The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Slog: Visual Art - Seite 4 
New Seattle Transportation Levy Just Dropped
Harrell Half-Asses Another Hugely Important Once-in-a-Decade Plan by Hannah Krieg On Thursday afternoon, Mayor Bruce Harrell released a draft of his eight-year, $1.35 billion transportation levy, dubbed the “Move Seattle Levy,” which historically funds about 30% of the City’s transportation budget. The levy proposal will cost owners of the median value home–which runs about $866,000 these days–$12 extra per month on top of the $24 they pay under the expiring levy. While the levy will raise more funds than the previous one, a nine-year $930 million levy passed by voters in 2015, it's less than half of the $3 billion that urbanists, environmentalists, and disability advocates say it would cost to tackle the City’s safety, mobility, climate, and equity challenges. Wow, Harrell only delivers about half of what advocates say the City needs! Anyone getting deja vu? Now the City will kick off a month of public dialogue before it goes to the city council for amendments and a vote. With the council so aligned with the Mayor, and with the Transportation Committee led by self-appointed “Pothole King” Rob Saka, advocates may find it difficult to win amendments for more funding, particularly for projects that benefit Seattleites who walk, roll, bike, and bus around town. Before making the draft public, advocates already voiced their concern that the conservative Mayor would write an “austerity levy” that would dig Seattle deeper into car dependency by allocating more money to street maintenance and repaving than to improvements to the City’s underwhelming walking, rolling, and transit infrastructure. Great intuition, guys. Seriously. In his proposal, Harrell allocated the most money–about $432 million, or 31% of the total levy–to repavement and street maintenance. By comparison, transportation advocates wanted the City to dedicate about $305 million for street repaving and maintenance, according to a financial plan drafted by Seattle 350, Disability Rights WA, Seattle Subway, and other groups. Unlike the Mayor, the advocates also suggested the largest single investment in building new sidewalks. Right now, 11,000 blocks in Seattle do not have sidewalks. At the City’s current pace, it would take more than 400 years to complete the sidewalk network, according to the Seattle Times. Advocates proposed $696 million to build about 590 blocks of new sidewalks every year of the levy and another $200 million to repair existing sidewalks. Harrell’s draft allocates $109 million specifically to “pedestrian programs,” which includes money to build 250 blocks of new sidewalks (about 2% of Seattle’s need) and 34,000 spot repairs on existing sidewalks. The next big-ticket item for the advocates were transit improvements. They wanted to set aside $400 million for them. Harrell’s draft allocates $121 million on transit projects, including 160 projects to improve bus reliability and adding two new east-west transit corridors to help transit riders get to the light rail. The advocates also emphasized the importance of bike safety. Their plan allocates almost $260 million for new bike lanes, $40 million for bike lane maintenance, and $20 million for bike parking. Harrell’s plan includes $94 million to build and maintain bike lanes. Harrell does have the transportation nerds beat on investments in bridges! He suggested $218 million for repairs and preventative improvements to Ballard Bridge, Fremont Bridge, and others. He also suggested $25 million to improve freight by repairing 20% of major truck streets and by making 32 spot improvements. By the draft's own omission, this does not help pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, the climate, or neighborhoods. The advocates did not suggest any money for bridge maintenance or freight improvement. On the bright side, Harrell’s draft proposes a 150% increase in funding to Vision Zero, a program to end pedestrian death, and pays for eight projects to open streets to people. Even though Harrell’s plan looks puny next to the plan from transit advocates, at a Thursday press conference, a reporter questioned him about asking taxpayers to vote for raising the levy while the City deals with a budget deficit. Harrell told reporters to “forget about” the deficit for a second because “one does not off-set the other.” He thinks the levy is the “right thing” for Seattle. The City is working “very feverishly” to balance the budget. Both can be true! Another reporter asked him about his “message” to property owners who do not want to pay an extra $12 a month. Harrell said he could have asked for $2 billion or $3 billion, but he said the City had to be “sensitive” to property owners who may already struggle to keep up with the rising cost of living. The Seattle Department of Transportation commissioned a poll that found 56% of voters would support a $1.7 billion Move Seattle Levy and 64% would support a $1.2 billion levy. He said he thinks he reached the right balance, but again, it’s not a done deal.
