Whatever your feelings about Utilikilts, they are part of the Northwest. The idea was born here. They’re manufactured here. They even have their own store in Seattle’s Pioneer Square Neighborhood. Why, then, are they so polarizing in their own hometown?
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 The revival of streetcars in Tacoma and Seattle would be a surprise to our civic leaders from the 1930’s. But they used to be prolific throughout the Northwest. What happened? Was it a conspiracy, or just the changing tides of fashion? |
 There's a large swath of native prairie southwest of Olympia that’s very strange looking. So strange, in fact, that some have even said it was created by aliens. What makes it strange are “things” called The Mima Mounds. |
 The city often ranks pretty high on those lists of the best places to move to – There’s the food, the water, the mountains, the music. But once people get here, they find it’s pretty tough to make friends. There’s even a name for it: The Seattle Freeze. |
 There they sit, almost three years later. On the shelf in the KPLU newsroom. Two dozen of them. Each in their own day-of-the-week slot. Why haven’t we been able to toss those papers and relegate the printed P-I to the dark depths of the archive stacks at the public library? |
 A lot of people in the “Rain City” take pride in the fact that “real” Seattleites don’t carry umbrellas. But, I walk around town with a portable roof over my head. The result? I stay dry, my hair doesn’t get tousled, and I can use my iPhone while I wait for the bus. I also get dirty looks. |
 We’ve all seen the billboards and giant posters hanging off the sides of buildings: “The Northwest has a higher incidence of Multiple Sclerosis than most anywhere on Earth.” But do we really? Turns out the answer is more complicated than the awareness campaign that got everyone talking about MS in the Northwest. |
 Everyone went a little crazy. Police were called, road blocks set up. It’s 1954, early spring, and tiny chips, pits and dings are popping up on car windshields throughout the Puget Sound region at an alarming rate. Suddenly, communities from Anacortes to Tacoma are in the grip of a textbook case of mass hysteria. (In fact, it is in the textbooks.) |
 Do I have an accent? You hear me on the radio. I hear myself on the radio, many times a week in western Washington, and I didn’t think so. But, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle tells me I do have an accent – it’s in the way I say that very word “accent.” |
 Fear of a ticket from paternalistic police? Group angst? Peer pressure? Whatever the reason, even if a car is not in sight, Seattleites will often wait patiently for the light to change rather than … jaywalk. |