Welcome to the Seattle podcast

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, everybody.

This is Jonathan Spasado, owner and publisher of Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine.

And I’m joined by editor-in-chief– excuse me, Rob– executive editor-in-chief of both Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine, Rob Smith.

How are you doing, Rob?

I’m doing well.

It’s fun to be here.

I’m glad we’re finally able to do this, Jonathan.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is our very first episode.

I was almost at the issue of the Seattle Magazine podcast.

And I’m so excited and proud to be here with you.

It has been a little bit over a year since I purchased the magazine.

And I did so just a little bit of background because I’m very bullish on Seattle.

And I feel like that this is a city that can way punch above its weight.

It is, in fact, already a world-class city, even if some of us don’t know it yet.

Would you agree, Rob?

One of the things I always say is, we don’t brag enough as a city.

We need a little bit more swagger because we are a world-class city.

And as you always say, what happens here matters not just in the Pacific Northwest or the West Coast or the US, but the world.

That’s exactly right.

And I think I’ve shared with you, Rob, that if only the rest of the city could hear from some of my friends who don’t live in Seattle, who live in much more, quote unquote, cosmopolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, if the rest of Seattle could only hear what my friends have to say about Seattle, they always tell me, oh, my gosh, Jonathan, you’re so lucky.

People in Seattle are so smart and innovative and progressive and interesting and quirky and a little bit weird and sort of cultural influencers.

There’s so much happening.

We envy you, right?

And because I’ve been hearing such a cacophony of that refrain for so long, it really activated me to think, like, you know what, let’s do more.

Let’s see if we can have Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine be a platform for being one of Seattle’s biggest boosters and to, in some ways, fake it till you make it.

This is no longer the city of just coffee and rain.

So we’re going to talk about a number of things.

We’re going to talk about the evolution in the magazine.

We’re going to talk about the current issue that’s on newsstands, which is the January, February issue of 2023, our Seattle’s most influential people issue, which is just fantastic.

We’re going to talk a little bit about some exciting things, germane to the actual physical growth of Seattle, so things like the future of the workspace, this kind of hybrid environment that we may stay in forever or maybe shift out of.

And in what ways do we shift?

So the sort of hybrid work and space environment what that looks like, and in general, where we are headed as a city.

So how does that sound, Rob?

Sounds fantastic.

This episode of the Seattle Magazine podcast is sponsored by RealLogic Sotheby’s, a premium real estate broker with branch offices in downtown Seattle, Madison Park, Bainbridge Island, Kirkland, Mercer Island, and downtown Bellevue.

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So Rob, one of the things that I know our listeners are eager to learn a little bit more about is the evolution of Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine in the year since there’s been a change in ownership and that we’ve rebranded and rebooted the magazine.

So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that.

How might you summarize some of the highlights of this evolution?

It’s been crazy.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Well, it’s been– It’s that I’ve been driving crazy.

I did not, wait a minute, that came out all wrong.

(Rob laughs) It, you know, basically once you took over the magazine, you quickly identified and met with agreement from current staff members that we saw an opportunity, I think, to reinvent a struggling legacy magazine with a deep history.

And I think a lot of people know that the magazine was in bankruptcy for two years when you purchased it.

So the magazine had been struggling.

It had been struggling prior to the bankruptcy.

And so we also saw an opportunity in the marketplace.

I remember some of those early discussions and especially after hearing from readers.

We talked to readers and we wanted to create a unique magazine that focused, like you said in the beginning, on the positive attributes of Seattle.

And there were some bumps along the way as we got to, we learned how to work with each other, you know, in a remote environment.

None of us knew each other really well.

So, but I think it’s been fantastic.

And the freedom and the autonomy and the brainstorming and the ideas that we were able to throw out and discard and, you know, nobody’s feelings got hurt.

It’s been a rocket ride, Jonathan. – Yeah, yeah, no, it’s been an absolute pleasure working with you and others on the magazine.

And you’re right.

I mean, this magazine really going back to its earliest foundation days has quite a legacy of having been founded by the bullet sisters back in the 50s.

And it was very, very important to them that the magazine was a platform to constructively steer the conversation in a city to being solution oriented and being positive.

One of the things that I love is going back into the archives and one of the regular features that we’ve created since the rebranding is that at the very, very back of every issue, we show a vintage cover.

