Good morning! We have a break from all the weather today. Expect some sun. Temps in the 50s. Not a drop of rain. The works.
Speaking of Weather: I hope your power is on. After we got walloped by a rain and windstorm on Saturday night, trees came down and took powerlines with them. At its peak, more than 310,000 households lost power, and as of Sunday evening, more than 100,000 of them were still in the dark. Most of the Puget Sound region is back up and running this morning, but if you’re one of the unlucky ones, today should be your last day lighting candles and plugging your phone in at the local coffee shop.
Support Your Local Food Pantry: They’re gonna need it. The USDA announced over the weekend that SNAP benefits are officially halting on November 1, thanks to the government shutdown. The Trump administration had already announced that it wouldn’t dip into the $5 billion they have in backup funds to keep the SNAP program moving—a program that helps one in eight families in the US buy groceries. The party of family values, ladies and gents.
That Government Shutdown Is on Day 26: Want to know how I know that? Because Donald Trump put a Shutdown Clock on the White House’s website. Flights to LAX were temporarily halted yesterday because of staffing shortages with air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay for 26 days. O’Hare, Newark, Reagan, and Teteboro had similar staffing issues this weekend. Real World contestant, competitive lumberjack, and current US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it’s “a sign that the controllers are wearing thin.” Give us healthcare, and everyone gets their salaries back.
The ICE Crackdown in Chicago Keeps Getting Worse: And they’re crossing over into local politics. Last week, immigration officers pulled over a Democratic Illinois state lawmaker, tried to break his car window, and pulled a gun on him before letting him go with a warning for going door to door to alert residents that ICE was in the area. The next day, at least four US citizens were detained by ICE in the city’s largely Mexican neighborhood, Little Village, including two staffers for a city Alderman. And Trump is still threatening to jail the Illinois governor and Chicago’s mayor. They’re all scare tactics, but what Trump might not have considered? Illinois has an unusual number of congressional seats up for the election next year, and the state’s Dems are using this chaos in their campaigns to retake the House.
Freedom Wolves: After melting down over a Canadian ad over his tariffs, Trump now doesn’t want Colorado to import Canadian grey wolves into the state as part of their ongoing effort to repopulate the area with the apex predator. They now have to pull from wolf populations in the Northern Rockies, which isn’t a realistic option. But at least we won’t have any of those socialist wolves in our midst.
Trump 2028: To try to get around constitutional term limits, MAGA supporters have floated the idea that Trump could run as VP in 2028, with the understanding that the lead on the ticket would step down on day one. On Monday morning, Trump told reporters he doesn’t plan to try to run that gambit because that would be “too cute.” But he’d “love” to run for a third term.
In Probably Unrelated News: He’d really like to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while he’s in Asia this week.
Election Day Is Coming: And based on the polling that The Stranger conducted with DHM Research, we know that the mayor’s race is all about turnout. When we polled the general population, Katie Wilson had a 12-point lead, but when we asked only likely voters, that lead shrank down to a statistical tie (she was still four points ahead, but the margin of error was 4.9 percent). What does that mean? Everyone has to get out there and vote.
So have you voted? No? Go get your ballot right now. Dig it out of your pile of mail and vote. And if you’re not registered yet, here’s how you can vote anyway. Not sure who to vote for? We’ve got you: the version for people who like to read our funny but highly informed endorsements; and the version for people who just like to be told what to do. And remember, USPS has new postmarking rules that means you’re not guaranteed a day-of postmark, so put it in a ballot drop box, not in the mail.
Why Are You Still Reading? Go vote.
Okay, if you’re still here, I’m assuming your ballot is already safely in a ballot box. I’m trusting you.
Area Man Tries to Get Famous on the Back of a Woman’s Accomplishments: More than 88 years after Amelia Earhart and her plane went down somewhere over the Pacific, Oregon archeologist Richard Pettigrew thinks he knows where it is. “We have a lot of evidence to go on, and I believe the chances are 9 out of 10 that it’s Amelia’s plane, but we won’t know until we go in there and take a look at it,” he said. On November 4, his team of 14 explorers leave for a tiny, remote island halfway between Australia and Hawaii called Nikumaroro in hopes that they’ll be the ones to find her long-lost plane.
King County Drops the Ball on Housing: The County Council commissioned an analysis of their progress to reach their housing goal: 308,677 new homes between 2019 and 2044, half of which would be affordable housing. According to the report, the County would need to scrounge up another $4 billion a year to meet those goals. If it stays at the pace it’s going right now, we’ll only build about a third of it.
