And You Know What Else???

Stop complaining about how expensive restaurants are here. They’re expensive because workers are required to be paid a living wage, and to be perfectly real, that wage is high because everyone fucking moved here and all the rents and real estate prices skyrocketed. Your servers and cooks need somewhere to live. Also, maybe you’ve noticed, but ingredients cost almost double what they used to.

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Speaking of servers, can we all stop going to restaurants owned by people who treat their staff like shit? As a local philosopher put it, “Happy employees don’t unionize.” 

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See also: rapist-owned restaurants. Stop giving these monsters your money.

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Gas Works in Gas Works Park should be one word: Gasworks Park.

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Why the fuck is it taking so long to ban the hell of earth that is leaf blowers. 

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Seattle has great Mexican food now. It didn’t, but now it does. Shut up about it.

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If we can’t, for some reason, make them illegal, then we should sanction the point-blank egging of vehicles that are too loud on purpose.

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Cyclists, either get off the sidewalk or put cards in your spokes like the child that you are.

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Stop whining about how your bespoke hyper-regional food from your hometown isn’t available 2,500 miles away in Seattle. Why would it be? That cudighi on a hard roll is back in Sault Ste. Marie where you left it. 

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Bartenders of Seattle need to stop putting so much ice in Diet Cokes.

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Bartenders of Seattle—never put ice in a Martini. Are you insane?

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It’s unacceptable that the Democratic Socialists of America and the Downtown Seattle Association have the same acronym. 

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Although there are many great ones, the best and Seattlest teriyaki joint in Seattle is inside the Community Grocery mini-mart, with the ’70s wood paneling and the wall of coolers and the 40 different kinds of Pringles and the Korean soap operas on TV. This is only a complaint if you think that [redacted], which serves roasted golden beet salad and is owned by a white Californian who’s claiming his shit is Hawaiian, is the best teriyaki in Seattle. 

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It’s Lower Queen Anne, not Uptown.

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On that note, it’s Downtown, not the Central Business District. You capitalistic fucks.

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We are at full saturation on boba tea joints at this point, guys. Matcha, too. All set, thanks.

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For the love of God, please scoot over to make room for people on the light rail, and let people get off the train first before getting on!

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Why the fuck would you put a Boston-based lobster roll chain in downtown Seattle, ship these poor souls across the country, salt them until they’re inedible, and serve them one block from ground zero for gorgeous, pristine PNW seafood? Dungeness crabs are our lobsters, but only MARKET Seattle inside SAM seems to understand this. Eat local. 

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There aren’t enough ghosts in this city.

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Counterpoint: The Biltmore has enough ghosts for the whole city.

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Stop fucking calling everything a smashburger, too, so you can charge seven dollars more. Smashburgs are actually smaller than regular burgs, ounce for ounce, since they cook the living shit out of them in the smash process. So it’s an even more heinous crime to charge extra. But also, they’re almost never real smashburgers. Words mean things. 

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Would it kill you to unclog a storm drain once in a while? 

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Please walk faster.

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Taco Time’s soft “tacos” are burritos. Adding lettuce to a burrito does not make it a taco. Why have we let them do this since 1960?

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Seattle is not a sandwich city.

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White chefs need to stop haphazardly tossing Sichuan peppercorns/chili crisp/XO sauce into their uninspired farm-to-table menus in a lazy attempt to “spice things up”—if you are going to incorporate ingredients from another culture, do so with intention and respect.

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We’re still mad that Seattle passed up the opportunity to name Frelard “Freball.”

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There are too many stairs in the new Stranger office, and the elevator is scary.

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Stop blaming the “Seattle Freeze.” To borrow a phrase from local band Who Is She?: It’s not Seattle, it’s you.

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Counterpoint: The Seattle Freeze exists. Your friendships don’t need to revolve around hobbies. Learn to hang out.

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Sober spaces are possible, but put some elbow grease into it. 

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No more restaurants staffed by robots, for fuck’s sake. Robot pizzerias, robot sushi-yas, that creepy robot barista place on First and Stewart: Down with all of it. It’s giving Disney Adult. Stop trying to turn Seattle into the end credits of WALL-E. 

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It’s never Cap Hill. 

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It’s never Capital Hill. 

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In fact, just keep that neighborhood’s name out of your fucking mouth unless you lived in Seattle before 2020.

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Restaurant and bar owners really need to stop making their logos (and menus!) with fugly AI art. Everyone can see it’s AI art. You look tacky and dumb.

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Seattle venues: DJ nights are cool but shouldn’t replace live bands. What if we had both. 

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We have more dogs than kids. Which means we have thousands of Seattleites walking around the sidewalks with hot bags of poop at any given moment. We need public trash cans outside of downtown. 

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Fred Meyer took the handles of their paper bags!!!! What the fuck!!!!!

The Stranger’s Complaint Commission comprises Hannah Murphy Winter, Emily Nokes, Megan Seling, Vivian McCall, and Nathalie Graham. Nearly all restaurant-based complaints were formally submitted by Meg van Huygen.