Local governments are continuing to struggle to respond to the continuous chaos that seems to characterize the current presidential administration. 

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have caused the stock market to tumble, the risks of recession to grow, and Washington State’s trade-dependent economy to brace for hardship to come. At the same time, sweeping cuts enacted by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) are gutting the country’s public health, human services, housing, and emergency management programs, among many others, while universities are having their research funding frozen or cut and immigration enforcement activities are ramping up.

Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown has now filed or joined 11 lawsuits against the new Trump administration, including most recently for delaying and cancelling medical and public health research, to protect election integrity, and to protect libraries and museums.  

While waiting for these lawsuits to wend their way through the courts, a process that can easily take months, city and county governments have to grapple with current realities while also trying to plan for the future against a landscape of deep uncertainty. 

King County resolves not to comply

King County receives $200 million in revenue every year from the federal government, in addition to many federal dollars passed through the state government, much of which is through the Medicaid program, which is called Apple Health in Washington State. 

Last week at the King County Council’s Health, Housing, and Human Services committee meeting, King County’s Director of the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget Dwight Dively explained that there are three kinds of risk the county is currently facing with regards to the federal government.

The first risk is the county not receiving money that’s already been allocated through grants and contracts. Many lawsuits have been filed to try to prevent promised money from being frozen, withheld, or otherwise stopped, but not all agencies have complied with federal court orders to continue to dispense promised funds. 

“These cases are inevitably headed for the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court is going to have to decide whether the Constitution and the impoundment Act apply to this president or not,” Dively said.

The second risk, which is just starting to appear, is county grants that are routinely renewed every year now having conditions applied to them that violate county ordinance and/or state law, for example, by requiring the grant-receiving agency to comply with all executive orders. The county is not planning to accept funding for grants with stipulations like these, meaning the money will be lost until the matter can be litigated. Dively referenced the fact that many recent executive orders are “probably illegal.”

This second risk will likely lead to critical services being either reduced or eliminated and county jobs being lost. “I share the view that we have to stand on principle. Somebody has to,” Dively said. “But there are very dire real world consequences, at least in the short run, from taking that position.”

While King County Metro and the climate office have been able to access funds for current grants and certain grants have been renewed without new conditions, $4.4 million in grants to Public Health – Seattle & King County and the Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) have been canceled in the last few weeks. The county will have to decide whether to enter into litigation for this money, and whether to backfill the amounts missing in the meantime while not knowing if their legal actions will be successful.

The third risk centers around future federal dollars for domestic discretionary programs, especially Medicaid. The U.S. House passed a budget resolution in February that only seems achievable through substantial cuts to Medicaid. Dwight said that much of those funds go to fund programs at Public Health and DCHS. 

“That’s not a sure thing yet, but that’s a very risky sign about what might happen in the future,” Dively said.

Congress would need to pass 12 appropriations bills by September 30 in order to make these cuts to Medicaid and other discretionary programs. If they do, cuts could go into effect as soon as October 1. However, Congress has only managed to pass all its appropriations bills on time four times in the last 50 years, the last time being 1996. Any cuts that occur due to congressional budgetary action would not be eligible for litigation. 

In addition, several federal agencies are looking at either having their workforces deeply reduced or being completely eliminated, which would also have large impacts on local municipalities. Agencies that could be on the chopping block include the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Weather Service, the Department of Education, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

Between cuts to essential services like Medicaid and the potential loss of entire federal agencies, local governments would be on the hook for a huge amount of money if they wanted to continue to provide public services at a similar level. Federal cuts could lead to less money to help people recover from natural disasters, an increase in homelessness, an increase in health issues, fewer people able to get substance use disorder treatment and behavioral health treatment, and more. 

Medicaid expansion in the past has been shown to be correlated with a reduction of violence.

“The pressure on state governments, local governments and nonprofits will be intense, and unfortunately, none of us have the federal government’s ability to tax and to borrow, and so we will be in a situation where we probably can’t replace all of those cuts,” Dively said. 

