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EverOut

The 49 Best Things to Do in Seattle This Weekend: August 14-16, 2020

by Stranger EverOut Staff • Friday at 10:40 am

Were entering peak sunflower season, and Bobs Corn Maze and Pumpkin Farm is kicking it off with the first days of their third annual in-person Sunflower Experience this weekend.
We're entering peak sunflower season, and Bob's Corn Maze and Pumpkin Farm is kicking it off with the first days of their third annual in-person Sunflower Experience this weekend. Bob's Corn Maze and Pumpkin Farm via Facebook

A slew of major festivals are coming at you social distance-style this weekend, from the Seattle Design Festival to the Seattle Tattoo Expo, along with a special Best Coast streaming show, Pike Place Market's Dine & Donate event, and a reading with Akwaeke Emezi. Read on for all of our top picks for virtual and in-person events, or check out our guides to movies to stream this weekend. For event more options, check out our complete streaming events and protests & resistance calendars, as well as our guides to outdoor and socially distanced things to do this summer and anti-racism resources and events.

FRIDAY

COMMUNITY
Othello International Festival in a Box
Budding South Seattle soccer players and general fun-havers (and their families) can scoop up boxes filled with all the trappings of a cute summer day: art supplies, Sounders soccer balls, a jump rope, sidewalk chalk, seed starter kits, snacks, and COVID-related safety stuff like masks and hand sanitizer. The day after claiming parcels from the no-contact drive-through, participants can tune in to a livestreamed soccer clinic on Zoom with the Sounders themselves.
New Holly Gathering Hall (Othello)

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News

Slog AM: How Seattle Became the Dishonorable City, Expect An Oppressively Hot Weekend, Pence to America: Kamala Harris Wants Your Red Meat

by Charles Mudede • Friday at 8:40 am

So much dishonoring going on here...
So much dishonoring going on here... divampo/gettyimages.com

Amazon Is Fleeing Seattle: That's how the mainstream press wants the public to read Amazon's decision to offer "Seattle-based employees [the] choice of [working at] smaller offices outside the city."

Seattle Times:

In a message to employees Thursday, Amazon asked which communities near Seattle — including Tacoma and Redmond, Washington — they’d prefer. The title on the message, which was shared on Reddit and later deleted, was “office workplace options.” Amazon declined to comment on the matter.

Seattle has become the Dishonorable City. It failed to count and protect its many blessings and instead dishonored its upstanding police chief, dishonored its downtown mom-and-pop shops, and, worst of all, dishonored the king of American corporations, Amazon. All of this reminds me of that wonderful dishonor scene in Mulan.

I can only see Jason Rantz as this lizard-sized dragon.

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Message to the City

A Message to the City from Lynn Shelton

by The Stranger • Friday at 8:00 am

The Stranger is organizing a memorial for Lynn on August 28.
The Stranger is organizing a memorial for Lynn on August 28. Photo by Cory Gustason

Good morning. It's Friday, August 14.

After the award-winning filmmaker Lynn Shelton passed away earlier this year, there was no public memorial for family, friends, and fans to gather together and celebrate her life.

No artist had a more profound impact on the Seattle filmmaking world over the last two decades, and just about everyone in the local scene has a story about her.

On August 28 at 6 pm PST, artists, family members, friends, fans, colleagues, and film critics will gather together on Zoom to share stories about her. You're invited. One hundred percent of the proceeds will benefit the Shelton/Seal Family Fund at Northwest School.

The memorial will feature storytelling and commentary by Megan Griffiths, Tomo Nakayama, Kevin Seal, Ben Gibbard, Sean Nelson, Lori Goldston, Annie Wagner, Charles Mudede, and others.

We invite your stories and remembrances as well.

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News • Slog AM/PM

Slog PM: Cliff Mass Claps Back; No COVID Relief This Summer; Let's Get Sexy, USPS!

by Chase Burns, Nathalie Graham and Rich Smith • Thursday at 6:30 pm

Its time to show that package on OnlyFans, Ken.
It's time to show that package on OnlyFans, Ken. Kyle Monk / Getty Images

Fuck your COVID-19 relief: Says the United States Senate as they go on vacation until after Labor Day without passing another COVID-19 relief package. This week—which was technically supposed to be the first of the vacation (which, I'm sorry, these windbags get over three weeks of vacation?!?) was the last-ditch effort to get agreement between parties. It didn't work.

