THE INAUGURAL SPLIFF FILM FESTIVAL KICKS OFF THIS WEEKEND

Slog PM: Pink Fluid Leaking into Seattle Schools, Notre Dame's Bees Survive Fire, Big News for Foot Fetishists

by Nathalie Graham • Friday at 6:00 pm

French bees dont fuck around.
French bees don't fuck around. William Jones-Warner/Getty Images

Memo reveals city attorney's office ruled imposing an income tax was illegal: In 2014, Assistant City Attorney Kent Meyer advised the Seattle City Council that passing a net income tax would be illegal. That's what they were trying to do back then. This memo has been the center of a legal debate in the present day because the city council passed a tax on total income in 2017. They've been in court about it because it's unconstitutional. People opposed to the 2017 measure believe the 2014 memo backs their argument, that an income tax is illegal. City Attorney Pete Holmes doesn't think so.

UW is a haven for nerds: We already knew that, but more nerds and e-sports aficionados are going to flock to campus now. The university has just opened its state-of-the-art Esports Arena & Gaming Lounge in the basement of the Husky Union Building (the HUB). From GeekWire: "The arena provides access to 40 high-end gaming computers, two VR systems, a casting station for live streaming to Twitch and popular, unlocked PC games. The lounge will also serve as a space for sponsored tournaments." Study before you game, Huskies!!!

Alaskan Way Viaduct demolition is over 30 percent done: Want to see the progress? Me too. I'm mildly turned on by time lapses:

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News • City

Rob’s Replacements, Millionaire Candidates, the Ethics of Shaun Scott's Suggested Donations, and More City Council Election News

by Lester Black • Friday at 5:50 pm

Voters will decide this fall who gets to work here.
Voters will decide this fall who gets to work here. City of Seattle

‘Suggested Donations’ OK for Democracy Vouchers: In last week's election roundup I reported on allegations made against District 4 candidate Shaun Scott. The socialist organizer had asked for $50 in Democracy Vouchers as a suggested, but not mandatory, donation in order to attend an upcoming town hall. The angry Facebookers over at Safe Seattle accused Scott of breaking the law because his request for the donations was “trick and misleading.”

It is illegal for candidates to trade Democracy Vouchers for any kind of payment or reward. So did Scott’s suggested donation amount to a violation? Last week an employee at Seattle’s Ethics and Elections Commission said it wasn’t clear if it was a violation. This week, Wayne Barnett, the executive director of the commission, told me that Scott had not violated the law.

“A ‘suggested donation’ doesn’t violate the law that bars people from buying or selling vouchers,” Barnett wrote in an e-mail.

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Sponsored

Authentic Experiences through Lifestyles

SEATTLE, WA- With six different lifestyles crafted to fit every individual’s needs, Origins Cannabis is bringing 420 to all this April. Cannabis Guides are trained and prepared to educate customers - new and established- on what products will work best for their preferred experience. With the best quality and best pricing in the state, it’s the perfect time to explore confidently.

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Animals

Meet Freeway Francine, Seattle's Cutest Cat

by Nathalie Graham • Friday at 4:45 pm

Freeway sure is a big kitty
Freeway sure is a big kitty Neal Callahan

You may recognize Sandra Lee Dejong, 77, from her breakout role as the farmer’s wife in the 1995 hit family drama Born to Be Wild. Or, maybe you saw her and her cat Freeway Francine in The Stranger's pet issue.

Sandra, or Sandy, contacted The Stranger's sales team because she wanted her cat, Freeway Francine (named because the cat was found by an Othello, Washington freeway), featured in our Ugly Pet Issue. The only problem? Freeway wasn't ugly.

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Things To Do

Last-Minute Plans: 111 Free, Cheap & Easy Things To Do in Seattle This Weekend: April 19-21, 2019

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Friday at 4:41 pm

Want to drink hazy beers, eat stoner-rific snacks, and hang out with baby goats? Head to IPA Daze this weekend.
Want to drink hazy beers, eat stoner-rific snacks, and hang out with baby goats? Head to IPA Daze this weekend. Shutterstock

Panicking because you don’t know what to do this weekend and you're short on cash? Don't worry—below, find all of your options for last-minute entertainment that won't cost more than $10, ranging from Cucci's Spooky Weed to the World Rhythm Festival, and from a Canna 420 Carnival to the 8th Annual Easter Bonnet Contest. For even more options, check out our complete Things To Do calendar and our list of cheap & easy things to do in Seattle all year long.