There’s New Evidence in the CHOP Shooting: The wrongful death lawsuit that Antonio Mays Jr.’s father filed against the City of Seattle is headed to trial next week, and new video contradicts the City’s prevailing narrative of what happened in the minutes before the Black 16-year-old from Los Angeles was shot. You can read the Seattle Times’s four-part breakdown of the evidence here.
KING 5 Can’t Handle the Spice: That’s the only reason we can think of that they spent a whole news segment on unpermitted pop-up food trucks. Like Micah mentioned on Friday, King County public health officials shut down 17 unpermitted food vendors selling around Lumen Field during the Seahawks game last week, and Snohomish County is juggling a wash of complaints as well. The only person complaining in the news segment? A food truck competitor who did pay for his permits, and he’s grumpy about it. It’s worth watching the news segment just for the comments, though.
Turns Out Some Food Can Hurt You: But it’s probably not from a food truck. Hormel had to recall almost 5 million pounds of frozen, boneless chicken because customers were finding metal in the meat. The chicken was sold to food service companies, not directly to consumers, so you don’t have to go digging in your freezer unless you own a restaurant, hotel, or cafeteria.
Louvre Robbers Roped: French officials announced that they’ve made arrests in the motorized ladder-based jewelry heist that shocked Paris and delighted everyone else. Details are light: officials haven’t said if they arrested all four of the people who escaped via scooter after the heist, nor did they say whether or not the jewels were on them when they were arrested. Experts say the investigators are racing to find the jewels before they remove the gems and melt down the precious metals.
A Song for Your Monday: For no particular reason.
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“More than 88 years after Amelia Earhart and her plane went down somewhere over the Pacific, Oregon archeologist Richard Pettigrew thinks he knows where it is.”
Or maybe the real Amelia Earhart was the friends we made along the way 😅
Finding something that’s been lost for 88 years seems like a pretty decent accomplishment in its own right
“Area Man Tries to Get Famous on the Back of a Woman’s Accomplishments”
Stupid header
In Tacoma, but that’s not far… ignored by Slog AM when the news came out, of course:
Officials find unrefrigerated meat, food cooked next to trash at roadside vendor kitchen
by KOMO News Staff
Thu, October 16th 2025 at 11:57 AM
TACOMA, Wash. — Food from unpermitted roadside vendors in Tacoma may appear appetizing, but officials warn of significant health risks.
A recent investigation by theTacoma-Pierce County Health Department uncovered multiple food-safety violations at a home used as a kitchen by several unpermitted street food vendors in Pierce County.
Violations included unrefrigerated meat stored outside with flies buzzing around it, raw meat and vegetables on the ground, and food cooked next to trash.
The investigation followed a complaint about the location. Without a warrant, officials could only render the food inedible and issue a business license violation to the renters.
https://komonews.com/news/local/officials-find-unrefrigerated-meat-food-cooked-next-to-trash-at-roadside-vendor-kitchen
@4: The Stranger’s dedication to supporting harmful anti-social behaviors now pushes into encouraging food poisoning (and worse). The Stranger’s support of food-safely scofflaws, putting private profit over public health, reads like a parody of right-wing glibertarianism. Horseshoe Theory FTW!
“…
and
food
cooked
next to trash.”
they’re
Cooking
the Trash!?
“They’re
EATING THE
CATS! They’re
Eating the Dogs!”?
oh — it’s KOMO/Sinclair
and as “Believable”
as “LEFT Wing*
TERRORISM!”
*Dwarfed by Reich
Wing TERRORISM
about FIFTY-One.
thanks, bippie!
When you look up that Nikumaroro atoll on Google Maps, there’s a “Historical Landmark” tag for a “Taraia Object”. The suspicion is that’s Earhart’s plan wreckage. It kind of looks like a plane maybe.
Once you’ve spent multiple days getting onto the island, it’ll probably take Pettigrew an hour to figure out if it’s her plane.
Then I’d spend the rest of the time snorkeling that lagoon.
@6 – kristofartian, I usually make it a point to not read your drivel, but do you seriously dispute the fact that the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department cited the unlicensed kitchen for food health preparation violations?
Does the fact that KOMO reported it somehow magically negate the fact that Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department cited the unlicensed kitchen for food health preparation violations and that The Tacoma Police Department and City of Tacoma Tax & License Compliance provided support during the operation?
“but but but bLoNaLd bLuMpFh!!!”
You’re even nuttier than I previously thought.
