EverOut Yesterday 3:30 PM

The Biggest April 2023 Events to Know About in Seattle

The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, and More Events All Month Long

No fooling—the first full month of spring brings tons of entertainment options across genres to Seattle. Below, we've compiled the biggest art and theater shows, concerts, food events, and other great things to do, from Shania Twain to Billy Porter, and from Independent Bookstore Day to Record Store Day. You can also browse our April events calendar to see these events at a glance, or check out our spring guide for seasonal events like plant sales and things to do for Earth Day.

COMMUNITY & FESTIVALS

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 2023
After the long, hard winter, the best way to shock you out of seasonal depression is to stick your face in a ton of fresh flowers. You’re in luck, because Skagit Valley’s annual Tulip Festival is really something to behold as, quite literally, millions of pink, yellow, purple, orange, and red tulips shoot up from the ground and announce that winter is finally over. (Or at least, it’s over in the rest of the world. It’ll be chilly here through June.) While you could fly to Holland to get your fill of tulips, the trip up I-5 is quicker, safer, cheaper, and, with one mountain range to the east and another to your west, even more Instagrammable than Amsterdam.
Skagit Valley (April 1–30)

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Labor Yesterday 2:22 PM

Senate Grills a Bratty Howard Schultz on Starbucks’ Union Busting Tactics

To Defend Himself, He Made a Mockery of His Father’s Story

This morning, appearing in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz showed the world that he is crumbling under his origin story and bringing Starbucks down with him.

Schultz loves to tell stories, and in front of Congress today he got the lesson from his favorite one wrong.

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Each spring, the MLK Business Association's dining promo Plate of Nations presents a two-week-long opportunity to sample the rich and varied cuisines of Rainier Valley, with shareable menus priced at $25 and $35. They promise that this year's lineup is set to be "the best yet," with over 30 restaurants participating from March 24-April 9. If you're not sure where to start, we've taken the liberty of curating five of our favorite spots on the list, from Bang Bang Kitchen to Vientiane Grocery, but we encourage you to get out there and explore the neighborhood's many culinary gems. For more ideas, check out our food and drink guide.


Bang Bang Kitchen
Sisters Miki and Yuki Sodos (the former owners of the dearly departed Cafe Pettirosso) pay homage to their native New Mexico at this homey restaurant and bar in Othello. That means lots and lots of smoky, spicy Hatch chiles—a prized pepper grown in the Hatch valley and served with all manner of New Mexican cuisine. During Plate of Nations, you can snag a covetable meal for two with chips; a choice of salsa or Hatch chile queso; chicken wings or fried Brussels sprouts; four enchiladas with your choice of up to two proteins (green chile chicken, seasoned ground beef, jackfruit al pastor, or tofu chorizo); a side of red rice; and a side of slow-cooked pinto beans, all for the very respectable price of $35.
Othello
Pickup, dine-in

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Food & Drink Yesterday 10:00 AM

Food Fighters

Many of Seattle’s Successful Indie Food and Drink Businesses Survived the Pandemic, Only to Close in Recent Months as Landlords Opt for Chains and Established Names

Miri Plowman sits, surrounded by smallwares and appliances in the dimly lit kitchen where her dream came to life, and starts to cry. She’s been looking at photos from 2018, when she opened the beloved beach cafe, Miri’s Golden Gardens, with husband Gabe Skoda. 

“We were so excited and full of hope, ready to give this thing to the community,” she says, brushing away a bouncy brown curl to wipe tears from her eyes. “I'm so sad that I couldn't figure out how to make it work without it breaking me.” 

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I, Anonymous Yesterday 9:47 AM

Bad Vibes

Every time I venture out to buy a sex toy, I’m greeted with a wall of options that range in color from princess pink to royal purple.
 
Sure, if I squint I can find a light blue one here or maybe an orange one there, but pinks and purples are by far the dominant colors in the high-quality vibrator rainbow.
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FDA green-lights Narcan for over-the-counter sale. For the first time since the onset of the opioid crisis in the United States, Narcan, the nasal-spray version of naloxone, which reverses overdoses, will soon be sold without a prescription. As soon as late summer, you'll likely be able to find the life-saving stuff "in big-box chains, vending machines, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations and even online retailers," according to the New York Times. 

Paid sick leave for gig workers: Seattle is the first city in the country to create permanent paid sick and safe time for gig workers. The Seattle City Council unanimously passed an ordinance allowing app-based independent contracts to accrue one day of paid sick leave for every 30 days of work. The ordinance will go into effect May 1 for food-delivery workers and Jan 1 for all other covered workers. 

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Music Tue 12:33 PM

Everybody Played Everything

Post-Rock Legends Tortoise Wowed with a Double-Vibraphone Attack

Despite not having released any new music since 2016's The Catastrophist, Tortoise nearly packed Neumos on a Monday night. That's how strong their fans' loyalty is.

The mostly middle-aged crowd, who surely had to rise early Tuesday for important jobs, watched with reverence as the Chicago quintet swapped instruments with professional efficiency and stoically kicked ass, as if they had something to prove after more than 30 years as a band. (This show was rescheduled from an October date intended to promote the reissue of Tortoise's totemic 1995 remix LP, Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters, but that gig was canceled due to a member getting COVID.)

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Most federal oversight of Seattle Police Department may end: Today Seattle city officials and the Department of Justice are expected to ask a federal judge to declare SPD a "transformed organization" and to release the department from more than a decade of federal oversight, according to the Seattle Times. In 2011, civil rights investigators found a pattern of officers using excessive force, often against members of the BIPOC community. However, the city and DOJ say U.S. District Judge James Robart should find that the department is mostly all better now, citing "model" use-of-force policies, some great data collection, community participation, and civilian oversight.

