Seattle Holiday Drink Week is December 4-10 and some of The Stranger’s favorite bars and restaurants are serving up glasses of good cheer. Participants include Bang Bang Kitchen, Athenian Seafood Restaurant, and Kamp Social House. Their Gay Yule Tide drink with gingerbread syrup is served over a snowball!

That said, it’s never a bad idea to have a drink recipe tucked away in your stocking for the impromptu holiday happy hour or for when the weather outside truly is frightful and you just want to stay indoors. Thankfully, Marceil Van Camp at Kamp Social House shared her secrets for the Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Kamper, a festive and fizzy cocktail spiced with cinnamon that you can easily make at home for one or 100 people.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority activates Severe Weather Response Protocols when daily high temperatures drop to 40 degrees or lower for three days in a row and/or there’s at least two inches of snow on the ground. (You can check the severe weather status and find open emergency shelters are at kcrha.org/resources/severe-weather-shelter.) But what about the rest of the not-severe but sure-the-fuck-not-very-comfortable winter days? What about those days when the temp doesn’t dip below freezing but the windchill sure as hell does and the clouds are pissing out the most annoying misty kind of drizzle that doesn’t seem like it should amount to much but manages to soak through every layer within 20 minutes? 

Everyone deserves a warm shower and a hot cup of coffee; no one should have to sleep in the cold. Here are a few places you can go if you need to warm up, as well as information on how to donate if you want to help others stay healthy and comfortable this winter.

Happy Birthday to Rich Smith! Our illustrious leader turns forever young today. Make sure to wish him a good year in the comments before you hurl your vitriol. [Eds note: Thank you. I thought I was 38 for most of the year, but it turns out that I am in fact turning 38 today, so I feel like I got a little extra time.]

Today's weather: BRRRRRR! Foggy morning today, but the sun comes out this afternoon with a high of 41 degrees.

About ten years ago, I was in a serious relationship with someone I loved more than I had ever loved anyone before. I hoped to spend my life with her. But I was deep in the closet, and the process of coming out annihilated large parts of my life, including our relationship. I dumped her and tried to tell myself she wouldn’t understand. In the years that followed, I came into my own as a proud and potent goddess, but I felt haunted by how I’d pushed my ex away. The regret that marked her absence tinged all my emerging triumphs.
In the chaos of the early pandemic, I sent a simple email, curtailed into a modest how-are-you, and she sent a brief-but-cordial reply. I didn’t take offense. It was kind of her to reply at all. But some months later, she reached out, asking to meet. Apparently, her boyfriend had dumped her, and it reminded her of how I’d dumped her. Despite my nerves, we had a simple afternoon in a park gabbing about poetry and ethics, laughing easily. I didn’t make any overtures. Regarding the past, I said only that I regretted how I’d left things. She replied quickly, “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s not like our relationship really had a future.” Yikes!
It’s been a few years and she’s become a close friend. We go hiking, drinking, we go on double dates with our partners — me and my wife, her and her new boyfriend. And yet… I still think about her every day. Even my wife knows I’m crazy about her! (We’re poly, it’s not an issue.) I’m writing because I don’t know what to do. For almost ten years I’ve tried to get over her, but I have proven stubbornly head-over-heels. I’ve tried separation, several types of therapy, even fiery rituals, but I still wake up with her name on my lips. I worry that if I were to broach the totality of my feelings, it would alienate her all over again. What’s a gal to do?

Confounded Heartfelt Amorous Damsel

You mention coming out, you mention transitioning, you mention being an out-and-proud goddess now — so, you’re a trans woman who had to end what the world perceived to be a cis-het relationship before you embarked on your transition.
And based on your ex’s reaction when you reconnected and apologized for dumping her (“It’s not like our relationship really had a future!”), CHAD, along with the fact that your ex has only ever dated men (or people she had every reason to believe were men), it sounds like your ex is a straight cis woman. Which means you couldn’t be the goddess you are now — you couldn’t. have the life you have now (to say nothing of the wife you have now) — if you were still with your ex, CHAD, because you couldn’t be her partner and yourself at the same time.
I’m going to crawl out on a limb and guess that however bumpy your transition may have been, the trade-off was worth it. You lost some things — including a romantic relationship with your ex — but you gained so much more.
If seeing your ex socially — if having her in your life — is too painful, well, don’t see her socially. If you want to tell her that you miss the relationship you once had and still have feelings for her, you can do that without blowing up the relationship you have with her now. Lots of people who are friends with their exes have said or heard variations on, “If things had been different, things could’ve turned out differently,” and remained friends.
You weren’t the person you thought you were when you were with your ex — or you weren’t the person were coerced into pretending to be — but you had important and meaningful experiences before you transitioned. Feel sad about what you may have lost as a consequence of transitioning takes nothing away from what you’ve gained. But the intensity of these feelings for your ex— waking up every day thinking about her — makes me wonder whether she’s a symbolic stand-in for everything else you lost. Maybe a few sessions with a good therapist could put your feelings for your ex into perspective.
P.S. If what you mean by, “We’ve silently agreed to uphold a narrative that we’re just old friends,” is, “I’m being shoved into a new closet,” that’s not good. If never acknowledging that you were a relationship is the price of admission you have to pay for her friendship, it may be too steep a price a pay. Awkwardness is fine… shame isn’t not.

Click here to read the rest of this week's Mini Savage Love (free-to-all).

