Groovy — Capitol Hill mushroom coffee joint Wunderground adds founder of one of Capitol Hill’s most popular cafes

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(Image: Wunderground Cafe)

A founder of one of Capitol Hill’s most enduringly popular cafes has returned from retirement to help create “the coffeehouse of the future” with an overhaul of E Pike adaptogenic mushroom coffee joint the Wunderground Cafe. They’re celebrating Saturday with a Pride rave.

Ericka Burke says she is joining Wunderground founder and CEO Jody Hall to give the four-year-old E Pike cafe and adaptogenic mushroom startup’s showcase cafe a fresh start, “offering food and beverage to nourish and flourish.”

CHS reported here on the fall 2021 debut of Wunderground, a grain bowl, bone broth, and mushroom coffee hangout in the space formerly home to Hall’s E Pike Cupcake Royale location and a center for the startup coffee company and its fusion of “health benefits” from mushrooms like Lion’s Mane, Chaga, Reishi, and Cordyceps with the daily ritual and the “antioxidant properties” of coffee. Continue reading →

City-run grocery stores in New York? Seattle Councilmember ‘not looking to legislate anything’ after Broadway Whole Foods shutdown

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Zohran Mamdani’s political surge in New York City, of course, has a grocery store element.

Soaring prices, faded services, and eroded humanity are an industry-wide trend that is hitting hardest in America’s largest, busiest, most expensive cities.

With this month’s nearly overnight closure of the Broadway Whole Foods only the latest major grocery corporation cutback in the city, don’t look to Seattle leadership to champion city-run grocery stores — yet.

“I’m not looking to legislate anything,” District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth told CHS about her comments following the rapid shutdown of the Broadway at Madison Whole Foods two weeks ago. Continue reading →

There’s a new, even more fun place to ride bikes now below I-5 between Capitol Hill and Eastlake

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Thanks to the Seattle Park District, a grant from King County Parks, and the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, there is a great new space to ride bikes below the rush of I-5 between Capitol Hill and Eastlake.

This week, the Seattle Parks Department and members of the alliance gathered to celebrate the opening of the $314,000 overhaul of the city’s I-5 Colonnade mountain bike skills park including a new paved track ideal for young riders and those riding mobility devices. Continue reading →

A ‘fairer tax system’ — To overcome Trump-fueled economic turmoil, Seattle proposes four-year break for smallest businesses, big bump for biggest

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(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle’s centrist mayor is teaming up with the city council’s most progressive member on a business tax proposal they say will boost the city’s small and medium businesses while helping overcome a projected $251 million budget shortfall. Voters could decide on the temporary, four-year change this fall.

Mayor Bruce Harrell and Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck unveiled the proposal Wednesday that would make any business generating less than $2 million a year exempt from the city’s B&O tax while raising the tax rate on the city’s most prosperous companies.

“This plan would reduce taxes for 90% of Seattle businesses while raising a needed $90 million to protect city investments against Trump threats to federal funding and to our local economy,” Harrell said in the announcement. Continue reading →

‘TALENT WANTED!  All acts, all humans’ — Capitol Hill’s Roxy Doll remembered

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Roxy Doll

The Capitol Hill club community is remembering an icon who helped give countless Seattle performers their first shot.

Word has spread about the sad passing of Capitol Hill’s Roxy Doll.

“TALENT WANTED!  All acts, all humans welcome for our fabulous weekly variety show & talent contest!,” one of Doll’s show calls last year read.

“Come join Seattle Drag Icon Roxy Doll at Neighbours Nightclub!” Continue reading →

Under New Ownership: First, Pride, then new life and new memories at The Cuff

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First, Cuff Pride Fest (Image: The Cuff)

Scott Walent lived in San Francisco for 15 years where he worked to fill the city’s nights as a promoter and co-owned the music venue Rickshaw Stop. He gave it up to move to Seattle in 2018 to build his career.

Seven years and a lot of nights later, Walent is an owner again, the holder of the keys to The Cuff Complex, the Capitol Hill leather bar that has been a backbone of Seattle’s queer scene for more than 30 years.

“I’m really focused on providing a range of music types and party types. We’re really focusing on having the gambit as far as we have in the queer community,” Walent tells CHS.

CHS reported here on Walent’s spring acquisition of The Cuff as the Queer/Bar family of Capitol Hill businesses decided to spin off the 13th Ave leather hangout to an owner who could focus on the historic gay bar’s unique place in the city’s queer nightlife scene.

