Seattle-based photographer Nate Gowdy went to Minneapolis twice this year, to document the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge and photographed the civilian efforts to protect their communities from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement.

“When I arrived in Minneapolis, I expected to find overarmed agents, tear gas clouds, traumatized civilians, and I did. I also found people walking their dogs, running errands, meeting for dinner,” he wrote in his essay in The Stranger. “Daily life continued, but it was unmistakably altered. Community events were canceled. It came through in every conversation with residents: weekend plans became risk assessments about the federal agents operating in residential neighborhoods without visible name tags or badge numbers. Tension lived in lowered voices and furtive glances toward any vehicle with tinted windows.”

“Five years earlier, on January 6, 2021, I photographed the pro-Trump mob as thousands laid siege to the United States Capitol. Claims that “Might Makes Right” exploded into acrid fear. I have an audio recording of that day, when I was deep in the crowd at the Capitol steps, that can still bring back that fear. Wild and chaotic,” he wrote. “In Minnesota, the fear worked differently. It folded itself into school pick-ups, grocery runs, work commutes. People recalculated familiar routes before starting engines. Ordinary traffic drew scrutiny. Conversations sought a lower volume. Or went completely underground. The anxiety was procedural.” Hear more about it here:

The post WATCH: Seattle-Based Photographer Nate Gowdy on Documenting ICE in Minneapolis appeared first on The Stranger.

Weekends are for funmaxxing, and we’ve got plenty of ideas for you. Read on for details on cheap and easy events from Grow and Gather: A Spring Gardening Festival to El Centro de la Raza Clean Air Fair and from Record Store Day to Global Groove’s 5th Anniversary. Check out our Record Store Day guide and top picks of the week for more.

FRIDAY

COMMUNITY

Future of Our Roadless Forests Community Meeting
I very much enjoy hiking, biking, camping, and just generally breathin’ clean air throughout the good ol’ PNW wilderness. Which is why this one hits close to home. Currently, a proposed rollback of the 2001 Roadless Rule could open millions of acres of national forest (including ~2 million in Washington) to logging and mining. If you’re interested in learning about what’s at stake and why these “roadless areas” matter for clean water, wildlife habitat, outdoor access, and more, this community meeting breaks it all down. Plus, if you’ve got something to say, members of the public have the option to share two minutes of public testimony that will be submitted directly to the federal government. LANGSTON THOMAS
(The Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, Northeast Seattle, free)

See more on EverOut!

The post The Best Bang for Your Buck Events in Seattle This Weekend: Apr 17–19, 2026 appeared first on The Stranger.

Spring/Sprung/Etc: We’re gonna hit the 70s this weekend, maybe! Tomorrow will be partially cloudy with a high of 69 (don’t say it) and on Sunday we might even get into the low 70s. GO OUTSIDE!!!!!!

Ceasefires for Everyone: Israel and Lebanon have agreed to a 10-day ceasefire. According to the Lebenese Health Ministry, “more than 2,000 people have been killed—including at least 172 children and 91 healthcare workers—and 7,000 wounded” in attacks over the past six weeks. Trump plans to invite Lebanon president Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House for peace talks. He will, undoubtedly, serve them McDonald’s.

Oil Prices Dropped, Too: Hours ago Iran announced the Strait of Hormuz is open for the 10-day ceasefire, and oil prices dropped and stocks “surged” and people are reporting on it like it’s Good News and not just the volatile results of an unconstitutional war. Wild. And once all that news broke, Trump woke up and grabbed his phone to clarify via social media that actually the US Naval blockade will stay in place. 

Head of ICE Is Out: Acting ICE director Todd Lyons has resigned—his last day will be May 31. This man refused to apologize to Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s families, he encouraged ICE agents to forcibly enter people’s homes without a warrant, and he has big dreams of turning mass deportation into a business, saying in April 2025 that it should be “like Prime, but with human beings.” Todd Lyons is a bad man. I wish him nothing but the worst.

Stop Hitting People With Cars: The number of pedestrians killed on Seattle streets nearly doubled last year. Ten people were killed in 2024, and 18 were killed in 2025, so Councilmember Rob Saka wants an audit on the Vision Zero program, which was founded in 2015 with the goal to “end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city streets by 2030.” 

You’re Not Imagining Things: Your allergies might actually be worse this season, and climate change is to blame.