Meanwhile, the airplane industry is cratering: Carlisle Interconnect Technologies (CIT) in Kent, which is responsible for making a bunch of interior plane stuff, is about to lay off around 595 people. The downturn in the aerospace design industry first started when Boeing's 737 MAX 8 was grounded and continued when the pandemic grounded flights worldwide.

Fortnite was kicked out of Apple's App Store and the Google Play store: Now Fortnite's developer, Epic Games, is suing Apple. The issue began yesterday when Epic introduced the ability for players to buy "V-Bucks" directly on the Fortnite app, instead of through the App Store and Google Play store. To encourage users to use that direct payment method, Epic offered users a 20% discount by purchasing the "V-Bucks" directly from them. This practice is in violation of both the App Store and Google Play store's guidelines. Epic argues, along with many others, that this practice is monopolistic. As an NBC headline reads: "Fortnite conquered the video game world. Now, it's taking on Google and Apple." Check out this epic video Epic had at the ready:

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Sponsored

NUDE KITCHEN is Museum of Museum’s weekly figure drawing class.

NUDE KITCHEN is a weekly figure drawing class hosted by Museum of Museums, and taught by Crystal Barbre and Madeline Owens. This two hour class provides professional instruction and unconventional models, designed for a range of students, from the beginner to the trained artist. Try interactive admission with personal instruction, or just come and draw!

Reserve your spot...

Coronavirus

This Mask Is the Best Mask

by Christopher Frizzelle • Thursday at 3:30 pm

In my personal experience. Faces vary.
For me. Faces vary. Photo by Christopher Frizzelle

Here's the thing about faces: They're all different.

What works for me won't necessarily work for you. I bought a beautiful Afriquaino mask because a friend on Facebook said it was his favorite, but its elastic straps fold up my ears like tacos. I tried the face masks sold by Timothy De Clue Collection, manufactured in Italy, but it wasn't a firm enough fit. A friend in Massachusetts sewed the last sentence of To the Lighthouse, my favorite novel, into a mask she sent me through the mail, but it has tie-on straps in the back—slightly inconvenient.

The best mask I've tried for my particular face is the three-layer cotton chambray face mask created by the Seattle company SwaddleDesigns. Right now on their website, it's $5.99.

The CEO of the company, Lynette Damir, is a registered nurse who worked at Swedish Hospital on First Hill for 10 years. "As a nurse, I have a desire to help people," she says in an interview with The Stranger.

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Food & Drink

Here’s Why You Need to Go Blueberry Picking This Weekend

by Matt Baume • Thursday at 2:42 pm

How to pinpoint the closest field awaiting your grubby little hands? See below.
How to pinpoint the closest field awaiting your grubby little hands? See below. m-gucci/Getty Images

Yes, the world is in a terrible tumult right now, with disaster around every corner. Every waking moment carries the risk of receiving some new horror, which is why there’s never been a more vital time to turn your cellphone off and wander out into a field with a wicker basket and a hunger for blueberry pie.

The entire state of Washington is in the middle of a robust blueberry-picking season, and if that sounds like terribly mundane news, you’re right it is and you’re welcome, isn’t it nice to have news that is mundane instead of horrifying? There’s a ton of blueberry farms open for business right now, not to mention a blueberry recipe contest currently underway, and an urgent need to escape from all your woes.

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Film/TV • EverOut

The Best Movies to Stream This Weekend in Seattle: August 13-16, 2020

by Stranger EverOut Staff • Thursday at 1:35 pm

Its rare to see this side of Africa on the screen, writes Charles Mudede about Wanuri Kahius Rafiki. See it this weekend as part of the Northwest Film Forums Queer as German Folk series.
"It's rare to see this side of Africa on the screen," writes Charles Mudede about Wanuri Kahiu's Rafiki. See it this weekend as part of the Northwest Film Forum's Queer as German Folk series.

The Northwest Film Forum's Queer as German Folk film series continues with Wanuri Kahiu's Rafiki, SIFF and Grand Illusion are bringing back the iconic early concert film Jazz on a Summer's Day, and we'd be remiss not to mention that Selena Gomez is reluctantly dissecting octopi in her home kitchen on HBO Max's Selena + Chef. Below, we've rounded up all those and more of our top picks for movies and shows streaming through local theaters and national platforms this weekend. Longing for the big(ger) screen? Check out our guide to drive-in movie theaters in the Seattle area, or check out our guide to streamable shows that received Emmy nominations.