We show a cover from the good old days when it was owned by the bullet sisters and that oftentimes we are incredibly struck by how riveting these covers are, how artistic they are, how provocative they are, and that they weren’t afraid to take a certain stand.

And nowadays it feels like that we’re echoing those very same issues, whether it’s equality, gender equality or diversity and inclusion.

This magazine has had an incredible, incredible legacy and I think you and I are aligned in our mission that there’s more to write about than just hiking trails and restaurants and wineries and things like that.

All good stuff and we can still write about that stuff but there’s a way to center the editorial on the issues that impact us the most. – Well, and to your point, you are so right.

Those early magazines, if you flip through them, they’re absolutely fascinating.

And provocative, not afraid to take a stand, not afraid to stir the pot.

So what we did, we took the concept of a traditional city magazine and we really broaden it to include more serious discussions of issues facing the greater Seattle area. – That’s right. – Well, like you say, still maintaining some of the traditional elements of a city magazine like dining and the arts. – Music, yep. – Music and living in home sections and things like that.

And we also added a little bit of whimsy.

We have a resident sexologist, Dr.

Pepper Schwartz. – Yes, that’s right, love that column. – We have an amateur historian, Brad Holden, who was digging back into Seattle’s past.

And what I love about that, he’s identifying things that a lot of the older Seattleites will recognize but he’s telling stories that is new to them. – That’s right. – And new to everybody.

He finds these little nuggets. – That’s right. – And we added some whimsy.

We’ve got cartoons, we’ve got a crossword puzzle.

So, you know, we’re not gonna be something for everybody, but it’s a very different magazine than it was before you took over.

And I do think it resembles a lot more like it was in the 1960s. – That’s right. – Than it did in the 2010s. – Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

And I think one of the things that I really appreciate about this reboot rebrand is that across all segments, we’ve really leveled up in terms of the caliber of the contributors.

So the really fun puzzles and games and crosswords that are in the back of each issue is designed by Jeff Chen, who is the guy who also designs them for the New York Times.

He happens to be a Seattleite.

A lot of people don’t know that.

And again, I wanna underscore this point that what sort of happens here in Seattle actually ends up impacting the rest of the country and really elevating and driving and influencing what happens across the country and across the world.

So that’s a good one.

And Dr.

Pepper Schwartz, the sex column, it’s just, I mean, she is like a nationally renowned relationship and sex expert, in addition to just being a delightful conversationalist.

So she’s amazing.

And we have to get her on a future podcast. – She’ll talk about anything. – That’s right, that’s right.

And our creative director at large, Matt Berman himself is an incredible personality in the segment of magazine publishing.

He famously partnered with JFK Jr. to start George Magazine back in the day.

And I kind of figured if that guy, if Matt Berman can make Washington DC politicians look edgy and sexy and cool, that he can, I think that he’ll have a fun time with Seattleites. – Well, to that point, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the words in the magazine.

The words work with the visuals.

And the visuals are absolutely stunning.

The visuals are what draw people in.

And hopefully the words and the visuals will continue to keep them there. – That’s right.

And so yeah, so also a shout out to Jen Miller, our photo editor, who is based in New York actually, but she hails from a number of iconic national publications.

So New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and she has got an amazing eye.

And so, so again, our mission to really elevate Seattle or to have people perceive what we’re doing here as being just as nationally interesting and influential, we’re gonna keep making more of that. – Yeah, I know we will.

And a lot of the serious topics we’ve discussed, along with those other traditionally lighthearted things that define city magazines, a good city magazine gives you a sense of place.

It helps introduce people to the community, or if you’ve lived here for a long time, it’s got an element of surprise and discovery and wonder.

And we’ve tackled things like homelessness and the need for philanthropy.

What’s happening here in Seattle to combat climate change.

Just how important the medical industrial complex, for lack of a better word is here, not just on our region, but in the US and globally.

Those are fascinating things that really position and make Seattle the world class city that you’ve been talking about. – That’s right, yeah.

And so please, readers and subscribers, keep the great feedback coming via email.

We get sent emails every day, some really positive emails about how much the new direction is resonating with you.

So we love hearing that.

It’s nice to not work in isolation to understand that the work is resonating.

So thank you for that. (upbeat music) – It is just amazing to see, while it is not perfect yet, to see Seattle kind of bounce back.

That tourism is over 100% plus pre-pandemic levels.

A lot of experts, both regionally and nationally, have predicted for a number, for a couple of years now that Seattle would bounce back from the pandemic in ways that are stronger and better than other regions.

