Sub Pop retail shop opens beneath a mostly-empty Amazon tower; WA records its lowest new-COVID-case count of the year; a Native-homeless advocate runs for mayor; no, Bill Gates doesn’t want to kill you on behalf of any lizard men from outer space.

Inaugural poem set to a local funk-rock track; waiting lists for vaccine-clinic helpers are getting as long as those for the vaccines themselves; Tacoma police SUV runs over street-race spectators; Microsoft’s developing chatbots based on dead people.

City asks artists and others to ponder their communities’ future; remembering one year of COVID in WA (and in the US); state makes a new vaccine distribution plan; man arrested at DC riot had tried to join Seattle protest groups, but was suspected of being a right-wing infiltrator.

Two Bells demolished three years after it closed; SPOG head Mike Solan refuses to quit; activists claim the FBI had a role in suppressing local summer protests; a post-COVID national recession could make homelessness a whole lot worse.

Alternative (and distanced) New Year’s ideas; homeless advocates stage an occupation at a Fife motel; probable arson totals a Lake City strip mall; Seattle home prices just keep rising.

Mayor Durkan’s not running again; SPD ruled in contempt of protest-response court order; 16 new COVID cases at King County Jail; GOP legislators want to rein in governor’s emergency authority; Sounders FC’s final-minutes comeback means another MLS Cup match.

Getting young adults to take masking/distancing seriously; end to federal aid could imperil local COVID response; Seahawks’ and Huskies’ late-game comebacks fail; Olympia MAGA rally member shoots at counter-protesters.

New statewide closures and restrictions announced as COVID cases skyrocket; Inslee may be sticking around; Microsoft says Russian hackers seek vaccine-research data; lotsa little earthquakes on Vancouver Island.

Local filmmaker fictionally stages her (real) dad’s death; parsing the local election results; ‘Every Vote Counts’ protests draw hundreds; a new one-day Washington record for new COVID cases.

What we do know about the election (i.e. the local parts, which went mostly as predicted); average Seattle rents are way down since pre-COVID; Boeing sells its corporate yacht with a borderline-unfortunate name; a local indie biz donates something big to Amazon (why?).

An ‘Indigiqueer’ drag performer wants real Native inclusion in the arts (not just slogans); more evidence of tech-biz sexism; Gates says COVID vaccine could be close; another failed try to track a ‘murder hornet’.

Right-wing talker Dori Monson loses Seahawks game-day gig; Seahawks respond with the comeback win of the year; Microsoft workers can largely stay home-based into next year; deputies may have shot Tommy Le when he was already face-down.

A neighborhood church’s hidden simplicity; no, downtown’s not dead (and poor people didn’t kill it); escalating actions against police violence (and police violence in response); a big Storm win (oh, and Seahawks also won).

More snarking at AG William Barr’s anti-Seattle screed; City Council overrides Durkan budget veto; racism ‘rife’ among King County Corrections workers; Boeing’s ‘COVID-zapping wand’ goes mass-market.

Celebrating Hendrix’s legacy to today’s artists (and others); R.B. Ginsburg’s legacy to today’s women (and others); report clears SPD in child-pepper-spraying case; Seattle’s smoke’s gone but WA’s wildfires remain.