Can We Eat Lettuce Again? Plus, Where To Get a Pumpkin Spice Latte

0:00The Washington State Fair is back. Every year brings new reasons to visit the Washington State Fair and celebrate all of our Washington traditions. Here's a list of cant miss experiences in 2026. America's 250th celebration, a new dog stunt show, some cant miss concerts, iconic fair food, I'm craving a corn dog already, thrilling rides and much more. Get your tickets at tickets.thefair.com. That's tickets.thefair.com. This is CityCast Seattle. I'm Jane C.Hoo and here's what Seattle's talking about. Today is a great day to register to vote. We'll talk about some national headlines that matter to us here in Seattle as well as the other things big and small that Seattle's are talking about right now.

1:00But first, I've been out for the last week. Many thanks to my team for keeping the good ship CityCast on course as well as our guest host Brett Hamill. But being out also means that I'm kind of behind on the news. So to catch me up, we have Hannah Krieg, founder of the burner. Hi Hannah. Hello. Glad you're back. Thank you. And we've got Lex Bon, founder and editor of the Needlings. Seattle's only real fake news. Hi Lex. Hi. We missed you. Even the Brett did a great job. Yeah. Brett did do a great job. I feel like Brett has a really like soothing, yeah, like host voice. Yeah. Which, yeah, I really love. Okay. But what happened while I was gone? I feel like I got little tidbits. But is there anything that comes to mind for you all as like if someone was completely unplugged for the last week? How presumptuous of you to think that any of us can remember more than two days in news

2:00at a time. I'm just like scrolling back on my feeds like, I got my quits that we talked about. What happened? I will. What did you put on your feed last week? I just saw that the City of Seattle is considering protecting polyamorous people from their anti-discrimination law. Yeah. It was nice and sweet and some irony poised in people online. One of the mean about it, but I like poly people and I think they shouldn't be discriminated against. Yeah. It does feel like a very Seattle clickbait headline. Yeah. It's like if you don't live in Seattle, everyone's like, oh, of course, Seattle's doing that. But what mean to poly people here too? What is this? Yeah. This doesn't protect you from online bullying. Obviously, it's like about employment and like housing, but like we do kind of need to add to shift on like poly people. You see so many things that's where it's like, poly people are smelly or just like we have time out. Time out. It's like, alright. We find some like very basic like discrimination in bigotry 101.

3:00Yeah. It's like middle school bullying level stuff right there. So if we were to pass this, would we be the first city to do that? Like are we going to be leading? No, you know who has a speed though. Portland, Oregon. I'm going to go. People, there's several cities. I think there's one in Michigan too. And like, couple in California, Olympia is a city in Washington that already has such as anti discrimination law. Okay. Well, okay. That's exciting. Some good news while I was gone. Our friend Marcus Harrison Green and Joined and Mayor Katie Wilson's staff. He's a public safety advisor now. I think it's exciting to see what he's going to do. It's exciting. Yes. I mean, I feel like Marcus is going to do a great job in that role. Yeah. And I mean, I really hope he does personally, but also just like for our city, you know, because we need that. I would hire Marcus to advise me on anything. I'm trying to put personal safety. He's an advisor. My personal well-being.

4:02Congratulations to him. Journalism will miss him. But, you know, yeah, seems like he's like to have fun there. One of the things that did permeate my, my bubble was his piece in the South Seattle Emerald being like, this is goodbye for now and explaining his reasoning, which I thought was a really lovely send off. So Marcus, we're so happy for you. We're going to miss you on the show, but we're really excited to see what you'll do in your new role. Yeah. Um, and let's see. What else can I manage to remember from even the last week? We're getting closer to you. Yeah. A.I. Grocery bill passing that past committee. I think there's one kind of semi-friendly amendment that people were like, okay, that's fine, but a little bit watered down. But that's, yeah, past committee and we'll go to a vote in two weeks, I think. Okay. So that's the one that bans dynamic pricing and grocery stores, right? I think, yeah, specifically like using their data, like algorithmic pricing.

5:04I saw someone online recommend that people should just swap their benefits cards. You know, like when you're checking out like QFC or whenever or Safeway, you scan your little card, like someone's like, just switch with a friend and then the algorithm will keep on their toes. Yeah. Like basically trying to muddy the data will remove some of the incentive structure for companies trying to do this. I mean, I don't know how many people are going to follow through on that for real, but it's like that. That can be kind of fun. I'm quite confusing people. One of my friends uses my, my number at QFC. So I have his data in there too. Yeah. That was, I think, throw it off. I think that's the other part of it was like, yeah, share a card with a bunch of different people so that it doesn't actually get a handle on what your real habits are, which I kind of love. Yeah. Although I have found that if you're at the grocery store and you're like searching around for your card, someone like usually an employee will just like scan one for you.

