Welcome to The Stranger’s… wait, what is this issue about? *checks notes* We don’t have a theme? All year long, since enthusiastically establishing a monthly print cadence in February, we have based every issue on some kind of theme. February was the Love & Sex issue, of course, and March was our fab Spring Arts issue. We did a Transit Issue and a Food Issue and a Queer Issue and a Climate Issue, and while it was fun to dig into the city with a curated eye, we also miss the days of just putting together a really solid collection of stories about whatever it is we’re currently obsessed with.

Like getting to the bottom of grocery-store pumpkin pie. Yes, on page 57 we pretend for one glorious afternoon that the Trump administration isn’t shooting our democracy into the fucking ever-hotter sun and set out on the self-appointed mission to find the best store-bought pumpkin pie in Seattle. The winner may surprise (and anger) you. Also related to the holiday season, we compiled an actually useful gift guide, should you want to treat your favs without lining billionaires’ pockets.

Start making plans with our weekly roundup of ticket announcements. Alt rockers The Neighbourhood go on their Wourld Tour in 2026—see what they did there? Vancouver duo Bob Moses and electropop band Cannons have a co-headlining tour planned for next year. Plus, Aussie singer-songwriter Chet Faker will support his forthcoming album, A Love For Strangers, on the road. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

ON SALE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7

MUSIC

Bob Moses & Cannons: Afterglow Tour
Dune Peninsula Park (July 14, 2026)

Boys Like Girls: The Soundtrack Of Your Life Tour
Moore Theatre (May 10, 2026)

Cat Power: The Greatest 20th Anniversary Tour
Paramount Theatre (Feb 20, 2026)

Last year, I was minding my own business, smug and confident because I’d bucked demographic trends and voted weeks before the election. Then, I got a text. King County Elections. An issue? With my ballot? It hadn’t been counted. I’d forgotten to sign the outside of my ballot.

Fuck! 

The good news is I wasn’t the first illiterate dumbass to bypass simple instructions. And I am far from the last. This happens all the time (and have you seen those reading scores?), including this cycle.

They’re calling it “the Red Cup Rebellion”: The Starbucks employee union voted to strike on November 13, aka Red Cup Day, when stores hand out reusable, free (with purchase) red cups to kick off the holiday season. The union said that after years of bargaining, Starbucks still hasn’t budged on their demands for better pay, more hours and resolutions of more than 700 unresolved unfair labor practice violations. The strike could hit about 25 cities, with potential to spread. Seattle baristas have participated in the strikes in the past. At one in March, police arrested 16 people.  

SPD Firings: Seattle Police Department Chief Shon Barnes fired two of the department’s top leaders yesterday, CEO Brian Maxey and general counsel Rebecca Boatright. According to the Seattle Times, they played key roles in federal oversight of the department, and were often referred to for internal policy inquiries—like protest response, use of body cameras and more—from City Hall officials. Barnes was hired by Harrell earlier this year. Look, I’m all for downsizing the police department, but is this the place to start? 

The sky is not falling, but Mayor Bruce Harrell gained more ground on Katie Wilson. Put your vomit bag away, this ballot drop is not decisive, as Vivian McCall wrote earlier today. In fact, it tells us “almost nothing,” as one political consultant tells The Stranger. There are more than 115,000 more ballots to count in Seattle alone. And 130,000 more countywide.

The ballots are coming! The ballots are coming! Calm down.

Mail-in voting is great in so many ways. You can do it in your underwear, or less. But the downside is the wait. We don’t really have election day in Washington. We have election week. We are a state of edging freaks.  

Political consultants tell The Stranger the numbers typically don’t move that much with the second ballot drop. “Tonight will tell us almost nothing,” one said. It’s too small. It’s puny. Miniscule. Pathetic. 

This article originally appeared in our sister publication, Portland Mercury.

Train Dreams introduces us to the story of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) by considering his life's footprint on a map. Orphaned early on, he grows up by the Moyie River in Idaho, before finding work in the 1920s as a logger, traveling west to the old growth forests of Washington. He never sees the ocean but comes within 90 miles or so of the coast. He doesn't make it very far eastward, either. 

