Friends

Posted by Matthew McQuilkin

https://www.fruitcakeenterprises.com/blog/2026/3/1/downtown-art-walk

The fourth Friday of every month is Downtown Art Walk, and since neither Shobhit nor I had anything else going on on Friday, that's what we did. A lot of these neighborhood Art Walk web pages are very difficult to navigate using a mobile browser, between the map itself and getting the addresses, so this time I made a checklist on my Reminders app, listing all the places with their addresses and in a rough geographical order. In this case I listed the first three locations that were in the same building on 1st Ave & Union Street, then we worked our way over to Pacific Place so we'd be closest to come when we were done.

All these neighborhood Art Walks vary widely when it comes to the number of participating venues. On the Downtown Art Walk map there are 23 locations, but several of them overlap because they participate in both the Downtown Art Walk and the Belltown Art Walk—which we just did two Fridays before (that one happens on Second Fridays). That one has 40 venues mapped; we didn't make it to half of them—but, we did make it to all the ones that double up with the Downtown Art Walk. As such, we skipped three on the map this past Friday, and went to 20 locations. Pacific Place has a huge concentration of them: nine others were scattered over the rest of Downtown, but 11 of them were at Pacific Place. At least 3 of those were closed by the time we got there, so I suppose we actually went inside about 17 locations total.

It still took us a couple of hours to get through them all. Downtown Art Walk is technically 5:00 to 8:00, so Shobhit went on a long walk to get more steps in before meeting me at work at 5:00. Then we walked over to Pike Place Market just to kill half an hour. We walked right past Target, I should have gone in there and gotten the deodorant I need to get. I constantly forget things like that, even when I look right at the store that has what I need.

The first three galleries were at the building at 110 Union Street, two of them listed on the fifth floor and one on the fourth. The 5th-floor space, which also has stairs down to some of the 4th floor, happened to be the same space that hosted our neighbor Mary's art opening reception last April. It's just this time the huge space was filled with a hell of a lot more art, a lot of it pretty amazing. The expansiveness of the art community here in Seattle continues to boggle the mind. I don't know how any of them make a living at it, with the market so flooded—but, it does also yield a lot of truly great art to admire.

Anyway, the place on the 5th floor, or at least with the 5th floor entrance, was called ArtLove Salon. In the fourth-floor section there was a digital photo booth, where Shobhit and I got a pretty fantastic photo taken with a beautiful painted background. I just realized that the other two places are listed as being on the 4th floor, but I don't know if one was in the 4th-floor section of the 5th-floor entry or what; there seemed to be only one gallery with a 4th-floor entrance, and that was Shift Gallery. (The third was called PublicDisplay.Art, and maybe that one was in the 4th-floor section of the 5th-floor entry? I don't know. It was confusing.) This one had very few people in it and I'm not sure how many even knew to take the elevator there; at the entrance on the street level the door was locked and there were people taking down names and merely directing us up the elevator to the fifth floor. We were only told about the 4th floor venue by a guy from Tasveer that we ran into.

Anyway, we went outside and made ourway to other locations. One of them was actually not even on the map but still had a Downtown Art Walk poster in their window. This is also relatively common, where the map is not fully complete but you can find participating venues just walking around. Sometimes, as was the case for the unfortunately sparse Central District Art Walk, there are locations noted on the map that turn out not to be participating after all. Or, again, they're just closed. It's very clear that different neighborhoods have different levels of engagement in their Art Walks; the one we have seen so far the most engaged is Pioneer Square.

Seattle has fully sixteen neighbrohood Art Walks, incidentally, although three of them only occur in the spring and summer months. I've already noted before that I've put six of them on my calendar; that alone makes at least one or two to consider going to every single week, as they all vary as to which week of the month and which day of the week they happen. It's really fun, though, and at one of the venues, a very small hosting of artists in the lobby of the State Hotel on 2nd off Pike, I bought a jar of a young Black woman's brown sugar-based face scrub for $6. I haven't bought face scrub in way too long because Alba stopped making the kind I liked; I just hope my skin doesn't have a reaction to this one, which sometimes happens. I was happy to support a small business like this, though. A young woman next to her sold some very lovely stickers and she was really trying hard to sell them; I felt bad for her but still did not buy anything.

