Sarah Stuteville

When Robert Hull heard he was headed to Afghanistan his first response was “where is it?” It was 1968. Hull, who grew up in Moses Lake, had just graduated with a degree in architecture from Washington State University and was looking to see the world — as well as stay out of the Vietnam War.

“The bibimbap, is that dolsot?” asks documentary filmmaker Eli Kimaro looking up from the menu of Wabi-Sabi in Columbia City. She’s trying to gauge the authenticity of the Korean dish in question. This version doesn’t come in the traditional heated stone pot (dolsot), but she goes for it anyway–calling the rice bowl a favorite “comfort […]

Eagles are majestic. Doves are romantic. Pigeons, with their tatty wings and street-living ways, are seen by many as dumb and dirty, referred to as the “rats of the sky.” But if you ever met a sleek-feathered, iridescent-colored, sharp-eyed racing pigeon, you’d never think of his cousin—that humble creature eating bread crusts in Pioneer Square—the […]

On a Sunday afternoon a week before Christmas, Northgate Mall is a mosh pit of shoppers. It’s a familiar scene. Our cheerful, if harried, consumerism is as much a holiday ritual as any traditional meal or family gathering. But by the Victoria’s Secret, between the kiosk advertising the new Fiat and the one selling massaging […]

Behind a complex of warehouses in Woodinville, in a fluorescent-lit sports complex laid with AstroTurf and strung with netting, there’s a batsman stepping up to the pitch. I’m at late-night cricket practice for The Moose, the traveling team of The Microsoft Cricket Club. It’s 9:00 on a work night but nobody’s going home anytime soon […]

Turns out you don’t pack much for boot camp. When I asked Belindah Mumelo if I could hang out with her while she prepared to head off for basic training this week, I imagined huge duffel bags stuffed with gear. Instead, she showed me a backpack the size of a school bag, full of white […]

The photo made me stop short, my coffee cup hovering a few inches above the newspaper. A young man in jeans and a Barcelona soccer jersey bent over a Dumpster rummaging for food. Spain is suffering 50 percent unemployment among young people, the article explained, and hunger is on the rise. The last time I […]

Seattle Globalist co-founder and columnist Sarah Stuteville starts a new weekly column in The Seattle Times today: Friday night at The Comet Tavern on Capitol Hill: the music pounds, the bathrooms stink and Russian politics are the topic of the night. I’m at a benefit show for Pussy Riot — a punk rock band arrested […]

The music is defiant, the bartenders studiously inattentive and the balaclavas sequined. If it weren’t for the smell of grilled onions wafting in from the hotdog stand outside and the cold beer (instead of warm vodka) I could still be in Moscow. But I’m at the Comet on Capitol Hill watching Corina Bakker of The […]

A crescent of twinkling lights and the blown-out mouth of a comic book style submarine cave are the last I see of Balaklava before we fly off the side of the road. We’re in Crimea, a little semi-island to the south of Ukraine and the east of Russia. Most Americans my age would know this […]