Floyd McIssac still worked at Sears when he opened Changes, Seattle’s longest continuously operated gay bar in Wallingford 35 years ago. He didn’t have high expectations and said he only bought it because he thought it would cover his car payment. 

Back in 1989, McIssac was tired of the scene on Capitol Hill. If you lived north of the ship canal, reaching the bars was a hassle, and the bars didn’t feel communal.

“You felt more like a number than a person,” he said. He wanted a classic dive, something like “Cheers,” “where everybody knew your name.”

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee company that touts its progressive values, has become infamous for its aggressive efforts to block “partners” from forming unions. Since the Starbucks Workers United union began organizing about two years ago, workers at nearly 400 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize–including 24 Starbucks stores here in Washington state. But not one of those stores has won a first contract. Starbucks currently faces multiple federal charges from the US Department of Labor for violating its employees’ legal rights.

Now, the Legislature is considering bills that might help Starbucks baristas and other low-wage workers level the playing field against their deep-pocketed employers. Senate Bill 5777 and House Bill 1893 would allow workers who go on strike to access unemployment insurance benefits after two weeks. These benefits, which only partially replace lost wages, would help us and our families keep a roof over our heads and food on the table while we fight for fairness.

On February 7, Scientific American posted a story with this headline: "Even ChatGPT Says ChatGPT Is Racially Biased." This is not surprising because as the post's writer Craig Piers points out, AI can only reflect the information provided by a society, and the bulk of this information will represent the views, limitations, and investment of a society's dominant group. In the case of the US, this group happens to be white Americans. But there is more to this story. Piers, who is a clinical psychologist, discovered that ChatGPT wasn't ignorant of the source of its bias. It knew "that its training material—the language we humans use every day—was to blame."

When Mayor Bruce Harrell took office, he summarized his plan for transforming the Seattle Police Department by saying it was all about hiring “the right number and the right kind of officer.” That sound bite, repeated often, reflects a persistent delusion among liberal police reformers that reduces policing’s ills to a matter of mere personnel. According to this view, the path to reform entails weeding out the “bad apples” and recruiting a diverse new generation of cops with a “guardian mindset” and a community-centered outlook. 

During the protests over the murder of George Floyd, we heard renewed calls to hire more women officers, who police reformers claim are less likely to use excessive force and more likely to de-escalate. SPD subsequently signed on to the 30 by 30 Pledge, vowing to take steps to increase its proportion of women officers to 30 percent by 2030. It isn’t going so well. 

This weekend, your only problem will be deciding which of these thrifty-and-nifty events to spend your time at. Read on for all of your options, from the Lunar New Year Night Market and Lucky Envelope Brewing's Lunar New Year Kick-Off to the Petit Troll Parade and the Wild Cure Art Exhibit opening reception. For more ways to spend your weekend, check out our guide to the top events of the week and our Super Bowl watch party calendar.

FRIDAY

FILM

Happiness in 35mm
Your internet besties (former Stranger staff writer Jas Keimig and former editor Chase Burns) will introduce the February 9 screening of Happiness, which has no recent home video or streaming release, as part of their ongoing project Unstreamable. Burns and Keimig have written "more than 350 (!) blurbs and reviews about offbeat, forgotten, and otherwise unobtainable pieces of cinematic history" (Matt Baume), and the project has since blossomed from the Scarecrow Video blog column into a live screening series. Dark comic misery master Todd Solondz's Happiness, screening here in 35mm, is a testament to his ability to entangle the darkly disturbing with the somehow hilarious. Plus, Philip Seymour Hoffman is in it (RIP), which is my favorite reason to watch anything. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Grand Illusion, University District, $8-$11)

An "elderly man with a poor memory:"A prosecutor decided not to file criminal charges against President Joe Biden for mishandling confidential documents. That's good news right? Well, no. The prosecutor made this choice by determining that Biden was a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" with "diminished faculties in advancing age." Apparently, in interviews with the prosecutor, Biden couldn't remember years events had occurred and couldn't even remember what year his son, Beau, died. So, Biden held a press conference to assure everyone he was mentally fit as a fiddle. Unfortunately, during that press conference Biden referred to Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the president of Mexico. Welcome to the 2024 election cycle! It's going to be hell :) 

McMorris-Rodgers says no more, please: US Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Spokane) announced Thursday she will not be seeking re-election. At 54 years old, she has over two decades of seniority and she chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, so the announcement comes as a surprise. The big takeaway is that it must fucking suck to work in Congress right now. “When a new chair of a top committee retires, it tells you exactly how bad a workplace Congress has become,” former Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye mused on X. Now, it's time to see whether Democrats can flip the 5th District. 