Cuts to or disappearance of these agencies would not only threaten local governments’ budgets but would leave large amounts of valuable and sometimes essential work undone, much of which Americans have grown accustomed to. 

“Even though we have one of the best local public health departments in the country, we don’t have thousands of researchers. We don’t have people who are trying to figure out what the next best vaccine we need to provide is. We don’t have people who can track worldwide epidemics and figure out when they’re going to show up here so we can be ready,” Dively said. “That’s the kind of information that we’re going to lose if the federal government continues down this path.”

King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda asked Dively to return to her committee to give updates every month and expressed her support for taking a principled stance when responding to the federal government. 

“I think one thread that we’re hearing is not complying with executive orders immediately, not being complicit in these actions, because many of them will either be rolled back on their own accord because they’re too confusing and nonsensical, or they will be found illegal, as we are seeing many of the executive orders that are currently being challenged,” Mosqueda said. 

Funding cuts mean more unaccompanied children face ICE without attorneys

Last week at the Seattle City Council’s monthly Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes meeting, councilmembers began discussing a draft resolution declaring Seattle to be a welcoming city. In addition to stating specific intentions around being a welcoming city, the resolution expresses a commitment to add $300,000 to Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to meet emerging needs of those running afoul of the Trump administration’s new aggressive anti-immigrant policies.

That money might be best used to try to fill some of the gap caused by federal funding cuts to the Unaccompanied Children Program and the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS) citizenship grant program, both of which supported legal assistance for unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children. 

Tim Warden-Hertz with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project said that the number of detainees at the immigration detention center in Tacoma has grown from 800 to 1,400 people since Inauguration Day. He said other federal funding for legal defense work is also at risk. 

Meanwhile, due to federal funding cuts, the Seattle Office of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) is closing in May. As a result, they are having to withdraw from almost 250 cases of unaccompanied children. 

“Data shows that immigration judges are almost 100 times more likely to grant relief for unaccompanied children with legal counsel than with those without,” said Jessica Castellanos, KIND’s managing director. 

KIND is able to continue representing 55 children’s cases due to funding from the City of Seattle. With the $300,000 in the council’s proposed resolution, they could represent an additional 60 children or more. 

“Now more than ever, we really need local funding to continue to support the children and youth in our communities,” Castellanos continued. “These are children and youth who have been abandoned, abused, and neglected, who are fleeing terrible things in their home countries, and have gone through so much to be here and to stay here, and this is not the time for our community to abandon them.” 

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who chairs the select committee after lobbying for its creation, appeared swayed by that line of argument.

“These are Seattle kids, and I know I’m not the only one whose heart breaks at the thought of a six-year-old needing to appear before a judge to defend themselves in immigration proceedings by themselves,” Rinck said. “We know that we will not be able to make up every financial gap, but we must do our best to do right by them.”  

Councilmember Martiza Rivera, however, cautioned that the council is not able to do anything immediately. While the mid-year supplemental budget could be the most likely opportunity for the council to take concrete action, Rivera emphasized the council would need to find somewhere in the budget from which to redirect the funding. 

The resolution will not receive a committee vote until May 16 at the earliest. 

Attacks on HUD likely to deepen homelessness crisis

Leaders in Seattle and King County have long battled with homelessness, with no clear end in sight. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims launched a 10-year campaign to end homelessness in 2005, which failed to deliver. Mayor Ed Murray declared a homelessness emergency in 2015, but he and his successors faced similar hurdles. Uncertainty, cuts, new restrictions to receive federal funding, and tariffs could all greatly exacerbate the crisis, both through decreasing the housing supply and available services and leading to more people becoming unhoused.

The Trump administration recently ramped up duties on Canadian lumber imports, which account for about a quarter of supply in the U.S., and has additional tariffs planned for lumber and steel. The moves have already spooked investors and led to a selloff of stock in homebuilders. A trade war on lumber, steel and other building materials appears poised to spike costs for homebuilders — which would soon raise housing costs as supply constricts.

