Brendan Kiley interviews his (sort of) racist Virginian relatives.

Racism in the South is also changing, receding from the public sphere while staying in the private sphere. Meaning: You can keep your prejudice and still vote for a nonwhite politician. “If Colin Powell were running, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat,” one of my aunts said. Then, later in the conversation, “I don’t want any of my kids marrying outside their race.”

What if one of your kids wanted to marry Colin Powell?

“No. I know it sounds un-Christian, but I have certain expectations. Black people just aren’t attractive to me. I wouldn’t want a little black grandbaby.”

So you think Colin Powell is intelligent, honest, and capable?

“Oh yes.”

The Stranger Election Control Board urges you to vote for mass transit (and a bunch of other stuff).

As much as the SECB hates saying we told you so—no, wait, the SECB loves saying we told you so. We LIVE to say we told you so. And we told you so, bitches! HA! Mass transit is BACK, and this year it includes 36 new miles of light rail to Redmond, Lynnwood, and Federal Way (they’re real places, we checked); 100,000 hours of new express bus service; and a 65 percent expansion of Sounder commuter rail. It costs just $69 in sales tax per year, doesn’t include a lick of new general-purpose pavement, and will be finished years before last year’s proposal would have been.

Bethany Jean Clement visits Belltown’s new Japanese “street food” restaurant, finds it Habitrail-like and somewhat magical.

The view through the plastic is of Second Avenue and, in the back, down onto a parking lot—a vista that at first seems poor but as you sit begins to seem correct in its random urbanness. When it’s raining, the rain will fall on the ceiling overhead (also transparent) and rivulet down the sides. The Kushibar people will turn on the heat lamps. It will sound like being on a boat in the rain, and it will still smell like the indoor-outdoor area’s ribs of new wood, its fresh wooden picnic-type tables. If prior experience is any indicator, tablesful of Asian boys will peck at their laptops, and tablesful of Asian girls will giggle and take multiple group photographs, switching off photographers between shots. Everyone will be eating Japanese street-food snacks that would cost approximately one-third as much on an actual Japanese street, and everyone will be happy about it.

Eric Grandy on Of Montreal—and what sounds like one fucking weird show.

Elsewhere in the performance, Barnes appeared as an electric-blue mariachi with a pink sombrero strapped to his back; as a red-robed pope enthroned with a sexy nun lying at his feet; as a Voltron-like being with a giant head and limbs operated by invisible black-clad figures, in a pair of roller skates the size of bumper cars with an oversized blue-sequin fanny pack to match; as a centaur with working hind legs provided by someone in the modified ass section of a two-man horse costume; and as a ghost or mummy covered in white shaving cream. He emerged from a curtained box carried by four lumpy, golden, doughboyish bearers. He was entertained by a sword dancer in an inflated polka-dotted garbage bag wielding what looked like giant crab legs. He was begged for (but decided to deny) clemency by a prisoner in an animal mask. He was hung and sang while dangling from his noose. He rose again from a white coffin. He shot glitter out of a spotlight-shining cannon.
Stranger Personals

Also in this week’s issue: Previewing the Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival; a look at Washington State’s perplexing red/blue split; a farewell to Belltown’s McLeod Residence; a review of Marco Iacoboni’s book Mirroring People; Erin Langner on “the best museum in America”; and much more.