It’s The Stranger’s December Issue. We made it to the end of 2025, which by all accounts, was the longest year in recorded history. And what do we have to show for it?
Actually, a lot. After enduring nine intense months of campaigning, we elected a new mayor, two new city council members, and a new city attorney, and as far as we can tell, none of them are secret Republicans. We got our very own women’s hockey team. We saved a major bus lane that was on the chopping block. The Mariners got the closest they’ve ever gotten to the World Series. An orca calf survived long enough to be socially integrated into its pod. The Pastry Project opened a bakery window. Mount Rainier didn’t erupt. And we have 11 shiny Stranger issues in the bag.
But amidst all that goodness, we still have some bones to pick. And in these pages, you’ll find The Stranger’s inaugural Complaints Issue, a non-exhaustive (exhausted, exhausting) list of everything that grinds our gears about Seattle. This isn’t the transplant bitch-fest you see every two weeks on TikTok. We love this city. And we love it enough to want better for it. We want parks that seem like they actually like people! We want things to be open outside of banking hours! We want grocery stores that aren’t part of the carceral state! We want more than one public artist! We want drivers that know how to operate a motor vehicle!
But we didn’t want to just leave 2025 with complaints, so we added a couple love letters for you, too. Senior Staff Writer Charles Mudede wrote about how Vangelis’s score for Blade Runner—which will soon be performed by the Seattle Symphony—used synthesizers to create an impossibly expansive city. Stranger contributor Meg van Huygen made you a list of the very best holiday drinks around the city, from taverns to cocktail bars. Michael Wong offers the official Asian Verified Ins and Outs of 2025, and our Books Correspondent, Katie Lee Ellison, finally ranked the best books of the year.
But just in case you dare mistake us as unserious, Staff Writer Nathalie Graham dug into a school board race in Tumwater that captures the conservative fervor against trans athletes in Washington. And now that the race for the Mayor’s office is over, we learned what it takes to run a mayoral campaign as a community organizer.
And that wraps our last little gift for you this year. See you in February, with a whole new bag of hijinks.
Love,
The Stranger
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Every fart-related conversation on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
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Releasing the Epstein files so I can get a good night’s sleep
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Women who ruin the workplace for the better
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Birdfeeder drama
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The difficulty from a math standpoint
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The 1997 masterpiece Batman & Robin
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My missing wisdom teeth
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Watching only The Santa Clause and Jim Carrey’s The Grinch all month long
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The comment section of our pumpkin pie rankings
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Seasonal Affective Disorder
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Women!!!
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Starbucks PR “actually having a really great day”
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Merkins
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Edging
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SECB Supremacy
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Katie Wontson
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A tuxedo cat named Miumiu
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Taiyaki
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Wine Gums
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Padma Lakshmi and Melissa King flirting on Instagram
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Merrell Jungle Mocs
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Everyone in the Doechii line banding together against the Christian evangelist shouting outside
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Hating with nuance and precision
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The conjoined Olympia Pizza & Spaghetti House III and Harry’s Bar
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The bulldog in Mexico that wears a stuffed squirrel “cowboy” on his back and a tiny red cowboy hat for every walk
Your pumpkin pie rankings WERE pretty whack though.
Reading this and seeing so many comparisons to other places, why are we all here? Seems like all this is doing for me is solidifying the idea it’s time to find a place that has some, if not all of this — public spaces with public conveniences, serendipitous happenings, late night food as well as access to food without driving in this car-dominated collection of suburbs — already in place. There are cities with parks and late night food and alternatives to driving and for some of us Seattle will never get there in our lifetimes. I don’t if the mayor’s office can confer the same power on Katie Wilson as Anne Hidalgo wields in Paris so it’s hard to see it happening quickly. I mean, it’s great to be under 30, or so I recall, but consider if Seattle will get any of this done by the time you are 40 or 50, youngsters.
Grocery stores would not have to be part of the carceral state if we did not have so many shoplifters. We have so many shoplifters because they know that they stand little chance at being punished. Go light on crime and you attract criminals.