FRIDAY

LIVE MUSIC

A Night of Latin Music & Art
Did you know that there is a boutique hotel above the Crocodile (cue Lana Del Rey's "Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd")? This week, Hotel Crocodile is back to spotlight Latin artists, performers, and musicians at their monthly art walk showcase. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for music from Gold Chisme, La Mala Noche, Albina Cabrera, Gloomyyy, Bloqueador Solar, Lucia Flores-Wiseman, and ArtnBeats, along with gallery displays, installations, tattooing, and live poetry. Plus, tasty treats will be provided by the Mexican-Italian street food cart That’s-a-Molè! and pop-up panadería Bakescapade. AV
(Hotel Crocodile, Belltown, free)

Last week, the Seattle police union’s tentative collective bargaining agreement showed that the City plans to increase pay by 23% for the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) officers and sergeants. The contract promised no substantial changes to accountability measures for the police department. In fact, rather than adding more accountability measures for officers, the City could even move backwards. 

For instance, to help with morale, Chief of Police Adrian Diaz has started pushing for the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) to allow SPD to investigate its own officers internally on minor complaints through “Supervisor Actions.” The OPA already allows SPD to investigate some policy violations, such as when a cop drove up to 54 miles per hour to a call, hitting speeds the OPA called “likely unreasonable.” We know very little about how the department handled that situation because SPD does not post details about supervisor actions publicly, resulting in less transparent accountability. 

SUV drives over tents: On Tuesday night, an Acura SUV drove onto the sidewalk downtown at Third Avenue and James Street and mowed down the tents pitched there. Luckily, the tents were empty. Police pursued the SUV through downtown but abandoned the chase when they learned no one was in the tents. The SUV returned to the area later and fired a gun multiple times. Police are now looking for the SUV again. What's most disturbing about this incident is the seeming intent to harm unhoused people, which, with several targeted attacks and even a murder of those living on the streets, is seeming like a growing trend in our city. 

Chipotle pays up: The burrito bowl purveyor came under fire for allegedly violating the city's Secure Scheduling and Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinances. Chipotle settled with Seattle's Office of Labor Standards, paying nearly $3 million to more than 1,850 employees over accusations of retaliating against workers who called out sick, not providing the correct sick time accrual rate, retaliating against employees who requested specific schedule changes so as not to conflict with other jobs, and more. 

Unleash the Kraken… Bar & Lounge! (Sorry, had to.)

In March 2023 the beloved pirate-themed punk rock bar closed after more than a decade on the Ave. The building was sold to developers and, at the time, owners Kat Colley, Daniel Colley, and William Knupp were left scrambling to find a new space in a city with increasing rents.

Kat told former Stranger reporter Jas Keimig at the time, “There’s so much development, but they aren’t building things that work for our type of business. Music is supposed to be a big part of Seattle, but there’s no space for it.”

With just a handful of pages to go in Thunder Song, a series of essays from award-winning Coast Salish author Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe, LaPointe asks her reader, “Are you listening yet?”

She breaks the fourth wall, but she isn’t speaking for just herself. With poignant essays that center her own experiences, the Coast Salish landscapes, livelihoods, and people who were lost to colonialism—while unapologetically celebrating those who survive—LaPointe sees herself preventing Indigenous erasure in multigenerational company. She traces the ongoing struggle from Chief Seattle, to her great-grandmother and namesake, Upper Skagit elder Vi taqwšəblu Hilbert, to herself.

Go, get ur freak on—Missy Elliott will embark on her first-ever headline tour this summer with Ciara, Busta Rhymes, and Timbaland. Aerosmith will also walk this way on their Farewell tour and you won’t want to miss a thing! Plus, California-based regional Mexican quintet Fuerza Regida have dropped dates for their Pero No Te Enamores tour. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus some news you can use.

Tickets go on sale at 10 am unless otherwise noted.

ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 12

MUSIC

49 Winchester
The Showbox (Wed July 31)

Aerosmith: PEACE OUT The Farewell Tour
Climate Pledge Arena (Sun Nov 24)

Air Supply
Marymoor Park (Sun July 14)

Doggy day care workers at Downtown Dog Lounge say they are up against a real-life "Cruella De Vil" in their eight-month struggle for a fair union contract. But these workers are biting back. The workers, who are organizing with UFCW 3000, ask customers, dog-lovers, and other working people to sign their petition to get the owner, Elise Vincentini, to stop dragging her feet.

“[Vincentini] thinks if she waits long enough, we’ll just give up and walk away,” said Justin Kahn, a “Pack Leader” at Downtown Dog Lounge. “But that’s absolutely not going to happen.”

This morning, the Seattle Public Library (SPL) announced 180 days of library closures from April 12 to June 2, adding up to nearly 1,500 hours of cuts to a critical public service. All branches will be closed one day per week, with a few exceptions. Madrona-Sally Goldmark, Montlake, and Wallingford will be closed twice a week. The Capitol Hill branch will be closed Sundays and open two hours late Thursdays. The Central Library Downtown and the Ballard, Deldrige, Greenwood, University branches will remain open as usual.