Reduced capital and spending power among private-sector builders will not be offset by public sector investment, which Trump is also slashing.

In February, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced they would be reducing their staffing by 50%, which will create difficulty in awarding and administering their funding programs. The Trump administration has withdrawn grants from organizations that enforce the Fair Housing Act, stalled funding for affordable housing, and halted its $1 billion Green & Resilient Retrofit Program. 

Also recently dismantled is the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) program, which helped low-income people pay their utility bills and access energy efficiency upgrades. Jess Blanch of Enterprise Community Partners said it is too soon to say what will be happening to the funding attached to the program, of which Washington State had been receiving $66.5 million per year.

Uncertainty is causing difficulty around the financing of local affordable housing projects. The pricing for federal tax credits that is used to finance affordable housing is dropping dramatically due to federal policies, while the upfront cost of building projects is going up. The uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs leads to fluctuation in financing because of the possible increased price of key building materials. The tariffs could also lead to increased inflation, which would in turn lead to higher interest rates, making financing more expensive.

Federal policy around homelessness is also changing. 

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) receives $66 million annually from the federal government, both directly and indirectly through King County. The agency now faces a choice as to whether to accept their next batch of funds that come with the requirement of verification of immigration status for the population it serves. 

“These funding delays or reductions could prevent states and communities, nonprofit organizations and homeless individuals and families from receiving the critical resources needed to address the crisis on sheltered and unsheltered homelessness,” said KCRHA Deputy CEO Simon Foster.

“We expect continued shifts by the administration to federal homelessness policy, including movement toward treatment first approaches that require services and treatment as a precondition to housing,” said Jess Blanch of Enterprise Community Partners.

Hampered by federal pullback, governments are providing insufficient money across the country to maintain current levels of homeless services because of fair-market rent adjustments, Blanch said. She added that the amount provided for Section 8 rental assistance is also far short of what is required, leaving 32,000 additional families at risk of homelessness nationwide. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has said it will release all remaining emergency housing voucher funding in late April. While this funding might be enough to last into 2026, it was originally intended to be provided through 2030. This puts an additional 60,000 people at risk of homelessness.

Enterprise has recently had Section 4 HUD funding canceled due to what Blanch referred to as their “supposed noncompliance with the DEI executive order.” This prevented them from releasing their most recent planned round of grants that were slated to go to many local organizations such as Chief Seattle Club and the Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC). 

DESC executive director Daniel Malone said his organization has recently lost some health and human services funding they had been receiving to support outreach and engagement services for people with opioid use disorder. Much of DESC’s funding goes to support social worker staff, so a loss of funding will directly lead to fewer people available to offer services.

And if Medicaid should be significantly cut, that would impact the services DESC is able to offer, including outpatient behavioral health services, substance use disorder treatment, case management services, mobile and facility-based crisis response services, opioid treatment work, and housing services in permanent supportive housing.

“Simply put, the solutions to our challenges have never been simple, and they grow more complex with every passing day,” Rinck said. “It will take all of us, every member of this body, every community leader, every resident of our neighborhoods, to work together to carve a path forward, to protect residents and create the future we all want to live in.”

While Rinck has been determined to daylight the increasingly grave problems facing our local region, it remains to be seen whether the rest of the council will be willing to do more than pay lip service to the destruction being wrecked by the Trump administration. Reportedly, Council President Sara Nelson has been reluctant to even schedule committee meetings to discuss it. 

Ratifying the Welcoming City resolution would be the first step of many necessary to make a substantive difference in the lives of those who are being most impacted by Trump and Musk’s rampage through the federal government. 

The post Trump Shreds Social Safety Net, Creating Perfect Storm for Homelessness first appeared on The Urbanist.

I don’t usually eat fried chicken in the middle of the night.

