the time is right for an event like this to really take off.

Vancouver Carnage: Near the end of the Lapu Lapu Festival organized by the Filipino community in Vancouver, British Columbia, a black Audi SUV plowed into the crowd. The driver of the car killed 11 people whose ages ranged from 5 to 65. The driver tried to escape, but was restrained by the crowd. Police say they had had previous "substantive contact with him over mental health issues." The police chief did not reveal what they believed his motive to be, but said the driver acted "intentionally." 

Counting the Days to the Conclave: The conclave, or the time when the cardinals of the Catholic church are sequestered while they choose a new pope, won't start until May 7. The delay is because the cardinals want to get to know each other better and find more of a consensus on who to pick as pope before it's conclave time. Will they continue Pope Francis' people-focused progressive papacy, or will they choose a conservative to center the church back on its core doctrines? 

Canadians Also Have an Important Election: Canada will vote today for their prime minister. The options are the Justin Trudeau-appointed Mark Carney of the Liberal Party and Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party. Before Donald Trump took power again, the Liberals seemed like they were headed toward defeat in this election. However, Trump's bloviating about Canada being a 51st state has turned many Canadians against the conservatives. Carney could have a real shot, especially since a record-breaking 7.3 million Canadians voted ahead of election day. This could be the first election—depending on how it goes of course—that illustrates a referendum on Trumpism. 

Photos by West Smith

When I first moved to Seattle from my small town in Alaska, I was enamored by the amount of 24-hour options this city had. Living right between the neighborhoods of Green Lake and Greenwood, I was walking distance from two classic North Seattle 24-hour diners, Beth's Cafe and Shanghai Room. I was able to get a chicken fried steak with milkshake at a moment's notice, any time of the day.

After the pandemic, Seattle's 24-hour establishments quietly went away. Some switched to reduced late-night hours, some closed altogether. Even the 7/11 by my house started closing at 11 p.m.!

I get it, it’s most likely not worth the cost of staffing to run that kind of business, but I still miss it. Which is how I ended up at Sakura Con, the largest anime convention in the Northwest, at 4:30 a.m. this past weekend. Unlike other fan conventions in the area where the show floor closes at 6 p.m., Sakura Con is a 24-hour convention, meaning once the doors open on Friday at 8 a.m., the con does not end until closing time on Sunday at 4 p.m.

I don’t know anything about anime, but as a lover of both conventions and 24-hour businesses, I challenged myself to stay at Sakura Con as long as I could.

OPENINGS

8 at Ping Yang
This Thai fusion charcoal grill concept soft opened in the former OOLA space last Friday, April 18, serving dishes like Dungeness crab cakes, coconut clam chowder, lobster khao soi, and green curry pasta.
Capitol Hill

Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine and (equally accolade-laden) Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry premiered their recital Our People, a celebration of LGBTQ and Black artists and histories, at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center in December 2021. It’s a production that Ballentine, who is Black, says was a response to the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd. “It was something that represented the times, and represented us, and represented as many queer and Black people as we could imagine in one setting,” Ballentine says.

Things have changed and things haven’t changed since that 2021 debut. For one, Ballentine and Lahiry, who both grew up in the US, now live in Berlin, which is home to a “gorgeous” music scene, three great opera houses, and parties Ballentine says feature “everything that my wild little heart desires.” 

The Kennedy Center, meanwhile, is a hyperpoliticized version of the institution it once was following President Donald Trump’s purge of and ensuing self-appointment to the Center’s board, placing an executive director of allegedly “unhinged” nature at its helm. All of that against the backdrop of continuously worsening political and social conditions for many Black people, queer and trans people, immigrants, and others, who historically and presently confront fascism’s entrenchment.

Our People comes to Seattle Opera’s Tagney Jones Hall on Sunday, April 27, marking its first return to the US since 2021. And, like the political conditions to which the performance is a response, parts of the recital have changed while maintaining its core qualities. 

This weekend will deliver the perfect weather (not too hot, not too cold) to run around to events from Seattle Independent Bookstore Day to the 22nd Annual White Center Khmer New Year Street Festival and from SOUK سياتل Charity Pop-up Market to the Seattle/King County Clinic. For more ideas, check out our top event picks of the week.

FRIDAY

PARTIES & NIGHTLIFE

SZA Dance Night
Are you considering killing your ex? Redirect that energy with this SZA-centric dance party featuring your favorite songs from CTRL and SOS, as well as jams from fellow R&B/hip-hop queens like Doechii, Jorja Smith, Rihanna, and Summer Walker. AUDREY VANN
(Chop Suey, Capitol Hill, $15)

This review originally appeared in the Portland Mercury. 