Thankfully, People Are Trying to Do Something About It: The First Peoples Climate Fund—a project established by tribal nations and Indigenous-led organizations to help the region adapt to climate change—was just awarded $5.5 million from the city via the payroll tax. The money will “help grow programs to support Native food producers, reduce emissions, restore habitat and educate tribal youth.”

More Climate News: The cooling towers from Google’s data centers might be fucking up the weather in Oregon along the Columbia River. At the very least it’s disrupting aviation schedules and sucking up a bunch of water. The Seattle Times reports, “Google consumed 550 million gallons in The Dalles. That’s 40% of the water used by the entire city.”

An Update on Washington’s Energy-Sucking Data Centers: You know those massive data centers that four companies are proposing for Seattle? Well one company has since dropped its plans, so now three companies are looking to build four data centers and Andy Strong, an executive at Seattle City Light, told KIRO Newsradio that the three companies are, Prologis, Equinix, and Sabey, “a company headquartered in nearby Tukwila engaged in the development, ownership, and operation of multi-tenant data centers.”

And Here’s a Fun Fact About Sabey: One of their executives appears to sit on the Seattle City Light board! Here’s a slideshow that digs in a little deeper: 

Not Everyone Is Terrible: Seattle Torrent captain Hilary Knight has been named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2026. Yes, the Torrent are officially eliminated from the PWHL playoffs, but Knight isn’t done here. On Wednesday, while speaking at the SheBelieves Summit, Knight said, “I want to win the Walter Cup in Seattle … this place is so special.” The Torrent have three home games left this season, on April 18, 22, and 25. They’re very fun! Go to one!

Do Something Fun While the World Burns: Did you know that we have a fuck-ton of art and culture recommendations in every issue of The Stranger? You can find a copy at hundreds of locations, and our monthly picks are all online, too, so find something fun to do this weekend! Haven’t you been talking about wanting to get out of the house more? In our music calendar, contributor Todd Hamm recommends tonight’s Devin the Dude show at Nectar. And for you theater fans, tomorrow is the closing night of Dacha Theater’s The Best Damn Thing, which Julianne Bell describes as a “meta-musical” that tells the story “of gay Midwestern teens Ellie and Rachel, who are determined to spread the gospel of Avril Lavigne by putting on the best damn pop-punk jukebox musical this town has ever seen.” It’s the weekend! Go see art! Eat good food! Dance a little, you dummy! Here are all our picks, conveniently linked because I love you: Music, Visual Art, Literature, Performance, Film, Food, and This & That.

Speaking of Avril, here is Ben Gibbard covering “Complicated” more than a decade ago. I love it so much.

The post Slog AM: Hormuz Is (Mostly) Open; Pedestrian Deaths Are Up in Seattle; and No, You’re Not Imagining Things, Your Seasonal Allergies Really Are Getting Worse appeared first on The Stranger.

Someone keeps dumping soap in the fountain outside the Seattle ferry terminal. It’s turning the water all sudsy and making a mess of things. 

The fountain was created by Japanese-American artist George Tsutakawa and named after Joshua S. Green, Sr., a Seattle philanthropist and one-time champion of the Mosquito Fleet. Like all of Tsutakawa’s fountain sculptures, this one attempts “to unify water—the life force of the universe that flows in an elusive cyclical course throughout eternity—with an immutable metal sculpture,” he says. Well, someone is messing up that recipe for unity by adding soap into the mix. 

The Joshua S. Green, Sr., Fountain was originally installed at Colman Dock in 1966. It  lived there until around 2022, when it was removed during construction on Seattle’s waterfront redesign. It was reinstalled near its original home and now lives on the waterfront on Columbia Street.

Since its return to the waterfront, the fountain has been “soaped” 16 times. Or, at least, 16 times that have been recorded, according to Tiffani Melake, an operations manager with the Seattle Center Waterfront Park operations team.

On one occasion in early fall, the culprits used tide pods, Melake wrote in an email. The rest of the soapings used dish soap.  

“We have drained the fountain a total of four times since the fall due to soap instances,” Melake explains. “It gets temporarily shut down as we pressure wash it and refill it back up, but that is a minimal time frame of less than 6 hours.” 

Either we’re stuck with a drained fountain, which is just a sculpture, or we’re stuck with a frothy, rabid-looking water feature. 

“As the soaping has continued, we have not drained it after each instance,” Melake said. So, it remains soapy. A defoamer they use helps tone down the foam, “but due to the amount of soap being put in the fountain, it doesn’t eliminate it.”

