I’m proud of all of the pieces in the paper this week. The news and arts writers at The Stranger did an outstanding job of covering last Saturday’s shootings.

I don’t want to single out any one piece. But there’s one that didn’t make it into the feature package, and I’m afraid it might get overlooked. Paul Constant writes the column “Party Crasherâ€� for us. It’s a weekly snapshot of a house party. We created the column because we felt that Seattle had a lively house party scene, and that we weren’t really covering Seattle’s nightlife if we ignored house parties. There’s nothing “in itâ€� for The Stranger; people don’t advertise their house parties. We cover them because we think they’re interesting and we think people enjoy attending, by proxy, parties that they weren’t actually invited to.

Anyway, if you missed Paul’s tremendously moving piece on last week’s murders—which, as everyone knows, took place at a house party—you can find it by clicking here.

We throw parties to bring strangers together in the hopes that, maybe, by the end of the night we won’t all be strangers. When you think about it, that’s an inspiring act of hope, and that’s why, regardless of some message-board screeching or a few fear-driven editorials and panicky government officials, we’ll continue throwing house parties and, yes, inviting people we don’t know into our homes….

Party crashing has taught me this: Most people genuinely want everyone to have a good time, and it’s too goddamn inexpressibly sad to consider what would happen to Seattle, and to ourselves, if we didn’t greet the next unfamiliar face at the party with a smile.

While we were pulling together last week’s issue Charles Mudede suggested that we float the idea of a night of house parties all over the city. That didn’t make it into the paper, unfortunately. I think it’s a good idea, and if people are into it, we’ll get behind it.

A night of house parties could be a memorial, of a sort, to the people who lived in the blue house on Republican. They frequently opened their home to friends, friends-of-friends, and, yes, to strangers. According to their neighbors, their parties had always been peaceful. (Just as peaceful as the all-ages dance scene.) A night of house parties could also perhaps a fund-raiser for the survivors or some appropriate charity. But mostly it would serve as an affirmation of Seattle’s culture of house parties that Paul Constant so elequently defends in this week’s paper.