The areas where the department might run into some trouble involve "crowd control, including tactics and use-of-force, and the key issue of officer accountability," reports the Times. Also, there's the whole ongoing racial disparities in use-of-force and investigative stops thing. But the policies. Those are really good stuff, judge. 

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Savage Love Tue 4:00 AM

Savage Love

Asked and Answered

Dear Readers: I hosted an “Ask Me Anything” last week, where I answered as many reader/listener questions as I could get to in 90 minutes. Here are some of the questions I didn’t get to before the buzzer sounded…


30s lesbian in a non-monogamous sexless marriage here. Do you think it’s ever possible to re-spark a sexual connection if both partners are open to it? The context: I love good sex and have had incredibly hot sexual connections with other partners, but sex in my 10-year relationship with my wife has always been infrequent, i.e., two to three times a year. She’s generally a very tired, low-energy person, and she’s so low-energy during sex that she’s literally fallen asleep mid-sex on a lot of occasions. This has done a number on my self-esteem, and the last decade of my life has been characterized by loneliness, yearning, and dissatisfaction. And lately, resentment has creeped in. You might tell me to go have amazing sex with other partners, but my wife is verrrry controlling of those connections and tends to treat me with a cold shoulder when I get involved with someone else. I’ve come to embrace the truth that this is not enough for me for the rest of my lifetime. I’m not sure how to dig my relationship out of this dynamic. We’ve been in therapy together for four years and although she says she wants the same exciting sex life that I want, nothing has changed.

Help A Lesbian Out

One of the superstar commenters...

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

Geek Mon 3:17 PM

A Cartoon Colon Pathway to Seattle’s Future

Seattle’s Weirdest Arcade Game Is a Butt-Shaped Iceberg of a Larger Tech-Arts Movement

Tonight, Seattle’s most prominent puppet butt has a problem. It technically always has a problem—which is why it’s been invaded by a plastic tube, examined by a camera, and made available to bar patrons as an interactive “colonoscopy game.” But on a cold, wet February weeknight, its co-creator is, ahem, bummed for a different reason.

“I was here for 11 hours over the weekend trying to get that curtain working,” engineer, coder, and artist Andrew Cole says as he unscrews the back of The Simpsons Colonoscopy Party, an arcade cabinet that currently resides at Time Warp in Capitol Hill. He arrived in time to see a patron try and fail to get the game working. Cole’s next steps: apologize to the patron, then immediately repair his freakshow version of Homer Simpson’s intestinal tract.

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Music Mon 11:00 AM

Comedian James Acaster's Weirdly Great Temps and Timothy Fife's Synth Sorcery

The Best New Music to Hit My Inbox This Week

Temps, “partygatorresurrection” (Bella Union)

James Acaster is not content to be one of England's funniest comedians. Nope, the British entertainer also wants to lead a music collective featuring an international cast of 40, called Temps, with membership that includes American rappers Open Mike Eagle, Denmark Vessey, and Quelle Chris, Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich, sitarist Ami Dang, singer Xenia Rubinos, and British drummer Seb Rochford (Sons of Kemet, etc.). 

Now, Acaster is no musical dilettante. Before he ascended to comedy stardom, he played drums in groups you've never heard of (the Wow! Scenario and the Capri-Sun Quartet). If anything, stand-up was his side hustle that unexpectedly blew up. But Acaster clearly has music in his soul, and his skills are no joke. An esteemed experimental hip-hop group such as clipping aren't going to let just anybody remix one of their tracks, as he and Dieterich did with “He Is Dead and She Is Bad.” A respected label such as Bella Union isn't going to fund an album as a vanity project for a comic—even if it originated from an aborted mockumentary. 

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EverOut Mon 10:30 AM

The Top 74 Events in Seattle This Week: Mar 27-Apr 2, 2023

Seattle Cocktail Week, Lane Moore with Lindy West and Angela Garbes, and More Top Picks

We believe you deserve the best, which is why we're cutting to the chase and recommending only the best things to do this week, from Lane Moore with Lindy West and Angela Garbes to opening weekend of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and from Seattle Cocktail Week to Plate of Nations.

MONDAY

FOOD & DRINK

Happy Accidents Pop-Up Bar
You may have heard of the Albuquerque cocktail bar Happy Accidents by way of the Netflix mixology competition Drink Masters, in which owner Kate Gerwin placed second. You can try their beverages for yourself at this kickoff party featuring drinks made with Ford's Gin.
(Rob Roy, Belltown)

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As the Washington State Legislature strategizes a new approach to the criminal drug possession law, lawmakers aren’t applying the same level of scrutiny to a different proposal related to drug addiction that would criminalize people who researchers say are most responsive to treatment. 

The proposal, Senate Bill 5010, would make it a Class B felony to expose dependent children and adults to fentanyl. The standard sentence for a Class B felony is three to nine months incarceration for a first offense.

On March 1, the state Senate voted 47-0 to pass the legislation over to the House. Some of those senators voted against the proposed criminal drug possession law because it increased criminal penalties and imposed mandatory minimums, raising questions about when the state should treat people for drug addiction rather than punish them for it.

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In a 7-2 decision released Friday morning, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the Washington State Legislature's 2021 capital gains tax, which taxes stock profits over $250,000 at a measly 7% to raise an estimated $500 million per year for early education programs. 

After the news broke, conservatives around Washington and their friends in television news broadcasting started ringing the alarm about the potential for this tax to magically morph into a progressive income tax, which would still be illegal under the state constitution thanks to an old 1930s precedent that treats income as property. Unfortunately, the alarm conservatives are ringing is false. By the sounds of it, state Democrats never even heard of an income tax. 

That said, the Court's decision does keep that dream alive. 

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