Actually, I almost never eat fried chicken. I eat kale and scrambled eggs. I’m one of those. But what is it they say about rules? When a guardian angel offers you the hookup, and it isn’t drugs, alcohol, or Five-Hour Energy, it’s a sign from above the clouds, not to be ignored. The universe speaks to us in mysterious ways, and some of those ways include crispy chicken tenders, extra spicy, with a few wheat rolls thrown in for good measure.

He and I were parked at Rainier and Rose, taking advantage of an extra minute in the schedule to work out the negotiations. Take some, take some, he said. Take some rolls too.
No, no, I responded, gradually realizing that when it comes to chicken guardian angels don’t accept no for an answer. He insisted that I consume, free of charge. This is what the universe looks like when it notices you need a little help.
“You’re a nice guy,” he said.
“No, you’re a nice guy, man! This is my dinner! Thank you so much!”

It’s not all about me, though. In the range of things which will rouse the uninterested, particularly in the part of town we’re in right now, fried chicken reigns high. It belongs to more than just bewildered dumpees.

“Ay, hole up!” a voice rang out.

We’d aroused the attention of a young man seated halfway down the bus. Chicken is wafting through the air, and he is stirring. “Whatchoo doin with tha’ fried chicken?”
“What?” said the guardian angel.
“Ah see you givin’ him some.” Picture the voice, if you will: half hardcore, with gold teeth and apathy, and half hungry toddler, tentative, feeling left out. Those two ends of the spectrum are rather closer than we often think, opposing sides of a single coin.
“You want some?”
“Hail yeah!”
“Cost you twenny dollars!”
“Ha!”

They worked it out. Angels don’t discriminate in their chicken distribution. But you knew that. As he swaggered back to his seat, the young man smiled to himself, genuinely, the smile you make when no one’s watching. We yearn to feel complete, if only for a moment.

“Thank you so much, again! ” I said. I have a tendency to over-thank people. Can I help it though, if I’m awed by the familiar?
“Well, you a nice guy!”

“Love that dude,” I said to the guy halfway down the bus after the Ezell’s angel had gone.
“No way he eatin’ alla dat!”
“Ooh, I think I will!”
“No, I mean him!”
“Oh, yeah, he had the hookup! That needs to happen more often!”
“Yuuup!”

He chomped away quickly, burning the chicken candle at both ends. I held off, as I was driving, of course. I’ve driven through the tunnel eating an apple, and I really have gone up Rainier Avenue chomping on raw kale– it’s what you do when there’s no break time: stretching and bathroom at the terminal, then eat on the road– but a bus driver chowing down on Ezell’s and smearing grease all over the steering wheel would just be bad form. Don’t you agree? How could you trust the guy? We’re not wired to have faith in an operator who’s wolfing down pork ribs.

As such I let the fried chicken aroma waft up from the dashboard. Ah, yes. This is healthier anyway, I thought, dispatching one of the wheat rolls. The smell was all I needed. It was the scent of kindness, of gestures offered willingly, for no exchange. It was a distant and gentle wink, a reminder that planets do align, though perhaps not in the way we shortsighted earthlings might prefer… a reminder of the long view, in which life contains not just valleys but peaks, details, comforts, and mysteries, to be seen only by appreciative eyes.

The post Smells Like Chicken first appeared on The Urbanist.

Two picnic tables are outside, southwest facing. They hope the sun returns so that they can be social again, meet new people. The tables. When the sun has a more forceful shine, they get all the activity that they can handle.

Once I walk in, I notice the late lunch crowd. Everyone is keeping to themselves in ones and twos. They do not look like regulars but they are trying the place out. They slow eat. Checking each piece like, ‘Is this the one that might disappoint as so many other fried places?’ Once the question is answered, I notice the people relaxing, speeding up. The pieces disappear from cardboard trays. They slow down now only to savor flavor or to enjoy the crunch of exterior and the soft of interior.