The Seattle Center Waterfront operations team has not called the police over the soaping. They do not have any suspects. It could be anyone. “It has been a recent Tik-Tok trend,” Melake says. This cannot be the future Tsutakawa envisioned for his fountain. 

The post Stop Putting Soap in the Fountain in Waterfront Park appeared first on The Stranger.

Coachella content got you feeling FOMO? Not to worry, artists from this year’s lineup are heading our way. Sombr wrapped up his first headlining tour just one month ago, but he’s already plotting his next roadtrip—he returns to Seattle this October. Garage rock revivalists The Strokes will support their forthcoming seventh album, Reality Awaits, at Climate Pledge. Plus, bedroom pop singer Cavetown arrives this fall on his Running With Scissors tour. Read on for details on those and other newly announced events.

Tickets go on sale at 10 am unless otherwise noted.

ON SALE FRIDAY, APRIL 17

MUSIC

The Bends
Chop Suey (Tues Sept 29)

Bill Callahan
Neptune Theatre (Wed Aug 26)

Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Tractor Tavern (Jan 29, 2027)

See more on EverOut!

The post Ticket Alert: Sombr, The Strokes, and More Seattle Events Going On Sale This Week appeared first on The Stranger.

Dear Hendrix,

I did a bad thing. I knew it was a bad thing, but I’m not sorry for it.

It happened last October. I was watching playoff baseball—the Seattle Mariners against the Toronto Blue Jays—and someone on Toronto got hit by a fastball. (I think it was a fastball.) It clocked him right in the knee. Hard. And I laughed. Probably even harder.

My friends watching the game with me, normal humans with a conscience, didn’t think it was very funny. Only the 12-year-old boy on the couch nodded in agreement. He knew. Screw the Jays! And their players! I was a bad example to this innocent soul. 

That’s right, Henny. I’m 36 years old and, as of just a few months ago, I’m officially a die-hard, laugh-when-the-other-team-gets-hit-in-the-knee-with-a-fastball, Mariners fan. 

Growing up in my house in the ’90s, sports were always on, but they were never my cup of herbal tea. I remember watching Ken Griffey Jr. on my grandmother’s little throwback black-and-white TV in the kitchen, thinking, “He’s cute!” That’s about as much of a game review you could get out of me. 

Until now. 

It was impossible not to get caught up in Mariner fever last year as the team went all the way to the brink of the World Series—game seven of the American League Championship. But more than that—and I don’t know if I’m channeling my inner-grandmother here—but I love how the game just sounds. 

Listening to baseball, especially on the radio, is like listening to classical music—it’s got a buzz and crackle like an old vinyl album. It’s calm in a world that is less than calm. 

I also love how every pitch of a game matters. Any team can come back from any deficit. That seems fair to me. There’s nothing quite like eating garlic fries and talking shit in the stands of a baseball stadium while your team is loading the bases. Gives you a great chance to talk trash!

But here’s the bad news: the Seattle Mariners are the only team in the MLB not to make it to the World Series. Ever. Since the team was founded in 1977. (It almost happened last year, but no.) The Mariners hate it. I hate it. Everyone in Seattle hates it. But that’s part of loving sports in Seattle—we’re almost always the underdogs. 

Now here’s the good news, Henny: That losing streak ends this year. The team is good, and we’ve got a seat on the bandwagon! We’re headed (if this letter doesn’t jinx it) for the championship this year! (Is that the way to say it? I’m still new at this.)

Our best player, Cal “Big Dumper” Raleigh, is the catcher and a power hitter, and he’s so good that he should have won the AL MVP last season. He hit the most home runs in the league (60 in the regular season!), but someone from the freaking New York Stankees got it. 

Whatever.

I’ve learned that the rest of our team is amazing, too. Julio Rodríguez (we call him J Rod) is a star fielder, shortstop J.P. Crawford is cool as ice, and our pitchers—Kirby, Gilbert, Woo!—are the best in the world. I think so, anyway. I’m still learning! But you don’t have to know how pretzels are made in order to love them, right? And that’s how I feel about the Mariners.

The Ms also have one of the best ballparks in the league. This is based on my sample of one. (I have not been to other ballparks.) But… T-Mobile Park has great food—they started serving French fries in a literal Washington State ferry this season—and I like watching the pitchers warm up in that place by the stairs. Your father tells me it’s the “bullpen.” All I know is that hearing the light rail train roll by at sunset from a seat in the outfield is my kind of Tuesday night. 

