February 12 was, aptly, a bit of a dark and stormy night. Wet snow dripped onto the sidewalks as people in winter coats trudged into Third Place Books in Ravenna. That night, Tacoma-based writer J. Ann Thomas was discussing her newly published novel, The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall, a Gilded Age romance novel, and her first adult novel. 

Nicole Bearden (NB): Hello, and welcome to another Iconic Convo with Seattle’s most recognizable icons. Today we are speaking with the Fremont Troll. We appreciate you spending time with us today, Fremont Troll. 

Fremont Troll (FT): Grunts, and nods slowly as dust drifts from his head to float through the air

NB: Now, you’ve been around since 1990. How have you noticed that the city has changed over the past 35 years?

Every quarter, SFS hosts the In Focus series celebrating Seattle directors and cinematographers that features shorts, music videos, and more in a diverse range of content. SFS chooses a director who has a strong intention and vision to their stories with robust elements of “framing/staging/blocking, confidence in editing, making distinctive choices, and thematically cohesive style choices,” said the SFS Artistic Director, Marcus Baker.  

February 2025’s In Focus event showcased director and cinematographer June Zandona, known for her work on Penelope, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Special, and I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. The screening featured three of Zandona’s shorts: Dancer, Wedding Video, and This is Concrete. 

Judith Skillman, Seattle author of Red Town, crafts a fictional town through a handful of poems that reflect on one’s past self and the experiences weaved within, around, and through. Reviewer Beth Bently claims that an “ordinary experience undergoes a surgical probe to reveal the underpinnings of relationships, ancestral connections, memories from childhood. No event is too slight to remain unexamined”. Red Town is a perfect example of coming to terms with one’s dark past to move to a future of pure gold.

I attended a Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in Seattle’s Central District on January 20, 2025. That day was also the inauguration of our nation’s 47^th president, Donald Trump. Many Americans are tired of talking about politics and Trump. Well, not everyone. I think there’s something about this coalescence of events that stands to unite us more than divide us. Hope stems from the fact that this march, which at times threatened to be more about Trump than Dr. King, ultimately succeeded to underscore the importance of some of the very radical problems King was putting his lifeforce into trying to solve before he was assassinated.

Imagine a free seat at a fine dining restaurant where each dish goes beyond flavor, offering a unique connection to Filipino culture and community—this is Archipelago. Archipelago is a minority, family, and women-owned Filipino American restaurant that creates delightful tasting menu experiences through culinary excellence and inspiring stories. The restaurant’s attention to detail is evident from the uniquely shaped and beautifully sculpted dishware to the intricate placement of each ingredient highlighted in every bite. Each guest is intimately around the dinner table like warm-hearted friends and family.

This week we’re taking a look at a book that’s a bit out of my normal reviews here in Parker’s Pages. This one is an interactive Tarot card guide called Every Little Thing You Do is Magic by two Seattle artists, Callie Little and Moorea Seal. While doing my usual rounds of the local bookstore, I came across this guide while digging through the store’s collection of Tarot decks and just knew I had to have it.

A.K. Burns’ current show, What Is Perverse Is Liquid at Henry Art Gallery, curated by Senior Curator Nina Bozicnik, uses materiality, speculative fiction in the form of short, multi-channel film installations, and sound to envision a future spawned from our current trajectory. Burns’ work centers the queer capacity to thrive in the face of chaos and persecution, and draws a strong connection between our own human resilience and that of nature. 

Writer and dance director Carol Levin published her poetry collection Confident Music Would Fly Us to Paradise in 2014. As a patron for all distinct art forms, Levin dedicates her collection to the Seattle Opera. The collection offers a deep dive into many intricate facets of a colossal opera production. 

Playland gives us one last night in Boston’s oldest and most infamous gay bar, featuring the ghosts who, even in life, haunted this place. Whimsical and bittersweet, Georden West’s film pays tribute to one of the oldest gay bars in the country: the Playland Cafe, previously located in the so-called Combat Zone in Boston, the city’s adult entertainment district. The cast of characters includes bar flies, performers, servers, and all manner of debauches and renegades.