Plus, Orville Peck and more event updates for April 4. by Audrey Vann Top 40 radio regulars Twenty One Pilots have announced their upcoming Clancy tour to support their upcoming album of the same name, and Ohioan blues rock duo The Black Keys have dropped dates for their International Players tour. Plus, indie rock’s masked cowboy Orville Peck is bringing his Stampede tour to Chateau Ste. Michelle this fall. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events, plus more news you can use. Tickets go on sale at 10 am unless otherwise noted.ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 5 MUSIC The Black Keys: International Players TourClimate Pledge Arena (Thurs Oct 3) Dexter and The MoonrockThe Showbox (Sat July 27) Dashboard ConfessionalShowbox SoDo (Sun Oct 13)
Dropping Stitches at Knit Night
Need help overcoming your debilitating perfectionism? Try knitting. by Nathalie Graham My fine motor skills leave a lot to be desired. I didn’t realize this until I tried knitting after the emergency JOANN’s Fabric run my then-roommates conducted in the hours before the world shut down in 2020. After squinting at a YouTube tutorial, dumbfounded, I gave up. Around me, Dom and Frieda already had full squares of stitches attached to their needles. Even for Nicole, my trusty companion in non-craftiness, knitting clicked. I went to my room and tossed my knitting—if you could call the three loops I’d managed to cast on my needle “knitting”—to the floor. My yarn—an ugly metallic teal—remained tangled under my desk, caught under my rolling chair’s wheel, still tethered to the needle. It stayed that way until I sold my desk and moved out that summer. In the years since, I’ve glanced at other people’s knitting or crochet projects without feeling, or perhaps idly thinking, "That's good for you, but it's just not for me." And then, I discovered Knit Night at Seattle Yarn. For my latest exploration into Seattle subcultures, I sat around a table with a bunch of people wearing their own knitting. They chatted, resting their projects in their laps or on a table strewn with balls of yarn in every hue, knitted purses, and water bottles socked in hand-knit sleeves. In-between light gossip and my asking everyone whether the knit I’d done was actually a knit or a heinous knot, I found a group of people who find solace in their stitches and peace in their purling, but, most of all, they found a home with each other. We love a knitting circle. Nathalie Graham The LYS The first thing you need to know about the knitting community is it revolves around the Local Yarn Store, or “LYS” in knit-speak. The "LYS" is the community hub for yarn, patterns, classes, and knit nights. It’s the beating heart of the hyper-local knitting scene. The Puget Sound region has one of the most vibrant "LYS" communities—each year, there’s a Puget Sound "LYS" tour that spans five days and 21 shops. For West Seattle, the "LYS" is Seattle Yarn. Destiny Itano, 53, discovered Seattle Yarn when she started knitting 18 years ago, pregnant and on bedrest with her twins. Her nurse, who visited twice a week, taught her how to knit to pass the time. “Time can fly when you get knitting,” Itano said. She liked that her brain shut off while she knit, that she could only focus on one thing. Though, she usually has multiple projects going at once. “I’m a super non-monogamous knitter,” she said. She didn’t knit in a group until she met Katie Weber, 51. Weber and Itano went to the same gym. At one gym event, Itano noticed Weber wearing a sweater with a distinctly hand-knit look to it. “Once you’ve knit you can tell when somebody has made something by hand,” Weber said. Itano approached Weber in the gym and asked her about her sweater. Weber, who had been knitting since she was eight—“I’ve been knitting for more than 40 years. That’s terrifying,” she said—only really committed to the craft after knitting her cousin a pair of socks in college. She gained the confidence to knit her first sweater once she moved to West Seattle in 1998. She used mohair, and the result was a monstrosity. The sweater Itano saw was a product of five or six more years of sweater-mastering. At that point, Weber knew how to gauge swatches for sweaters that actually fit, she’d learned cables, and she’d picked a yarn she could frog—or rip out—which you can’t do with mohair. In other words, it looked good. And so the two got to talking about knitting. Weber eventually invited her to a group that met in a coffee shop every week, and after participating in that group for years, Itano went on to buy Seattle Yarn together with her childhood friend, Cheryl Lea. She's now nurtured a knitting community akin to the one she found all those years ago. The Group Weber was part of the group from the beginning. In the early 2000s, a dedicated follower of knitting blogs and the then-new-fangled knitting forum Ravelry, Weber attended a class by a renowned knitter at a different West Seattle "LYS." There, she met the