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.

    FRIDAY

    COMMUNITY

  1. The Botany of Birth, Life and Death: Parables for All Religions and None
    In honor of the season of death and rebirth, join a botany-focused discussion with weighty prompts like "What does death mean to an organism with no heart, no brain, where every cell is a world unto itself?" and "What is a resurrection plant and is it ever really dead?" 
    (Capitol Hill, $10)

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Music

Get Heady with The Budos Band at Neumos on 4/20

by Leilani Polk • Friday at 4:30 pm

These guys rock harder than this picture suggests.
These guys rock harder than this picture suggests. Shervin Lainez

There are plenty of things you can do to mark your 4/20 “holiday,” but staying in shouldn’t be one of them. It’s Saturday night! Toke up and get the hell out of the house. Might I suggest an evening with Staten Island–spawned Daptone Records–repped Budos Band?

The instrumental ensemble are groove-hawkers of the nth degree, synthesizing funk, psychedelic soul, and Afrobeat with hard and greasy psych rock, all built on ominous organ swells, heavy-driving low end, an urgent trumpet-and-bari-sax attack, and slinking, surging, striding, and roiling rhythms washed in hand percussive textures and rinsed in ’70s vintage warmth. It’s the sort of music you want cued up as your own personal baddest-bitch-on-the-block soundtrack, music that will make your walking down the street feel purposeful and righteous as fuck.

This tour supports their 2019 fifth LP, The Budos Band V. RIYL: Anitbalas, Adrian Younge, Shuggie Otis. This show is officially sold out, however, you can always find tickets if you try hard enough. Some media below to encourage you to do it.

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Visual Art • Weed

Rihanna Asks for Wi-Fi Passwords Just Like You and I Do

by Jasmyne Keimig • Friday at 4:18 pm

A bedroom is a sacred place. One for meditation, fucking, crying, calling your mom, eating, writing, reading, cleaning, checking your breast for lumps, masturbating, lighting incense, clipping your toenails, casting spells, reading tarot, smoking weed, spying on your neighbors, doing your makeup, drinking with your friends, etc. My bedroom is MINE and important to me as a space to keep safe and holy.

Women.Weed.Wifi, the all-womxn of color collective of artists, healers, and community organizers who educate and heal through cannabis, is on a similar wave. The collective has set up their Sanctuary of the Modern Divine Feminine in Mount Analogue for the Space Residency program for the month of April, transforming the space into a giant Spice Girls World Tour Bus-inspired bedroom.

The gallery is bursting with books, plants, crystals, clothes, mirrors, and energy. I had Women.Weed.Wifi's main partners, Amanya Maloba, Janice Ibarra, and Vanity Thomas, share with me some of their favorite objects from their fantasy bedroom.

“Wuts Da WiFi?” Rihanna Painting

Uhh.....sorry.....whats the wifi??
Uhh.....sorry.....what's the wifi?? Jasmyne Keimig
"This painting is by Anand Adler and was created for one of our early art shows in 2016, Dexterity," Amanya wrote to me. "Rihanna is definitely a major influence, so I had to cop it! She’s almost like a WWW mascot now. I hope to share a blunt with her one day." It should be noted that at SPLIFF—which opens today!—Amanya is featured in an instructional video on how to roll a magical "Bitch Better Have My Money" blunt in the style of a Rihanna Fenty Beauty makeup tutorial.

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Housekeeping

Now Hiring: The Stranger's Sister Paper, Portland Mercury, is Looking for a New Music Editor!

by Wm.™ Steven Humphrey • Friday at 3:43 pm

dog_headphones_DeanDrobot.jpg
DeanDrobot / Getty Images Plus

The Stranger's sister paper down south, Portland Mercury , is losing music editor/senior editor Ciara Dolan, who is moving to California to seek her fortune (and presumably to pan for gold). But what's bad news for us is GOOD NEWS FOR YOU (or perhaps someone you know), because the Mercury is now hiring a brand new music editor! If you love music and writing, this is a fantastic opportunity to work in a very fun atmosphere in one of the greatest music cities in the world. Check out our ad below, and even if you're not interested, help us spread the word, bird!

