A real pickle for Seattle: Today So Far

• Pickleball has taken off in recent years, but is Seattle ready?
• Nearly a week after her Seattle concerts, Taylor Swift news keeps on shaking things up. Fan enthusiasm was recorded on local seismic sensors.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for July 28, 2023.

Quick hits

• Public transit is now free for King County youth. But what happens when you turn 19?
• New book provides a primer for aspiring state legislators
• Video: Crowd pushes back Seattle PD from Capitol Hill street racing

Well this is a real pickle.

Pickleball has really taken off in recent years. It's gone from its humble origins on Bainbridge Island to becoming the fastest growing sport in the USA. There's so much new interest, hardcore players are trying to figure out how to accommodate all these new players. That was a big topic at the recent pickleball Seattle Open tournament.

"We have too many players, not enough courts,” local player Edward Roque told KUOW.

It seems that Seattle's pickleball tournament — which is viewed as a big step toward the nationals in Dallas — hit a few snags. The floor on some of the courts that were slated for games ended up cracking shortly before the event. Tennis courts had to be converted to make up for the loss. That didn't make tennis players happy. Out-of-towners were actually surprised by Seattle's lack of pickleball courts. Didn't it come from here in the first place?

KUOW's Joshua McNichols has the full story here, which partially includes coverage of pickleball's professional "bad guy" Ernesto Russo.

Nearly a week after her Seattle concerts, Taylor Swift news keeps on shaking things up. It turns out, the energy between Swift and thousands of her fans at Lumen Field last weekend was so intense that local seismic sensors picked it all up. This is similar to when Marshawn Lynch scored that touchdown in 2010, and the celebrating crowd made such a ruckus that the vibrations triggered nearby earthquake monitors. Swift's concert, however, was more extraordinary than that.

An interesting thing about Swift's seismic impression is that you can actually see the songs, and the crowd reaction over time, by looking at waves that were recorded. Saturday and Sunday's vibrations over a few hours made the same waves on a seismic chart — they nearly lined up perfectly, showing the same set list was played, and the crowds were equally into it. Read more here.

Earlier this week, I asked TSF readers what their summer song would be. It could either be a general summer favorite, or something for 2023. Read the results here.

AS SEEN ON KOUW

Fabian Hernandez-Angel at the bus stop he uses to return home from school on April 20, 2023 at Seattle Pacific University. Buses are free for riders under 18 in King County, but now that Hernandez-Angel is 19, he's finding the travel costs to and from class are not so great on his limited student budget. Read more here. (Antonio Nevarez / RadioActive)

DID YOU KNOW?

Douglas fir trees are pretty well known around these parts. They're kind of a big deal for the Northwest landscape. It turns out, however, that these firs are imposters!

Douglas fir trees are not actually fir trees. They're technically conifers. Some might think they're like hemlocks, but the Douglas fir's Latin name, "Pseudotsuga menziesii," actually means "fake hemlock." The name we know comes from a Scottish botanist, David Douglas, who documented the tree in the 1700s. He wrote it down as "Douglas fir" and it stuck. But Douglas had a rival named Archibald Menzies, who not only was also Scottish, his name was way cooler. Menzies also documented the tree in the 1700s, and his name became part of that Latin title mentioned above.

Of course, they could have just asked the locals what the tree was called and all this drama could have been avoided. In Halkomelem, it's called "lá:yelhp," and in Lushootseed it's "čəbidac."

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

Trump charged with additional counts in Mar-a-Lago documents case

A grand jury in the Southern District of Florida has charged former President Donald Trump with a new count of willful retention of National Defense Information in the case related to his handling of classified documents. The new charge stems from a top-secret presentation Trump waved at aides at his Bedminster, N.J., resort.

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