other women who would form the knitting group. They met every Wednesday at Uptown Espresso in West Seattle. “We would take their biggest table and hang out and knit and drink tea and have coffee,” Weber said. “I loved it because no one else in my family—with the exception of my mother—did any crafting like this. It was just great to be able to talk in all the lingo, be able to express yourself about your frustrations with a pattern, or ask for help, or do any of that and just have that camaraderie of other people doing stuff that’s similar.” Week in and week out, the group met and worked on their projects. They saw how much time and effort they each invested in every piece. When someone finished a scarf or a sweater, they heaped praise on each other. “You would get all sorts of support and love for that project because, ‘Wow, look at what you did,’” Weber told me. She wore a multi-paneled, asymmetrical, blue-and-yellow-striped sweater she knitted from a pattern called “Twitch.” Her socks she made with a yarn called “Mermaids are Real” for the knitting competition she’s currently in, which is called “Sock Madness.” Itano, wearing a blue sweater she knit in the pattern “Love Note,” told me about the group while she taught me to cast on, to weave the working yarn through my fingers, and to coil it around my pointer finger—or whatever worked for me because everyone has their own way of doing these things—to keep tension in it. She taught me the English style of holding my needles, then the Continental style. We sat in two armchairs in the middle of Seattle Yarn. “Sometimes there was another knitting group meeting at the same time that was all old ladies,” Itano said. Jokingly, I asked, “Did you have any beef?” “No! We didn’t have any beef!” Itano laughed. Then, she paused, considering. She called to the front of the shop. “Elsbeth, we didn’t have any beef with them, or did we?” Elsbeth Jones, 37, walked over. She wore a yellow cardigan she’d knit herself over a turquoise sweater she'd also knitted. Jones, who discovered the group through a post on the West Seattle Blog forums, said, “It kind of felt like they were more of a class. The woman who was the instructor would come talk to us, but none of the rest of them would.” No beef, then. In general, the Seattle knitting scene doesn’t have much drama—at least nothing compared to the scandal when Kirkland-based yarn dyer Goth Socks falsely claimed to have died for 10 minutes. That’s unsurprising. According to Penny van Kirk, a 49-year-old antiquarian book saleswoman, the coffee shop group was uniquely welcoming. Van Kirk, who’s joined a lot of knitting groups in her 20 years of knitting, said it “was the first group where I felt welcomed, like people cared about whether I showed up.” Six years ago, when a for sale sign went up in the Seattle Yarn window, the group panicked. “Somebody was like, ‘Who’s going to buy the shop? We can’t lose the shop.’” Itano said. Weber suggested Itano should buy it. And, she did. So, Itano took over the place. Jones and other group members started working in the shop. Weber now teaches a two-at-a-time sock-knitting class. The Wednesday night group merged with Seattle Yarn’s existing knitting group, and the welcoming ethos has remained the same. A Common Thread All day every Sunday and every other Wednesday evening, the back room of Seattle Yarn fills with knitters. They cram in around a wood table with a center tray full of point protectors, row counters, stitch markers, t-pins, and so on. Then the group, well, knits. People of all ages and knitting experience show up. They even allow crocheters to join. Pamela Jorgensen, 77, started knitting when she retired, finding one of her first friend groups outside of her job and her family. Now, she has an all-ages community that she finds invigorating, she said. One thing she really appreciates about the group is how they have each other’s back, even beyond knitting. “If someone needs some help—some of the older women here are single or live alone—there’s always someone who will come and bring groceries or drive you to a doctor’s appointment, and you never have to ask,” Jorgensen said. One time, Jorgensen said, someone got shingles during the group. “That was me!” Ada Sorey, 35, cried from the other room. “It was the third time I had shingles!” Someone from the group drove her to urgent care. When shop co-owner Lea's stepfather died a few years back, the group organized a blanket drive. Everyone knit a square of a blanket, Weber said, and gave it to the grieving member. “With our knit group, I've knit blankets to give to other knitters within the group for their first kids,” Weber said. They’ve taken care of each other through all stages of life, doling out love and support through actions, and, mostly, through their knitting. Nicole Bishop, 31, is the resident crocheter in the knitting group. Bishop sought out the group after she gave birth to her second child. "I started coming here when I