It’s like staring at a timeless, peaceful painting. 

But my favorite part of the season, as I mentioned, Henny, is listening to the games on the radio at home with you. That old timer play-by-play announcer, Rick Rizzs, is just classic. His vocal timbre and that background crackle are like ASMR on steroids. Your father and I have put you to sleep dozens of nights with the game on low. Our ears lean in as you drift away to hear if Cal hit another bomb over the outfield wall.

Yes, Dear Henny. That cacophony you’ll hear some nights this summer is me going nuts for the Ms (or maybe laughing uncontrollably at an opponent’s injury). And that other sound you’ll hear will be the city bursting in chaotic joy or collectively groaning, depending on whether WE make it to the World Series come October (yes, we).

Oh, there’s one more important piece of information you should know about baseball. Every player gets to have a walk-up song, a song that’s played throughout the arena as they step up to bat. I don’t know everyone on the team’s song yet, but I do know what mine would be: Public Enemy’s “Public Enemy No. 1.” 

A fucking classic!

What’s yours?

Eva Walker is a writer, a KEXP DJ, one-half of the rock duo the Black Tones, and mom to her baby girl, Hendrix. She also cowrote the book The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City, which was released in 2024. Every month for The Stranger, she writes a letter to Hendrix to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. Read all installments here.

The post Dear Hendrix appeared first on The Stranger.

So, how about that weather? We had all of it yesterday. Sun. Rain. Hail. Thunder. Lighting. One crack of lightning set off a chorus of car alarms in my neighborhood. And if you were looking at Elliott Bay, you might have even spotted a totally-normal-in-this-part-of-the-world “tornadic waterspout.” Today promises to be far less exciting. Sun, temps in the 50s. The kind of April day we hope for but rarely get. Plus, tonight is our first post-8 p.m. sunset. 

So take a look at this funnel cloud and then let’s do the news. 

City Council Dares the Mayor’s Office to Be Better Than Everett: In council’s Land Use committee meeting on Wednesday, councilmembers questioned representatives from the mayor’s office about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed legislation that would allow her to open 4,000 shelter units during her term. There was, predictably, a lot of chatter about public safety. (City officials declined to go into detail, but did say they planned to have undercover police around the new tiny home villages to crack down on “mid-level drug dealers.”) But my favorite moment of the meeting was when Councilmember Dan Strauss used his time to claim that Everett was able to avoid getting mired in permitting and process, and stood up their new shelter within 48 hours of getting the tiny homes. And so he had one goal for the mayor’s office: Beat Everett. 

Good News for Everyone but Ticketmaster: Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and 32 other states (plus DC) won an antitrust case against LiveNation on Wednesday. The jury found that the company, which owns Ticketmaster, has an illegal monopoly in concert and ticketing markets—which is why concert ticket prices seem so out of control these days. Next up: the court has to decide how to break up that monopoly. 

There’s a New Mall Cop in Town: The City announced yesterday that they plan to contract with private security to patrol Golden Gardens and Magnuson Park overnight, from May 1 to September 30. Apparently, it’s to deter late-night “boom” parties at the parks, which have “loud music.” 

Hate Crime Case Comes to an End: Remember last year, when we reported that police were investigating a hate crime outside of Pony Bar? Witnesses said three men circled the bar in their car, shouting slurs and firing a water pellet gun at people outside. Two people were charged for the hate crime last April, and according to Capitol Hill Seattle blog, court records show that they struck a plea deal in the fall, including a suspended sentence of a year in jail and two years of probation. 

Iran’s FC Coming to Seattle? The head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, confirmed yesterday that Iran will be coming to the US for the World Cup this summer. Iran had previously requested that their games be moved to Canada or Mexico—two countries that aren’t actively bombing them—but it appears that FIFA turned that request down. All of this came from Infantino, though. Iran hasn’t directly confirmed it. 

Europe’s Jet Fuel Is Dwindling: And the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, says that they have about a six-week supply left, according to the AP. We should expect to see flight cancellations “soon,” he said, if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t reopened permanently. (He then made a painfully awkward reference to the band, Dire Straits, which I will spare you.) “Some countries may be richer than the others. Some countries may have more energy than the others, but no country, no country is immune to this crisis,” he said. “Everybody is going to suffer.” 