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Weed • Things To Do

52 Weed Events for 4/20 2019 in Seattle

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Friday at 2:58 pm

Check out Seattle’s raunchy DIY rapper and acid drag purveyor Michetes psychedelic drag and variety show Am I Right, Ladies? on April 20.
Check out Seattle’s raunchy DIY rapper and acid drag purveyor Michete's psychedelic drag and variety show Am I Right, Ladies? on April 20. Courtesy of the artist

Pot dispensaries are open throughout the year, but 4/20 (Saturday, April 20), the universal day for cannabis appreciation, is an extra special opportunity to wear your bud-loving heart on your sleeve. If you want to celebrate properly but are bored by the idea of getting stoned and watching Netflix on your couch, you're in luck. Below, we've compiled all the weed-centric things to do on the holiday and throughout the weekend, from The Stranger's SPLIFF Film Fest to drag performances like Michete's Am I Right, Ladies? to the hoppy-hazy IPA Daze to Neon Taco Bell. Find all the options for this weekend below, and check out even more events on our weed calendar.

Found something you like and don't want to forget about it later? Click "Save Event" on any of the linked events below to add it to your own private list.

FRIDAY

COMEDY
Cloneapalooza's Comedy Showcase
If you're in Tacoma, prepare for 4/20 with comedians Tyler Smith, Casey McClaine, Narrin Vann, Jason Stewart, and host Brock Terrano.
O'Malley's Irish Pub, Tacoma

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Music

The Top 5 Tracks Burning up the Airwaves on Eva Walker's KEXP Show, Audioasis

by Dave Segal • Friday at 2:38 pm

When not singing and playing guitar for rising Seattle rock band the Black Tones, Walker is exposing KEXP listeners to overlooked Northwest musical gems.
When not singing and playing guitar for rising Seattle rock band the Black Tones, Walker is exposing KEXP listeners to overlooked Northwest musical gems. Brian Snyder

EVA WALKER (KEXP, The Black Tones)

Current top 5 favorite tracks:

Black Ends, “Maybe When” (self-released)

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City • Architecture

Because Rich Seattle Has Too Many Poor People, QFC Has Installed Monitors That Assume You Are One of the Poor

by Charles Mudede • Friday at 2:07 pm

You are criminal even before you are criminal...
You are a criminal even before you are criminal... Charles Mudede

Basically, Seattle has a homeless crisis that no one with actual power is willing to do anything about. And so the city's present situation is this: As the number of the excluded soars, due to the collapse of public housing and social services, and a building industry that is almost totally devoted to forms of housing that have the upper middle class as its poor, businesses and institutions and individuals directly exposed to the consequences of this extreme and, most importantly, imposed poverty (there is no such thing as real/natural poverty in our society) are left to defend themselves. This condition is the source of the Social Darwinist imaginary that transforms political economic (and therefore cultural) phenomena into the wild trees and beasts of a jungle. The homeless of Seattle: Red in tooth and claw.

It is in this context of culturally imposed scarcity of capital, housing, and general welfare that the developments in QFC on Broadway and Pike are, for the most part, explained. A few years ago, the supermarket closed its second exit, which it saw as bleeding thieves. Soon after, it hired black-shod and -clothed security guards who can enforce property rights with lethal force. A few months ago, it placed monitors in front of machines that make people do the job of both a grocery clerk and bagger, but with no pay (self-checkout machines). Last week, it installed hanging screens that go out of their way to make themselves known. They are all over the supermarket and want you to see that you are being watched.

When you get close to one, it turns on and you are there, in the aisle, caught in the consumerist squeeze of trying determine what is the best item at the lowest price (this is a paradise "whose skies [are] the color of hell-flames" for the subject of neoclassical economics, homo economicus). On the screen appears you holding a can of tuna or rolls of toilet paper and the words, in red: RECORDING IN PROGRESS.