6:05That's true. Although I do feel like part of that might depend on the way that you look and the privilege that the way that you look carries. But I think people generally are like, oh, this person looks like they're genuinely trying to find a card. So I'll just like scan it. But another way to get out of the car. It's a big card for you. Like, you know, it's like, it's like a solid. They're really giving you anything. It is discounts. You can just discount. Yeah. I'll say it again. Discounts are fake. They should be for everyone. Give everyone the lowest price always. But yes, that's just me hating corporations. There's more things that ain't been corporations like the people at UW who are trying to create more stringent rules that can like more easily punish students that protest on campus. I don't have the actual like nitty-gritty memorized, but from what I can gather, it's like they kind of did the sneaky thing during the summer when not many of students aren't on campus to protest this thing that could keep them from protesting.

7:08And I think there's a vote this week on it. Yeah. So something about a new student code of conduct. Yeah. I think that got delayed a little bit. There was supposed to be a vote sometime this month, and then there's a huge backlash to it. And now I think the faculty senate gets to review those rules and those rules kind of include like if you're present at a protest where vandalism occurs, you can get in trouble, which is a crazy rule. Yeah, that's way too broad. Exactly. That's going to like, you know, preemptively tamp down on like free speech in my opinion. And then other things like they can trump up charges if you wear a mask. That is now going to go to a deliberation from the senate faculty and they'll have time to give recommendations until I think December of this year. Oh, well, okay. So this could drag on for quite a bit. Yeah, it got delayed. And what you're probably seeing right now is that students are trying to keep the pressure up. And so last week they went to a board of regents meeting. And I think they'll continue to go to meetings and keep the pressure on and let the people

8:10in power know that they still want to be able to protest without these new rules. Okay. We'll be keeping an eye on that one. They tried to pull a fast one. And I don't think it's going to work, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Students are back. And oh, I guess they're not quite back yet. It's another couple of weeks, I think, until the quarter starts, right? Yeah. I don't know. I'm like, oh, shit. I guess. But the kids are back. And I think it's awkward that NYC and LA are like banning AI. But yeah, it was just like. Oh, that's so good. It's cool. Yeah. Why is it so bad? That's true. I think there needs to be a lot more ongoing conversation about that because it's like way too many people are shrugging about how open and embrace we have for AI in schools. When I mean, we should be going the opposite direction on that if you're, you know, reading any of the news about what AI is doing to people.

9:11I know Brett talked about this last week with Seattle Times Education reporter Claire Brian. So folks want to go listen to their conversation about that. But yeah, it's, I feel like every day there's a new AI headline. And yeah, the one other thing that I saw while I was out was that Maclatchee laid off a lot of people nationwide, a lot of journalists out of work now, including seven reporters at the Bellingham Herald, the Olympian to come a news tribune and Tri-City Herald. It's always a bummer to see journalists being laid off in a time where there are fewer and fewer journalists. Like, I heard that, you know, Tacoma now has no journalist covering City Hall or local schools. And that's a huge loss for that community. Yeah. And new small papers, they're really, you know, the Thim Blue Lion between us and chaos for Laca and Drew. This is what the, the rule olds are reading, you know, the people who are otherwise scooped up by Fox News.

10:11Yeah. And I feel like it's better for them to be reading local news from, you know, normal sources. Uh-huh. Boxers. At least even the centrist news source is better than I, I guess when I read stuff like that, I'm like, we got new crap of independent reporters about to come up into Tacoma. So, you know, if you see that happen, support them as soon as you can. We have to get on their co-fi. Yeah. Yes. Get old co-fi. Yeah. All right. Let's take a break and we come back. We're going to talk through some national headlines with local relevance. More than 20 years ago, Grand Central Bakery took tomatoes off their menu, unless they were sourced from local farms at peak ripeness. That decision turned tomato season into a celebrated annual event, marking the return of the