You purchase by the piece at Emerald City Fish & Chips. Fries. Slaw. What caught me was remoulade. Not tartar sauce. But remoulade. Right there, they sell me, on their stubbornness. Because they’ve probably got to tell people all day long what remoulade is and why they call it that instead of tartar. They’ve got to be patient about it, and dogged. That spirit of just a little bit different spreads to everything else for me once I see it. I start to read the Specials as special.

Frying is one of the most forgiving of the culinary arts but it too has its limits. Our cook knows this and so waits for each order. He fries on the spot. He cooks my short order quickly. Fish and chips. Crispy. My are they so!

While sitting at the picnic table, a truck from Blue Streak Towing pulls up. His got a big smile on his face. He is about to get that lunch, I presume, he postponed to answer that distress call for a failed battery, a flat-tire. I say hello and he returns mine with his own.

I can see my northbound Seven coming down. No need to panic or have to check the phone. Pretty regular is the Seven on a Saturday afternoon. It’s only later, on a desktop screen, indoors, that I recognize the Stop number as 8360.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: Emerald City Fish & Chips and Stop 8360 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Metro stop 8250 is slightly north of Bookworm Exchange on Rainier Avenue South. Jim and his shop once lived in Columbia City. But he closed that one and moved all the books to a storage unit. The shop then went virtual.

He re-opened in brick and mortar this past summer in Hillman City. Jim tells me that a long time Eritrean restaurant in Columbia City is moving in, across from his shop. Bookworm, I note, is following a migration south to the city that Clarence D. Hillman developed along the valley down to the lake.

Jim cannot wait for another new neighbor nor can he wait for the summer. The strollers. The readers. The browsers. The weather brings everyone out from the houses east and west. And Metro Seven brings them from the south and north. We each daydream separately of summer: he of happy book buyers and I of late Seattle afternoon bone-warming sunshine.

I look over his counter to see board games. A set of gaming cards. His open laptop. I slow stroll – the bookstore stroll – to the history section. Then I turn around to find a just-above-the waist high shelf. There rests a large format photo book of now extinct birds and animals. Right next to it, one on the Musée Rodin. The juxtaposition feels just right.

Jim is paying me mind but letting me wander where I might. The shop has enough space to always be in eyeshot but never too close to feel watched.

I linger in fiction. I gather a signed hardback of Waxwings. And one copy of The Night Circus, which I never read but every book group friend raved about. And a copy of Wild, I know, I know. I know. I will read it soon. There are so many books, people!

Then one stops me. Brought me right to eleventh grade. To Jill’s house. To her living room when she said, ‘This book changed my life,’ and I thought she was being way too enthusiastic for a teenager of our time and place. She did not show the proper deference to cynicism. But time has not been kind to my teenage sensibility. Jill must have been right about that book as she was about so many other things.

I tell myself that I can only buy one of the four. Not because any will break the daily budget, but because I just cannot carry more than one on the bus. The decision is really very easy. I reshelve Raban, Morgenstern, and Strayed; someone else will get to take them home.

Jill will soon receive a letter in the mail about Morrison’s Beloved. I pay and hurry to stop 8250. And to the next arriving northbound Seven.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: Bookworm Exchange and Stop 8250 first appeared on The Urbanist.

Metro stops 8080 and 8070 surround the northern and southern ends, respectively, of a lakeside bend of Rainier Avenue South. In the bend’s lee, does preside King Donuts Teriyaki Laundromat.

Through a quirk of bio-evolutionary history, when the lake was lowered nine feet by the Corps of Engineers, for what would become General Chittenden’s Locks, King Donuts Teriyaki Laundromat arose from the waters. Fully formed. Donuts. Teriyaki. And Laundry. All the people of Seattle by the sea rejoiced and continue to do so. Were such a story fictitious, we would have to make it up. King Donuts is the missing Seattle link because nothing – nothing – is or feels like it. I approach the coffee counter in awe.