“the County would need to scrounge up another $4 billion a year to meet those goals.”
and of course those funds would need to come in the form of a property tax levy. Using the recent parks levy (which was $1.4B) as a barometer the average homeowner ($850K) would be looking at adding another $500-$600 per year to their property tax. It just never ends.
@7: “Once you’ve spent multiple days getting onto the island, it’ll probably take Pettigrew an hour to figure out if it’s her plane.”
Way more competent investigators than Pettigrew have spent way more than an hour searching Nikumaroro. The plane’s not there. This guy is on a Bigfoot hunt. 😂
@8 What is your point though? This happens at regular brick and mortar restaurants all the time too and they get fined and/or shut down for it. It’s not just something illegal brown people do… so don’t get too fucking excited.
@8 – My point, simpleton, is that it is illegal for unlicensed kitchens to cook food for public consumption, whether “brown people” are making it or not, and besides that, the reason “regular brick and mortar restaurants” get fined and/or shut down for it is because THEY VIOLATED THE HEALTH LAWS, laws that were passed to help safeguard the public health. That’s why various city and county and state governments, along with the Federal government, have “health inspectors” for restaurants.
Do you want to discuss the high likelihood that those restaurants that get fined/shut down almost invariably employ “brown people” who are almost assuredly the ones causing those health violations?
@6/11 is your assertion that no one should pay for a permit and that we should let this go unregulated?
@6: That projection is so pathetically convoluted and dumb.
@11. “Brick and mortar” restaurants, run by people of color as well as people of white, get cited for uncleanliness, safety violations, but typically have refrigerators and don’t leave meat out to rot.
“Brown people shouldn’t have to follow any laws! Especially if they are already illegal aliens!!!” – Typical naive White-Guilt Seattle “progressive”.
Get it straight — if you’re a conservative, food safety regulations are bad because Raw Milk. If you’re a progressive, food safety regulations are bad because delicious Spoiled-Chicken Tacos.
“Illinois has an unusual number of congressional seats up for the election next year.”
Not sure what this means. Next year all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for election as is the case every two years.
Let the free market decide if dangerous unlicensed food is profitable and delicious.
@6
“kristofarian,
I usually make it a
point to not read your drivel… “
yet, here we Are
“but do you seriously
dispute the fact that the Tacoma-
Pierce County Health Department cited the
unlicensed kitchen for food health preparation violations?”
not at All, bipps!
“Does the fact
that KOMO reported it
somehow magically negate the
fact that Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
cited the unlicensed kitchen for food health preparation violations… ?”
allow us, here, to take our
Cue from The
Wormtongue:
ready willing and
Eager Beavering to discover
the Merest, barely Tangenital utterance
and BLOW IT UP
TO E P I C PRO-
PORTIONS!
Opening the Door
to an Impossible wild goose chase
cum Down the Rabbit Hatch
Evisceration of ALL the
things that may’ve
preceded or
Followed
that one
sole
seemingly innocuous part.
wormmy does it like
a fucking Professional.
I’m just Here to mock the FUCK
outta the Pro-CAPITALISM*
Money is EVERYTHING!!!
crowd.
“‘but but but bLoNaLd bLuMpFh!!!'”
you May wanna get
That checked,
bipps.
“You’re even nuttier than I previously thought.”
Biped on October 27, 2025 at 10:20 AM
THNX! you’ll be Elated to
hear I share your
sentiment.
I do Hope you didn’t read
this one, either, bipps.
it may Damage your
psyche beyond
redemption.
@18
we’re
just over
Two Weeks
from that. good one
@19 — a very Slight Correction:
“allow us, here, to take
our Cue from The
Wormtongue:
ready willing and
Eager Beavering to discover
the Merest, barely Tangenital utterance
and BLOW IT UP
TO E P I C PRO-
PORTIONS!
Opening the Door
to an Impossible wild goose chase
cum Down the Rabbit Hatch, and
then Ignoring ALL the words
and points that may’ve
preceded or Followed
that one sole
seemingly innocuous part.”
my Apologies!
[I cannot Afford a
Decent Editor and’d
LOVE It if tS’d Provide one].
“The only person complaining in the news segment? A food truck competitor who did pay for his permits, and he’s grumpy about it.”
Oh, and don’t forget, paying taxes (B&O), paying minimum wage, adhering to all of the other pro worker regulations – I truly don’t understand TS / various progressives stance on illegal food vendors (like others have pointed out, how very libertarian of you all 🙄)
Talk about losing the thread of a strong social fabric.
