Sub Pop retail shop opens beneath a mostly-empty Amazon tower; WA records its lowest new-COVID-case count of the year; a Native-homeless advocate runs for mayor; no, Bill Gates doesn’t want to kill you on behalf of any lizard men from outer space.

Inaugural poem set to a local funk-rock track; waiting lists for vaccine-clinic helpers are getting as long as those for the vaccines themselves; Tacoma police SUV runs over street-race spectators; Microsoft’s developing chatbots based on dead people.

City asks artists and others to ponder their communities’ future; remembering one year of COVID in WA (and in the US); state makes a new vaccine distribution plan; man arrested at DC riot had tried to join Seattle protest groups, but was suspected of being a right-wing infiltrator.

‘Mario’ games you’ve probably never seen; state tries to speed up vaccination pace; ‘Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse might close for good; Nikkita Oliver to teach Seattle U law students about ‘abolition.’

Canadian artists depict Seattle’s CHOP protests; still more local fallout from the DC coup attempt; a quiet but ‘weird’ opening to WA’s legislative session; how the Storm’s Sue Bird helped get Raphael Warnock into the US Senate.

Could John Roderick’s deleted Twitter thread affect Ken Jennings’ TV career?; Inslee announces new ‘reopening’ plan, restaurant trade org. hates it; Virginia Mason/CHI Franciscan merger moves ahead; pioneering local Black judge dies.

Our 35th (Yes!) annual list of trends that will soar and decline over the coming 365.

On the day after the Seven Gables Theater burned, we look back on some recent local arts and culture stories, trends, and tales of survival.

Alaska Airlines’ suddenly popular ‘Safety Dance’ ad; Cal Anderson Park ‘reopens;’ an obscure part of the federal relief bill could threaten live-streaming; a holiday message for our time.

Views of an empty Microsoft campus (except for construction crews); the state passes 200,000 COVID cases; the first vaccine doses are on the way; another shooting at another right-wing Olympia protest.

A live Santa greets kids from inside a plastic ‘snow globe;’ ‘several’ COVID positives among the UW football squad; a bomb scare at the Spokane County Democrats’ office; imaging ‘a future where Amazon rules the world.’

Inslee keeps restaurants, bars, etc. closed three more weeks (restaurant industry assn. doesn’t like it); Seattle School Supt. Denise Juneau won’t ask for another contract; big-biz group wants city’s big-biz payroll tax tossed out.

Local photog’s shots of national racial (and racist) historic sites; Amazon warehouse work is officially riskier than logging; pandemic economy hits nonprofits (and their clients) very hard; historically comparing COVID, AIDS, and the ‘eugenics movement.’

New kids’ book ‘Panda Demick’ looks on (and for) the bright side; state starts COVID tracking phone app; Tacoma ICE jail uses solitary confinement heavily; make your own ‘restoration of federal sanity advent calendar.’

Woodland Park Zoo’s new walk-thru light show; where most new COVID infections occur in King County; Amazon Web Services has a big outage in the east; a street sign honors a late local Black theater producer.