Wanna get out of town with your sweetie but don’t know where to go? Well, good thing you happen to live in one of the greatest states in the U.S. for scenic road trips! While we do love Leavenworth and Orcas Island, crowds there are likely for holidays like Valentine’s Day, so we’ve rounded up a few off-track trips that you two will remember when you’re old and gray (hopefully, you know, together).

❤️ Check out our complete Seattle Valentine's Day guide. ❤️  
Find wine tastings, performances, and more ways to celebrate.

Imagine returning to your childhood home only to discover that something has changed. That something is you. You’re dead.

That’s the reality facing one of the most vital species in Puget Sound’s ecosystem, the salmon. For decades, scientists have seen that when fish return to their spawning grounds, something here has been killing them in astonishing numbers: In certain locations, 60 to 80 percent of the salmon die before they’re able to reproduce.

That’s a huge problem for just about everyone.

Kevin Muñoz is a self-taught artist in Austin who works in a folk realm of warm colors and loose textures to explore concepts of identity, longing, and happiness. His design background informs his practice, as does his upbringing in Southern California to Guatemalan parents. In our interview, we talk about overlapping disciplines, identity struggles, and the mighty power of parenting.

As a designer, I am often drawn to artists that came from the design world. What is your background in design?

Biden will end COVID national and public health emergencies on May 11: The move comes after House Republicans were foaming at the mouth to end the protections as soon as possible, and Biden decided to meet them halfway, reports The Washington Post. That means you'll start having to pay out-of-pocket for your COVID-19 treatments, at-home tests, and out-of-network vaccinations if you have private insurance. (If you are enrolled in a Medicaid program, then COVID tests ordered by your provider and vaccinations are still free.) Don't you just love America!?!??!

Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz released a statement about that SPD cop who hit student Jaahnavi Kandula with his cop car and killed her: He confirmed that officer Kevin A. Dave was the driver, which DivestSPD reported yesterday. Diaz said that Dave had his emergency lights on and was responding "as an EMT to a Priority 1 emergency call." SPD's so-called “Traffic Collision Investigation Squad” is conducting a criminal investigation of the incident “as we would with any fatal collision investigation,” and will forward any potential charges to the prosecutor. The Office of Police Accountability also started an investigation to check for department policy breaches. A “drug recognition expert” found “no evidence” Dave was impaired.

On Tuesday, Roosevelt resident Ron Davis announced his campaign for the open District 4 seat on City Council, giving the University District, Wallingford, and Laurelhurst yet another progressive choice on the ballot.

Davis has spent years consulting start-ups and sitting on boards of urbanist-y organizations such as Futurewise and Seattle Subway. He was also a member of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, which he said was not NIMBY. Now, Davis feels compelled to “get off the sidelines” and run for office, he said.

My fiancé has a foot fetish, and he hates it. Can you tell him it’s harmless and immutable?

Harmless! Immutable! Also, we’re living in the golden age of foot-fetishist representation—from the conniving, murderous, unctuous Ser Larys Strong on HBO’s House of the Dragon (prestige television!) to the sweet, goofy, traumatized Jimmy on TLC’s MILF Manor (trash television!), guys with a thing for feet are suddenly all over our screens. And as kinks go, there are far… well, I don’t want to say worse fetishes. Let’s just say there are fetishes that are far harder to explain, far riskier to attempt, and that a vanilla partner is far less likely to happily indulge you in.

Would you contact an ex after a year to ask how they are?

Depends on...

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

Saturday night at the Crocodile was Seattle's last chance to see ESG—NYC's most fun and stripped-down funk group over the last 40-plus years—perform live, and, according to an informal survey conducted by my ears and eyes, everyone left the club elated. For a lot of folks in the 83% full venue, this was a bucket-list show, and the sweat the dancers in the crowd generated could have filled a bucket.

Straight out of South Bronx, ESG began in 1978 with four Scroggins sisters and their percussionist amigo Tito Libran, and immediately established themselves as a unique force of rhythmic joy and songs of blunt female empowerment. Their most atypical song, the perilous instrumental “UFO,” became their most sampled, lending Twilight Zone guitar pulsations to scores of hip-hop and electronic-music cuts. But it's their guitarist/percussionist Renee Scroggins's youthful sass on the mic that's endeared ESG to legions of feminist women and their allies.