Depeche Mode has a new album, Memento Mori, which is also the name of the present tour. It visited Climate Pledge Arena last night. How did it go? The veteran British band cold knew that the audience was there to hear the old stuff, the music made between 1990 and 1981. They got the balance right. A good number of the tunes were what the fans wanted (and, for many, paid serious money) to hear; and an equally good number were the songs they wanted the audience to hear. But here is the thing. The new music wasn't bad or intolerable. It was, according to my ears, pretty consistent in mood with the tunes that made Depeche Mode world-famous.

God-shit-ass-buns, it’s freezing outside and now you’re stranded in the cold, stupid woods on what should have been a pleasant Pacific Northwest vacation because you didn’t know it got dark at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

This can happen for many reasons—an overly ambitious REI spending spree, a few too many treats from Shawn Kemp’s Cannabis—but no matter. You need help, and fast. Luckily for you, we’re a buncha burly, uh, burlesons here at The Stranger so we rated some of our biggest, brawniest wildlife on how likely they are to keep you warm under dire circumstances. Think Luke Skywalker and the tauntaun, Hugh Glass and the horse, or Bart Simpson and the kangaroo. Gutting knife optional.

Renny Cobain, owner of Tough Tatas Pottery, has put boobs on just about everything—mugs, bowls, plates, planters, flasks, pinch pots, sponge holders, matchstick holders… but does she have a favorite?

“My taste in boobs is always changing,” she said. “But my current favorites are my ‘little knockers’ wind chimes and ‘tits and butts’ ashtrays. But boobs on a coffee mug are a classic.” 

You won't regret taking the time to plan out your week with our top picks guide. We're taking the time to shout-out happenings from alt-J: An Awesome Wave 10th Anniversary Show to SMooCH 2023, from Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé to A John Waters Christmas, and so much more.

MONDAY

FILM

Cross-Faded Cinema with DJ Nicfit
You might've heard the urban legend of a strange synchronicity between The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon from some cool stoner kid growing up. Inspired by the idea, Cross-Faded Cinema (curated by Seattle's own DJ Nicfit) twists the soundtracks of cult films, giving them a spin that the Seattle International Film Festival describes as "mesmerizing." The film being screened for this showing hasn't been announced, but it promises a trippy, ultra-sensory time. LINDSAY COSTELLO
(Here-After at the Crocodile, Belltown)

No one at the warehouse in Florida knows Hayden is a trans woman. It’s best they don’t.

To stay hidden, she binds her chest. She doesn’t flinch when they say violent things like, “If I found out anyone here was transgender, I’d take them out back and shoot them,” or, “If I found out my boyfriend hooked up with a trans woman, you’d find him hanging from a light pole the next morning.” She doesn’t say anything when they ask her opinion. 

Evictions are up 100%: According to the Seattle Times, King County landlords filed more than 600 eviction cases in October, more than double the number filed a year ago, as Washington's final pandemic-era tenant protections expire and rent assistance becomes harder to find. 

Do you make six figures? If not, then your family of four is just barely getting by in Seattle, according to a couple new reports analyzed by the Seattle Times. That "true living cost" threshold shot up 80% since 2005, thanks to rapid increases in the prices of "food, housing and child care." To address those issues, we need to tax the rich and large corporations and invest that money in housing subsidies and worker pay, but good luck getting a progressive tax through your new conservative council majority, Seattle! 

My favorite picture of Martin Gore is found in Wikipedia. It was taken right around the time, 1986, the band he co-founded in 1980, Depeche Mode, released its masterpiece, Black Celebration. In the picture, which was taken in sunny Los Angeles, Gore looks like he is from a planet where "the sun don't ever shine." His world is nothing but a dark city. Its street lights flicker and buzz like an insect caught in an electric swatter, its alleys, gutters, and windows are always as cold as the distant stars; the rain there is toxic, and fumes satanically rise from machines that "never stop the action."

Gore's bleached hair and eyelashes, his sun-starved skin and lips, the studded leather straps and jacket—Los Angeles must have marveled at him in the way a person on a horse marvels at a flying saucer.

"$115.77," said the guy working the merch booth at the Moore on Wednesday night to a Sunn O))) and/or Earth fan. Another happy customer, no doubt.

As far as the eye could see, the line for those drone-metal bands' T-shirts, recordings, and posters snaked around the venue. As you tucked into your Thanksgiving dinner, there were punters likely still waiting in line to purchase goods from these groups with deep roots in Seattle's heavy-rock scene. It's safe to say there will never not be somebody with a credit card poised to obtain Sunn O))) and Earth's wares. And that is somehow comforting in an industry where musicians struggle to make fractions of pennies per stream and most are lucky to break even on tour. 

BEHOLD! The Stranger’s HOLIDAY DRINK WEEK will be here sooner than Santa can get his big booty down yer chimney! Get ready for an ENTIRE WEEK (December 4-10) of specially crafted, original holiday-themed cocktails mixed by the best bartenders in town… and get this, they're only $12 each!

Seattle has a reputation for getting more rain than any other American city thanks in part to fresh transplants who learned everything they know from watching Frasier and Grey’s Anatomy. The truth is, the American South clobbers us on yearly rainfall—Seattle’s not even in the top 20! But we are number five or something for most rainy days per year.

Because of that, our restaurant scene’s hygge levels are through the roof. From the precious Cafe Allegro, tucked in its ivy-draped U District alleyway, to Wallingford’s A Muddy Cup with its warm tones and carved duck decoy decor, Seattle does a cozy cafe as all hell. And even though we don’t have the most rain ever, it’s still gonna be a long, wet winter for at least the next four or five months, so you’re gonna need a good fleece-lined hangout. Here are some favorites for snuggly season.