Law enforcement officials arrested Boys & Girls Club of King County’s SE Network SafetyNet’s Executive Director Matelita “Marty” Jackson on Wednesday for possible connection to a multi-state drug trafficking conspiracy. From the indictment, Jackson’s son appears to head up a drug trafficking operation. The indictment charges Jackson with allegedly conspiring to commit money laundering.

Law enforcement arrested 17 people connected to the alleged drug trafficking conspiracy, including Jackson’s son, Marquis Jackson, 31, who supposedly headed the operation, and who splits his time between his parent’s home in Renton, WA and Atlanta, Georgia, according to a press release from the the Office of the US Attorney for the Western District of Washington. The drug trafficking operation had connections to people in Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Arizona, and Washington. Ten of the 13 defendants arrested in Washington remain at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac, though three were released in place of bond, including Marty Jackson.

Remember in the ’80s and ’90s, when, for some reason, every kid was planning to become a marine biologist when they grew up? Ayana Elizabeth Johnson was one of those kids—she grew up on stories from her father’s upbringing in Jamaica and, when she was five, fell in love with coral reefs through a glass-bottomed boat in Florida. But unlike most of us, she’s also one of the few that actually grew up and did it. 

Marine biology brought her to conservationism, and watching hurricanes destroy coasts she’d fallen in love with brought her to the climate crisis. “It was my bad fate to fall in love with coral reefs just as they were dying,” she writes. But that love infuses her work. She’s now middle-aged (self-described) and one of the leading voices in the climate conversation that’s not just forcing people to face the crisis but to imagine real, livable, joyful solutions. 

Tickets go on sale at 10 am unless otherwise noted.

ON SALE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4

MUSIC

aespa - Synk: Parallel Line
accesso ShoWare Center (Jan 28, 2025)
On sale at 3 pm

The Driver Era: Obsession Tour
WaMu Theater (July 9, 2025)

Emei
The Crocodile (Mar 8, 2025)

On August 30, Sound Transit added, between Northgate and Lynnwood, 8.5 miles and four (soon to be five) stations to its 1 Line. This amounts to 33 track miles. The time it takes to move from one end of the present line to the other is just over an hour. This is the real deal. A big section of the region has been liberated from I-5, and time spent searching for parking.

Two weeks after the extension opened, however, it was hit by electrical issues. An army of self-bloated commenters wasted no time denouncing light rail on news posts that covered the incident. This one in the Seattle Times was typical: "That section of rail is only 2 weeks old, at huge cost of billions of dollars. You would think that something so new and supposedly built to be in service for decades would not have a failure like this. What the heck throw another million a minute to this total waste of money."

The gold believed to be in this reasoning is transformed into worthless straw by the daily existence of traffic jams. 

Practically Magic

you told me you were on a "Sandra-bullock kick" and I can't stop thinking about it. let's catch another flick at SIFF together on purpose next time?

Abolitionist Bandana at Zookraut

Moshing at Zookraut with an "Abolish the Police" bandana. I'm the girl who got BONKED in the pit. Wanted to say hi, catch a show sometime?

3. BLURRING THE LINES: Magical realism is the key for today’s witnessing.

Paprika

Surreal director, animator, and manga auteur Satoshi Kon's 2006 film Paprika doesn’t just have Inception beat by four years—it's also a far better exploration of dreamscapes. With a freaky new piece of technology, morally questionable therapists can observe their patients' dreams. The gadget's creator, Dr. Atsuko Chiba, moonlights as a "dream detective" named Paprika—cool girl alert—but when the device is stolen, nightmares and reality merge.

For English teacher K. Wayne, the trouble started on a Friday, when a friend texted to say they were sorry for what had happened.

After some confusion about what that something was, Wayne learned the Instagram account @phs_crazy, an anonymous, student-run page that bullied queer and minority students at Peninsula High School about their looks and “cringe” behavior, had discovered that on nights and weekends Wayne performed as the drag king, Jack King Goff.

Surprise: Hannah and I switched Slog days. Because I respect tradition, we’ll begin with the weather, which is quite nice today. Expect a mostly sunny day, with a high of 64. Tonight, it’ll be cloudy with a low around 49 and a slight chance of rain.

Virginia Mason is closing its downtown birth center, women’s health clinic: Administrators said the hospital is closing its only birth center in the city to expand its “critical care capacity” for patients with cardiovascular, spine, and neurological needs. The Seattle Times reports that while Virginia Mason Franciscan Health will continue to offer gynecological services downtown, it’s unclear what this means for patients who are planning to deliver at the center or those that rely on it for prenatal care, lactation consultation, and a host of other services. When it closes, the closest place for obstetric care within that hospital system will be 12 miles away at St. Anne Hospital in Burien. The Washington State Nurses Association union told the Times it is concerned how the closure will affect expecting families and called for more regulatory oversight of closures to review potential impacts.

2. DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Mad scientists never seem to follow the rules…

Human Centipede

I don't want to spoil any surprises, but I will say that we have some really fantastic film recommendations lined up for Scarecrow’s Psychotronic Challenge. 

Today’s entry, though, is… not that.

I bought the marketing for Daniel Saldaña París’s book, Planes Flying over a Monster, hook, line, sinker. A collection of translated essays about the many selves a single person can be over the course of their twenties? Drugs, travel, and the conviction that literature is a path through the greatest pains and toward understanding? And it’s in translation from the Spanish original? Wrap it up, cause I’m sold.

I won’t lie: I was compelled to read this book and talk to Saldaña París because I’m an essayist who also writes about cities, addiction, and who is compelled by a Humpty-Dumpty belief in putting myself back together through the process of writing and composing my own book. As I told Saldaña París, his book gave me no easy answers, but reminded me that I have to find my own way through my story. 

Please. For the love of god, leash your damn dogs. 

WEDNESDAY 10/2  

Author Talk: Edd Kimber, Small Batch Cookies

(BOOKS/FOOD) In 2022, Great British Bake Off winner Edd Kimber (aka the Boy Who Bakes) released Small Batch Bakes, a game-changer in the cookbook world. While the average baking session results in enough cookies, cream puffs, or croissants to feed a small elementary school, Kimber brilliantly stripped his recipes down to one to six servings. (I have made his emergency chocolate chip cookie on multiple occasions, and it is everything a big, gooey emergency cookie needs to be.)  His follow-up, this year's Small Batch Cookies, is another must-have with recipes including Salted Malt Shortbread Rounds and Oreo-inspired Black Cocoa and Vanilla Sandwich Cookies. At Book Larder, he’ll sign copies of Small Batch Cookies and, if we’re lucky, share a few more small baking secrets. (Book Larder, 4252 Fremont Ave N, 6:30 pm, $30.60 for author talk and a copy of Small Batch Cookies or $5.75 for just the talk) MEGAN SELING

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Rachael Savage for a crunchy, queer elder who’s always one kombucha away from launching into a 30-minute tirade against Ronald Reagan. Savage, who owns The Vajra, a “metaphysical boutique” on Capitol Hill, wears jewel-tone lipstick, sports a face tat, pins delightfully gaudy broaches to her coats, and insists, as a longtime Seattle resident, that she’s a “city girl” through and through. 

But her recent introduction to the Seattle political sphere paints a different picture. Savage faced accusations of racist fear-mongering over a short, semi-viral clip in which she almost chickened out of taking Republican Attorney General candidate Pete Serrano on a tour of the Capitol Hill light rail station. She’s also half of the brains behind the newly launched “Savage Citizens” organization that’s leading a campaign to block the construction of a new 120-unit supportive housing building on Belmont Avenue in favor of mandatory treatment and abstinence-only living spaces. On top of that, she is teasing a 2025 mayoral run if Mayor Bruce Harrell, who has already overseen the transition to a tough-on-crime approach to public drug use, fails to call in the US military to bolster the City’s response to the fentanyl crisis. 

Good news, everyone: We live in the future now and you don’t need to borrow someone’s kids to go to an apple-pickin’ harvest festival. You can just go. Well, you could go before, too, but looks like the farms have decided that our old-ass money folds just the same, and so more and more of them are adding adult-like activities to their punkin parties. This includes but is not limited to wine tastings, ziplines, events that don’t end at 4 pm, and evidently, gourd tunnels? Uh, maybe those were actually meant for kids, but they’re ours now. Go forth, take up space in the gourd tunnels of Washington State, and live your best adult life within them.

Carpinito Bros. in Kent
Carpinito Bros. is the O.G Kent Valley farm stand, although these days, it’s equal parts produce market and nursery/garden center. For more than 50 years, this place has been selling all categories of garden-y stuff: fresh fruit and veg, plant starts, landscaping materials, Christmas trees, and more. And now through Halloween, just a couple miles south of the farm stand, you can tour their corn maze and pick a pumpkin from their patch, after grabbing some cedar bark for the yard and some broccolini for tomorrow night’s dinner. And just around the corn-er from the corn maze, the Farm Fun Yard has pigs and cows, whom you can personally meet, as well as something called a goat walk. That’s where you’ll find us, man.
($5–$12 depending on age and attraction, open through Oct 31)