For the most part what makes these Art Walks so fun that they are free (unless you buy something), and maybe a quarter of the participating venues offer you free wine and snacks. We even both had a small cup of wine right there at the State Hotel lobby. A couple of other places had much more elaborate snack spreads, particularly the 5th floor at 110 Union. One shop at Pacific Place even had mini cupcakes, but because no one else was partaking, I was too shy to take one.

I suppose the one other notable stop was at a gallery that included work by a South Asian woman named Yaminee Patel. She's had a very cool display of a sari made out of basmati rice bags in a window on 4th Avenue for some time, and it was moved here for this gallery showing. She makes a lot of insanely intricate pictures made entirely of grains of rice—they're like rice paintings.

When we got to Pacific Place, we went to the fourth floor and then worked our way down, all the way to the one venue listed from the basement level—that one was closed by the time we got to it, as was another place in Pacific Place that closed at 7:00, and now we were just passed that. Shobhit was tired by this point and didn't feel like walking all the way back home, so we went and caught a bus.  

So. Shobhit had a cold. He seemed to have gotten over it. I really thought I had managed to weather his cold untouched. Well, now I have a cold. I've had it for a few days, really. It's pretty mild, if also consisting of minor arcs of sinus headaches, and consistently waking up congested in the morning, which mostly dissipates by the afternoon and then thickens again by evening.

I saw a movie with Laney yesterday. I met at her apartment, as usual, half an hour before the movie (which was at 1:30) to give us time to walk down to Pacific Place. I gave her the warning as soon as she came out: "Full disclosure, I'll definitely wear a mask at the movie, but I have a mild cold." I told her I'd even sit in a different seat if she wanted but she said if we both wear masks we should be fine. She did say, "It's not covid, right?" and I have not bothered to test, which I did not explicitly say to her, but I did tell her Shobhit had tested at the request of his director (before he was let go from the play) and he tested negative, and she was satisfied with that. It's pretty clear I got whatever he had, so I see no sense in wasting a test on something I'm certain is not covid. I feel mostly fine, anyway, aside from the frustration of intermittent congestion.

So anyway, we saw Scream 7, which I already knew was the worst-reviewed of the franchise, so we both went in with our expectations in the toilet, and grateful for our AMC Plus A-List subscriptions—we would not have bothered going to this movie otherwise—which actually resulted in us both kind of having a good time at it. We both agreed, however, that that did not mean it was a good movie. None of them have really been that good since the 2022 reboot, really.

Otherwise, Shobhit and I have been spending our time watching the first season of Patriot on Prime Video. What a great show—it has exactly the kind of oddball quirkiness that is very much my jam, but it's also incredibly well written and well plotted. Both this and The Night Manager had come at high recommendation by Laney, but I like The Patriot way better. I still haven't started the new season of The Night Manager, but will probably start in on season 2 of The Patriot today. I'm just bummed they only made two seasons of that one.

Otherwise, Shobhit and I need to do a spot of shopping today, maybe go for a walk, and then this evening we go to the SAG-AFTRA Seattle Local Actor Awards Viewing Party at Central Cinema. Originally Shobhit had booked a ticket just for me, as he was going to be in Olympia rehearsing. Getting to spend more time with him, and particularly at events like this, is one of the minor silver linings of his no longer being in the play.

Shobhit has sent his letter to the director asking for an explanation. He showed it to his agent, who like me (and like Karen when I mentioned it to her) thought he should make it shorter. But, Shobhit insisted on keeping the length, while taking a few other minor editing suggestions. So, that part is done; as far as I know Shobhit has not yet heard back.

[posted 9:02am]

https://www.fruitcakeenterprises.com/blog/2026/3/1/downtown-art-walk