And there are all kinds of reasons why we’re bullish on Seattle.

Rob, can you think of some other reasons why you’re optimistic? – Seattle was one of the big movers and shakers in the US and one of the hottest cities before the pandemic.

And once the pandemic started, and even now people were saying, Seattle is gonna bounce back a lot quicker than a lot of other places, because it had all that momentum and a lot of that infrastructure.

And we’re not back yet.

I don’t think anybody’s back yet, but we’re getting back relatively quickly.

And there’s gonna be some bumps in the road.

But if you look at everything that’s happening downtown, if you look at some of the improvements and foot traffic is improving, still a lot of empty storefronts, but they’re starting to fill in a little bit now.

And there’s more people, there’s more excitement about getting out and going downtown and getting out and about, and you see what’s happening.

You look at what’s happening around South Lake Union and with the life sciences industry here, one of the hottest, if not the hottest in the country.

There’s three different life sciences areas right around the Space Needle and the North Shore of Lake Union.

They’re going up right now.

Now granted, a lot of these were happening prior to the pandemic, but they’re continuing now and they’re leasing because life sciences, as we all know, you can’t do that from home.

You can’t do that in your basement.

You need some specialized equipment.

So there’s just a lot of positive things happening in Seattle right now that I’m not sure everybody is really cognizant of. – Yeah, that’s right.

It almost reminds me of when Bill Gates will publish in his notes series, some very, very uplifting and inspirational factoids about the world that, hey, actually, the world is not coming to an end.

It may, we have our problems in some areas, but here are the facts as it relates to how we’ve made progress throughout the decades and sort of our progress in science and curable diseases, et cetera.

And similarly, to your point, Rob, Seattle’s cruise season hit an all-time record last year with about 295 ships passing through the city, which is more than three times as many as in 2021.

That blows my mind.

And we’re gonna touch on this a little bit later, but a little bit more regionally, just outside of Seattle, Everett’s ambitious 65-acre waterfront place development is 75% least with restaurants, cafes, bars, breweries scheduled to open this spring.

And we haven’t even touched on the Seattle waterfront makeover, which is still going and robustly and just really shaping up.

So yeah, lots of reasons to be bullish on the city and the region in general. – Yeah, and you mentioned that waterfront development in Seattle, that is absolutely gonna be the crown jewel of the city.

That open shark aquarium, the brand new aquarium, which frankly needed to be made over. – Yes, I think so. – And that huge pedestrian park.

And more important, with a viaduct down, it’s gonna connect the various neighborhoods.

It’s gonna create a much more pedestrian and scenic city.

You’re gonna be able to get to Pioneer Square.

You’re gonna be able to walk downtown from Pike Place Market a lot easier than you can now.

So that’s just, it’s gonna change the very nature of the city. – Right, right.

So then I usually, oftentimes in any human endeavor, it’s important to look at the data and to look at the numbers, but at the same time, balance that with the experiential eyes on the ground aspect of it.

So let me ask you sort of an interesting question.

I apologize if I’m springing this on you and hopefully you don’t feel too surprised by this, but how would you measure from a personal standpoint, whether the city has bounced back or not?

You alluded to the fact that it’s a little bit of a mixed, there are some things that are mixed.

There are still some challenges, but I am curious to know, Rob, because I think that you’re a smart guy, you are an engaged father and husband.

You and I are actually kind of neighbors in Magnolia.

And so how, as you walk the city and as you conduct your business, what’s the in-person sort of POV on how it feels these days?

Because sometimes it seems like across my friendship group, there are some people who say like, oh, I still feel like wearing the throes of the pandemic.

And some people are pretty much behaving like it’s all done and we’re all back. – Remember prior to the pandemic, there were a lot of people who didn’t live in Seattle, who were up north or in the suburbs, who would say, I don’t go into Seattle anymore.

It’s not safe, it’s dirty, it’s messy, too much crime, too much homelessness.

I still think there’s some of that perception, but if you’re in the city, and if you actually experience the city, and if you’re close to the city, if you have reason to go down there, you’re gonna see that it’s coming back.

If you were there in 2020, you’re walking around in 2021, it’s improving and it’s not back where it was.

Now I’m from Portland, Oregon. – Wonderful city. – Wonderful city, beautiful city.

I like Portland a lot.