New & Noteworthy: Supporting Seattle Businesses

Freaky Friday
A punk teen (Lindsay Lohan) and her straight-edge mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) make a chaotic switcheroo in the beloved 2003 remake of the 1973 film Freaky Friday. This virtual MoPOP screening comes complete with games and ideas for themed snack pairings.
Available via MoPOP as part of Pop+ Punk
Sunday only

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Visual Art • Currently Hanging

Currently Hanging: Anthony White's "WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS" at Greg Kucera Gallery

by Jasmyne Keimig • Thursday at 12:50 pm

The balm my brain needed this week.
The balm my brain needed this week. JK
Seattle artist Anthony White's latest at Greg Kucera Gallery is killer; a vibrant, plastic portal into another world. The piece, named after the tattoo that elegantly tracks the figure's hairline, is part of the gallery's contribution to Seattle Deconstructed Art Fair, a project which Greg Kucera helped spearhead late last month. Kucera constructed a replica art fair "booth" in the back galleries that features a collection of both local and national artists. White is folded in with the likes of Kerry James Marshall, Alison Saar, and Helen Frankenthaler. And it's there he shines.

"WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS" portrays a subject (one of White's real-life friends) taking a selfie in a convex mirror against the abstracted spinning wheel of death. In an email, White told me he completed this painting during quarantine, when "all hell was breaking loose" in the US with violent state crackdowns on protesters and the intensifying pandemic.

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News • City • #SeattleProtest

Mutual Aid Group Occupies Cal Anderson Shelterhouse to Serve Homeless

by Rich Smith • Thursday at 12:10 pm

I didnt even know this place could open.
I didn't even know this place could open. I guess I thought it was a shed. For now, at least, it's small soup kitchen. RS

For the last two days a mutual aid protest group has been occupying the newly remodeled Cal Anderson Shelterhouse, a small rental facility equipped with a kitchen, gas fireplace, and a bathroom.

Organizers have been using the kitchen to feed the neighborhood’s homeless population, including some who had been swept along with the rest of CHOP last month.

Wednesday night one of the volunteers, Ali, said she’d heard people who had been living in the park had “gotten in” to the locked facility to use the bathroom and the kitchen. She said some of the homeless using the facility had been swept from the Waterfront, and then later from the CHOP.

"There are people here who still don't have their belongings back from that sweep," she said. A guy who gave his name as Mikey B. said he lived in the park during CHOP and lost his social security card and birth certificate in the sweep.

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Film/TV

You've Only Got a Few Weeks—NOW Is the Time to Submit to SLAY, The Stranger's New Horror Film Festival

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey • Thursday at 11:20 am

slaypr_forest.jpg

It's official: The world loves HUMP!—America's sweetest homemade-porn film festival, where entrants make short dirty movies for the chance to win impressive cash prizes! And now, the freaky minds behind HUMP! (and SPLIFF, our cannabis-themed film festival) have a brand-new and terrifyingly fun contest we know you're going to love: SLAY—a film festival for fans of horror!

SLAY is a great opportunity for amateur filmmakers (like you) to stretch their artistic muscles and make an eight-minute-or-less spine-tingling movie that can earn big, BIG money. And like HUMP!, the possibilities are endless! SLAY films can be legitimately horrifying and gory, spooky and unsettling, campy and funny, political/science-fiction/dystopian-themed, animated, sexy, sweet, old-timey, new-timey... YOU NAME IT!

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News • Slog AM/PM • Coronavirus

Slog AM: Trump Won't Fund USPS Over Mail-In Voting, Jobless Claims Dip, Herman Cain Tweets From the Dead

by Jasmyne Keimig • Thursday at 8:30 am

TK TK TK TK
President Donald Trump admitted he's blocking funding for USPS over mail-in voting. Win McNamee/Getty
Washington state is changing the way they count negative COVID tests: Before, if a person tested negative for coronavirus twice, they were only counted once by the Department of Health (DOH). Now under this new system, both negative tests will be counted by the DOH in an attempt to provide a more comprehensive outlook on the disease in our state.

For the first time since March, under one million people filed for unemployment: 963,000 people filed first-time claims and another 489,000 applied under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, reports the New York Times. Those numbers are still ridiculously huge, easily beating the previous worst week on record in 1982, when 695,000 people filed for unemployment.

