“Helen Hunt is a very fine actress, and she’s beautiful,” says Seattle geneticist Dr. Mary-Claire King. Assessing actors isn’t a habit for the scientist, whose most famous discovery is the existence of a gene for inherited susceptibility to breast cancer, but in this case she has reason to—King is played by Hunt in a forthcoming…

There’s an electric feel of happiness in the air today as same-sex marriage becomes officially legal in Washington state and couples of all ages, colors and creeds line up to be among the first who receive marriage licenses. Prior to the approval of Referendum 74, Seattle magazine profiled seven local same-sex couples. Several of them…

Who would have thought that in the year of Occupy protests and anti-fat-cat rhetoric, liberal Seattle’s agenda would be hijacked by a multimillionaire San Francisco hedge fund manager? But so it was. An unknown guy named Chris Hansen spun the civic debate by proposing to invest around a half-billion dollars in building a new basketball/hockey…

1. Singing and dancing in the streets as a direct result of seeing change in action. 2. President Obama’s now famous Tweet, and that moment when the entire Obama family initially took the stage. 3. Tammy Baldwin’s win in Wisconsin – She is the first openly lesbian senator to be elected and the first woman…

My father told me never to get into a car with a stranger. I wonder how he’d feel about it if an app existed that knew which strangers were trustworthy, and which were, perhaps, even potential friends? And what if this app could also arrange for me (when I’m carless and in a rush) to…

Seattle magazine editor-at-large Knute Berger returns to his stomping grounds at the Space Needle tomorrow night. After spending a year at the Needle as writer-in-residence, Berger will now be in attendance to deliver MOHAI’s Denny Lecture, a new annual event developed to recognize the work of influential historians in our region. Berger spent most of…

There’s something ironic about a museum devoted to documenting a city’s progress getting booted out of its home in the name of progress. Then again, the team at Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) understands better than most that civic progress does not happen without demise and demolition. Housed for the last 60 years…

With state and national elections imminent, a large helping of politics with your news is pretty much unavoidable. And while it’s easy to guess what end of the spectrum political ads sit on (thanks to those handy endorsed by and paid for declarations), that’s not always true of the news we read online. That’s why…

Edmonds resident and travel guru Rick Steves is wrapping up a statewide lecture tour to promote his (and others’) longstanding argument for why Washington State should decriminalize marijuana. In case you live in a dense, dense fog, the issue is on the ballot next month as I-502, which, if approved, would eliminate criminal penalties for…

Leslie Helm, editor of our sister magazine Seattle Business, boarded All Nippon Airway’s very first Boeing 787 Dreamliner flight to Tokyo this week. Read his account over at the Seattle Biz blog, in which he describes both the ups… The sun coming through the unusually large window was blinding as we took off, but rather…

Tonight brings the first of four presidential debates, which will no doubt set the tone for all future water cooler discussion around the Obama vs. Romney political race. Jim Lehrer hosts and the topics have been announced as follows: The Economy, parts 1, 2 and 3 (a new series from George R. R. Martin?), health…

For decades, Pier 57 owner Hal Griffith dreamed of building a Ferris wheel at the end of the historic landing. Now, after 30 years, he’s putting his money where his dreams are—and he says the time couldn’t be better; he fears the waterfront is in real peril, thanks to the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement. “We…