I was down there last summer, and the pandemic has really hit Portland a lot harder than it has Seattle. – Oh, in what ways? – Slower recoveries, I used to work in Portland, and a lot of the restaurants that I used to frequent are now boarded up.

And same is true in Seattle, but there are entire blocks in Portland that are now basically shut down in downtown Portland.

You don’t see that in Seattle on that scale.

So I really think we’re making momentum now, is it gonna be 2024, 2025, until we’re back to where we were pre-pandemic?

My guess is it’s gonna be closer to late 2024, early 2025.

That’s what I hear people talking about.

So we’re gonna have to be patient with this.

But on the other hand, the progress to me is palpable. – Yeah, that’s right.

Perhaps the best summary about the inconsistency, a little bit of a mixed sense of how things are back or not back was from an Uber driver that I had the good fortune of riding in.

And I love, you know, I’m a chatty guy when I’m sitting in the back of an Uber or a taxi cab, and I just love talking with people.

And when I asked him the same question, he was very astute about how it is neighborhood dependent.

And he says that on a weekend.

Now, as a middle-aged guy, I’m well past, you know, being able to, you know, hang out late after work on a Friday night with colleagues or partying on a Saturday night and going out clubbing and all that kind of good stuff.

But he says that, you know, there are certain neighborhoods, where, you know, Friday night, Saturday night, Capitol Hill, where we’re doing this podcast from, Ballard, Fremont, various places in Wallingford, that they’re really hopping.

He says it is above pre-pandemic levels, but then downtown, it’s a tale of two cities, right?

So, yeah, yeah. – And it has been a tale of two cities for a while.

If you get down up first and second and pike and pine, it was a little gritty down there for a lot of years and becoming more so.

You know, but try to find a parking spot in Ballard on a Saturday night. – No can do, my friend. – No, you better take that Uber. – That’s right. – And to your point about not being out, I’m not out either, I’m a middle-aged guy with a family.

I think it’s funny, you remember months ago, we were meeting to plan one of the future magazines. – That’s right. – And we weren’t closing down bars, we closed down two coffee shops at 5 PM. – At 5 o’clock?

I know we kept getting kicked out. – So, let me, again, continuing on this more personal angle, you and I both have kids the same age.

What would your son’s answer to this question be? – My son would say, I hated COVID.

I couldn’t see my friends.

Doing jumping jacks in the basement for PE via Zoom was not the way to do physical education.

I’m not blaming the school district because that was a tough time. – I saw jumping jacks and I saw tossing a tennis ball into a bucket and then my own son getting really frustrated because he goes, oh, I know so-and-so cheated.

I could see that he cheated, you know. – Well, and I’m still a little bit cautious in some very public places with wearing masks, but during the pandemic, I don’t know about you, we didn’t go anywhere.

We didn’t go into the grocery store.

We discovered delivery and we were lucky to have the privilege and the resources to do that.

So now you’re out and about.

I was at the symphony a couple of weeks ago and hardly anybody was wearing a mask.

So it seems like things are a little bit back to normal.

And I don’t care if somebody wants to wear a mask, I will on occasion in a very crowded place.

But just the fact that you don’t see that anymore, that fear has gone away.

And I think you can see that in the behavior of everybody.

And I was talking with an arts executive a couple of weeks ago who said patrons are starting to slowly come back. – That’s right, that’s right. – So once people feel comfortable, then more comfortable, that’s just gonna lead to more and more activity. (upbeat music) So now let’s talk about how we’re all working together.

And Rob, I don’t mean just how you and I work together, but how all of Seattle is working together.

So, you know, there’s, I get asked all the time, just walking the streets, “Hey, Jonathan, are we gonna be in this weird hybrid “sort of work environment, part virtual, “and then some days a week we go into an office?

“Or is it gonna ever change back to the way that it was?”

What are your thoughts on that? – Nobody, even if they say they do, nobody really knows what the future of work is gonna look like.

I mean, people are designing buildings based on, you know, common areas.

What they think the future of work is gonna be, but this is gonna evolve.

You know, I’m struck by the fact that Howard Schultz recently called Starbucks people back into the office, the managers back into the office, because he wrote in a letter to employees that the brand was in peril.

Well, I would suggest if the brand’s really in peril, wouldn’t you call everybody back in five days out of the week?

And one of the things I will note in our best companies, in this last issue as well, we had most influential and best companies to work for based on employee surveys, almost every one of those companies has some kind of a hybrid remote work model, almost every one of them.