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News • 2020

Elizabeth Warren Joins Team ITMFA

by Rich Smith • Friday at 1:40 pm

Warren, welcome.
Warren, welcome. DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES

Elizabeth Warren appears to be the first 2020 presidential candidate to call for Trump's impeachment following the release of Barr's version of Robert Mueller's report. On Friday the senator from Massachusetts laid out her case on the president's favorite platform:

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Food & Drink • Things To Do • Food News

A New Food Truck with Smoked Meat and More Seattle Food News You Can Use: April 19, 2019 Edition

by Stranger Things To Do Staff • Friday at 1:30 pm

The new food truck Odin Star begins slinging porchetta sandwiches and other meaty delights today.
The new food truck Odin Star begins slinging porchetta sandwiches and other meaty delights today. Odin Star Sandwiches

This week, Wallingford's beloved poke hole-in-the-wall 45th Stop N Shop joins the South Lake Union lunch crowd, and a new food truck comes bearing delicious smoked meat sandwiches. Read on for that and more recent food developments, like a new chocolate factory coming to Pike Place Market next month. For more ideas, check out our list of food and drink specials to try in April, our list of weed events for 4/20, our guide to where to eat for Easter brunch, and our full food and drink calendar.

OPENINGS
45th Stop N Shop Poke Bar
The popular Wallingford family-owned convenience store and poke bar, which enjoys a cult following as one of the first places to get poke in Seattle, has expanded with a second poke bar location in South Lake Union, which soft-opened near Whole Foods earlier this week. The new location is twice the size of the original and retains the same menu, with the addition of edamame kimchi. Beer, wine, sake, and kombucha on tap will also be available to drink.
South Lake Union

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Weed

Don't Drive Stoned on 4/20, Dummy

by Lester Black • Friday at 1:05 pm

Dont drive high.
Don't drive high. sestovic/ Getty

Driving stoned in Washington is dumb. Not only because you might kill yourself or someone else if you do a bunch of dabs and then drive down I-5, but also because you are putting yourself in a lot of legal danger by driving stoned. It’s really easy to get charged with a pot DUI, even if you don’t feel impaired, and that danger is especially elevated this weekend while cops are on high alert for people celebrating the international stoner holiday of 4/20.

So if there was ever a time to take the bus instead of driving, it’s this Saturday. After all, it is way more fun to celebrate 4/20 and enjoy a blunt, a fresh bowl of top shelf bud, hit a nice vape pen, or eat your favorite edible when you’re letting someone else do the driving.

I would recommend you take one of Seattle’s mediocre but very necessary public transit options during this holiday weekend. Ride a bus, take a ferry or a water taxi, or hop on the light rail. Or, if you are not in a rush and looking to waste a lot of time, just hop on one of our streetcars. Public transit literally saves lives and is better for the environment.

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Olympia

Human Composting Bill Passes in Washington State

by Katie Herzog • Friday at 12:33 pm

An artist rendering of the future Recompose Seattle
An artist rendering of the future Recompose Seattle Katrina Spade

Some excellent news for people who want to be composted came down from Olympia Friday when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 5001, which could change the future of after-death care in Washington state.

"I am over the moon!" Katrina Spade says about the bill's passage. "It feels amazing to have this bill pass, and with so much support behind it."

Spade, an architect by training, is the founder of Recompose, an organization working to revolutionize what we do with bodies after death. The phrase "human composting" describes it best, although, for obvious reasons, Spade prefers the term "recomposition" or “natural organic reduction." Until now, it hasn't been legal to compost people in any state in the U.S., but if, as expected, Gov. Inslee signs the bill, that will soon change: Instead of being buried or cremated, the two most popular forms of body disposal in the U.S., in the future, bodies could go to facilities like the one Spade is designing. They will be laid into a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw—all materials that help speed the decomposition process—and broken down into soil. It happens shockingly quick: In around a month, the body will be transformed into rich, living soil by thermophilic bacteria that thrive at certain temperatures (and, yes, this includes the bones and the teeth).

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Savage Love

We Got a Lot of Nice Letters This Week—Really!

by Dan Savage • Friday at 12:19 pm

1548976856-savage-letter-of-the-day-stamp-2019.jpg

Recent Savage Love Letters of the Day: They're really into each other, but there are issues (for starters, her boyfriend); some letters don't require a response (but she got one anyway); learning the lessons and moving on with confidence; and the sex was great but then they fell in love… And, as always, last week's column and Savage Lovecast.

Regarding Never Mind, the woman who didn't need a response but got one anyway...

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