By the time this magazine makes its way into your hands, we still may be slogging through the last of the rainy season (although as I write this, we are experiencing one of those hope-inspiring strings of sunny days in April). But sooner or later, summer will arrive and with it all the warm-weather rituals…

Seattle Sketch Comedy Month 5/31–6/29Founded in 1999 under the direction of monologue master Mike Daisey, the SketchFest comedy festival each fall is packed with local performers and laughs aplenty. This new, summer showcase of short-form scripted comedy bits (think: Saturday Night Live but, hopefully, better) includes local groups Charles, Ubiquitous They, and Drop the Root…

COFFEE DATE: Award winning cartoonist Jim Woodring, whose new graphic novel, Fran (a “bizarre romance”), comes out from Fantagraphics this month.SCENE: Café Racer, a Wednesday morning in March.JIM’S ORDER: Coffee, black. Nancy Guppy: Describe the world through Jim Woodring’s eyes.Jim Woodring: Hmm. Well, the world has never quite jelled for me. It’s an endlessly strange,…

When you think about it, Western fashion, with its focus on conforming to the predictable curves of the human body, designs itself into a box, as it were. With the exception of the audacious Alexander McQueen, most designers base their work on a woman’s hourglass shape (or often, a stick-straight version of it) and the…

It’s become a common sight in sun-drenched Seattle parks: outdoorsy types balancing on what looks like a wide, flat tightrope strung between two carefully padded trees. It’s called “slacklining,” and Adam Burtle, 32, is Seattle’s authority on the sport, which originated with rock climbers in Yosemite in the 1980s and is gaining fans and practitioners…

Must SupportDrink for a Good CauseThrough May 31 — Several local restaurants, including Elliott’s Oyster House, Ray’s Boathouse, Ivar’s, Toulouse Petit and Ba Bar, have partnered with broVo Spirits to serve up classic cocktails throughout May in honor of National Brain Tumor Awareness Month. A portion of the proceeds for each cocktail ordered goes to…

Every summer has a soundtrack, and if you live in Seattle the track listing is especially vibrant. Our thriving local music scene is more diverse than ever, with an ear-opening variety of sounds including neo-folk, indie rock, psychedelic, dream-pop, hip-hop and retro soul. To give you an earful, arts and culture editor Brangien Davis handpicked…

When my husband and I first moved here in August 1997, we knew of the seductive powers of the golden month’s glorious glow and warm temperatures. We had been to Seattle before—in the throes of a rainy February, natch—but in relation to the Midwest and East Coast arctic winters from which we came, Seattle winter…

Sitting in a Ravenna coffee shop, novelist Julia Sidorova is making sweeping gestures across a table, like a seamstress extending a measuring tape across a long swath of fabric. She’s explaining what she does during her day job as a biomedical scientist at the UW School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology, where her particular niche…

The act of parenting doesn’t allow parents an abundance of time for artistic endeavors. How could it, when you’ve got the life of (at least) one other human to organize in addition to your own? Yet Mount Vernon mom and artist Kristin Loffer Theiss has uncovered a trick to the work/life balance we may all…

MUST SEESAM Gallery “Artists’ Choice” OpeningIn celebration of its 40th year playing art matchmaker to its host of art lovers who, for whatever reason, just can’t seem to commit, Seattle Art Museum’s rental and sales outpost SAM Gallery is unveiling Artists Choice. The show will feature a vibrant mix of work by several up-and-coming artists….

Props to our staff photographer Hayley Young for her latest work in the new issue of Out magazine. Young captured a few poignant shots (shown below) of a certain Seattle-based white rapper who’s a pretty big deal right now and his DJ/producer Ryan Lewis for the magazine’s in-depth article, “The Making of Macklemore.” At Seattle…

Seattle dancer Ezra Dickinson has been working on his Mother’s Day gift for the last seven years—a public performance of several short solos called Mother For You I Made This—but it’s unlikely that his mother will see it. A diagnosed schizophrenic, she lives at Western State Hospital. Formerly a ballet teacher, Dickinson’s mother enrolled him…