100 Reasons to Love Seattle

Photo: Courtesy Geoffrey Smith of LookatLao

66–70. Fancy Restaurants Serve Family Dinner on Sunday

Business-savvy meets down-home nostalgia in a win-win trend: The Sunday Supper. Upmarket restaurants prop up their least popular day by setting out a family-style repast, which diners enjoy in a casual context for an old-fashioned tab. At Dinette (dinetteseattle.com), diners sit at communal tables. Ventana rotates ethnic themes from Thailand to Portugal and beyond (ventanaseattle.com), Joule (joulerestaurant.com) dishes up BBQ, and Avila (avilaseattle.com) puts on all-you-can-eat multicourse feasts. Heck, the Sunday Supper might even happen on a Monday, as at Spring Hill (springhillnorthwest.com) in West Seattle, where Monday Supper is sometimes a walk-in affair featuring big, 10-buck spaghetti plates, sometimes a reservation-only fried-chicken feed for four. Far cry from duck confit with savoy spinach.

74. Hillman City Is Rising (and Bellying Up to the Bar)

After two decades of languishing in disrepair and disrepute while rival/sister neighborhood Columbia City snagged nearly all of the new businesses in Southeast Seattle, Hillman City is waking up. Its nascent restaurant district is wildly international: the Kawali Grill (Filipino), Mawadda Café (Middle Eastern), Afrikando Afrikando (Senegalese), and Eyman’s Halal Pizza, where Muslims from East Africa and Jews from Seward Park savor porkless pies baked by a Cham from Vietnam. Soon it should get some good homegrown grub, too. Laurie Lusko, proprietor of the popular Beacon Pub, was at last word awaiting a liquor license to open another pub in a spiffed-up historic building next to Eyman’s. Lusko’s goal: “To make Columbia City jealous.”

75. We Say It with Lushootseed

The revered Upper Skagit elder Vi Hilbert devoted half her life to teaching, recording, and preserving Lushootseed (aka dxwle šucid), the language of the Puget Sound Salish. When she died at age 90 in 2008, some aficionados feared it would die with her. Instead, two generations of Lushootseed learners have taken up the cause. Her granddaughter Jill La Pointe leads the nonprofit Lushootseed Research (lushootseed.org), which in April convened a milestone language conference at Seattle University. Children stood up with the elders and scholars and proudly introduced themselves in Lushootseed. Future generations may still twist their tongues with this region’s original language after all.

88. We Take Downward Dog Literally

“I understand that people think it’s wacky,” Brenda Bryan says of her doga practice. Yeah, she said “doga,” as in yoga for dogs. For nearly four years, Bryan has been teaching canine-centric stretches and poses (our favorite: the one-leg-up “fire hydrant” pose), first at the Seattle Humane Society and now at West Side Yoga Doga (westsideyogadoga.com), the studio she runs with her business partner Kelly Page. She’s endured her share of snarky comments from non-dog lovers, but she’s too enlightened—and brightened by the positive effects that her classes have had—to let them get to her: “At the end of the day, it’s about having a bonding experience between you and your dog.”

76. We’ve Got Perfect Pitch, Without the Pitches

KING-FM (king.org), Seattle’s only classical musical station, has long had it all: knowledgeable hosts, a mix of old favorites and rarer pieces, Saturdays with the Metropolitan and Seattle operas, local chamber music performances. Only problem: the goofy commercials between them. No more. As of July 1, KING goes noncommercial and hits up listeners instead of advertisers for cash. Goodbye laser-dentistry spots in between Liszt and Mendelssohn; hello, unbroken listening, just like the Internet has taught listeners to expect. Given the decline of traditional ad-based business models and the ardor of classical fans, the switch may be good for the station and the arts education it supports. It certainly is for listeners.

77. We’re Saving the Elephants

When Zambia and Tanzania petitioned for exemptions from the worldwide ban on ivory exports at a WTO conference in Doha, Qatar, last March, they had Sam Wasser to thank for sinking their bid. As the scientific director at the Woodland Park Zoo in the 1990s, Wasser set out—where top forensic scientists had failed—to extract intact DNA from elephant ivory. He succeeded, then assembled a comprehensive DNA map of Africa’s elephants, a useful tool in tracing captured contraband ivory to its area of origin. Now the director of the University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology, Wasser proved via DNA that Zambia and Tanzania were the main sources for most of the contraband ivory seized. Their bid was rejected—a stunning upset victory for elephants and conservation. And it all started at our zoo.

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Published: July 2010