Hello and Welcome to The Stranger's Fall Arts Issue!

It’s my first Fall Arts Issue as Arts Editor, and I could not be more thrilled to show you what we’ve done with the place.

When trying to plan this paper, I couldn’t help but wonder: What makes an Arts Issue an Arts Issue, when every issue we make has a big, fantastic Arts Section in it already (if I do say so myself)? 

For one: It’s all art, baby. We gave our lovely news team a break. (Just kidding, we politely made them write about art, plus the funniest Last Month This Month to date.) And of course if you need it, our website is still never not news-ing; the news just won’t quit!

But back to THE ARTS. We say it a lot, and we say it because it’s true: Seattle struggles with rising rents and vanishing funding. We suffer, like many cities (and eras throughout history), from the people with the most money often having the wackest taste; some of our best buildings lie vacant for years while some of our best artists (or those wishing to even be able to begin that journey, to take that chance) don’t have space to work, experiment, or thrive. 

But there is still so much art in this stupid wonderful city. Artists here keep building, keep inventing whole worlds outside those constraints. 

There is a quote from the late, great D. Boon of the Minutemen: “Punk is whatever we made it to be.” I think of that line often because it’s less about a genre than it is about permission—the freedom (inspiration?) to build something on your own terms. 

Not that anyone is asking me to define art (yikes), but I think art, too, is like that. Art is whatever we make it to be: not a set of rules or boundaries, but a practice of claiming, shaping, and expanding what matters to us. With whatever we can, however we can. 

Art is creating a meaningful space for your community in Chinatown, and art is cultivating a fresh jazz scene in Pioneer Square. Art is freestanding neon glowing in unexpected landscapes, films starring homegrown legends, and drag kings finally getting their crown. 

Art is baking for the Latin American diaspora. Art is writing memoirs from within heavy circumstances. And if a fabulous local diva living in a loft behind a stage isn’t the embodiment of art, then I don’t know what is. 

We also have guides to help you choose your own art adventure when it comes to: NWFF’s Local Sightings film fest, all the neat things local theaters have in store for fall, the best visual art happening outside of galleries, local record releases that rip, upcoming local(ish) books we’re excited about, and the very best late-summer-in-Seattle eats because don’t forget, summer ain’t over until the strike of September 22. And even then, I say the line between summer and fall is also whatever you make it to be, rebel. 

I don’t want to break the fourth wall too much or reveal how the paper sausage is made, but on a personal note, this issue was difficult to put together. Pieces morph and change and fall through, decisions must be made quickly, deadlines are finite, perfectionism is not an option, and personal lives have lives of their own. 

But making a newspaper is an art form, too. Huge thanks to our production team, to our writers, and to you, dear reader, for giving this work meaning.

Okay, get out of here. You’ve got a lot of arts reading to do. 

Love Actually, 

Emily Nokes 

COVER ARTWORK

Jason Grube

Father, husband, friend, Stranger contributor

1977–2025

This Issue Brought to You By....

Crying

Bruce Harrell’s Primary Election Cake Mistake

TS12

Butches

Emergency vets who don’t lecture or scold you after your dog accidentally ingested weed (he’s fine)

Petting piglets

Being marooned in Lake Union

Having a Spindrift at exactly
4:00 p.m.

Every government worker’s out-of-office email reply

Bad arch support

Imagining two sloths telecommunicating

The bunion on my left foot

BLTs

Having a tiki bar at home

“We got a wee machine that be’s cleaning our dishes”

These fucking sunsets 

Missing Mike McGinn

Unabashedly singing Matchbox Twenty songs at the top of your lungs while tipsy with a bestie 

Pocket kazoos

A wedding ring at the bottom of Lake Washington

Raw sewage 

Finding God in REI

All of the cats I see in windows on my daily walk

Aunt Gladys from Weapons

Watching Buffy from the beginning for the first time