It began slowly—the plague, the greed, the riots. Revolutionaries rose up behind symbols, murals, and songs, while the masses were fed machinery and religion. In the wake of the destruction, politicians deemed art a dangerous thing—a worthless thing—and the masses agreed. They took away the paint, the books, and the instruments. But they could not wholly silence the artists. These are the stories they left behind. 

Seek out designers like Titus Ross of Thirty+ Clothing. He presents an alternative approach, embodying sustainability through the art of upcycling and strengthening community. On January 25, 2025, he showcased pieces from his current collection alongside Clementine Cimetiere of ClemCreations—who debuted on January 26—at the first-ever PNW Fashion Week. The shows took place at the QFC – Quality Flea Center and featured other local artists and advocacy vendors who promote creativity and challenge the status quo.
I spoke with Titus ahead of PNW Fashion Week to discover his inspiration for Thirty+ Clothing and find out what the future of sustainable fashion in Seattle looks like from his perspective as an emerging designer.

Three art pieces came to the Seattle Center and are here until the cherry blossoms bloom this April. The Seattle Center, in collaboration with The Office of Arts and Culture, commissioned three public pieces for a short-term display on their campus: two sculptures and one hung banner. 

NB: A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chatting with Pike Place Market. During our talk, Pike Place spoke briefly about their friend The Gum Wall. Now that we are clear of the market’s holiday hustle and bustle, Gum Wall has made time to connect with us and share some secrets. Welcome, Gum Wall, and thank you for speaking with us today.

The theater is a triplex with the largest of its three screens on the street level. The lobby is adorned with history. Photos of the original iterations of the theater line the wall with a look at what the demolition and reconstruction process was like for the theater in 1998. Within the lobby there’s a classic snack bar with everything a movie goer needs. Above your head, notice the unique glass lighting fixtures that look like jellyfish, which complements the theater's maritime theme, more evidence of which is scattered throughout the space. 

For discussion this week, I chose a poem from Reyna Biddy’s poetry collection, i love my love. Published back in 2015, I was exposed to her work for the first time in college during one of my poetry workshops. After reading it several years ago, I wanted to reread it with fresh eyes and an open heart.

Although the collection goes through ups and downs of self-doubt and self-confidence, Biddy reflects on her parents’ relationship as well as the greatest love of all: self-love. Biddy’s poem “for you” speaks to this ideal through a power anthem that invites the reader to act.

This morning, I awoke to the news that one of my favorite authors walked beyond the veil on February 9. Tom Robbins, a prolific novelist, was born in North Carolina in 1932, then relocated to Washington State in the 1960s. He wrote with a bohemian playfulness and humor that often belied his philosophical style and was once most accurately dubbed “The Northwest’s Master of Zen-Punk” by Seattle Weekly writer Roger Downey in 2006.

There are those of us (author included) for whom Halloween is not enough—we like to be scared year-round. Two such individuals are Taylor Bartle and Tony Gee, aka Taylor of Terror and Skeletony, co-hosts of the Grave Plot Podcast and Grave Plot Film Festival. “Thank you guys for traversing the arctic tundra,” Bartle said in his introduction, adding that when they first began the festival in 2019, the duo didn’t expect it would last more than a year. This was the 7th annual iteration of the festival, and its first at Central Cinema, the delightful 123-seat dine-in theater in Seattle’s Central District. 

As they wrapped up the speeches and braced for the ribbon cutting, Savanna Boles was invited to sing. During her rendition of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, it began to snow. At first it was a magical dusting, but as the music swelled, so did the weather. We followed the singer as everyone was ushered inside and out of the cold. A few joked that the ancestors were saying, "Get on with it, it's cold!" Inside the music switched to a vocal accompaniment to “Glory,” and the ribbon was cut. With that, the Washington State Black Legacy Institute was officially open.

When life gives you a book about frogs, by golly, you’ve got to jump on it.

This week I discovered Frog Day, a stupendously cute and informative book all about frogs and toads and the wonderful world they live in. From the Earth Day series of the University of Chicago Press comes a 24-hour story about 24 different frog and toad species, written by herpetologist (a biologist who studies amphibians and reptiles) Marty Crump and illustrated by local Seattle artist Tony Angell.