Megan Seling

I’m gonna brag for a minute. This week, @thestrangerseattle published our annual How to Seattle magazine, a smaller, glossy city guide that shows visitors and new arrivals all the good, surprising, and strange-in-a-good-way people, places, and things our weird little corner of the Pacific Northwest has to offer. Sure, we could’ve phoned it in and just added some curse words to some half-hearted blurbs about the usual tourist attractions that every other outlet else writes about, but we didn’t. Because we love this city and we want you to love it, too. In it, there are 117 things we think everyone should do at least once while they’re in town, whether you’re here for a weekend or a lifetime. 117 things! Including more than 30 new recommendations from last year’s issue! As we pulled this year’s guide together, I found myself falling in love with Seattle all over again. It’s very easy to grow cynical or take the charms of this goofy little town for granted. Our grocery stores lock up ice cream, and everything costs approximately 1 million dollars. But this little guide reminded me of all the only-in-Seattle shit that makes me so happy to live here. Make protest art at @pushpullseattle ! Hunt for @bill_hinker_ ’s hot dogs! Eat Turkish-inspired barbecue (and banana pudding!!!) at @outsider_bbq ! Hear your favorite records on a sound system you could never afford at @shibuyahifi ! Smoke weed in our secret spot next to the cemetery! AND LITERALLY MORE THAN 100 MORE THINGS! Anyway, I’m super fucking proud of it, and my colleagues. @corianton kicked ass on design, @kbilliewinter ran all over town snapping beautiful photos, and the cover of the choking seagull drawn by @petey_royale is going to make me laugh forever. I’m going to tuck a copy into my bag to pull it out whenever I want to do something fun but can’t think of anything fun to do. I hope that if you see one while you’re out and about, you pick one up and flip through it, too, and maybe reintroduce yourself to the many nooks and crannies that you may have forgotten (or never knew!) were there. We even put little check lists at the end of each section so you can track your progress, like homework, but fun! 💖

What a city.

Hashtag bring back bag handles @fredmeyerstores @krogerco

Took my @porchlightcoffee 35mm to Oaxaca in November.

Dusted off my hockey writing hat to follow the Seattle Torrent around ahead of their home opener, and @kbilliewinter took some incredible on-ice and behind-the-scenes photos.  *** The history of professional women’s hockey in the US and Canada is a dense web, and sorting it all into manageable, bite-sized nuggets of information can make you feel a little bit like Charlie Kelly trying to find Pepe Silvia in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But here’s the gist: Before the PWHL was founded in 2023, there was the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), which ran from 2015 to 2023. It was the first professional women’s hockey league to pay players a (meager, very meager) salary. The PHF was renamed from the National Women’s Hockey League (1999–2007), which absorbed some teams from the Western Women’s Hockey League (2004–2011) and was renamed from the Central Ontario Women’s Hockey League (1992–1998). There was also the Canadian Women’s Hockey League, founded by former players of the NWHL in 2007. That folded in 2019 after 12 seasons. Do you see what I mean? Carol! Carol! Carol! The leagues were always small, and budgets were even smaller. Most didn’t have enough money to pay players, though some did offer stipends when possible. The women often had jobs on the side, and there were few to no resources for the players off-ice. In a story the Victory Press published in 2020, former NWHL players recalled abysmal working conditions, including having to pee in a trash can during practice because they didn’t have access to locker rooms. (A boys’ junior varsity team had dibs.) It’s no wonder some people were brought to tears at the sight of professional women’s hockey players finally getting their due, breaking merchandise and season ticket records, being supported by thousands of fervent, passionate fans in a sold-out 15,000-capacity arena on the West Coast of North America, and having access to their own bathrooms. It was about damn time.  *** It's been a minute since I've dug into something like this. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. I hope you'll read it. Happy @pwhl_torrent home opener to all who celebrate! /sports/2025/11/26/80345774/

Fourteen years married to the world's most hilarious, creative, kind, and weird-in-all-the-right-ways human, @robby1066 . Every day is immeasurably brighter and funnier with you, even when we're lost in a Mexican desert and wondering if we took a wrong turn while literal vultures circle above us. I love the shit out of you, Robby.

Breaking news from Oaxaca

A+ street art in Oaxaca.

I'm still in Oaxaca.

I am in Oaxaca.

From this morning's plunge off Alki. This picture is in color. Seattle Gray should be officially listed in Pantone.

Seattle's having fun.