11:14Grand Central BLT. And this year, they're sourcing their plum tomatoes that I'm being told, a larger than a baseball from deep roots farms and gathering together farm in our Willem at Valley. They pair up the stick tomato slices with Jack Mountain meat spaken, crisp lettuce, and rich tangy mayo, unperfectly toasted comobrette. It's an Italian rustic white bread with a gold crust, any soft and chewy center, house made of course. And if bacon's not your thing, just get it without the bacon. It's equally delicious. Or you can add some of these fresh local tomatoes to your favorite sandwich like a cheddar egg biscuit, which sounds delicious. Find out why people rearrange their vacation plans for this BLT, order online at GrandCentralBakery.com or at any of their eight neighborhood locations. And yeah, they do deliver. Okay, first off, today is National Voter Registration Day. This is a good time to make sure you register to vote if you're not already.

12:15I mean, I feel like every election is important, but the November general is going to be a spicy one voting on a lot of really important things. Also we have a whole thing in our newsletter about getting registered to vote. So if you're not already subscribed to our newsletter, you can go check it out. You can go to Seattle.citycast.fm to find that. I'm assuming you two are registered to vote, but yeah, okay, good. Check all the cool kids. Obviously registered to vote. And we're all going to vote super early. Yes. And we're going to vote. I'm curious about my fingers crossed behind my back. No guarantees. That's the day of. I just want to say, like, okay, so it's been in the news lately that like, you know, because of changes that the post office and all these different rules about when, you know, ballots can be accepted. There was an increase statewide in ballots that got rejected because they relate or whatever.

13:22But I mean, not to like glow, but because it's bad, that's bad when that happens anytime, whatever you look at the data, the amount of rejected ballots in King County actually went way down because we were so on top of it and didn't have faith in like the mail system. We like made sure that our ballots got in that drop box and like this, this new rule where they're not accepting late ballots as much. That effect did more rural areas and more conservative areas. I think it's just funny that it's like, there's all this skepticism of mail-in voting and all this clamping down on things and who is it hurting most? It's actually hurting more conservative areas. Their rate of rejected ballots went up like four or five times. The ability to vote by mail really is just a public good. Yeah. And you cannot convince me otherwise. You know, it just, it makes it so much more equitable for people to be able to have their

14:27vote counted and heard and for them to vote on their own time. Yeah. But I wish this was how it worked in every state. It just doesn't need to be more complex in this. All right. Another national headline here. So after a summer of foodborne illness outbreaks, completely preventable ones I might add if we had better federal monitoring this whole time. But the CDC just recently declared that cyclospora is over, you guys. Congratulations. Well, all the A.I. threats are over. All the food nuances are over. Everything is looking great because it was. Yeah. Mission accomplished. So mission accomplished. The CDC says that there were like a thousand reported new infections a day at the peak of this outbreak and the average is now two. So they're like, it's over. Luckily here in Washington, we did not see too much of it. Yeah. I never met anyone that I heard of anyone getting it. And talking to the King County Department of Health, they said, you know, there's always

15:30a few cases here and there, especially people who have been traveling, but like we didn't see anything resembling an outbreak. But I don't know about you guys. I did stay away from bagged lettuce for quite a while. And it helped me see the joys of buying local produce, local lettuce, very expensive local lettuce. And actually, let's just make me think about your recent needling headline about like person enjoys like $800 salad that they grew themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of the vibe right now. Yeah. I mean, I guess like I'm not an experienced gardener, but yeah, it's like that first year or two, I think you experiment with gardening. You're like, yeah. So I blew $800 on everything and I have a whole side salad for new gardeners. Yeah. I think you know, all of my gardener friends that I've moached off of this season and my dad who just grew tomatoes for the first time, they're like quite good.

16:31It's been really nice being the recipient of that produce without having to put in the $800 of work myself. But it is nice knowing that as much as I've been enjoying eating like locally grown butter lettuce that I can be a little trash goblin again and maybe buy a bag salad when I'm feeling lazy. Yeah. I think I'm still going to be cooking a lot of things through. I don't think everything's going to be okay. There was such a succession of things that were infected. It wasn't just like the lettuce. It was like, it's blueberries. The blueberries would kill you. Yeah. Okay. I give up on raw fruit and vegetables for a while. Like I'll just not let Taco Bell all out. So what am I supposed to eat? You know? That's like the main food groups. Yeah. Blueberries, lettuce, fat salads and Taco Bell. Yeah. That's the whole period. That's a lot of my summer diet. I have to say. So that was sad. All right. In another headline here from the New York Times, the EPA plans to eliminate limits on pollution

