Seattle Living

Most Influential, Business: Ebony Welborn and Savannah Smith
They saw that few in the maritime sector looked like them. They're out to change that.
Ebony Welborn and Savannah Smith are among Seattle’s 25 most influential people reshaping our region. #mostinfluential A fascination with the ocean brought Ebony Welborn and Savannah Smith together. A mission to create BIPOC representation in the maritime industry keeps them going. Welborn and Smith are the cofounders of Seattle-based Sea Potential LLC, a company they…

Most Influential, Education: Kate Starbird
Kate Starbird spends her career studying and combating falsehoods
Kate Starbird is one of Seattle’s 25 most influential people reshaping our region. #mostinfluential Kate Starbird sometimes wishes her research focused on happier topics. If she didn’t spend her days devoted to tracking disinformation [false information deliberately spread to deceive people], she wouldn’t witness attempts to unravel democratic elections. She and her colleagues at the…

Editor’s Note: Microsoft’s Jane Broom Davidson: ‘Coolest Job Ever’
Jane Broom Davidson has built a career giving away Microsoft’s money
Investors buy Microsoft stock to make money. Jane Broom Davidson get paid to give it away. As senior director of Microsoft Philanthropies, Broom Davidson oversees investments in affordable housing, human services, education, arts and culture, and workforce development. It’s no small job. The company donated $73.9 million across Washington state last year, behind only Amazon….

Essentials: Hot Girl Walk Thaws Seattle Freeze
Weekend walkers come together for friendship, community
What began as a way for Courtney Byers to meet some friends in a city known for the “Seattle Freeze” has blossomed into a full-on army. Byers, a women’s strength coach and birth doula who recently moved to the area, created the Seattle chapter of Hot Girl Walk last August. Two women showed up. Nine…

Editor’s Note: Spirit of the Sonics
Basketball-crazy Seattle awaits the NBA’s return
Back in the ’90s, I rented an apartment near Seattle Center. My buddy — a longtime SuperSonics season ticket-holder — took me to dozens of games at the old KeyArena in exchange for a convenient parking spot at my complex (which, sadly, like many things from that time period, is now gone). Those early-to-mid…

Fave Five: Sail, Stream, Donate, Create
Enjoy the sun and find a new hobby
1 DON’T WAIT to sail off into the Puget Sound horizon on a 70-foot yacht. You don’t need your own boat. Just buy a ticket or two online and head down to Pier 56 off Alaskan Way and join a Sailing Seattle Cruise, a company family owned and operated here for 40 years. Bring a…

Publisher’s Note: ACAB?! Not so fast
The truth is often more complicated than it appears
It’s powerful how simple slogans, mottos, and memes capture the zeitgeist of a particular moment. They express a necessary and biting emotion to provoke the establishment and cause us all to think a little, or a lot, about what’s broken. But an oddly circular thing can happen. An acute series of tragic instances of police brutality…

Pride in Place: Why Seattle Architecture Shines
Seattle's Past Influences its Modern-Day and Future Architecture
George Suyama has had an outsized influence on much of what we know as modern-day Seattle, but he never planned on a career in architecture. Suyama, a Seattle native who has been practicing architecture in the region for more than six decades, founded his award-winning firm, George Suyama Architects (now Suyama Peterson Deguchi), in 1971….

The birth of pre-funk
a look at Seattle’s first real citywide Mardi Gras
According to the online slang compendium Urban Dictionary, the term “pre-funk” is defined as “an informal social gathering that takes place prior to the official ceremony, or social gathering, usually involving intoxicating activities and generally resulting in inebriation.” Further research shows that it’s actually a regional phrase, specific to the Pacific Northwest, and is a…

Seattle’s BLOCK Project is expanding
THE INNOVATIVE BLOCK PROJECT IS GROWING IN SEATTLE AND EXPANDING TO OTHER STATES
Editor’s note: The homeowners requested that their last name or neighborhood not be used. In the early days of the pandemic, Sarah and her husband, Robbie, looked around at their safe and comfortable home and couldn’t stop thinking about how people experiencing homelessness were faring during those tense weeks and months of social distancing. Years…

Screen Gem – Nate Burleson
FORMER O’DEA STAR AND NFL RECEIVER RISES TO THE TOP OF HIS NEW PROFESSION
Nate Burleson was right. It is awfully early. Just after 5 a.m., in fact, and while the lights in Times Square remain on that’s because the lights in Times Square never turn off and as I approach the Broadway address for the studio where we’re meeting, a man in a suit steps forward. “Who are…

An Intervention: Seattle architects weigh in on the city’s style
How buildings can bring famously guarded Seattleites together
The elevator door opens. You step aboard and join a few others on the 30-second ride down to the ground floor. If you’re a Seattleite, you know instinctively to stare ahead, up, down — anywhere but into the eyes of a stranger. When the noiseless descent ends, you escape the forced close quarters to get…

‘Blandmarks,’ not ‘Landmarks:’ Why Seattle architecture falls short
SEATTLE CAN AND MUST DO BETTER WITH ITS ARCHITECTURE
I’m not an architect. I’m not an urban planner. I’m not a developer. I am just a guy who has chosen to live most of his life in Seattle, and I’m disappointed. I fell in love with the Emerald City while visiting in the early 1990s, so much so that I moved my family from…
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