Meanwhile, Trump got distracted by something(s) shiny: In the middle of a goddamn war, the US Commission of Fine Arts (whose seven members were all appointed by President Trump) will consider Trump’s proposal to build “the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World” today. It’d be 250 feet tall on a manmade island in the middle of the Potomac, covered in gilded lions and eagles. He also wants to paint the granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building white. Constructed beside the White House, its granite, slate, and cast iron exterior makes it one of the US’s best examples of the French Second Empire style of architecture, but Trump thinks the stone is ugly. 

Hegseth’s War Posture: At a press conference this morning, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth told reporters that the US military is “maximally postured to restart combat operations” if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal. We have less than a week left in the ceasefire, with no signs of an actual peace deal. 

Did you know that we’re still bombing boats in the Pacific? Our military can multitask. On Wednesday, the US Southern Command struck a ship in the Eastern Pacific, killing three people that the government claims were moving drugs. It was the third strike in as many days, and the 51st since Trump started this campaign. 

Oh No, Don’t Do That: Stanley Zhong, a coder who graduated high school with 4.42 GPA, a 1590 SAT score, and high rankings in several international coding competitions, was rejected from UW’s undergrad program, and shortly after that, Google offered him an AI engineering job that would typically require a doctorate. He and his dad determined that racial discrimination was likely the culprit for his rejection, so they decided to sue the university, but no lawyer would take the case. So instead, ChatGPT and Gemini are their lawyers. “ I’m going stand here and make a bold claim, based on our filing and the judge’s recent ruling, that I think AI is already on par, if not better, than the top lawyers in the nation,” his dad said, while going on to say that he has to comb through every document to search for fabricated quotes and other errors. 

If any of that was your last straw, the road to Canada is finally open again, after getting clobbered by a landslide. 

As usual, that was a lot. So here’s an entire article about seal whiskers. They make them extraordinary hunters because fish movements “leave behind underwater trails that a seal can follow to find the fish and gobble them up,” KUOW reports. “If you look at an airplane, you can see a trail left behind,” a biologist told KUOW. “And this is similar to what you have if a fish is swimming through the water column. You can’t see it—but you can sense it, with the whiskers.”

The post Slog AM: Washington Wins Lawsuit Against Ticketmaster, Europe Is Running Low on Jet Fuel, and the Road to Canada Is Back Open appeared first on The Stranger.

Gone are the days where Drag Race reunion episodes are sordid kiki sessions where the queens sit around and throw shade at one another.

Now, we’ve got LaLaPaRuzas, and if you have trouble wrapping your tongue around that particular RuPaulism, just know that Ru struggles with it too: she called it a “lip-sync whatcha-callit.” Keep cashing those checks, Mama.

Punny tongue twisters aside, we got nine (!) lip-sync battles as all the eliminated queens duked it out for the title of “Queen of She Already Done Had Herses,” plus a $50K cash prize. Discord was thrilled at how many safety pins she could buy with that much money. And I was just happy to see Jane back on my television screen.

Briar Blush, post Faintgate, opted to sit out of the LaLaPaRuza on her doctor’s orders, revealing her diagnoses of walking pneumonia and sepsis. The other queens were supportive, a kind conclusion to what had been a problematic edit of Briar’s health issues. 

We also revisited the drama between Ciara Myst (her bloody Carrie-inspired werkroom look was doing the most) and Jane Don’t, the recipient of Ciara’s suitcase full of scraps in Episode 10’s design challenge. When Jane confronted Ciara about the sabotage, Ciara claimed innocence, but was happy to hear how her presence haunted the werkroom even after she had sashayed away. Keep those bitches talking about you, and you’ll live forever. 

RuPaula-Shanina-PaRuza

The Lip-Sync LalaPaRuza Smackdown *tongue pop* featured all RuPaul songs, because apparently a reunion episode isn’t worth the staggering licensing fees for a dozen gay anthems. 

I enjoy RuPaul’s music just as much as the next Drag Race gay. The song selections were diverse, considering they were all Ru’s; his sixteen-album catalogue skillfully samples from basically every queer genre you can think of from disco and house to sissy bounce and hyperpop. 

The “RuPaula-Shanina-PaRuza” (thanks, Ru) was structured into three rounds. The longer a queen lasted in the competition, the later she would enter the fray. The first round featured DD Fuego, Mandy Mango, Vita VonTesse Starr, Ciara Myst, Mia Starr, and Athena Dion. The three winning queens of round one would then enter round two against Kenya Pleaser, Discord Addams, and Jane Don’t; then, the last three queens standing after round two would battle it out alongside Juicy Love Dion (the “final boss,” according to Discord) in round three. Finally, the last two queens would battle for the win. 