17:33from power plants. Meanwhile, last week K.O.W reported that the U.S. Department of Energy ordered our states only coal burning power plant to stay open for another 90 days. So in case you all weren't already up on this in 2011, Transalta came to an agreement with the state to stop burning coal by 2025. So they had 14 years to make this transition away from coal. And it's planning its switch to natural gas. But the Trump administration, starting last year, kept filing emergency orders to keep it open as a coal plant. And now if the EPA is going to be removing pollution limits, that's just what it is. I feel like Washington and the federal government are in so many power battles right now in terms of what law takes precedent here. You know what they say? You give a mouse a cookie. You give a coal plant 15 years to keep destroying the environment.

18:34It's just going to keep on wanting to do it. We got to stop giving these corporations these big runways to do things. So like it's just like they always extend. And we should, you know, it's like shoot for the moon and land among the stars. Like you should give them less time because they're going to extend a year anyway. That is what they say Hannah. Absolutely. I have a lot of a lot of metaphor, a lot of saying, turning a phrase this morning. Yeah, truly. All right. headline, which is a half rant from me. You all might have seen that Apple released its newest phone models. And I was excited to see that they have a new flip phone called the iPhone duo. But that I was less excited to find that it folds the hot dog way instead of the hamburger way. And it's $2,000. I'm like, just make me a Motorola crazer. Like I don't want hot dog phone. I want hamburger phone. See, and if you weren't so obsessed with Apple, you could have that.

19:35This is a product that already exists on the market that I had for many years. I actually wouldn't really recommend it because it breaks really easy. I had the Motorola one, which is cheaper. And then I also had before that the more expensive Galaxy Samsung Galaxy. This is five or whatever. That one was really cute. And it was like really nice, but it was super expensive. And they just break easily. The iPhone one is like so ugly. It's too big, too small at the same time. And I don't want like an iPad when I open a phone on a normal size phone. And then we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about what else people in Seattle are talking about right now. So the idea for this segment came up because every morning we have a newsmaiding. Right at 9 a.m., we talk about what the headlines are, what everyone in our lives are talking about in Seattle. And our team has a lot of different circles.

20:38Like I feel like there's some overlap, but there's also some differences. Like for instance, our executive producer Ashley is very into football. And nobody in my circle is just talking about football. I don't know any football people. So I am curious to hear from both of you, Hannah and Lex. What are people in your circles talking about right now? And it can be little, it can be big. Cortese is so much festival. Oh, what's that? This is maybe for the youth, but there's a TikTok influencer in Seattle who had a summer music festival this weekend. I don't know. We had a whole festival. I follow that guy, but I didn't know he had a whole festival. Maybe it was the music festival. I kind of thought it was music. It was definitely called a festival. I didn't see a ton of content about it. It was Cortese's so most festival, a celebration of Mexican and Latin culture. Oh, cool. That's cool. So it was on Saturday night in Pioneer Square. And it was kind of like a block party thing.

21:38So that's cool. That's also cool. That's cool. Cool. Cool, that I do love the energy of just creating the thing that you want to see in the world. You know, like, and I feel like right now there's really great energy in the arts of people just putting on new stuff and like just making new festivals or just like new events, new art installations. So hell yeah Cortese. Hell yeah Cortese. Lex, what about you? What are people talking about in your circles? I'm so basic right now because I think I'm only just thinking and talking about a fall. Yo, okay. I feel like everyone is talking about the seasonal change. You're a black yellow sweater on. Like I've been long sleeves, Hannah's on a sweatshirt. I was very thankful. I was very thankful. I was very thankful. I was very thankful. You know, this weekend was nice and like cloudy and rainy. I was like, thank you. This is what I wanted. I made chicken soup. I cleaned my house. It feels like you just have permission to be indoors and not like summer backsing. And I'm also like, thank you Seattle for bringing this fall earlier.

22:41Like I like it early September. I don't have to wait until the 22nd. Every day when we do, but yeah, I'm like always thankful that September is like pretty much just fall right at the beginning. Do you have like a fall ritual, either of you? Yeah, mostly like just kind of getting into like soup and book mode. Um, yeah. It's very basic. I saw Hannah, you were talking on one of your social media posts asking about PSLs that aren't from Starbucks. Yeah. I like very in favor of like a better roundup of like good PSLs in Seattle that are not from, you know, Starbucks that are from like indie cafes. Yeah. Here's my work. Yeah. What happened with that? Yeah. I'm always worried that like, okay, you, especially if you're framing a roundup as like, this is an alternative to Starbucks. You're almost sort of endorsing the business practices of another place.