I can’t recall any one of those companies where employees are required to be in the office five days out of the week.

Now, some of the companies said, employees wanna be back in the office because they miss, they miss that, but a lot of the companies are giving employees the option as you do, whether you wanna be in the office or not.

And if you don’t, you know, you might have to pop in from meeting now and then, but you can spend the vast majority of your time working at home.

And right now I think that’s what workers are demanding.

Another thing that’s interesting, a Stanford University study released last summer found that employees are 9% more productive in a remote, and I’m not sure how they measured this, I didn’t get into the methodology, but 9% more productive than they are when they’re actually in the office.

So I think the common wisdom is just the opposite of that.

And there are some companies that have received some negative national notoriety because, and you know this, they’re measuring keystrokes.

They’re actually calling employees or video through their cameras to see how often they’re at work.

That’s just gonna backfire. – That has to not be a part of a culture, ’cause you think about the broader context of the culture that a policy like that comes out of.

And that to me signals that there’s not a lot of trust there to begin with.

And what I observe right now across multiple teams and across multiple generations, ranging all the way down to Gen Z in terms of the workforce, is that there is an incredible amount of inertia for working at home.

And that is the default, is working virtually, working from home, and it’s almost like extra.

It’s almost like that’s about the most you can ask for is two or three days in an office.

Not really three days even, like one or two days.

And so I was impacted by, it’d be great to get a refresh from him, but my good friend, old friend, Dave Bytel, who was one of the original founders of Zillow and is currently their CTO, a while back, reflected this strategy that they had to switch to, which is that they had to do away during a pandemic.

They decided to completely refactor their offices downtown.

And I think a lot of the other offices in other cities, where it is no longer cubicles or people having specific desks, and they refactored everything to resemble more of one of those co-working spaces that Rob, you and I visit.

And in doing so, it’s hoped that it’s a more attractive, communal, social environment that would actually become a little bit more of a magnet draw.

Like it’s, you know, kind of beats the monotony of sitting at home by yourself.

And maybe you sit with a different colleague on a day-to-day basis, or you group together temporarily for like a week with a certain group of colleagues, and then shift, and then maybe to line up shifts the next week.

He and the other manager at Zillow, we’re just convinced that that is in fact a future.

And those guys are pretty smart guys, and it’d be really good to get a refresh from him in terms of whether, how that’s worked. – Well, and we have that coming up in the next issue.

Now that you mentioned that, but we can get to that later.

You know, two things come to mind when you say that, Jonathan.

The vast majority of people I talked with said, “I hated working from home in the beginning.

“I missed the interaction, I missed the action, “because workers were the action is.”

Three or four months in, everybody tells me, “And I’m one of these people too.

“You know, I like walking down in my basement.

“I like working in my sweats.” – Yeah, right. – You know, I like being able to go get a cup of coffee and be gone for five minutes and run a little errand and come back. – That’s right. – But the other thing, which I think is much more broadly impactful on society is, there’s a lot of office buildings, especially here in Seattle, that were going up and they paused a little bit during the pandemic, and now construction has restarted.

If workers aren’t gonna be coming into those buildings, those buildings could be repurposed.

And I would suggest two things.

Number one, for hospitality.

Number two, maybe is housing.

Some kind of affordable housing.

I think there’s opportunities here.

And if the marketplace, now people can say what you want about developers, but if the marketplace forces developers to do this, they’ll have no choice. – That’s right, yeah.

Yeah, and actually I’d like to bookmark affordable housing and some adjacent topics for a future episode because there are a lot of things that a lot of thoughts that you and I both have about that as it relates to the future of Seattle. (upbeat music) And now what I’d like to really talk about is the current issue on newsstands, which is Seattle’s most influential people.

And we decided to have 25.

We decided to pick 25.

Rob, tell our audience how we did that. – Well, in the past, in the distant past, before you purchased the magazine, Jonathan, we did 50 and I know some people, some magazines in the city and across the country, they prefer to do 100.

But the more exclusive it is, and look, I’ll be the first to admit that this is highly subjective, no matter how many people you pick.

But the more exclusive it is, it just seems to carry more weight with me in general. 25 seem picking two dozen, those are the people, and the vetting process that we had was really intense.

So coming to terms with those two people in terms of the debates we had and what qualifies them versus somebody else was absolutely fascinating.

I learned as much from that as I did from meeting the articles on the 25 people. – Yeah, that’s right.

