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.

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.

Seven Gables Theater movie memories; the local COVID curve’s still ‘flattening’ for now; Seahawks clinch division title; ‘excessive force’ lawsuit against the SPD could cost the city $600,000 or more.

On the day after the Seven Gables Theater burned, we look back on some recent local arts and culture stories, trends, and tales of survival.

Where poetry, programming, and Amazon intersect; train cars with crude oil catch fire; homeless-services group refutes KOMO’s depiction of it; a few of the big COVID relief bill’s various pieces and their various effects.

Iconic car-wash sign gone; another one-day COVID case record as hospitals fill up; a unionization drive at an Alabama Amazon warehouse; what Thanksgiving means this year (or could).

A new local hip-hop history book remembers the people who started it all; no more City Hall overnight shelter; a trans woman Lewis-McChord soldier sues to keep her job; where new city-funded arts spaces could go (part 1).

Artist Tariqa Waters’ colorful new Bellevue group show; state health officials would rather you not have a big Thanksgiving; Europe hits at Amazon’s trade practices; what to do to stop a coup.

Author Ted Chiang on how sci-fi doesn’t always mirror science and vice versa; how this cultural era can end (and why it must); a fatal police shooting in Woodinville; the city starts a real-estate entity to save and nurture art spaces.

Wizards of the Coast sued over role-playing-game spinoff novels; a ‘fall surge’ in regional COVID cases could be here; Durkan asks Seattle cops to stay; ballots just keep a-coming in.

Wildfires bring still more destruction and foul air; Tim Eyman sends out phony ‘recall Durkan’ petitions; Pullman cites WSU b-ball coach for a ‘mini block party’; Ijeoma Oluo on raising kids to survive a racist nation.

A local sci-fi author imagines transforming ‘oppressors’ into ‘kin;’ a techie dad parses the tech glitches facing remote schooling; a wildfire destroys a small eastern-WA town; a local sports broadcasting legend dies.

Sending WWII-era Japanese souvenirs back to Japan; Cal Anderson Park ‘swept’ again; police-oversight cases skyrocket; making a ‘City of Literature’ that tells more people’s stories.

SAM and (later) Frye Museum to reopen; more COVID cases among the unhoused; why the Seattle public-safety status quo isn’t working for many; authors and publishers complain to Congress about Amazon’s power.

Garth Stein’s graphic novel about a goat-boy on Seattle’s streets; City Council passes minuscule SPD cuts, Chief Best might quit anyway; a touring evangelist and his audience defy mask guidelines; the first use of Amazon-hosted podcasts: ‘don’t diss Amazon’.