It may be the shortest month of the year, but thankfully, February isn't short on superb things to do. There's still plenty going on in every category of events, plus big dates like Valentine's Day, Black History Month, and Mardi Gras. Find all of February's highlights below, with events from Bruce Springsteen to Sarah Silverman and from the 11th Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival to the Seattle Polar Plunge. Planning further ahead? Check out our complete guide to 2023.

LIVE MUSIC

Eric Bellinger
R&B singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger is known for his unbelievably smooth vocals and knack for writing soul hits. Over the past couple of years, he has become a go-to songwriter for big names like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Usher. Bellinger will be joined by fellow neo-soul heavies Trevor Jackson, Kyle Banks, and June Poole.
Neumos (Thurs Feb 2)

Good news: The Stranger is hiring!

We’re looking to add a full-time staff writer to our small, dynamic team. This position will primarily focus on covering criminal justice—from cops to courts to crime on the streets and in the executive suites. 

The Stranger serves up incisive news and culture content to the Seattle area, and we’re seeking applicants who can keep up with the quick pace of digital reporting. This staffer would work with editors to write features, shorter reported pieces, and national/local news roundups. 

We’re looking for a reporter who’s hungry to break stories that hold police and prosecutors accountable, dig into crime from a restorative justice perspective, explore public safety alternatives, and get the city talking.

Buildings of Seattle is one of the best things to happen on Instagram. It came to life at the beginning of the pandemic and provides detailed but compressed descriptions of the homes, apartment buildings, and towers of our city. I did not know there was so much to say about Seattle's architecture until I read the steady and never-disappointing stream of information on this feed of photos and words written in a style that is as informative as it is charming. And the charm of Buildings of Seattle can certainly be attributed to the fact that its handler is an amateur. He, Keith Cote, has no formal training in architecture.

Indeed, Cote, who moved to Seattle 10 years ago from the Boston area, has revived, in a sharing social network, a tradition that's mostly forgotten in a society that prizes professionals—in sports, in the sciences, in literature. But the professional only emerged recently, around the middle of the 19th century. Before that period of specialization, those investigating the motion of the planets, or examining with a microscope the forms of life invisible to the eye, or composing poems or essays were the main amateurs. Charles Darwin and Marcel Proust were in the twilight of that mode.  

Preach!

I think stickers make every neighborhood better. Why would you take it upon yourself to be a fuckin' cop? DON'T SCRAPE!

As we round the corner from January into February, there are plenty of events to check out, from Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations to Aubrey Gordon with Lindy West: You Just Need to Lose Weight and from Field To Table to The FRIENDS Experience: The One in Seattle. 

MONDAY

FILM

Radical Films: 15 Movies That Shook the World
This is not your standard-issue "radical films" class—you won't hear a peep from film bros about Citizen Kane or The Godfather. Instead, SIFF is taking a globetrotter's approach, with deep dives into Japanese horror, Mexican realism, Bollywood Westerns, and more. The series of hybrid talks at SIFF Film Center will be presented in conjunction with screenings of each film at SIFF Uptown, so do your homework by catching flicks like Enter the Dragon, La Haine, and City of God throughout the five-week series.
(SIFF Film Center, Uptown)

It’s a quiet, snowy day on the Duwamish Waterway, the thin channel that separates West Seattle from Sodo and Georgetown. Along the banks, industrial operations churn away as they have for the last century: On one side of the water, a car-crusher smashes old automobiles; on the other, a conveyor belt feeds a mountainous pile of gypsum particles, and ships laden with cargo slip beneath the bridges to West Seattle.

But amidst the busy industry, another process is at work, transforming the landscape–slowly, steadily, every moment of the day. The natural habitat that formed the landscape of the Duwamish for centuries before colonizers arrived has started to regrow, revealing a face of Seattle that hasn’t been seen in over a hundred years. And you’re invited to watch.