First PNW Fashion Week Highlights Sustainability on the Runway
Seek out designers like Titus Ross of Thirty+ Clothing. He presents an alternative approach, embodying sustainability through the art of upcycling and strengthening community. On January 25, 2025, he showcased pieces from his current collection alongside Clementine Cimetiere of ClemCreations—who debuted on January 26—at the first-ever PNW Fashion Week. The shows took place at the QFC – Quality Flea Center and featured other local artists and advocacy vendors who promote creativity and challenge the status quo.
I spoke with Titus ahead of PNW Fashion Week to discover his inspiration for Thirty+ Clothing and find out what the future of sustainable fashion in Seattle looks like from his perspective as an emerging designer.
Free Public Displays Make Art Accessible Around Seattle
Three art pieces came to the Seattle Center and are here until the cherry blossoms bloom this April. The Seattle Center, in collaboration with The Office of Arts and Culture, commissioned three public pieces for a short-term display on their campus: two sculptures and one hung banner.
Iconic Convos: The Gum Wall
NB: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Pike Place Market. During our talk, Pike Place spoke briefly about their friend The Gum Wall. Now that we are clear of the market’s holiday hustle and bustle, Gum Wall has made time to connect with us and share some secrets. Welcome, Gum Wall, and thank you for speaking with us today.
Sound Cinema: The Majestic Bay
The theater is a triplex with the largest of its three screens on the street level. The lobby is adorned with history. Photos of the original iterations of the theater line the wall with a look at what the demolition and reconstruction process was like for the theater in 1998. Within the lobby there’s a classic snack bar with everything a movie goer needs. Above your head, notice the unique glass lighting fixtures that look like jellyfish, which complements the theater's maritime theme, more evidence of which is scattered throughout the space.
Max’s Musings: Reyna Biddy
For discussion this week, I chose a poem from Reyna Biddy’s poetry collection, i love my love. Published back in 2015, I was exposed to her work for the first time in college during one of my poetry workshops. After reading it several years ago, I wanted to reread it with fresh eyes and an open heart.
Although the collection goes through ups and downs of self-doubt and self-confidence, Biddy reflects on her parents’ relationship as well as the greatest love of all: self-love. Biddy’s poem “for you” speaks to this ideal through a power anthem that invites the reader to act.
In Memoriam: Tom Robbins, Washington Author
This morning, I awoke to the news that one of my favorite authors walked beyond the veil on February 9. Tom Robbins, a prolific novelist, was born in North Carolina in 1932, then relocated to Washington State in the 1960s. He wrote with a bohemian playfulness and humor that often belied his philosophical style and was once most accurately dubbed “The Northwest’s Master of Zen-Punk” by Seattle Weekly writer Roger Downey in 2006.
Playful + Profound: Highlights from Grave Plot Film Fest
There are those of us (author included) for whom Halloween is not enough—we like to be scared year-round. Two such individuals are Taylor Bartle and Tony Gee, aka Taylor of Terror and Skeletony, co-hosts of the Grave Plot Podcast and Grave Plot Film Festival. “Thank you guys for traversing the arctic tundra,” Bartle said in his introduction, adding that when they first began the festival in 2019, the duo didn’t expect it would last more than a year. This was the 7th annual iteration of the festival, and its first at Central Cinema, the delightful 123-seat dine-in theater in Seattle’s Central District.
WA State Black Legacy Institute Cradles Community in History, Art, Education
As they wrapped up the speeches and braced for the ribbon cutting, Savanna Boles was invited to sing. During her rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, it began to snow. At first it was a magical dusting, but as the music swelled, so did the weather. We followed the singer as everyone was ushered inside and out of the cold. A few joked that the ancestors were saying, "Get on with it, it's cold!" Inside the music switched to a vocal accompaniment to “Glory,” and the ribbon was cut. With that, the Washington State Black Legacy Institute was officially open.
Parker’s Pages: Frog Day
When life gives you a book about frogs, by golly, you’ve got to jump on it.
This week I discovered Frog Day, a stupendously cute and informative book all about frogs and toads and the wonderful world they live in. From the Earth Day series of the University of Chicago Press comes a 24-hour story about 24 different frog and toad species, written by herpetologist (a biologist who studies amphibians and reptiles) Marty Crump and illustrated by local Seattle artist Tony Angell.
Noir City Film Fest Celebrates Fierce Femmes
Returning this month is Noir City, a film festival dedicated to all things seedy, nefarious, and tantalizing in the world of crime. As the weather stays frightful, it is a great time to watch hardboiled detectives, cruel gangsters, and the women who love them in glorious black and white celluloid with a few hundred fellow genre admirers. This year's edition of Noir City highlights films "where winsome women turn wicked.”
