Skip to content

The Needling’s 2019 Year in Review: Welcome to Seattle, Come Right In

Afraid the city skyline didn’t have enough construction cranes, local residents happily set aside the Seattle Freeze to welcome a few new guys to town

By The Needling December 13, 2019

12_Justice-Center

This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of Seattle magazine.

This article appears in print in the December 2019 issue and is part of our of the Year in Review feature. Click here to subscribe.

WARNING: What you are about to read is not true, accurate or representative of Seattle magazine’s professional opinion, but it sure is funny.

County Unveils New Sign for Children and Family “Justice” Center
After years of #NoNewYouthJail protests and advocates leveraging the project’s progress for better juvenile justice reform, King County finally pulled back the curtain on its completed Children and Family “Justice” Center in Seattle’s Central District. In a related move, King County—which built a Zero Youth Detention campaign while building a youth detention center—proclaimed doublespeak as its new official language.

KeyArena-bound NHL Expansion Team Officially Named the Seattle Not-the-SuperSonics
After years of speculation, the owners of Seattle’s NHL team confirmed its name would be the Seattle Not-the-SuperSonics, beating out potential team names that included the Sockeyes, the Totems and the Macklemores. “Any Seattleite stepping into KeyArena to watch professional male athletes do anything but play basketball is thinking ‘not the SuperSonics,’ so why not just roll with it?” the owners said. Ongoing rumors claim the team’s mascot will, most likely, be Not-Squatch.


Seattle is finally being graced with the almighty power of technology

Apple’s Arrival to Help South Lake Union’s Underserved Tech Community
For years, South Lake Union’s tech workers only had Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and countless startups at which to spend their days earning the city’s highest wages. So, it was no wonder that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, in a major press conference, hailed the neighborhood’s long-awaited entrance of Apple as a landmark moment for the area’s sluggish tech economy: “Somewhere, somehow, Steve Jobs is smiling on us and spitting on Bill Gates right now, I just know it.”


Expedia’s new campus was artfully selected to evoke the desire for escape

Travel Destination Website Chooses Interbay for Headquarters
When go-to travel planning website Expedia sought a new campus on which its workforce could continue to thrive, its CEO, Mark Okerstrom, says Seattle’s Interbay was a no-brainer. “As George Bailey once said in It’s a Wonderful Life, ‘You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are? Anchor chains, plane motors and SCRREEeeEEeeEEeeCH.’ Hot dog! Boy, we’ve got it all now.” 

Follow Us

A New Climate Fund Starts With Indigenous Leadership

A New Climate Fund Starts With Indigenous Leadership

The $5.5 million investment will support seven Tribal governments and Indigenous-led organizations working on climate projects across Greater Seattle and Puget Sound.

As we head into another summer of hotter days, drought, stress on waterways and habitat, and the now-familiar arrival of wildfire smoke, the First Peoples Climate Fund puts city and philanthropic money behind Native communities already doing the work of responding to these pressures, many of them closest to the impacts and with long-held knowledge…

Washington’s Gender Wage Gap is Widening, Study Finds

Washington’s Gender Wage Gap is Widening, Study Finds

Women earned $18,545 less than men in 2024, one of the widest disparities in the country.

The wage gap between men and women in Washington is the second widest in the country. An analysis released in March from the National Partnership for Women and Families found that women in Washington earned a median income $18,545 less than their male counterparts, the largest gap in the country second only to Utah. For…

A Letter to the Community

A Letter to the Community

For more than a decade, our competitor Seattle Met has been a meaningful and vibrant voice in our city’s media landscape. Its journalists, editors, and contributors have told important stories, celebrated our culture here, and helped define what it means to live in Seattle during a period of extraordinary growth and change. News that folks…

More Than a Watch Party

More Than a Watch Party

At the Museum of Flight, Seattle celebrated Artemis II with real ties to the mission.

A moon mission lifted off in Florida on Wednesday, but one of the most interesting places to see it was Seattle. On April 1, the Museum of Flight hosted a free public watch party for Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon in more than 50 years. The event included a live broadcast,…