‘Is that an old-fashioned?’

‘Which?’

‘The one that looks like a bun thing? It’s got no glaze.’

‘No, that’s a butter milk.’

‘I’ll take one. And a drip. Thanks.’ I’m happy with my choice; it’s good. I stand at the counter. Listening.

I ask Jimmy if he is the owner, the son of the owner, married into the business. I go through a handful of different ways to ask how he got there. Here. On that side of the counter. Jimmy assures me that he is not family, though I still do not really believe him. Everyone, I see so far, treats each other like extended. I am the only person that does not know my way around the counter, the laundromat, the tables in the dining room. They’re doing their best though to adopt.

‘May I plug in my phone, Jimmy? It’s about to go dead,’ appears one with stylish orange glasses. She looks at him and flashes a wide smile before returning to what I previously thought was a private dining room, but now know is the laundromat.

‘Sure,’ he tries to keep a smile down but his eyes completely give him away. He pulls apart a – before unnoticed behind the counter – cord octopus. He tries to attach one charging cord and then another. He is patient, but neither one quite works. On the third try, he lights upon the right tentacle for her phone. I hear the beep. Charging.

For the few minutes I’m there, a stream of people enters: for a donut, a cup of coffee, juice, milk. It’s never crowded or ever slack. Steady faces: parent and child, co-workers, a retired trawler crew, a suite of college kids washing laundry, middle- and high-schoolers snacking, and library goers from the Rainier Beach branch across the street. Just really everyone.

Jimmy tells me that he hates interviews. And he likes to up-cycle cleats and sneakers into robots. He shows me one that he has made with an X-Acto knife, hot glue, used soccer cleats, and his imagination. An arm’s length tall Optimus Prime double. Red. Black. Fierce. Playful. Squishy. Vinyl. He tells me that companies send their old shoes to him and then he returns them as robots.

I finish my donut and the last of my coffee. And head out refreshed to Stop 8080 to catch the Seven.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: King Donuts and Stop 8080 first appeared on The Urbanist.

The sign for Metro stop 8380 has a smudge on the second eight, which makes it look like a six. Because confirming the number is an eight rather than six takes what seems like way too long with a GPS-enabled phone, I cross the Mekong Supermarket’s lot and pass through the market doors, rattled.

I decide to catch my bearings in aisle 1B. The fish sauces: prawn sauce, shrimp sauce, prawn and shrimp sauce, oyster sauce, and similar combinations derived from what sometimes is simply called fish paste. Any one of them could bring my planned dinner of rice and Chinese wax sausage even more umami. The selection here at Mekong hits a mean between a Viet Wah grand selection and your corner Asian market. I’ve found a fish sauce golden mean. I relax.

I look up to the aisle reader board to see that aisle 1B directs me to Cooking Oils without mention of Fish Sauces. And that the sauces do not merit a shout-out on the board rattles me again.

I approach the register where I finally remember exactly why my friend told me to come here. ‘We have four types,’ one of the owners points at the trays. ‘Pork, chicken, tofu and combo.’

‘What’s the combo?’

‘That’s barbeque pork and chicken. We have tofu for vegetarians. Some people don’t like meat.’

‘Which is the most popular Vietnamese sandwich?’

‘They’re all the most popular!’ I smile and reverence her use of a relative absolute. I ask more questions about the other food impulse buy trays. They hold sweets. Bright colors trapped in coconut and condensed milk heaven. She tells me that it depends on the time of day what is out. There is a method, but she does not have time to explain. The place is busy even at an off morning hour.

She takes me, the depth of the store, to the market’s back wall to see the sandwich preparation station. Everything’s orderly and prepped: pork trimmings, dark meat chicken, tofu, cucumbers, peppers, carrots, cilantro, spiced mayonnaise, and a liquid that could have been Maggi sauce or something else. I am not entirely sure. The cook starts at nine and wraps up the whole operation around five. The owner smiles and returns to the front register.

