by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Lizz Giordano
With the opening of the West Seattle Bridge on Sunday, Sept. 18, the Duwamish Valley is counting down the days to fewer vehicles passing through the neighborhood and regaining its streets for slower uses.
Continue reading Duwamish Valley Hopes for Quieter Streets as the West Seattle Bridge Reopensby Ronnie Estoque
After nearly 15 years of planning, an old gas station in Georgetown has found new life as an arts community center. In the late 1990s, John Sutton, Ben Beres, and Zac Culler first met as art students at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts. They had worked in the Cornish sculpture lab and eventually began to collaborate on various installation projects. Since then, they formed an artist collective called SuttonBeresCuller (SBC), which recently finished developing the Mini Mart City Park (MMCP), a cultural space featuring local art that is located at 6525 Ellis Ave. S. in Georgetown — formerly the site of a gas station.
Continue reading Mini Mart City Park Reimagines Georgetown Gas Station for Arts and Community Useby Erica C. Barnett
(This article was originally published by PubliCola and has been reprinted under an agreement).
Drive through Seattle’s industrial areas — Georgetown, South Park, parts of Ballard, and SoDo — and it’s hard to miss them: Bulky, horizontal concrete blocks lined up like giant Legos along the sides of the street, preventing large vehicles from parking by the roadside.
Continue reading ‘Eco Blocks’ Are Concrete Signs of Seattle’s Failure to Address RV Homelessnessby Kayla Blau
Seattle is known for its plethora of culinary options, but there is one glaring hole in the Seattle food scene: Native American cuisine. Given that we are squatting on Duwamish land, Jeremy Thunderbird (Ohlone, Chumash, Squamish) is working to change that.
“I always hear people saying, ‛Oh, I know this bomb Mexican spot or phở spot in Seattle,’ but no one ever says ‛I know this bomb Native American restaurant,’ so I wanted to change that,” Thunderbird shares.
Continue reading Native Soul Cuisine Puts Native Food on the Map in Seattle Food Sceneby Mark Van Streefkerk
In an effort to increase access to journalism for BIPOC youth in the Duwamish Valley, journalists and community storytellers Bunthay Cheam and Jenna Hanchard are launching the first-ever Duwamish Valley Youth Storytelling Project. The project is in collaboration with the Port Community Action Team and sponsored by the Port of Seattle.
A series of four workshops, the project will help youth shape a story of community interest that will ultimately be featured in South Park Roots, on the Port of Seattle communications website, and on Hanchard and Cheam’s own storytelling platforms, Lola’s Ink and TnouT, respectively.
Continue reading Tell Your Story: Apply to the Duwamish Valley Youth Storytelling Projectby Rayna Mathis
Interloper (n) — a person who becomes involved in a place or situation where they are not wanted or are considered not to belong.
—Oxford English Dictionary
Interloper is a network of art exhibitions, community engagement events, and a conversation podcast all centered around rotating themes of controversial topics. Interloper’s current show, “THIS IS(NT) FOR YOU,” which premiered on March 29 in the Ravenna neighborhood, is a pairing of two solo exhibitions, each with an artist making work for their own community — communities alienated in different ways by language, location, and class expectations. By constructing the exhibitions using language and coded signifiers of the communities the work is for, each artist creates dual viewing experiences that immediately confront the viewer with a sense of (not) belonging.
The show asks the following questions: Who controls the narrative? Who is art for? Who is left on the outside looking in?
Continue reading ‘Interloper’ Explores (Not) Belonging With Pop-Up and Online Art Installationsby Paulina López and Troy D. Abel
Recently, legislative debates turned from carbon pricing to the Healthy Environment for All Act (HEAL) uplifting environmental justice (EJ). This is important legislation, but what we really need are bold solutions and different laws addressing a persistent form of unjust and ongoing pollution. Air toxic exposure disparities and their impacts on communities like the Duwamish Valley are still being ignored by politicians and industry. This inattention continues even as new research suggests that higher air pollution may increase COVID-19 vulnerability and deaths.
Many environmentalists in our region not only overlook decades of toxic air pollution injustice, some even gloss over the problem. In January, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Seattle office announced that industrial toxic releases declined in the Northwest. Pollution dropped 12% in 2019 for 752 facilities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. They further asserted “that U.S. companies that use and manage chemicals and metals continue to make progress in preventing pollution.”
But we knew that regional averages likely obscured trends in our heavily polluted Duwamish River Valley neighborhoods of Georgetown and South Park — often first documented by our community. EPA analysts lumped air, water, and land pollution together. When viewed separately, air and water pollution went up in the Northwest. Surface-water discharges increased by 1.17 million pounds and air pollution by 610 thousand pounds between 2018 and 2019.
Continue reading OPINION: Clean Air Everywhere, for Everyone in Washingtonby Mark Van Streefkerk
Georgetown’s Jules Maes Saloon reopened under new ownership on January 12, but don’t expect much to change — owner Raché Hemmelgarn loves the historic saloon just as it is. Built in 1888, the watering hole on Airport Way hails from a time when Georgetown was the sixth-largest beer-producing district in the world, well-known for its gambling and vice. Sandwiched between the Duwamish Waterway and the train tracks, Georgetown’s outsider attitude (it was annexed by Seattle in 1910) remains largely intact. According to Hemmelgarn, what’s not to love?
“I’m not surprised by any of it,” Hemmelgarn said about the neighborhood’s infamous history. “I’m super excited to be in Georgetown. You can’t box anybody in here. Everybody’s welcome. You get everything from blue collar to white collar to punk to whatever. You walk in [Jules Maes] and it pretty much looks exactly like it [always] did.”
Continue reading Jules Maes’ New Owner Preserves Legacy of One of Seattle’s Oldest Barsby Mark Van Streefkerk
The Georgetown Liquor Company (GLC) is one of a few long-standing pillars of Seattle’s meat-free eateries, so when the GLC announced its closing in September, the city’s plant-based community collectively lamented another loss — but not for long. Alan Threewit, co-owner of Capitol Hill’s vegan metal bar Highline, took over. He renovated the interior and debuted an all-vegan menu and selection of craft cocktails, officially relaunched on December 4 for takeout only.
Continue reading Co-owner of Vegan Metal Bar Resurrects Georgetown Liquor Company
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