David Cronenberg’s chief cinematic obsession has long been the human body and all the painful, pleasurable, and generally fucked up things that people do with their corporeal forms. But in every case—from the 1970 Crimes of the Future to the 2022 Crimes of the Future (which was not a remake of the 1970 film), the beings at the center of his work deal with unusual growths, wild physical transformations, or the hunger to be penetrated in any number of ways.

With his latest film The Shrouds, the 82-year-old Canadian filmmaker homes in on the reality that these bodies of ours will one day rot away or be reduced to ashes. It’s an unsettling truth that's easy to stuff aside, even as we watch a loved one lowered into the earth.

Good morning! We’ve got three more days of this perfect weather, and the universe very kindly made two of them a weekend. These are the days that out-of-towners don’t know exist here. Go hang out at a street-end park. Look for mushrooms in the arboretum. (But only eat them if you know what you’re doing!) Lock down a grill at Golden Gardens at an absurdly early hour, and text everyone you know.

But before all that, let’s stock up on the news so you can put it out of your mind for a few days.

Ready for another round of ticket drops? Carnation music fest Thing is switching things up this year with a series of concerts featuring Father John Misty, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Mon Laferte, and the Roots. Longtime friends Band of Horses & Iron and Wine, who recorded a covers album together in 2015, are teaming up once again for a joint headline tour. Plus, we’re giving you a heads up to snag tickets next week for Modest Mouse’s Psychic Salamander Festival featuring the Flaming Lips, Courtney Barnett, Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo, and more. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 25

MUSIC

Andy Bell of Erasure: Ten Crowns Tour
The Showbox (Thurs Dec 4)

Autoheart: The Heartlands Tour
Neptune Theatre (Fri Nov 14)

Band of Horses & Iron and Wine
Marymoor Park (Thurs Sept 18)

Friday Phish show, Row X, 50th Bday party

I was in your row at Phish, lame dude was being “aggressively enthusiastic” and you asked me to stand between him and ya’ll. Would love to see you!

Hailstorm Hottie (ugh)

You were walking your dog when we were caught in that freak 3/13 hailstorm. The hail was cold, your smile was warm - would love to grab some hot cocoa

Yes, Seattle has market-fresh seafood and one of the best coffee scenes in the country, and is home to the Seattle dog. But there's no denying: Seattle is teriyaki town. In the late 1970s, Toshi Kasahara started serving the masses chargrilled chicken slathered with his signature sauce atop a bed of steaming rice, popularizing the dish and pioneering a wave of teriyaki shops all over the city. Quality, portion size, proximity to your house, and even salad dressing are all contributing factors to what can be considered the city's "best" teriyaki, but here are a few of our favorites.

Grillbird
As a lifelong vegetarian and Seattleite, I am extremely skeptical of the tofu teriyaki in this city. Most teriyaki restaurants don’t offer non-meat dishes, and if they do, it’s usually a sad slab of raw tofu with a little side of sauce. As far as I can tell, West Seattle’s Grillbird is the only restaurant that’s filling this gap. Grillbird makes marinated sesame tofu and fried cauliflower that is crispy, flavorful, and saucy enough to seep down and coat your rice. Plus, they offer mouthwatering sides, including a tart cucumber salad and, in my opinion, the world’s best macaroni salad. The shop doesn't have indoor dining, but you can take it to go for a nourishing, reasonably priced meal to eat in front of the TV. AUDREY VANN

KOMO, rolling its eyes: "Be ready to get turned away from driving into Pike Place Market." Have pedestrians finally won this long and stupid war? Have those in power at last seen the light? Hardly. The Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) bills this ban as nothing bigger than a pilot program. Meaning, it may or may not last. And, by the way, the program doesn't run the full length of the street. Only half of it. And, by the way, a considerable part of Pike Street is under construction. (Seattle Public Utilities is tearing up sections of the street and sidewalk for repairs and improvements.) This work will end on July 18, at which time, I suspect, the ban will be lifted. In truth, cars really couldn't go down Pike Street during construction anyway, so little to no enlightenment played a role in the ban.

I visited Pike Street on the day it was kind of liberated, April 23, and soon found the calm that never fails to settle in a place with little or no rumblings or roars from the world's most wasteful mode of transportation. You can even hear other humans better. "Bruce, what the hell is wrong with you?" A young woman said this to a boy who tried to kick a pigeon that was doing nothing but minding its own business.