So I’m gonna just kind of pause for a second to say to give you kudos that in coming up with a criteria in speaking with you initially, when we were ideating who should be on the list and various candidates, you came up with some great thoughts, right?

There were sort of four main things that we sort of considered very, very, very carefully, which was who are sort of the unsung heroes who did something really big this year, right?

Number two, who does all of these things in a selfless way to find solutions for others.

So kind of put themselves at service to others.

Who has been behind some of the year’s biggest news stories?

And it’s often not who you think, right?

Some counterintuitive, delightful surprises there.

And lastly, who excites us?

Who stirs our souls with hope, optimism, and love for a better future, right?

Who’s inspiring, in other words.

And I’m always, I think, biased towards those who sort of, as you said earlier, who have a little bit more swagger and who have a distinctive POV.

And in doing so confidently and sure-footedly that they inspired the rest of us to do the same.

So I appreciate, Rob, how you guided us all the entire Seattle Magazine editorial staff through a sort of Jedi Council process of determining those 25.

And I couldn’t agree with you more that sometimes less is more.

And I feel like it’s a really exclusive list. – And the overarching theme, very simplistically, is who is making a difference in their community?

And there’s a lot of different ways to do that.

And I do need to point out, we were politically agnostic as we did this.

We wanted a mix of people who were known, who were not well-known.

And I’ll say one of my favorites, who I knew what she did, Kate Starberg.

She was a basketball star here in high school.

She went to Stanford.

She played professionally. – Love Kate, yeah. – And she’s now, I believe, a professor or an assistant professor at the University of Washington. – That’s right. – I knew that she was fighting disinformation.

That’s what she fights disinformation online and she studies its effects.

But I had no idea until we ran the story just how deep that went.

And some of the experiences that she had and how willing she was to talk about that.

And one of the funniest anecdotes was critics.

And she talked about a lot of the criticism that she got from this.

They made fun of her hair.

And she told us, you know, it doesn’t bother me.

I think it bothers my hairdresser more than it bothered me. – I thought I saw that. – And you know, little things like that about people, you know, the very human element.

So, you know, people like that.

So a lot of people knew who Kate Starberg was.

But I’m guessing they didn’t know the depth of what she was doing and how she puts herself on the line to do that. – That’s exactly right.

I mean, I thought that she was a great, great nomination to the Jedi Council.

You were 100,000% right.

I knew who Kate Starberg was, but, and I even knew because of some other things that I do in town, that she was a principal at the University of Washington Center for an informed public.

And kind of the general gist of what they, the kind of admission.

But what I didn’t realize was the importance, depth and breadth of it.

And so much about that story by Heidi Mills was inspiring to me, even as you said, how she even handled personal attacks, which sadly I’m, you know, have gotten in the past and they’re always really silly.

If you take them seriously, you know, you just can’t, right?

And I just love how she, how Kate said, well, actually, you know, my hairdresser is more sad about it than me.

And so believe me, I’ve, when my goofy haircut, I’ve gotten similar comments from trolls on the internet.

So that was a really cool one.

You know, one of the things that I do want to acknowledge in you, in the process and the rest of the magazine staff is that I can truly stand behind.

We can all truly stand behind the fact that this is bar none, the most diverse group of individuals for Seattle’s most influential, I believe, of any publication.

And so I think that we should be, I think we need to make more. – Well, and here’s the thing about that.

Obviously we have an eye, we should have an eye toward that, not just as a magazine or as professionals, but as people in society now.

But that doesn’t mean that, you know, it ended up being diverse because we broaden our scope and we broaden our lands and exposed ourselves to things that we might not have exposed ourselves to.

We try to do that in the magazine every issue.

And if we did that every day as people, it would just, it would make things work so much more smoothly in society.

It’s just, you know, we didn’t say, we’re gonna have this many people, this many diverse people or anything like that.

It worked out that way because we took the time to examine communities that maybe not a lot of us were familiar with and we found some really interesting things. – That’s right, yeah.

I mean, I would say that agnostic of my role with the publication as a reader, I was just dang proud of knowing these folks and calling them our colleagues and neighbors.

You know, and a lot of, you know, well over 50% of this list were people that I had not known about prior.

And so just an incredible group.

And I encourage, you know, the magazine is on newsstands right now.

This is the January, February issue and we’re very proud of it. – Well, and another example, one that we, I think a lot of us are familiar with is Ridwell.