His life was small. Our narrator—the wizened tone of Will Patton—says as much in the movie's opening moments. Robert didn’t cover much ground; he was geographically insignificant and arguably unremarkable. The only thing exceptional about Robert is his quiet. Director Clint Bentley may have given Train Dreams a narrator because Robert is a soul who needs one. Someone’s got to sound out his loneliness. 

All of this we learn with a few words and fewer minutes.  Adapted by Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar (who together wrote last year’s Sing Sing) from a novella of the same name by Denis Johnson, Train Dreams takes Robert's story and gives it shape and weight.

Shall we say it? We will say it. Last night, SECB experienced what Chic called “good times,” with the exception of Bruce Harrell, who is still very much in the race. He claimed a 7-point lead on the first drop (53.3 percent to Katie Wilson’s 46.18 percent). But yet his allies suffered what can only be described as disastrous results. 

• In District 9, Dionne Foster is in a cushy lead against incumbent Sara Nelson. Foster came away with 57.9 percent. Nelson with 41.6 percent. 
• Over in District 8, Alexis Mercedes Rinck essentially saged the city of Rachael Savage’s presence, winning a dominant 78.7 percent to Savage’s 20.5 percent. 
• In District 2, Eddie Lin will be the new city councilmember. He left election night with 68.6 percent of the vote. Adonis Ducksworth took 30.9 percent. We’ll still get you that skate park, buddy. Don’t you worry. 
• As for City Attorney, it’s safe to say that Ann Davison is history. She will be seen as a kind of relic of the post-COVID years, while Erika Evans, who has a 25-point lead (62.5 percent to Davison’s 37.1 percent), is calling the shots as Seattle’s top lawyer. 
• The County Executive Race is still neck and neck. Girmay Zahilay has a slight lead with 50.1 percent to Claudia Balducci’s 48.4 percent. A lot can shift in that second ballot drop. 

Expect Katie Wilson to shrink a good part of Harrell’s lead in the coming days. The question at present is: Will it be enough? My guess? Expect a nailbiter. Voter turnout was lagging in the days before the election, but last night, at 7:59 p.m. in front of the Seattle Central ballot box, an election worker told us that they’d been doing this for five years, and they’d “never seen lines this long, not even for the last presidential election.” A comeback is possible. Kshama Sawant came back. Tammy Morales came back. It's difficult from a math standpoint, but she can pull it out. Watch for our ballot drop update after 4 p.m. today.

📌 Election Day is finally here. Let’s make sure it doesn’t suck.

When all the ballots are counted, if we’re lucky, we’ll have a new mayor, a new city council president, and a progressive caucus in City Hall. The dust won’t settle for a few days. The results may be unclear. And if trends hold, the earliest voters are the most conservative. If our polling bears out, at least in the mayor’s race, this will be a lot tighter than the primary. 

Progressives really kicked ass in the primary. Presumed underdog Katie Wilson walked away with more than 50 percent of the vote. Mayor Bruce Harrell finished more than 9 points behind her. Embarrassing. City Attorney candidate Erika Evans took home almost 56 percent of the vote. City Council candidate Dionne Foster snagged 58 percent. County Executive Candidate Girmay Zahilay took home 44, compared to Claudia Balducci’s 30 (that race has really tightened up). City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck swept her race with more than 70 percent of the vote. It was a great night for gloating.

You might not expect us to produce reputable polling (you’ve seen our sex survey). And rest assured, we didn’t! But we paid someone to do it for us. Specifically, DHM Research, a nonpartisan public opinion firm that specializes in the Pacific Northwest.

We decided to do this because we were asking questions that other people weren’t—at least not to the same group of 600 statistically significant people around the city. Questions like: Do they really hate Seattle? Is it dying? Are they afraid to leave the house for fear of running into the public safety crisis in a dark alley? What issue drives them to dig their ballot out of their junk mail? Is Bruce Harrell Superman?

We didn’t ask them like that—that would lead to very biased study results. And thankfully, the data scientists DHM knew how to ask these questions scientifically.

