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Amazon Opens U Village Store & More News
The top Seattle news stories you should be reading today
After the swirl of rumors, Amazon has finally announced that it will open a physical retail store–a bookstore called Amazon Books–in University Village. The store will be Amazon’s first-ever brick-and-mortar bookstore, Geekwire reports, and will “sell top-rated books that are available on Amazon’s website and also feature Amazon hardware,” all at the same price points as it does on the website. A letter to Amazon customers noted the pricing is “so you’ll never need to compare our online and in-store prices.” Amazon Books will open its U Village doors to swarms of book-loving customers today (November 3) right next to Banana Republic and across the street from Joey Kitchen.
A new survey out today by Eastlake-based Porch.com and local real estate company Redfin says that Seattle ranks 10th in the U.S. as the Best Place to Own a Home. The survey queried more than 10,000 homeowners in 11 subcategories. Along with netting the number 10 spot on the list, Seattle homeowners also ranked their city number 8 out of 67 cities for Best Climate, number 8 out of 67 cities for Healthiness, 25 for commute and interestingly a below-average 46 for security and safety. Cities with similar rankings included Miami, San Jose and Denver.
Our famous Gum Wall at Pike Place Market will receive a good cleaning, KING 5 News reports. All of the gum will be removed from the walls for the first time in 20 years and once it’s clean “people will be allowed to put gum back up again.” Steam cleaning of the wad-covered walls begins November 10 and is expected to take several days.
A new AOL Instant Messaging-inspired chat game seeks to take us all back to the pre-social media glory days of the early 2000s, Wired reports. Emily is Away, developed by Kyle Seeley, is a game that simulates the AIM chat experience (oh, how I remember cryptic away messages and assigning certain sounds to alert me when certain people were online) by letting you create a screenname and an avatar and then chat in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style with your friend, Emily. Memories.
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Rearview Mirror: Spinasse at Home, a New Spa Experience, and Seattle Mag’s Reader’s Choice Awards
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
YOUR VOTE MATTERS Everyone has a favorite restaurant, coffee shop, or local boutique. Call me old-school, but I will die on the hill that Caffe Vita has the best coffee in town. Disagree with me? Now’s your moment to speak up. Each year, we survey Seattle magazine readers, asking them to weigh in on everything…
Studio Sessions: Ling Chun
The Seattle-based artist brings playful color to ceramics and neon while exploring memory, transformation, and life between cultures.
For Ling Chun, creating begins with something sensed before it can be named. Working with clay, glass, light, and sometimes synthetic hair, the Hong Kong-born artist gives physical form to things that words cannot always hold. “For me, the magnitude of making goes far beyond the object that is eventually produced,” Chun says. “The object…
The Magic of PAX Is Stronger Than Ever
PAX West draws more than 100,000 people to Seattle each year. Co-founder Jerry Holkins reflects on what the gaming convention set out to change, how its community has grown and why gathering face to face still matters.
Access to game news as it was happening was difficult back in the day. Even with the advent of the internet, communication between game publishers and journalists was still a very elite affair. I used to fake credentials—via fax machine!—to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo, mostly just known as E3. It was simultaneously as loud…
Your Guide to Bumbershoot 2026
Navigate Seattle’s wildest end-of-summer weekend with 20 picks spanning Death Cab for Cutie, Blood Orange, wrestling, skateboarding and—obviously—movies made in 48 hours.
Four years after Bumbershoot returned with its quirkiness revivified, Seattleites broadly acknowledge the two-day multimedia extravaganza as a welcome finale to the summer festival season. Fests like Bumbershoot are designed around a choose-your-own-adventure model, but if you’re the kind of person who looked at this year’s sprawling lineup—featuring multiple bands, artists, and exhibits happening at…