Queer/Bar nightlife veteran and co-founder Joey Burgess is still on hand to help guide The Cuff this Pride weekend through its major Cuff Pride Fest street party but, after that, Walent is ready to move forward in reshaping The Cuff on his own.

There will be changes. And expansions. Walent said he’s working to produce a Girl’s Night Out event so lesbians, queers and allies can also feel welcome at The Cuff, adding how he’s “making sure that it’s not just the typical gay bar.” Based on the mix of people he’s seen at The Cuff, Walent is excited to give this new effort a try. Continue reading →

2025 Capitol Hill Pride Weekend: Trans Pride in Volunteer Park, PrideFest on Broadway

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This weekend, there will be Pride celebrations across Capitol Hill even as challenges in Seattle, across the nation, and around the world cast their shadows. Two major celebrations will lead the way as Friday’s Trans Pride Seattle rally and party again fills Volunteer Park and Saturday’s PrideFest Capitol Hill spans five blocks of Broadway, Denny, and Cal Anderson Park. Both events are free to attend.

  • FRIDAY — TRANS PRIDE SEATTLE — 5 – 10 PM VOLUNTEER PARK: Friday’s event runs from 5 to 10 PM and will fill the Volunteer Park amphitheater stage with speakers and performers: Now in our twelfth year, Trans Pride Seattle stands as a radiant testament, honoring and carrying the torch of our Transcestors who originated Pride as a means of both resistance and cultural communion. We gather here in celebration of Trans life. To be Trans is to be powerful. In each of us is the power that comes from dreaming, from forging new paths, from becoming. We are not bound by the limitations of what is, but illuminated by the infinite possibilities of what we can create. What profound gifts we bring to this world. Our celebration is survival and our survival is celebration. We gather here in vibrant defiance of the violence, dehumanization, and political attacks on our lives. We gather because we dare to imagine—and demand—a world where all people can live truly, safely, and freely. Trans Pride is not just a festival. It is a declaration: We are divine. We are powerful. We are the past, the present, and the future. We are unstoppable. More: transprideseattle.org Continue reading →

Seattle City Council: ‘Algorithmic rent fixing’ ban passes, digital kiosks get second ‘yes’ vote

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  • Rent fixing ban: The City Council session Tuesday included a vote approving a Seattle ban on “algorithmic rent fixing” in the city. The final vote by the full council had been delayed a week to give the council time to consider amendments adding language clarifying the new law is not “intended to interfere with standard recordkeeping business practices of individual landlords.” and an amendment requesting that the Department of Construction and Inspections “conduct outreach efforts to educate landlords about the provisions of this bill.” Continue reading →

911 | First Hill gas station stabbing, Capitol Hill man arrested in SPD child porn investigation

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See something others should know about? Email CHS or call/txt/Signal (206) 399-5959. You can view recent CHS 911 coverage here. Hear sirens and wondering what’s going on? Check out reports from @jseattle or join and check in with neighbors in the CHS Facebook Group.

  • Gas station stabbing: Police say a man was in serious but stable condition after a Tuesday night stabbing at a First Hill gas station. The suspect is in custody. According to the SPD report on the incident, police were called to the stabbing in the area of the 76 service station at Terry and James just before 10 PM where officers provided aid until Seattle Fire Department medics arrived and transported the victim to Harborview. According to witnesses, the victim was “standing outside a gas station when an adult man and woman approached while arguing,” SPD reports:
    The man went inside the gas station alone. When he came back out, he saw the woman stabbed the victim in the chest. The woman fled the scene shortly after the stabbing. Continue reading →

There are still single family-style homes across from Capitol Hill Station

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A rendering of the planned affordable Alnus building as viewed from 11th Ave E (Image: Hybrid Architecture)

A long-running effort to replace a set of old single family-style homes and duplexes north of Cal Anderson and across the street from the mixed-use development above Capitol Hill Station with a new eight-story apartment building is moving forward this summer.

There is still a long path ahead including the public process around a proposed rezone to allow the project to rise to 85 feet even as the city is going through the final months of settling out a compromised overhaul of its zoning hoped to more equitably distribute growth across Seattle as part of its new 20-year plan.

Developers behind the Alnus project in the 100 block of 10th Ave E have filed paperwork for land use and construction permits for the planned affordable, eight-story, multi-family building with 221 residential units above an underground 30-stall parking garage.

Affordable housing developer Great Expectations says the 10th Ave E project’s design will require a contract rezone with the city. Continue reading →