Iconic Convos: The Seattle Freeze
Nicole Bearden (NB): Since we are deep into Seattle’s dark days (Winter), I thought it was about time to talk to our most famous, local, glacial icon: The Seattle Freeze. Thanks so much for joining us today, Freeze. What have you been up to?
Seattle Freeze (SF): Oh, just chilling. The usual.
NB: Snorts Oh! Ha. Very funny.
We Endorse Prop 1A for Seattle! Here’s Why:
It’s no secret that the housing problem facing the city of Seattle has already reached emergency levels, and we absolutely cannot delay action any longer. Data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau's 2009 and 2019 American Community Surveys shows that Seattle rent prices have increased nearly 92% since 2010. Gone are the days of thinking we can continue with the status quo and hope to achieve a different outcome.
Max’s Musings: Sarah Stockton
I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State, edited by Rena Priest, is a poetry anthology full of diverse poems celebrating the tales of the epic fish. Priest states in the preface of the anthology that this passion project of hers stemmed from how “salmon are a keystone species, which means everything relies on them, and if we want to be okay, the salmon must thrive.”
Seattle’s Comedy Imprint Grows with SF SketchFest Guests
3 weeks, 12 venues, 100+ performances. The San Francisco Sketch Festival (SF SketchFest) is renowned as the largest festival dedicated to stand-up, improv, sketch, and all comedic art forms. The 2025 world-class lineup includes Bill Murray, Kathryn Hahn, Tim Curry, the casts of Futurama and Children’s Hospital, and an anniversary staged reading of Airplane!
Barboza Continues New Sound Spotlighting with waltzerr
Barboza in Capitol Hill is a long, rectangular underground bar. Seventies ballads are playing while pink and blue lines of light beam down from industrial rafters to the dance floor below. People sit tucked away at cozy circular booths lit by flickering red candles while others gather near the stage. In the crowd, I see the opening band milling about and chatting with audience members. This is the band waltzerr, and they are about to perform their opening set before a performance from Kellan, followed by the night’s headliner, Ayo Dot & the Uppercuts.
Top 10 Candidates for PNW Bird of the Century
After John Oliver’s aggressive campaign for the Puteketeke to become New Zealand’s Bird of the Century, it seemed only right that I follow in his footsteps to elect my own Pacific Northwest Bird of the Century. I may not go so far as to don a giant bird-suit on live television (like John Oliver did on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show), but I’ll happily offer up my own strong opinions of the little flying creatures we see around the Sound. So buckle up for the Top 10 Birds of the PNW, culminating in my pick for the PNW’s Bird of the Century.
Iconic Convos: Lenin Statue
Nicole Bearden: Zdravstvuyte, today we are speaking with the Fremont Lenin statue. (I don’t speak Russian, but I learned the phrase for “hello”, just for today).
Lenin Statue: Hello. I do not speak Russian.
NB: Aren’t you a Lenin statue? I thought Lenin was Russian?
LS: Lenin was Russian. My nationality is more complicated. I was created by a Bulgarian, for Czechoslovakia, and have now been in the Capitalist States of America since the ‘90s. What is nationality anyway? What are borders, but arbitrary lines assigned to take power from the many and funnel it to the wealthy?
Max’s Musings: Ani DiFranco
Ani DiFranco, folk singer and founder of Righteous Babe Records, is returning to Seattle, February 1, 2025, to the Moore Theater. In the spirit of her visit, I wanted to select a poem from her poetry collection Verses, published in 2007, which tackles “the tough issues at hand” while “her personal-is-political viewpoint is more relevant than ever”. The collection looks at the importance of art and poetry and how they can be powerful tools in rhetoric when entering political spheres.
More Than Coffee Art: Art with Your Coffee
Past the coffee cup, a thriving coffee shop is filled with satisfied customers having the ability to sit at a table, lounge leisurely, and possibly work on a laptop with free wifi. Seattle shops routinely deliver these modest customer requests.
Here are four coffee shops around the Seattle area that can be ideal for finding your next open seat—and of course local art.
Journey Through Time, Grief, and Humor in Gorman’s Gold
Staged in Capitol Hill’s Annex Theatre, Marcus Gorman’s Gold: A True-ish Jewish Story is one part coming-of-age road trip and one part psychedelic music video. Directed by Jasmine Joshua and starring Rebekah Nachman and Megan Huynh, Gold follows two friends as they take a trip across America and time to uncover the raunchiest details of the Gold family’s patriarch’s secret love life. Learning about a deceased grandparent’s adulterous past might not be the fun vacation college students Frankie and Mona believe it to be.