The counter cook slices, on the horizontal, mini-baguettes, while we chat about which is the most popular. I have not given up on the question.

A regular approaches to ask for a chicken. ‘There aren’t any up front,’ he adds. She already knows that there aren’t. She has not a few minutes earlier finished preparing the chicken. But he wants her to know that he’s not asking for something special. I love this kind of respect and politeness over lunch counters.

She nods and begins to prepare one. Her motion is quick and rugged. Except for bringing the spatula from the mayonnaise. She pauses to milk one dollop from the stainless dish, spreads it evenly across the baguette’s length, and returns the now-empty spatula to the exact position where it began its journey around the whole baguette.

She wraps the baguette in white paper and apologizes. ‘I have to bring it to the front.’ Right. They’ve done this before and he does not protest. And so she walks with her swaddled one carefully to the front. He is in tow.

Now fully steadied, I get a chicken sandwich too, made the exact same way, with the exact same movements, wrapped all in white for my short stay under the protection of stop 8380.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: Mekong Supermarket and Stop 8380 first appeared on The Urbanist.

An iron compass, set into the concrete just outside Metro bus stop 8190, lets you know that you’ll never be lost, and that all directions are possible. I let it point me south-east a few feet to see Solomon Dubie and his good friend, Bisrat, at Rainier Mini Mart aka Café Avole.

‘Yeah. Well that’s the name over the door. But we are more of, we’re trying to be more of a café. We are having an event this weekend. You should come. Take this.’ He hands a flyer my way. ‘It’s a neighborhood here and we want to be more of neighborhood place. You know? Serve Ethiopian coffee. Do it the traditional way.’

‘I’d like a cup, if you’ve got some?’

‘Takes about five minutes until we can drink. I’ve some going already. You’ve got five?’ I see a long-necked clay pot with a spherical base, which I will later learn is called a jebena.

‘I’m trying to make the next 7.’

‘Should be good. No worries.’

‘Sure, then. Thanks.’

When I ask what neighborhood this was exactly, Bisrat says that he calls all this South Seattle. Not Hillman City, though he likes that. Not Brighton, though he likes that too. So does the city clerk’s office. Whatever someone should call the area around the 8190, he would want it to carry all of its history and all of its rapid change.

‘There’s a great amount of it really. You know? We want to be a part of these changes. We want to know that the change here reflects the community that’s here. That’s been here. When new people come, they know, it didn’t just start then. It’s bigger than them. And us.’

Two men, other café customers, sit in the mini-mart-turned-café window. Each has a double espresso cup placed to the left of a keyboard. If they turn their screens ninety degrees, Rainier itself could peer, from the mount’s great distance, into whatever messages and reports they are working on. They don’t talk to each other, deep in the glow of their laptop screens.

Bisrat asks from behind the counter whether they would like more coffee. They decline. Too busy to engage in chatter or more coffee, but they do turn seconds later to give smiles of appreciation for the offer.

The café still has mini mart staples: wire shelving lined with cookies and candy bars that do not perish. Beer and energy drinks cool in refrigeration.

‘We’re trying to decide how we go forward, you know?’ He points to spices I had not noticed before. ‘How to invest in ourselves. And in our community. We are thinking, do we need money to build out a kitchen in the back? To make it more a café? Do we invest in a roaster? A full kitchen?’

Most beans are roasted in a pan, no greater than the circumference of an outstretched hand. It hangs from a nail on the back wall. ‘We get roasts from Tin Umbrella, up Rainier, and other places too! This one we’re about to drink,’ he points behind him to the pan, ’is our own roast. Single origin.’

Steam rises from the narrow neck of a clay pot, the jebena in Amheric. Bisrat pulls it from a heating coil. His left hand reaches for the pot and the right for a circular woven-string stand. The pot’s curved, spherical, bottom comes together, like the two last remaining parts of an international space station, from Bisrat’s mission control. His right hand moves slowly away while his left tilts the spout counter-ward. ‘Keeps the grounds from getting in the pour.’ Bisrat has not looked at me to answer a question I have yet to ask.

