Vintage Ata Kak, circa the Ghanaian dance-rap artist’s 1990s heyday. Courtesy of the artist

This month, adventurous music heads in Seattle have the chance to see an experimental guitarist from Bhutan (Tashi Dorji) and a quirky rapper/singer from Ghana (Ata Kak). I hope you realize how good we have it here sometimes.

First, let’s talk about Dorji. But before that, a little prologue: In 1991, a tiny American indie label released a compilation titled Guitarrorists, featuring Sonic Boom, Helios Creed, Kim Gordon, Steve Albini, and more. It encompassed dozens of guitar players doing myriad interesting things with an instrument that’s most associated with rock music.

Stop using playgrounds as off-leash dog parks! Please! I’m specifically talking to all the people at TT Minor Playfield.

This small grassy area is the only outdoor space available for the teenage refugee and immigrant students who attend school there. Just like dogs, human youth enjoy playing, walking, and basking in the sun. Unfortunately, the students cannot do any relaxing activities in the playfield because of your dogs’ prolific shit, piss, and holes (the ones they dig). They are reduced to passing a soccer ball between the cars in the parking lot. I do not need to describe how annoying it is to retrieve

Very nice of this building to color-coordinate with nearby flyers. Matt Baume

Dare we dream of social housing? The housing justice nonprofit Be:Seattle is hosting a virtual workshop tonight on the subject of social housing, featuring Councilmember Tammy Morales along with Seattle University’s Zachary D. Wood and Tenant Power Organizer René Christian Moya. They’ll talk about building tenant power; the distinction between public housing, affordable housing, and social housing; and making sure that everyone who needs a place to live has one.

How about just social concrete? Local concrete companies have refused for months to work with local labor groups and end a strike, so King County is considering whether

One and counting…. Hannah Riley

Wahoo! Seattle officially has its first unionized Starbucks. The baristas over at the Broadway and E Denny location voted unanimously to form a union, the National Labor Relations Board announced today. Heidi Groover over at the Seattle Times writes that this “is an especially symbolic win in the coffee giant’s hometown as Howard Schultz returns as interim chief executive officer and workers at more than 100 stores say they want to unionize.” Take that, you person of beans! Next, the long slog that is contract negotiation.

The state of political discourse in this country: A sitting senator just asked a highly-educated, respected, and intelligent Supreme

CM Mosqueda was the only council member who mentioned the fact that cops have killed people. Shitty Screenshot from Seattle Channel

On Tuesday, the Seattle Police Department presented its 2022 Strategic Plan to the city council’s Public Safety & Human Service committee. The committee let the department slide with a brief overview of SPD’s priorities for the year, plus a preliminary look at a new data collecting program. Nearly two years after police brutality protests broke out here and across the country, only one council member offered much in the way of criticism.

For their part, the cops said they learned a lot from the summer of 2020. In fact,

Get ready to DANCE, Seattle! Dave Vann

Seattle isn’t exactly known as a dancing town.

While Lizzo and Beyoncé-themed nights at clubs bring out young folks ready to lose their shit to “Good As Hell” for the umpteenth time, there aren’t tons of spots that consistently offer a space to dance to live music, especially by local artists. But Ahamefule J. Oluo wants to change all that.

Every fourth Friday, the noted Seattle-based trumpeter, composer, and writer now brings a party/concert called The Shrine to the Crocodile. It kicked off at the venue last month—and its goal? To play a heady mix of jazz, funk, and other Black and West

A woman with teenaged kids has started seeing a man she’s known for a decade. It’s a dom/sub relationship, where she is the dom. Part of their arrangement is that she gets to date other people and he does not. She has always been transparent and open with her kids, but she hasn’t told them about this new relationship. Should she?

A man has decided he never wants to bring kids into the world. But he’s eager to adopt and have a family. How and when can he explain this on his dating profiles?

On the Magnum, our guest is Laura Kipness, author

Probably my favorite bit of neon in the city. XO

Some time after Capitol Hill’s beloved little (“little” as in 830 sq. ft little) brunch spot announced its “Glow Up” campaign to fund construction of a much bigger spot elsewhere on the Hill, an anonymous donor dropped $50,000 on the mission. The donation nets the generous contributor an exclusive lifetime “SPEED PASS,” which allows them and three guests to skip to the front of the diner’s famously long line whenever they want. Aside from the TSA pre-check for mimosas, the donor also scores free breakfast for four at the new location for the next two years.

In a phone interview,

The new busiest be here… Charles Mudede

A note on the students who yesterday protested the premature termination of Washington’s mask mandate: What it revealed is how the right always in the end gets what it wants. In this case, it is getting its beloved necroeconomics, or, put another way, a society that explicitly places the value of life below the endless accumulation of value in the form of capital. All that mainstream Dems did was delay the transition into this kind of economy by two years. The right wanted it right away. But the fact of the matter is the pandemic has not reached an end, and some are