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Message to the City

A Message to the City from Rafael Soldi

by The Stranger • Thursday at 8:00 am

Rafael Soldi is a visual artist.
Rafael Soldi is a visual artist. Courtesy of Rafael Soldi

Good morning. It's Thursday, August 13, and for today's message we turn to the visual artist Rafael Soldi, who's just completed an absolutely beautiful project while in quarantine.

Rafael is a Peruvian­-born, Seattle-based artist and curator. His practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss.

What is the beautiful project he completed in quarantine? It's called CARGAMONTÓN, and in today's message he opens it up and shows you inside.

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News • Slog AM/PM

Slog PM: Veto Drama at the Seattle City Council, COVID Relief Talks Aren't Going Anywhere, I Miss Cats Discourse

by Chase Burns and Nathalie Graham • Wednesday at 5:20 pm

Lorena González, back when the council met IRL. Today she said, Our constituents are looking at us to take action in this period of time. We cant just freeze ourselves in amber.
Lorena González, back when the council met IRL. Today she said, "Our constituents are looking at us to take action in this period of time. We can't just freeze ourselves in amber." Lester Black

Biden and Harris made their first appearance together as Biden-Harris: Biden opened his speech by saying Harris is "a proven fighter for the middle class" who "knows how to make the hard calls" and is "ready to do this job on day one." Harris talked about "a new coalition of conscience" that is "demanding change" and "crying out for leadership." Here are those speeches from NBC News:

The Biden campaign also had a banner fundraising day: The online donation platform ActBlue processed around $30 million in donations in the 24 hours after the Harris pick was announced. Wall Street executives clamored that Kamala was a "GREAT CHOICE" and that the pick showed "excellent judgment" on Biden's part.

In other news: It did, Derulo. It did.


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News • Portland

Portland Lifts Ban on Duplexes, Triplexes, and Fourplexes

by Alex Zielinski • Wednesday at 4:17 pm

gettyimages-840586550.jpg
SOLODKAYA MARI / GETTY IMAGES

This article was originally published on our sister publication The Portland Mercury's blog Blogtown.

After years of debate, Portland City Council has passed a policy overhauling the city’s residential zoning rules to allow more housing within city limits.

The Residential Infill Project (RIP) will lift Portland’s decades-old ban on building "middle housing"—duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes—in the vast majority of the city’s neighborhoods, where current city rules only allow the construction of single-family homes. The final policy, four years in the making, is meant to improve housing affordability by increasing the sheer number of homes within Portland city limits—and begin to reverse the lasting impacts of local zoning laws created to exclude people of color from buying property.

"We cannot deny the impacts that exclusionary zoning have had and their racist origins," said City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, before casting her vote. "That is a vitally important piece of the conversation."

The vote comes a year after the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 2001, a law requiring cities with a population over 25,000 to allow construction of middle housing on land exclusively reserved for a single home.

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Film/TV • Fashion

I'm Thinking About... Moesha's Braids

by Jasmyne Keimig • Wednesday at 2:50 pm

I love the hairpin/box braid combo here.
I love the hairpin/box braid combo here. Screenshot from Netflix
To the delight of many, last month Netflix announced the arrival of seven popular Black sitcoms that have long been unavailable on streaming services. Moesha, The Game, Sister Sister, Girlfriends, The Parkers, Half & Half, and One on One will all be arriving over the next several months to the platform. What took them so long?!

The very first show to arrive on Netflix is Moesha, a series which followed the life of Moesha Mitchell (played by theeee R&B singer and legend Brandy Norwood), a teen living in Leimert Park, Los Angeles with her family. Airing from 1996 to 2001, Moesha was immensely popular during its six-season run and syndication for its quirky, Black teen girl lead and the distinctly Black fashion and hairstyles featured on the show.

“The show’s vision was of a cool young Black girl who was brave and creative in her life, and that [carried] over in her style," Sara Finney-Johnson, co-creator of Moesha, told GARAGE in an interview last year.

Particularly, Moesha's box braids that Brandy rocked both on and off the show have become iconic. So much so, that fans melted down last year when a rumor got out that Brandy's fastidiously done microbraids were ACTUALLY part of a lacefront wig (spoiler: the actress-singer's hairstylist Deedra Cole resolutely debunked that myth, saying her braids really did take hours).

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