Pettigrew has a ton of evidence to support his assertion that it’s Earhart’s plane, this video is pretty interesting.
https://heritagetac.org/programs/taraia_object_amelia_earharts_aircraft-71eb03
I’m not entirely convinced it’s actually necessary or all that beneficial to anyone for him and his crew to head back down there, possibly if he’s correct in his assertion that renegade relic hunters will scavenge the site otherwise, though he also doesn’t say what steps can be taken to prevent this. I also don’t think there’s anybody gonna stop them regardless. Agree with Max the snorkeling there is likely to be freaking gorgeous, as is the site in general.
@20: You’re welcome to start feasting on it for lunch today if you want.
@9 $500-600 a year to build sufficient housing for the growing population and get people off the streets? Seems like solid value to me. Maybe the visible homelessness just doesn’t really bother you though.
Kudos for today’s banner photo Hannah. I don’t avoid Dicks but the ick applies.
@25: And what is the total of all the property taxes? Like a couple of extra mortgage or rent payments per year? Got it?
@25: Stop robbing taxpayers to get the homeless off the streets unless it’s into rehabilitation. After all, you first need to sort out those who want to live outside and those who don’t.
@24
Your
Great White
Hero’s put US on
that Pathway, with great
Encouragement from folks
Precisely like KkKoolie’s $$$.
where $hareholder Value
Plus PUNISHMENT!’s
the Only REAL
Point.
good one!
Right, let’s rob taxpayers to give homeless people free healthcare. I’m sure that will go over well in a country where half a million gainfully employed people go bankrupt every year from medical bills they can’t pay.
In high school, I worked for a real SOB who, if it were not for the health inspector, would have killed half the town, he was such a cheapskate and slob. He used to make us save all the sauces that had been in a steam table all day, which were all crusty, and put them in the walk-in so he could add water and reconstitute them in the morning. We also made all the pancake batter and omelet batter for the week on Monday evenings, added what was left over from the previous week, and stored them in huge garbage cans in the walk-in refrigerator. He taught us to mop the bathroom, kitchen, and dining room floors by dipping a mop in a “clean” toilet that we added some bleach to. Although the restaurant was fairly popular (mostly old people in the morning and drunks in the evening), He was constantly getting dinged by the Pottawattamie County Department of Health, and eventually lost his license after a bunch of people were hospitalized.
I suppose The Stranger thinks it’s “edgy” to disregard health inspections, sort of how they think Our Unhoused Neighbors are “picturesque”, but anyone who would eat at one of those stands is an idiot. Most of the time, food poisoning is your body rejecting the food, out of one or both orifices, and that’s that (and that’s more than enough) but sometimes it can kill you, or cause permanent organ damage.
I’m a fairly trusting person, but even at conventional restaurants, I won’t eat at a place that has a “good” score or worse. They may have cleaned up their act from the last inspection, but I’ll wait until the reinspection.
@28
claiming
IT WON’T WORK!
sans Rehab may be True
for some
but Not for
the Majority
tho I do know
how you Neocons
LOVE THE PUNISHMENT!
AND “Personal Responsibility!”
UNLESS it’s a Wealthy
White person
doing the
Crime
See: J/6
and Bonespurs’s
ever-lengthening cast
of Felonious Motherfuckers*
he CANNOT WAIT to Pardon.
*George Santos
for Minister
of Truth?
Stay Tuned!
Jesus Christ, I see kris is even more tedious than usual today.
I think that The Stranger should have a new weekly segment where they try street meat from the sketchiest unlicensed vendors downtown and let us know what sorts of horrible illnesses they develop from it. I think Hannah should inaugurate the column.
@30: It goes over better than creating more homeless out of former taxpayers.
34 if a few hundred dollars a year is going to put homeowners on the street they shouldn’t own a home in the first place but who do you think would be paying for the “free” healthcare, genius?