Meanwhile, our top three took on a spectator role. Floridian Myki Meeks wore an elegant citrus-patterned dress, while Darlene Mitchell appeared as a cheeky diner waitress complete with a stack of pancakes. And Nini Coco looked like the most glamorous STI you could possibly get.

Let the Lip-Syncs Begin

With Asaf of the Pit Crew pulling balls from the Golden Hopper to decide the order of the queens’ lip syncs, our first matchup was between Ciara and Athena to “Born Naked.” (Asaf was the gem of the episode—his reactions from the judges’ panel were so pure.) Ciara went for a mutated beauty queen look a la The Substance while Athena was clean and classic. Despite struggling with her reveal, Ciara got the pass and Athena sashayed away.

Next up was Mia and Mandy to “Just What They Want,” a hyperpop-house track with a lot of words. The matchup was epic, with both queens giving their all. Mia brought a fat stack of real dollar bills to make it rain on Mandy mid-lip-sync. Icon behavior won Mia the lip-sync, and Mandy joined the peanut gallery.

As the last lip-sync for round one, Vita and DD Fuego squared off to the classic disco beat of “Main Event.” DD’s looks and movement were beautiful, and it was great to see more from our Porkchop of the season. However, Vita better matched the energy of the song and became the final queen to advance.

Vita and Mia, still sweating from round one, kicked off the second bout with “Call Me Mother” —a bouncy house track that made for an excellent mainstage showdown. Mia won by a hair, advancing her to the final round.

Next up were Kenya and Ciara to “Pretty Gang,” a RuPaul track that I don’t think much about, and it was okay. Ciara just sort of walked back and forth while Kenya bounced around the stage, bringing her the win. 

And now we get to Jane. With Discord as her opponent, Jane had an opportunity to do “the funniest thing ever,” which was choosing “Sissy That Walk” as their lip-sync song. When the beat dropped, she mimicked Discord’s iconic walk (Discord did too) to howls of delight from everyone present. Jane’s comedy savvy brought her the win.

The Final Four

As round three began, I wondered how Jane could pull off a win against performance powerhouses Mia, Kenya, and Juicy. Nini thought she could by channeling her “Jane magic,” AKA using the lip-sync song to make her opponent look silly. 

But alas, Jane could not keep up with Juicy Love Dion during “Cha Cha Bitch.” Juicy made Drag Race herstory by doing a costume reveal through a back handstand (!), cinching her a spot in the top two. Jane wasn’t too put out by her loss: “I’m ready to go drink and talk shit.” Love you, Jane. Can’t wait to see you at home.

Mia and Kenya jiggled and wiggled their way through “Peanut Butter,” a sissy bounce masterpiece featuring vocals from the queen diva herself, Big Freedia. The energy was high. The asses were fat. Both queens put on a spectacular show, but Mia was a bit more precise, launching her into the top.

And here we go again: Mia Starr versus Juicy Love Dion. The last time these two queens lip-synced, it was a double win. The LalaPaRuza finale was the ultimate tiebreaker to the tune of “Cover Girl,” the proto-Drag Race track that started it all. While Mia gave it her all, this was her fourth high-energy lip-sync of the day, and she couldn’t quite keep up with her drag niece. Juicy killed it, winning the title and the cash prize, a tidy conclusion to her prodigious story arc.

Join us next week for the finale of Season 18, where Myki Meeks, Nini Coco, and Darlene Mitchell compete for the crown. Also, Team Jane Don’t for Miss Congeniality! The bitch deserves it. 

See you then!

The post ‘Drag Race’ Episode 15: RuPaul’s LaLaPaRuza Lip-Sync Whatcha-Callit appeared first on The Stranger.

I knew I wanted to tell you to shut the fuck up from the moment your voice echoed off the gallery walls. The cacophony of noise you and your family made was only sweetened by the idiocy of mind your words betrayed, and I felt my heart flutter when you stepped near enough for me to hear more than a snippet through the din. I thought that the tapestries depicting the violence of colonialism on Indigenous bodies and the land were vivid and unmistakable in their directness. But only a flaccid young man like yourself could put forth such a breathtakingly vapid critique of the work: “I don’t know what it means, but it’s very evocative.”