Ba Sa
Want to abscond to Bainbridge Island for a romantic getaway? Sibling chefs Trinh and Thai Nguyen will prepare a Valentine's Day meal inspired by their recent trip to the vibrant coastal city Hoi An, as well as an intensive pastry program Trinh took in Paris last year. The room will be illuminated with Hoi An's signature colorful lanterns as guests tuck into dishes like fried quail eggs with caviar, frilly flower-shaped dumplings, wagyu cao lầu (fried dough strips with wagyu beef), and matcha yuzu eclairs.
Bainbridge Island

Queer/Pride Festival is back to slay the house down boots this summer with headliners Rico Nasty, Tegan and Sara, and Santigold. Folk troubadour Iron & Wine is coming to town to support his seventh studio album. Plus, blues rock legend Bonnie Raitt has announced her Just Like That tour with a local stop this fall. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

ON SALE FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10

MUSIC

1964 The Tribute
Neptune Theatre (Sun June 9)

Blitzen Trapper - A Tractor 30th Anniversary Show
Tractor Tavern (Say May 18)

Bonnie Raitt: Just Like That...Tour 2024
Paramount Theatre (Oct 4–5)

Last September, while walking around Green Lake, I stumbled across an astrologer sitting on the grass offering birth chart readings. 

I’ve never had my chart read, but I am someone who walks a little slower when I come across psychic shops, looking back over my shoulder when I pass by them. I’ve had my palm read twice—once by a magician at my step dad’s birthday party, once in a Hell’s Kitchen apartment amidst half-folded stacks of laundry—and I love to hear myself explained. 

I sat down on Aubergine Bliss’s blanket. She smoothed her cornflower blue dress and knelt beside me as she plugged in my birth date, location, and time into an app on her phone. (Not CoStar because, “We don’t love CoStar,” she said.) 

HUMP! will shock you. HUMP! will make you laugh. HUMP! will turn you on. It's the one-of-a-kind northwest tradition all your friends are talking about and it opens TONIGHT! 

That's right, hornballs, The Stranger's amateur porn festival is back and this year we received so many incredible entries that we're splitting HUMP! into two parts! 

Double the sex! Double the kink! Double the fun!

Jlin feat. Philip Glass, “The Precision of Infinity” (Planet Mu) 

Gary, Indiana's Jlin (aka Jerrilynn Patton) has reigned as one of footwork/juke's most interesting and sophisticated producers since she began releasing music nine years ago via England's Planet Mu label. Birthed in Chicago, footwork mutated from elements of hip-hop and ghetto house into a fast-twitch strain of electronic dance music mainly built on repetitive and manipulated vocal samples and frenetic beats—all the better to challenge the city's slickest dancers to achieve unprecedented moves.

Jlin's 2015 debut album, Dark Energy, harnessed its titular force and proved that footwork could get abstract and weird. She demonstrated that she could bring it live, too, with a stunning set at the final Decibel Festival in 2015. In a review of her performance for The Stranger, I wrote, "She coaxed strangely angled beats and swarming bass tones that spasmed with a jittery fierceness. Jlin’s grooves are elusive, jagged, tumultuous, and militantly distinctive. Sometimes they sounded like boulders caroming inside a washing machine, sometimes hitting like staccato whipcracks, sometimes coming off like ’90s-era Squarepusher slowed to 16 rpm. It sounded like one very odd and special version of the future of club music." Subsequent releases have only broadened her compelling sonic palette.

Billion-dollar corporations such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub, and InstaCart started ramping up their cry-bully tactics against gig workers after the City of Seattle instituted new “Pay Up”-branded protections on January 13 of this year. Workers don’t want you or the brand new, business-backed City Council to fall for it. 

“They’ll cry, they’ll throw themselves on the ground, kicking and screaming like a toddler. Anything to make reasonable labor policy fail,” said driver and Pay Up advocate Carmen Figueroa.

Good morning: Some chance of rain during the day today, but big chance of rain tonight. My music suggestion today includes a recommendation about going to see Tkay Maidza at Neumos tonight. If you go, figure out an outfit that includes a rain jacket, especially if you plan to be out at midnight.

Excluding Trump from the ballot: A case before the US Supreme Court today asks the court to consider whether Colorado can exclude former President Donald Trump from its 2024 presidential ballot on the basis he did an insurrection, according to the Guardian. Given Trump nominated three of the judges on the court, it seems unlikely they'll exclude him. If they do, it could set off a chain reaction as states across the country remove Trump from the ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment.

WEDNESDAY 2/7  

Superchunk & Fucked Up

(MUSIC) Throughout their 35-year-long career, indie rock quartet Superchunk has experimented with the sweet release of loud aggressive music as well as the ease of soft indie pop. On their 2022 album, Wild Loneliness, they move away from the politics-driven aggression of their previous album, What a Time to Be Alive, and into a sense of peace that Pitchfork writer Steve Kandell described as "a deep sigh after their Trump-era primal howl." Canadian psychedelic hardcore outfit Fucked Up will open with tracks from their critically acclaimed album One Day. (The Crocodile, 2505 First Ave, 8 pm, $35, 21+) AUDREY VANN