@23: “Pettigrew has a ton of evidence to support his assertion that it’s Earhart’s plane”
Right, but the Bigfoot people always have a “ton of evidence” too! 😁 Pettigrew is going to find a coral rock at that location, just like everyone else who has ever spotted “aircraft wreckage” in aerial imagery of the Nikumaroro reef. 😛
The year after the Earhart disappearance, the British established a colony of Micronesians on Nikumaroro. They lived on the island for the next 25 years. There is no way a colony of Micronesians spent 25 years on the island yet failed to notice a giant piece of aircraft wreckage awash in the lagoon eight meters from the high-tide line. Micronesians are fanatic spearfishermen and octopus hunters; they’d have found an airplane at that location within 25 hours, never mind 25 years 😂
Pettigrew’s theory also requires the aluminum wreckage to be light enough to be washed into the lagoon just two days after the crash (so the initial search planes couldn’t find it in 1937) yet heavy enough that it subsequently remained in exactly the same spot since 1938 (the first “detection” of the Taraia Object in aerial imagery, according to Pettigrew). Convenient! 😅
Pettigrew’s theory also requires every other previous search team—including his own!—to have overlooked this giant piece of wreckage over decades of repeated searches, including overflights by helicopters and drones and searches by shore parties on foot. 😅
This isn’t even the first time an aerial image of “aircraft wreckage” has spurred a search of the Nikumaroro reef. Coral rocks are a known failure mode for aerial image-based aircraft detection! 😂
There are credible Earhart search teams, but Pettigrew’s isn’t one of them. The Pettigrew search is like Bigfoot-hunting, where the real point of the “search” is the social aspect: the breathless interviews, the tight-knit team, the scrappy adventure to a far-flung corner of the world. 😄 I get it, I’m a sailor myself! I love taking friends to remote atolls! 😁 In fact, I’m overdue for a return to the South Pacific! Maybe I’ll go find me a tropical Bigfoot! 😂😂😂
@33
a REAL Neocon’d
recommend they feed
their Leftovers TO the Homeless.
you’ll Get There
one Day. Keep
Trying, bLnx!
Rich lib says losing few hundred a year is no big deal and thinks he’s a genius.
Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t see where any actual unsafe food practices (excepting the seal of the state) were involved, or where The Stranger suggested dangerous food was a public good.
It’s been my reading that their advocating food trucks both as a cultural good (makes a city, a city) and as a way limit the monetary barriers of entry to the food scene. Closing trucks only on the basis of not being properly permitted is bad in this frame.
Claiming their advocating for unsafe practices that likely, but not necessarily, follow seems like putting improperly prepared words in their mouthes.
compared
to a Neocon
he IS. KkKoolie!
@39
“Claiming their advocating
for unsafe practices that likely,
but not necessarily, follow seems like
putting improperly prepared words in their mouthes.”
well
That’s their
“Secret Sauce.”
38 well no, that’s not what i said, and i called you the genius but clearly i spoke too soon, but if you think a few hundred dollars a year is too much to fund housing, why is it acceptable to spend taxpayer money an extremely expensive healthcare treatment with a high fail rate? It’s all coming out of homeowners’ pockets either way.
42: Because it’s better than building “affordable” housing for addicts who don’t want to get off the streets and couldn’t hold a job. Besides, we really haven’t tried it. It’s been all build and hardly any rehab or mental asylums for decades now.
@39
Yeah, after getting part way through today’s comments I went back and reread the paragraph about the health inspector. All Hanah did was to question KING 5’s editorial decision to publish such a story not that enforcing health codes is somehow pointless or bad politics. If the stranger were to take the position that not enforcing health code and permits was somehow a good thing that would undermine the interests of their food service advertisers.
39: No, everyone loves taco trucks we just want them to be safe.
43 we have tons of rehab centers but if you think people won’t be just as upset that their tax dollars are funding healthcare for homeless people as you are over housing them you’re living under a rock
46: It’s your assumption that the taxation would be the same amount or that it would even come from property taxes.
Tons huh. Well, I haven’t done a tally in number or in pounds but another is going to be at 1145 Broadway in the old PolyClinic building. Area libs are protesting.
@25 it won’t do anything to help people who are on the streets get off the streets because we are not talking about free housing. This is affordable housing and you still need to pay some rent.
The bigger issues is it’s not just a few hundred dollars. It’s on top of the already numerous levy’s we are committed to, for parks, for education, for housing in Seattle and on and on not to mention sound transit and other agencies that have their hands in the pie. And what do we get for this money? It is spent wisely with accountability? Anyone who says yes is either an acolyte, a fool or both. The lazy excuse around here for every problem is to sock it to the taxpayers and throw ever more money at it. The state last year passed $9B in new taxes and we still have a funding deficit. Where does it end?
@30 better than robbing taxpayers to pay for police and jails to put homeless and addicts in over and over ad nauseum.
It’s only “robbing taxpayers” for you people when what’s being financed might actually help the person instead of just punishing them for offending your bourgeois sensibilities.
@48 I dunno I think parks, education, housing and transit are important public goods that are worth paying for. That’s kind of the whole point of civilization.