Oh, stranger, are you fucking stupid? Or do you just not know how to read the artist’s statement, the description of the pieces on the walls, or glean the most basic of interpretations from the art itself? I’m so sorry you found expressions of rage and grief to be “unfortunate.” That must have been so uncomfortable for you. Much easier than actually engaging with the themes of the work, of course; who would dare make your mind, seated at its pinnacle of privilege, ever do such a thing?

There’s so much I wish I could have communicated to you, hapless coward, but something tells me I would have been thrown out before getting through to you. You taught me so much about the amount of noise and the inanity of content capable of being produced by such a small group of people in such a short amount of time; I can only hope that one day you’re able to see what a fucking dumbass you are.

Do you need to get something off your chest? Submit an I, Anonymous, and maybe
we’ll illustrate it! Send your unsigned rant, love letter, confession, or accusation to
ianonymous@thestranger.com. Please remember to change the names of the innocent and
the guilty.

The post The Art of Stupidity appeared first on The Stranger.

At first glance, Maddy’s Bakeshop is tiny. Itty bitty. Almost too small to be a bakery, in fact. The pocket-sized storefront is tucked into the corner space of a strip mall painted an unremarkable blue-gray color on Western Avenue, right where Belltown, Interbay, and Lower Queen Anne collide, aka Nowheresville, and it’d be easy to miss when driving or even walking by. But once you step inside, you become engulfed by Maddy O’Donnell’s world, a dramatic, colorful place where sweet pastries are topped with fistfuls of rainbow sprinkles, stunning white sheet cakes are decorated with big, fresh flowers, and savory croissants are finished off with decorative wooden toothpicks skewered with pepperoncinis or cornichons.

The walls are pink with green and white squiggly lines. The day’s menu is handwritten on a giant roll of butcher paper, stretched out taller than the average man. In one corner, under a large mirrorball (obviously Maddy’s Bakeshop has a mirrorball), there’s a thoughtful selection of gifts and foodie items—Fishwife’s tinned seafood, Flouwer Co’s artisanal crackers dotted with dried flower petals, Maeve chocolate bars, Pistakio pistachio spread. In another, there’s a small coffee station, two serve-yourself dispensers offering Kuma drip coffee and hot water for Miro tea. Just minutes into her tour of the space, owner Maddy O’Donnell makes it clear that Maddy’s Bakeshop will never, ever be a coffeehouse.

“I don’t want to do anything unless I really love it, and I couldn’t hate something more than the thought of me making espresso,” she says with a laugh, as she walks me back to the kitchen. In fact, she didn’t even want a storefront, as cute as it is. “My dream was to have a window. I never was gonna have a front-of-house space, but it’d be dumb not to with this weird little room.”

O’Donnell’s love-it-or-leave-it attitude permeates Maddy’s Bakeshop’s walls. That weird little room is just the tip of the icing berg. Because behind that too-small-to-be-a-bakery bakery is where the real pastry magic happens. The kitchen, which is closed off during business hours, is a 2,500-square-foot space that O’Donnell has designed and outfitted into a full-size, full-time croissant factory.

One room houses several refrigerators (the previous owners removed the walk-in before O’Donnell moved in) filled with local produce, various types of cheeses, and so much butter. In another area, there are three ovens and a proofer. The main event is the big room, with a killer view looking out onto Myrtle Edwards Park on the water, lined with rows of work tables and a sheeter, allowing ample space for rolling and shaping and filling and topping croissants in flavors like sour cream and onion potato, grilled cheese, French onion soup, strawberry crumble, almond funfetti, and jalapeño popper. She could’ve turned that space into a dining area, a coffee shop, or a bakehouse with a view, but she kept it for herself.

The mechanical sheeter is a new addition, she says. Before opening her storefront, she worked in a commissary kitchen and used a Brod and Taylor countertop dough sheeter that had to be cranked by hand—an incredible feat when you consider just how many croissants O’Donnell makes in an average week. Between nearly a dozen wholesale spots, the Ballard Farmers Market on Sundays, and the new bakery (open Friday through Sunday), she estimates she goes through about 180 pounds of butter and about 200 pounds of flour a week. And that’s just for the croissants. Last year, on a busy summer day, she’d easily sell 900 pastries at the Ballard Farmers Market, and these days, she moves anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 a week.