I didn’t know that founder Ryan Metzger, co-founder Ryan Metzger actually started that with his young son. – That’s right, it’s a great story there. – When they had a recycling thing. – That’s right, yeah. – So again, you know, we’re telling people information they probably don’t know and information that hopefully enriches their lives and you know, makes that Ridwell connection just a little bit more personal. – Yeah, my understanding was that Ryan’s nine year old son actually worked a problem so well with recycling neighbors, you know, AA and AAA batteries that just the nine year old alone got 4,500 members, neighbors to sign up.

I don’t know how they scaled.

I, you know, I don’t think there are, I could have, you know, 4,000 neighbors that I know in my neighborhood, but somehow they got it to the point where it was practically, I think it was revenue positive, which demonstrated absolutely a proof of concept and made them a very, very investable partner by Madrona Ventures and off they go.

And now they’re like at over something like, probably I think a hundred thousand, I don’t want to get this wrong.

Yeah, about a hundred thousand members. – Several states now and let’s offer that kid an internship. – Absolutely.

Yes, Ryan, you can give us a call.

So what were some other, you listed a couple of people already, but what were some other pleasant surprises for you on this issue? – No, my name is Rob Smith.

So I butcher names constantly. (laughing) – And with that, I think I can guess. – With that, I’m gonna try to, I’m gonna butcher a name here, I’m sure.

She’s an award winning deafblind author.

Her name is Elsa Soonison, I believe. – Right, amazing. – I didn’t know anything about her and to read her story and how she’s fighting, you know, media bias and ableism and things like that was absolutely fascinating to me.

There’s another woman in there, Maritza Lopez, who fled the Stryfe of El Salvador and she launched a beauty college down and I think it’s in Lakewood.

And she now works with many students who are single mothers and who come from poverty and abusive situations like I believe that she did.

I mean, you could ask anybody on the street who that person is, nobody’s gonna know, but I will argue she is an absolute hero. – Yeah, 100%, I agree with you on both counts.

To me, both of those folks are heroic figures and one of the things that I did observe that almost every person on the list of Seattle’s most influential, one number one, they’re all sort of polymaths.

They all sort of succeeded in one area and then moved on and succeeded in another area.

So that’s super interesting.

But the second attribute that they all have in common is this sense that growing up, they never saw someone like them on TV or as a CEO or as a restaurant owner or whatever it is.

And so they had this internal passion, which was, so I’m gonna do better for the next generation.

So that was certainly the case with Elsa Suyunnison as well as Maritza Lopez.

And many others almost probably, it feels like 75% of this pool of wonderful personalities here said something to that effect.

Growing up, I didn’t see someone that I could relate to that looked like me or acted like me.

So I’m gonna do something to change that. – Well, and to that point, James Wong, the developer who talked about, he lived in this kind of rundown apartment building and he didn’t want his friends to know where he lived when he was a kid.

So he would kind of take these circuitous routes away from school. – Even though like his school was like, maybe I don’t want to overstate it, but it was like across the street from his own, a family’s apartment. – Yeah, no, I, when James first told me that story, I, James will corroborate this, I was moved to tears.

So as an Asian American sort of coming from an immigrant family myself, I mean, I was born in London and lived in New York, but my parents were immigrants.

I could very much relate to his story of sort of being embarrassed by how we lived differently from my, you know, nice, upstanding white friends that I went to school with.

And I always bristled a bit when friends would come over to our house.

And when James told me his story, it hit really close to home.

And I think it’s a very universal child of an immigrant family kind of story.

And the fact, the delta between sort of where he came from to his amazing successes as a real estate developer, and prior to that as a tech entrepreneur is really mind blowing.

It’s absolutely inspiring.

And, you know, it’s just wonderful that we could tell his story.

Now there’s a little bit of a, you know, I don’t want to, I guess, this is not in any way diminishing of his amazing accomplishments in real estate development and creating kind of revitalizing entire neighborhoods and creating value.

But there was a little bit of controversy in the ID.

So I find that sometimes the most interesting stories in life are these ironic things.

Here is the prodigal son of the Seattle International District who decided as a mission in his adult life, I think he just turned 50 to revitalize the very neighborhood that he was sort of ashamed of when he was growing up because of the, and I remember my grandparents lived in the ID and not really wanting to visit them because it was kind of sketchy and, you know, it was not the most pleasant place.

I’m not proud to say that.

