Would you pay $20 for a pampered cherry? Today So Far

• They're called "ultra premium" cherries and they're grown right here in Washington state.
• Three glaciers disappeared from Mount Rainier.
• Seattle's City Hall Park has reopened after a two-year closure.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for June 14, 2023.

It's a cherry worth $20, perhaps even more. They're called "ultra premium" cherries and they're grown right here in Washington state. But to get one, you'll have to travel outside the USA.

"They're like pampered cherries," Northwest News Network's Anna King told Seattle Now, also noting that, "Right now, it is for the super affluent, and it is for those premium markets."

King has been reporting in the Northwest's agricultural region for a couple decades and says she has never seen an operation like this one, outside of Kennewick, that produces these high-end cherries. They're grown in an upscale greenhouse in a highly controlled environment. The roof can open and close depending on the conditions — temperature, wind, moisture. A farmer controls it all through their smartphone. They're not harvested like other cherries. These are harvested in the middle of the night, when it's dark. The result is a cherry that is absent any bruises or blemishes, about the size of a half dollar.

"They want to preserve that crispy crunch when you first get into a cherry," King said of the nighttime harvest schedule. "We don't see that because our cherries might be harvested during different parts of the day, or they might be a little bit longer from tree to market. But these cherries are off the tree and in a market within 48 hours. That's pretty amazing timing given that they are going to Indonesia, Japan, China, all over in the Pacific Rim. So they are very preciously handled."

These cherries are not likely to show up on local grocery store shelves. King notes that Costco attempted to get ahold of some, but walked away with sticker shock. These cherries are slated for export. This luxury agricultural process could become more common in the Northwest as climate change alters farming conditions. Check out the full story over at Seattle Now.

I keep asking myself: What would I spend a spare $20 on? A cherry? I put this question to my KUOW web team colleagues. The idea around this quickly soured for those living in Seattle, where $20 perhaps doesn't go so far.

Reporter Ashley Hiruko would buy a ticket for a show at the Sunset Tavern, or some ice cream for the family from Salt and Straw. Editor Isolde Raftery argues that Seattle is not a $20 city, and says Seattle has a "mountain tax" — you pay a lot to live here and every now and then the mountain comes out and that's nice. But she'd probably go for coffee and a couple cookies for the kids. Editor Stephen Howie echoes that sentiment. When he comes into KUOW's Seattle office, $20 covers lunch for him. Otherwise, he'd go for a movie ticket, nice olive oil, a piece of halibut for two, or a "fancy-ass bouquet from Pike Place Market."

A Seattle lunch can cost $20 (unless you go to Dick's where you can get a week's worth of hamburgers). My problem is that when I buy lunch in the U-District, I usually walk by Pink Gorilla and end up buying a couple NES games, so that brings me to $20 real quick. Otherwise, I could probably get a cheap drink and an evening of pinball at Teddy's. I could get 40 pinball games if I stuck to Safecracker at Shorty's. You could get a game of pitch and putt for two at Green Lake, a cup of Mrs. Bennet's Nerve Tonic at Distant Worlds, and some noodles at Time Warp on Capitol Hill (and again, more pinball). Outside Seattle? I'd recommend a road trip to any of our region's drive-in movie theaters.

What do you think $20 can get you these days? In Seattle or elsewhere? Let me know at dyer@kuow.org.

Climate change is being blamed for the disappearance of a few more glaciers on Mount Rainier. Three glaciers are now absent from the mountain. They include Stevens Glacier, which is located on the southern slope. Its ice has dwindled so much that it can no longer be considered a glacier.

“It's still kind of a perennial snow patch,” said Scott Beason, a geologist at Mount Rainier National Park. “If you go up there, you'll still run into some snow, but you're not going to see crevasses. You're not going to see movement.”

With warmer summers, and heat waves happening more often, more glaciers across the Northwest are expected to melt away in the coming years, mostly around lower elevations. Some experts say there is still time to preserve some glaciers at higher elevations. KUOW's John Ryan has the full story here.

Seattle's City Hall Park has reopened after a two-year closure.

Over the summer of 2021, the park garnered a lot of headlines. A total of 33 county judges sent a letter to city officials urging the closure of the park, citing safety concerns. After a stabbing and other high-profile incidents, the park was eventually closed. An encampment was also cleared, and the park was fenced off. The park has since undergone a clean up. The city also handed it over to the county to take care of.

On Tuesday, the fences went away. In an attempt to keep the place spruced up, officials plan to add more lights and have two park rangers patrol the area. There are also plans to bring in buskers, entertainment, and food trucks.

“City Hall Park is revitalized," said King County Superior Court Presiding Judge Patrick Oishi at the reopening event. "Hopefully, as people are coming here, people will feel much more safe and comfortable when coming to the courthouse and accessing justice."

The park's reopening is part of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan. KUOW's Natalie Akane Newcomb has the full story here.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced a 24-member workgroup June, 12, 2023. The group is tasked with developing a local ordinance that will align Seattle municipal code with Washington state's new drug possession law. The Seattle City Council previously rejected a proposal to establish a local drug possession law. (Seattle Mayor's Office)

DID YOU KNOW?

One of the quirks of "Star Trek" is how so many of the devices in the show have appeared in real life — handheld communicators aka cell phones; tablet computers; video telecommunications that are now offered by Google, Zoom, and Skype; even the little bluetooth headset that Lt. Uhura wears on the bridge. Other tech still seems to be out of reach, like food replicators. Warp drive, however, is something modern scientists believe could eventually become reality.

Theories around such travel have been around for a while. Most point to Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre's work that was published in 1994. NASA says that warp drive is currently impossible, but leaves the future open to all possibilities. More recently, a team of physicists said they accidentally found a warp bubble while looking for something else. Erik Lentz, a University of Washington PhD alum, spent his time during pandemic lockdowns working out the potential of warp drive. This led to some new ideas around the concept, and a published scientific paper. Unless you're well-versed in Einstein's theories, it involves a lot of physics jargon. In short, all these ideas come down to warping space — condensing the space in front of an object, and expanding the space behind it. While a lot of this can be worked out on paper, making it happen in the physical world is a whole other matter. But most advances start on paper.

Why all the "Star Trek" facts this week? Well, today I'll be on Soundside's "No Spoilers" segment talking all things Trek ahead of the season two debut of "Strange New Worlds" on Thursday.

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