had really bad postpartum depression," Bishop said. "Coming here and being able to pick all of their brains—a lot of them are moms, they give advice on the different stages—" "—Whether she likes it or not!" Weber called out, interrupting her. "—Yeah, whether I like it or not," Bishop smiled. The group has helped, she said. Bishop’s current project is a giant crocheted blanket of her dead dog, Spike the Shitzu. Spike died nine days after Bishop birthed that second baby. Bishop said she never really got to process the death, but she's been able to through crocheting. She’s making the blanket in secret so she can give it to her husband for his birthday. "He thinks I’m making a corgi," she said. Not a corgi. Nathalie Graham Death to the Perfectionist I sat around the table chatting and focusing on my tiny project, my fingers feeling thick and big as I tried to knit. Occasionally I'd whisper to someone for help, asking whether I’d made a mistake, and then offer them my knitting to fix whenever I'd messed up. I was not alone. In addition to being supportive emotionally, the group is especially helpful for help solving knitting problems, according to June Hwang, 32, a designer who started knitting less than two years ago. You could never tell she was a novice knitter by the successful creations she posts on her “Knitstagram,” or by the gorgeous round-sleeve oxblood sweater she wore to Knit Night. “I messed up pretty bad on this,” Hwang said of the red sweater she wore, talking to me as she pored over a grid of numbers and measurements for her current project, a linen-silk knit tank top. With the sweater, she thought she was going to have to start from scratch when she ran into a problem, but then she brought the sweater to the group, who spread it on the floor, crouched around it, and performed sweater surgery, teaching her as they went. Those starts and stops and asks for help have been important lessons for Hwang, who said she won't do something at all if she can't do it well. "I used to sew, and once you cut a piece of fabric, it’s cut, but with knitting, if you mess up then you just undo it, nothing lost. The yarn’s still there," she said. I am well-acquainted with the limits of the perfectionist brain. When I first arrived at Seattle Yarn, Itano asked whether I wanted to buy any needles to keep practicing after our lesson. I said no, assuming I would hate the process just as I had before and that any needles I bought would end up forgotten and tangled under my current desk. That need for perfection and that itchy feeling of doing something worse than everyone around me kept me from continuing to knit back in 2020. It made me self-conscious as I squinted and hunched around my needle, maneuvering in and around knits in slow motion. But once I stopped worrying about being bad—once I messed up and Itano told me to just keep going, that it would turn out fine—I settled into the process. My focus on the mechanics, the needles and the small-scale drama happening at their tips, silenced my internal monologue, a typically-spinning, spiraling thing. Soon, I’d knit four entire rows. If I had more time, I thought almost longingly, the motions could become rote. As I left, I asked Itano about buying those needles. Any ideas on which Seattle subculture I should explore next? Want me to tag along with you on your favorite hobby or pastime? Send me tips at playdate@thestranger.com.
I Saw U: At the Capitol Hill Farmers Market, at the West Seattle Auto Zone, and Under the Space Needle After Bad Bunny
I Saw U at... by Anonymous Opera Girl Looking For Ballet Loving Russian-Turk You asked me about Malcolm X/for my # walking in lower Queen Anne - I was late, so I gave you my card. Hope you didn’t feel brushed off. Call me? you use ASL Saw you walking on Pine St., signing with a friend. Learning ASL now. Can't wait to chat with you next time! Time Traveling Goth Librarian Ada's on a Wednesday. I had blue hair. You were an elegant gothic beauty. Love your vibe. I'm convinced you run a secret library <3 The briefest emotional rollercoaster You came into Pine Box, gave me a cute smile, went to the patio. But wait! You came back in! You walked to me! Oh, you left your phone on the chair. WE TOOK A PICTURE TOGETHER AFTER BAD BUNNY you stopped to take a pic with me by the space needle. i was wearing a bandana shirt and your were so handsome but i was too nervous to flirt. Help me, The Stranger, you’re my only hope! Cute girl + dog named Chewbacca + Cap Hill farmers market + I’m an idiot and didn’t ask for her number… Cute gap tooth smile I saw you in my apartment parking lot. You were with a tall guy. Brother? Hopefully. You guys were eating pastries. Think you are super cute. West Seattle Auto Zone We both had dead batteries, I offered you windex. Is it a match? Leave a comment here or on our Instagram post to connect! Did you see someone? Say something! Submit your own I Saw U message here and maybe we'll include it in the next roundup!