‘Ethiopia has a lot of different people. Ninety different languages are spoken there. Umhmmm! And I only know one. Amharic. So I call coffee, bunna. But people who grew up speaking something else or had parents came from somewhere else, might say something different. They might call it another word. In Ethiopia, though, no matter, what they call it, they are all serious about coffee. So is Seattle. So we know people can handle the time and appreciate getting coffee from its source. It all comes from Ethiopia, you know?’

We talk about coffee’s origin, the history of it, what cities and countries went gaga over its introduction; how often he visits Africa; how long he has worked at the café; what he thinks of the 7 (‘loves the 7’); and more about his aspirations for the café in transition just like its neighborhood.

‘It’s ready to drink,’ Bisrat knows what time it is. And the 7 fast approaches.

I drink my cup in two draughts, put the cup down on the counter and thank him. I leave the shop to find three people already waiting; we are four in our spacious shelter. I take a picture of the compass. The fifth and last to board runs up just behind me. A busy stop is that 8190 on Friday afternoon.

Editor’s Note: If you’d like to learn more about Cafe Avole or help support getting it started, you can visit the website at www.cafeavole.com.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: Cafe Avole, Rainier Mini-Mart and Stop 8190 first appeared on The Urbanist.

With more than a few minutes until the next Seven arrives, I stand, phone in hand, under Metro Stop 8040 to assess my options. Old Town Rainier Beach has many: Nate’s and Jude’s are as promising now as Montera’s and O’Harra’s one hundred years ago.

But none is as promising or as close to stop 8040 than Redwing Café. Sucks for me that it is now closed on this late Friday afternoon. Inside, I can see that Su has begun clean-up and break-down behind the espresso counter. She decompresses the area around the now vintage Marzocco like a trainer a boxer after many rounds. Tired. Elated. Still outside, I ask silently for entrance. She waves me in from sidewalk to cafe.

‘We’ve been open a couple of months, not very long. We have the kinks out now. There are already people coming down from the hill, on Waters. Coming up from the beach. There was no place really that you could get a cup of coffee, have something freshly baked. And, you can see, we have a full kitchen!’

Su and I walk past the open kitchen to the far end of the café. A set of back windows overlooks an enclosed patio, one story down. ‘That is going to be a great place for kids in the summer,’ Su says. I agree and add bikers. ‘Bikers too! They will love it here.’ We move back to the front of the café where we can talk in sight of the stop. And they can resume their readying for the weekend crush.

Su owns the building with her partner, Anthony. He is also the baker and cook. He tells me that he used to be a carpenter. ‘Did you make the tables?’ I run my left hand over wood that’s soft and solid. Cool and warm.

‘No, Su’s son did those.’

‘They’re great!’

‘Thanks. I think so too. We did a lot of the work ourselves.’

‘You must be a real measure twice type of guy, being a carpenter then a baker?’

“Yeah, but entirely different really carpentry and baking.’ I stare at his fingers. Anthony pretty much reads my mind. He points out a single nick, which Su adds proudly was not work-related. Otherwise the hands are intact.

‘In baking, there’s a daily perfection of the task and immediacy,’ Anthony muses while he moves his hands through the air. ‘There’s a precision. I bake. A sticky bun. Or a pie. I make it right. And then someone enjoys it. And then it’s the next day. Another shot at perfection. It’s different than moving from construction site to construction site.’

I want to hear more about his daily acts of perfection, this craft of baking. Instead my phone alerts me – TWO MINUTES in green on OneBusAway – to the bus’ arrival. I say hasty thankyous, seeyoulaters, and resolve to come again…when they are open.

The post Stories from Metro Route 7: Redwing Cafe and Stop 8040 first appeared on The Urbanist.