The announcement comes days after SPL closed seven libraries, about a quarter of the system, in one day due to staffing shortages exacerbated by a hiring freeze on all departments except for “essential” positions such as police officers, firefighters, and social workers in the new dual dispatch program. Mayor Bruce Harrell instituted the freeze to prevent deepening the City’s quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit. 

Seattle vibes coming in STRONG: I hope you got a chance to bask in the sun yesterday because Seattleites will have no such opportunity today, according to the forecast from Weather.com. This morning, expect cloudy skies and temperatures crawling from the high 40s to low 50s. At around 4 pm, you should start to see some showers that will carry on into Friday morning. I hope Charles enjoys himself :)

WEDNESDAY 4/10  

DREAM TEMPLE (for Octavia)

(VISUAL ART) Artists Mia Imani and Mayola Tikaka call upon the extraordinary visions of Octavia Butler for this installation, which features a low-lit resting space, an altar, and imagery of Black rest. Head to King Street Station to contemplate Butler's visionary worlds, which counteract intergenerational trauma and stress often experienced by Black people with a "portal of healing and imagining." By the way, Butler prophesized an eerily accurate, destabilized world in 2024, so Imani and Tikaka's rest space has arrived just in time. Throughout the exhibition, visitors can engage with rest rituals, hear interviews, and watch performances by the artists. (King Street Station, 303 S Jackson St, Wed-Sat through May 23, free, all ages) LINDSAY COSTELLO

When he ran for Mayor, Bruce Harrell promised to find ways not to send a gun and a badge to every single little call fielded by the Seattle Police Department (SPD). But a draft memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the City and the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG) that details the expansion of civilian work within SPD falls well short of fulfilling that promise. Instead of creating serious police alternatives that could save the City money and help alleviate staffing shortages at the department, the MOU outlines civilian roles that look more like personal assistants to cops and that protect cushy positions wholly unsuited for some of the City’s highest-paid employees.

I drive a Geo Tracker, a car that resembles a squished Jeep or a Hot Wheel magically enlarged. Men–mostly named Kyle and Matt–tuck handwritten notes under the windshield wipers asking if I want to sell. I do not want to sell. Why would I? This car reaches blistering speeds of 95 miles per hour.

She ran great until she didn’t. The engine began shrieking to life when temperatures dropped below 50 degrees. I had to crawl over the passenger seat every time I drove because the driver’s side lock broke in an ice storm. A rain leak molded the carpet so severely I’m convinced new antibiotics could have been discovered. I cut out the carpet with a utility knife and decided the bare metal floor looked cool and industrial, or something. The final straw came when a coolant leak spewed onto the engine and evaporated into hot, sweet-smelling white clouds. The failure coincided with a pricey medical bill, temporarily beaching my car on the street. 

They're not getting the message: In a recent poll, only 26% of Washington voters agreed that "building more units of housing in my community will help stabilize the price of housing where I live," according to a Seattle Times analysis. As the Times mentions, in other surveys majorities of Washington voters embrace more density, and so the results from this poll may simply be catching voter cynicism about home prices ever coming within reach, which is understandable. Building new housing will only slow the rate of price increases, but that's better than not building enough and then watching housing prices skyrocket, so it's worth building more everywhere.

Two women accuse UW football player of rape: Tylin "Tybo" Rogers faces rape charges after he allegedly matched with women on Tinder late last year and sexually assaulted them, according to KING 5. Though the team suspended him in November of 2023, he was "allowed to return" in mid December and went on to play a bowl game and a national championship game. "Officials said there were multiple emails within the UW Athletic Department confirming Rogers should be taken off the team's travel roster for the Pac-12 championship game, but there was no documentation of reasons for the move," the outlet writes. 

True, aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, didn't mention my name in his longish article "Boeing’s long fall, and how it might recover," but he did (fucking finally) mention the negative impact Boeing's decade-long buyback bonanza had on the relationship with labor and, ultimately, the production of planes. Before that article, posted on April 7, there was no mention of buybacks from Gates and other business reporters employed by Seattle Times. The whole matter was, according to their judgment, entirely irrelevant. A lot of hot air. Fanciful even. But five years after the crashes, and during a year (2024) Boeing is facing increasing government and industry-wide scrutiny for a number of high-profile fuck ups, Gates finally got around to saying what I said in 2017:

Boeing’s leaders delivered gushers of cash to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends — $68 billion since 2010, according to Melius Research — rather than investing in future all-new airplanes.

There you have it. And it's coming out because the Seattle Times has nothing to lose. They are kicking a horse that's on the ground. This was not the case in 2017 or 2012. Why? As an industry analyst explained to me in 2019, if the Seattle Times published a negative piece about Boeing, then the then-Chicago-based company would have closed the doors on its reporters. The result? You can find it in this post, which does not mince words: "Seattle Times Systematically Misinformed Readers About Boeing Until It Was Too Late."