You know the narrative by now. Seattle is dying. The CVS downtown is closing. Starbucks is making itself scarce. The Seattle of yesteryear is gone. Instead, we are all living in hell. Leafy green hell. The way the Chamber of Commerce tells it, we’re on the brink of becoming a bust town. People are one straw away from packing it up and moving to Idaho (or at least Bellevue).

Except, that’s not true. Their feelings are not the facts, or the cold, hard data from the new and exciting world of Stranger polling. The pollsters (kind, sapiosexuals) at DHM Research, a reputable, non-partisan PNW-based public opinion research firm surveyed 600 people in Seattle on their thoughts and feelings about this city, its politics, and its issues.

How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All, the comedy troupe Firesign Theatre asked on their 1969 album. That question seems germane to attendees of the Freakout festival, perhaps the most debauched annual event on Seattle's music calendar. Figuring out a scheme to catch all of the acts that you want to see requires tactics that would impress an army general. And, you know, from a certain perspective, Freakout sounds as much like a command as it does a festival name... 

Even the most dedicated follower of musical trends may not know most of the Freakout lineup, but if you're agile enough to hit up multiple rooms per night, you can discover several artists—local and foreign—who'll enrich your life. That's the magic of Freakout, now in its 13th year. With 70 acts performing at nine venues in Ballard and Fremont, Freakout promises a diversity of sonic adventures. And respect to the curators for booking so many international artists, given the horrific state of US immigration policy. Here are (at least) 20 performers whom you should see/hear. But, by all means, Do Your Own Research™, too.

• Melt-Banana: These Japanese noise-rockers are spazzing as wildly as ever, 32 years on. You may want to wear a neck brace for this one, just in case. (Nov 8, Salmon Bay [Upstairs], 10:50 pm)

• Glyders: It was love at first listen for me with these masterly Chicago songwriters' new album, Forever. There's something so basic and spare about their mongrelized, chooglin' American music, but also something about it that's sneakily krautrock-y/kosmische—it's like drinking absinthe out of a PBR can. (Nov 7, Conor Byrne, 11:40 pm; Nov 8, Sunset Tavern, 8:40 pm) 

• Møtrik: Portland quartet honor their name with klassik, ekstatik krautrock accelerations. (Nov 8, Tractor Tavern, 10:10 pm)

• L'Eclair: When not moonlighting with Zambian rock gods W.I.T.C.H., this Swiss group elegantly and cinematically funk you up (and down and all around) and will make you feel very sophisticated, indeed. (Nov 7, Salmon Bay [Upstairs], 12:20 am)

• glass egg: Seattle shoegazers will unveil songs from their new, serenely misty visions & ecstasies album—which is dreamier than Aerosmith's "Dream On." (Nov 6, Ballard Smoke Shop, 8 pm)

Trump Endorsed Cuomo: “You really have no choice,” Trump says. New Yorkers do, actually, and it seems pretty likely that more of them will select Zohran Mamdani as their mayor. 

I hope you will select Katie Wilson as yours. Please don’t make us endure another four years of Bruce Harrell, a man who thinks being the mayor is standing at a podium and announcing something. His case for mayor is basically: I should be mayor. He may be from here, and he may have a compelling personal story, but God, this guy SUCKS. Wilson may not be very charismatic, but she actually wants this city to be a better place. We have other endorsements, which you can read here. Turnout is never great, but it’s also not great this year. 

Despite being composed entirely of news/found/archival footage (no talking heads, no voice over), the documentary WTO/99 nevertheless has the aspect of a dream. 

It’s hard to believe the event even happened, here in Seattle, in the last days of the 20th century. Who are these people chanting this and that about globalization, exploitation, the rights of workers, and another world that is possible? Who are those officers dressed in Robocop gear? And the horses, the helicopters, the oil tanks rolling down the hill (First Hill?), the smashed windows, the eruption of tear gas, the rising smoke, and the frustrated civil servants from every corner of the world heading toward Belltown. "Aimai-je un rêve?"