And yes, she’s loyal to her butter brand, as many croissant makers are. But not in the usual gatekeeping way that often comes with monotone lectures about butterfat and melting point. When I hesitantly ask about her butter preferences, I brace myself for a monologue about trade secrets and blah blah blah… Instead, she immediately says, “I use Darigold!” and shrugs. No big deal. No snobbery. Darigold. Like the kind you buy at QFC when it’s on sale, two for $5 with a loyalty card.

“I don’t like the inconsistency of quality of Plugrà,” she says. “My dream is Kerrygold, but I can’t afford that.” She used Crémerie Classique for years, but found it inconsistent, too, so she tried Darigold, and, she says, “Everyone was like, ‘Your croissants are so much better!’ It has a good price point, it’s local.”

O’Donnell is used to people questioning her methods. People have said a lot of dumb things to her since she started selling pastries via pop-ups in 2022. She’s been given unsolicited business advice and unwanted baking tips. Some have commented on her branding, while others have criticized her presentation. Instead of getting mad, she gets creative.

“Anxiety and rage are what fuel me,” she says. “All of the decisions I make are because someone’s pissed me off. The pink walls—a guy, another vendor, told me once my stuff was too girlie. He said I was alienating a group of people, aka men. So I was like, ‘I’ll show you!’ I got a pink tent. My branding is so much pink because, fuck you.

“Someone told me two weeks ago that my ham and cheese croissant looks stupid because it had a pepper on it, and that it needed to be put inside [the croissant]. I said, ‘Do you work in the food industry?’ And he said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Great, so you know it’d get soggy?’ Just shut up! It’s cute! Let a girl live!”

Maddy’s stands out in a city where so many bakeries and coffee shops play it safe. I think of the complaint that Stranger staff writer Julianne Bell made in our 2025 Complaints Issue, that coffee shops specifically have adopted increasingly sterile, cold design, seemingly to not offend potential customers. But the way O’Donnell sees it, trying to please everyone is boring. Being herself—loudly, with sprinkles on twice-baked croissants—feels like a radical act these days.

“I also love making a ‘trashy food’ with the bougiest ingredients,” she says. “Like a jalapeño popper. I do a jalapeño popper croissant, but the jalapeños are from local farms, I’ll use really expensive cream cheese, and my flour is from a local mill. I feel like that’s me—a little trashy, but…”

“Locally sourced trash?” I ask.

She laughs. “I kind of love that!”

Indeed, the ham for her ham and cheese croissant comes from Olsen Farms. She gets berries from Hayton Farms, rhubarb from Sidhu Farms, and works with Collins Family Orchard all the time, she says. The flour comes from Cairnspring. And, of course, the butter from Darigold. Which is a local dairy! People forget!

O’Donnell is “not a bread girlie,” she says, but she recently hired another baker, and the two are plotting out a new menu item for the summer: focaccia sandwiches. She shows me a photo of a cross section of a test bake, and I gasp.

“Oh, shit!”

“Yeah, dude!”

“Are you gonna fill those nooks with pesto?”

“And aioli! I am such a slut for aioli,” she says. “I love a good herby mayo. We’re gonna do a veg [sandwich] that’s super, hyper local—my goal, my dream, is to go to the farmers market in Wallingford on Wednesdays and pick up all the veg and sell it Friday through Sunday so it’s so fresh. And then I’ll also have an Italian [sandwich], an herby, oily, meaty… a really good sandwich.

“I live up the street from here. I wanted to be in this neighborhood,” she adds. And I suddenly feel bad for thinking of the area as Nowheresville. I always assumed this intersection of neighborhoods was a pedestrian dead zone—people were always either going down to the water or up to Lower Queen Anne, circumventing Western Ave entirely. But O’Donnell saw the magic immediately—and she saw how her fun, delicious food could fit right in.

“I think of a lot of ideas at that park,” she says, pointing at Myrtle Edwards. “Sometimes I’ll take a bottle of wine, some cookbooks, and I’ll sit there and think of fun ideas. This is a dream, where I am. We’re going to do sandwiches and wine and beer, so it’s a picnic-y vibe.

“I’m trying so hard to make things that will also bring someone joy,” she says, but acknowledges, “my stuff is definitely not for everyone. It’s leaning in on the femininity of it all, because I don’t know, everyone hates women and hates anyone who’s not a straight man. That’s mainly my customer base. My customer base is the girlies, and that’s not gendered.”

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