23:42And it's like, I actually don't know if they're good to their workers either. Yeah. So it's hard to be like, you should go here and then I'll have three workers in that place. I'm like, actually, they're pretty mean to us too. And I'm like, make it at home. I don't know. I mean, I think I'm Starbucks. I'm still in my, my aims are more selfish. I like, I want to know, I want to know what cafes have like a more spicy like PSL versus a sweet because I like spicy, you know, and let's say, okay. And I always forget which cafes though. I'll keep looking. I'll keep my windows to the ground. But I can't say like somebody get on it. Someone be the master, the PSL master. It might have to be us. We might have to put someone on this mission, you know, crowdsource info on this. And I want, I want categories like, you know, best spicy PSL. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So yeah, we're done with summer maxing. Now we're going to fall max and we're going to make this list for Lex. Yeah. Specifically. Yeah. One thing that I saw online again, that permeated my little note, not being online bubble

24:46last week was a video of someone driving on the I 90 bike and pedestrian trail. Did you guys see this? Yeah. Oh, you did. Okay. So Lex described it to Hannah since she's not seen it. Somebody got on to like the pedestrian bicycle lane. And what I saw in comments online was that like people are like, how did that? What happened? There were a lot of people were like, no, that's totally doable, which is kind of scary. Like a lot of people are like, no, I've almost done that myself. I thought about that. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's not good. That's worth it. Okay. I read my bike there regularly. It shouldn't be clear to you immediately. Okay. That you are not driving in the right place. But how is it possible? It should not be possible. If I'm getting this correct and I wasn't quite sure of the orientation from the video, but it looked like they got on from Mercer Island. And the way that you get on from Mercer Island, if you're on a bike, is there is a path.

25:47It's through a park. And you go down quite a ways into the park and then it spits you out on the bridge. So really at any point, this person should have realized what they were doing. People are so like plugged into there. Like, I mean, GPSs aren't new, but I feel like there's almost like such a growing mindset of just not questioning like apps or directions from chat. But that's what GPS says. I'm not going to question it. Like, I feel like that sentiment is growing. Yeah. I mean, the other thing that gave me pause about it though, is this person was going so fast? Like, you could see them. I think the video that I saw was a person who was on light rail taking a video of this happening in the trail. And like, this person was going like as fast as other traffic. And then I saw another angle where it seemed to like this person was stopped by a pedestrian who was like, thank God. It was just walking very slow. Like, not any rush.

26:48Like, hmm. Yes. Yeah. Well, I saw that Washington State Patrol is now investigating this, but I mean, as someone who uses that trail quite a bit, I was like, I am so glad no one got hurt. Like, it just, it seems wild. But I think also I've seen a lot of people in my circle talking about, like, should we bring ballards back? Like, you all might know that like for many years, there were lawsuits around ballards. I actually didn't know. I was hitting them. Really? Okay. So I think that's why a lot of spots no longer have them because especially at night, or like, if you're riding in a group, like having this big ballard in the way is kind of a hazard and people have gotten very seriously injured with them. Yeah. What injures you worse? Ballard or car? It really is just kind of like the man or the bear. I mean, gosh, it just seems like it's happening more often that like people in cars are just like putting whatever direction on in their car or their phone.

27:51And I think sometimes these directions are like, maybe like for walking or, you know, it's like they're getting the wrong route. Oh, maybe that's what it was. And it is like, I'm here. I'm here. We're really assuming a lot of like, oh, I don't know. I was in a monocidal walk. I kind of think they knew. That's my suspicion too. Like it just, if you've driven before, it's like, I think you would just be like, this isn't right. Like, I don't see any other cars here and all the other cars are over there. And maybe I should just hit reverse, you know? But anyway, that's all for today here at CityCast Seattle. Hannah, Lex, thank you both so much for catching me up. Yeah, no problem. Pleasure. Welcome back. I'm your host, Jane Seehu. And listeners, we want to hear from you. If you know anything about that I 90 car, I am very curious to hear more about that since I have not gotten a full story being out. Also, if you know about alternative PSLs for Lex, spicy ones specifically, you can send

28:57us an email at Seattle at CityCast.fm or you can text us or leave us a voicemail at 206-880-3931. Until next time, see you at Seattle.