So here’s the prodigal son of the International District revitalizing the neighborhood and what happened to him, Rob?

What happened with him? – Well, he’s accused of gentrifying the neighborhood and wrecking the character of the neighborhood, which is an interesting discussion because, you know, there’s a lot of ways to move forward and there’s one way to stand still.

And if you’re moving forward, there’s, you’re not gonna get a hundred percent agreement no matter what.

And so I think he’s run into that.

So where do you preserve the past and where do you build on that past?

How do you move something forward without devaluing what’s happened in the past?

And I think that’s what he’s running up against. – That’s right, that’s right.

And so this is a very interesting, nuanced, complicated story that is still being written.

And I know that he and his GeoCities partners are working hard to strike that balance. – Well, and these are the kinds of civic discussions we absolutely have to have. – That’s right, that’s right. – Even if they’re gonna make some people feel uncomfortable and that’s okay. – Yeah, and I genuinely wish everybody on all sides of the issue, a lot of luck and a lot of peace and a lot of constructive dialogue between the two to resolve it because that’s actually, in microcosm, I feel like that that’s what more of the city needs, which is constructive dialogue.

But anything else that you wanna say about the magazine’s most influential people? – I agree with you that it’s the most diverse that we’ve ever had.

And I have very few bylines personally.

So I can say this with honesty and sincerity.

The storytelling in there is absolutely fascinating.

I learned so much from every one of these stories. – Agree, and I have to just shout out, just to first of all, Rob, you’re a beautiful writer and you are supported by the likes of Rachel Galleher and Christina Shibwaki. – Heidi Mills, you mentioned. – Heidi Mills, thank you.

And Daniel Neal and others who have gelled beautifully to put together Seattle’s 25 most influential people.

So available on Newsstands now.

It is our January, February issue. (upbeat music) – Well, Rob, I wish I could sit here and talk with you all day.

Sometimes when we do meet, we’re pretty much talking all day. – We talk all the time. – Right, but we won’t make our listeners listen to us any longer today.

But just, hey, what are you looking forward to?

Looking at the next several weeks happening in town. – Well, this is gonna sound pretty geeky.

There’s a comedy troupe called the 1491s.

And they just released a play and it’s gonna be showing here in Seattle in March.

It’s called Between Two Knees.

And if you’re not familiar with the 1491s, they’re best known for their TV series called Reservation Dogs.

And this is gonna be at the Seattle Rep.

So if you go to the Seattle Rep website, you can find more information on the 1491s. – Very good, I didn’t know about that one, so that’s good.

You know, I’m looking forward because I’m just such a geek at heart.

My all-time favorite sort of early first quarter Seattle activity is the world famous Emerald City Comic-Con.

Really?

I love me comic book conventions.

I cannot tell you that that is my happy place, my friend. – What’s your character? – Well, you know, I don’t go dressed, but I have been known as a younger man to do a little bit of a cosplay thing.

And I’m proud to say it still fits, but I have my Star Trek uniform.

Next generation, mind you, but these days now that I’ve gotten a little older, I just delight in high-fiving somebody other guys, the somebody other dads with their dad bods that are in like their Batman outfit.

And I like to high-five those guys because they’re walking around with their wives and their kids and the dad and the guy is the only one in costume, right?

I love that. – So I was down there outside of there with my son randomly at the time he was eight or nine years old.

We were, I don’t remember where we were going.

It was not the Comic-Con, but we were just walking around and his jaw dropped.

It’s like, wow, that’s a Star Wars paratrooper.

That’s Batman, that’s Wonder Woman.

Are they real? – Yeah, I know, there’s something for everyone.

And I just love sort of reveling in some fun and reminiscing about some of the things that really inspired us during our childhood.

Just as now in older age, there are real heroes amongst us who inspire us as well.

And you can find them in Seattle’s most influential people issue on Newsstands today. – We’re gonna be telling those stories every single issue. – That’s right.

All right, thanks everybody.

We’ll see you next episode. – Thank you. (upbeat music) – Thank you for listening to the Seattle Magazine podcast.

You can always find us on seattlemag.com.

Look for new episodes approximately every two weeks on our website.

A special thank you to the entire Seattle Magazine staff and to podcast producer Nick Patrie.

Contact Lisa Lee at lisa@seattlemag.com for partnership opportunities.

Until next time, let’s keep celebrating Seattle. (upbeat music) [MUSIC]