Slog AM: Cop Acquitted in Manny Ellis Death Resigns New Position, Donor Pays for Another Quick Fix to Migrant Crisis, Seattle Appoints Two New School Board Directors
The Stranger's morning news roundup. by Hannah Krieg One of the baddest apples: Christopher Burbank, (a Tacoma cop acquitted of manslaughter and second-degree murder in the death of Manny Ellis, an unarmed Black man) got a new gig next-door in Thurston County. Understandably, the new hire pissed people off. Cops should not get to tase an unarmed Black man three times while another officers chokes out that person, get their little wrist slapped, and then get another job as an armed defender of capital elsewhere. After receiving death threats, Burbank resigned just two days after getting hired. Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders said in a written statement that when he decided Burbank, he "failed to consider the greater community impact." Instead, Sanders said he based the decision on "business needs to remedy TCSO’s staffing crisis.” He went on to say, “I recognize the harm this has caused to marginalized communities, and I was wrong.” Let's not get ahead of ourselves: Take a look at this forecast: Happy Thursday! Low clouds have rolled in this morning from a low to the east. Showers will be possible via wrap-around moisture late this morning and afternoon/evening. Highs will top out in the low 50s.📷Space Needle Panocam: https://t.co/YNHQqeDffc#wawx pic.twitter.com/J4IBFv7QQz — NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) April 4, 2024 Housing or handcuffs (Part I): Tuesday night, about 300 migrants, including 70 children, camped on the tennis court at the Garfield Community Center. This same group has been passed around as state, county, and city governments give them just enough money to get inside for a few weeks at a time. In a Wednesday press conference, they called on local governments or ANYBODY to help them get longer-term housing. One speaker suggested six months to a year would be long enough to allow them to get work permits and start earning their own rent money. Yesterday, the City would not commit to paying for housing and would not confirm suspicions that the Mayor might order a sweep to clear the refugees for tennis season. Housing or handcuffs (Part II): Sitting on their hands worked out for the City—this time. I missed this in the initial story (everything happened so quickly, and I got locked out of my apartment, and we updated it and I’m SORRY), but Wednesday evening a donor came through with enough money to move people inside 61 rooms for 11 days. As KOMO reported, the migrants dismantled their encampment upon hearing the news. Housing or handcuffs (Part III): But 61 rooms may not house everyone at the camp, according to an organizer helping the migrants' advocacy efforts. Another organizer said that the migrants don’t know where they will go after that money dries out, so who knows where they will set up camp next. This is the exact issue I tried to highlight in my story: Temporary shelter does not make someone un-homeless. Maybe the Mayor did not have to choose between tennis season and refugees (an easy choice I do not trust the City with) this time, but until SOMEONE gets these migrants some stability, we will keep having this same conversation. The Mayor’s spokesperson said they are working on it! In an email late yesterday evening, the spokesperson said, "Medium- and long-term solutions will require collaborative statewide action. To that end, today, Mayor Harrell convened a meeting with regional mayors and King County to discuss next steps with the state." The City and the County continue to fail to bring these migrant families inside. Temporary shelter does not make people un-homeless. Not clear if the City will find a permanent solution this time, but there's a mutual aid request in case of another failure: https://t.co/U2ihdrrjjh pic.twitter.com/NqC8RAXkBW — Hannah Krieg (@hannahkrieg) April 3, 2024 AI genocide: According to The Guardian, intelligence sources revealed that Israel used an AI system called "Lavender" to identify as targets 37,000 Palestinians allegedly connected to Hamas. The sources also claimed that during the early weeks of the war, Israel allowed its military to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on "low-ranking militants." So, no. I don't think this is a war against Hamas. Incoming: Today, Mayor Bruce Harrell will unveil his long-awaited draft of the transportation levy. The current levy, approved by voters in 2015, pays for about 30% of the City’s transportation budget. I don’t have any insider info unfortunately, but advocates already sounded the alarm that Harrell will probably write “an austerity levy focused on street maintenance and repaving” rather than making Seattle a more connected and accessible city for transit riders and pedestrians. I’ll have more later today! They should put this program in the levy lol: It's clever because it works pic.twitter.com/wvVsEPx1j1 — Mens_Corner__ (@Mens_Corner__) April 2, 2024 Speaking of transportation: Council Member Bob Kettle wants to keep Pike Place car-friendly. Personally, I think that's bad! And more than 10,000 people sent a letter through Seattle Neighborhood Greenways' letter campaign telling Kettle to knock it off. Today Councilmember Kettle introduced legislation that would forbid the next transportation levy from funding improvements to Pike Place. We disagree. Let's make Pike Place a better experience for everyone. Take action: https://t.co/PcQcQUUmop pic.twitter.com/Nimaoqj0HO — Seattle Greenways (@SNGreenways) April 2, 2024 Full steam ahead: A New York judge rejected former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his hush-money case while the US Supreme Court decides his presidential immunity claim. The judge said, "This Court finds that Defendant had myriad opportunities to raise the claim of presidential immunity." Trump should have asked for the delay in his omnibus motions last September, the judge suggested. Leave it blank: A campaign for New York Democrats to leave their presidential primary ballot blank won 12% statewide as of preliminary results from the day after Tuesday’s election. I wish they would have joined us in voting “uncommitted,” but it's still cool to make Biden a lil scared. End the war: According to the AP, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lowered the age of conscription from 27 to 25 in Ukraine so as to replenish their troops after more than two years of defending itself against Russia. A tale of two school board directors: The Seattle School Board of Directors appointed the actual wildest combination of people for the two openings. Representing District 2 will be Sarah Clark, the director of policy at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, AKA the most powerful, conservative political force in the city. And District 4 gets Joe Mizrahi, the secretary-treasurer of UFCW 3000, one of the most powerful progressive forces in Seattle politics. Bonkers! New Chappell Roan song out tonight: Celebrate with her Tiny Desk performance!