I’m All Lost In, #86: Leichacha tea; NIMBY city council member resigns; the Pavement movie.
I’m All Lost In…
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.
#86
In last week’s report about the renaissance afoot in Pioneer Square, I was delinquent for failing to mention my go-to Pioneer Square lunch spot: Saigon Drip, where I regularly place an order for their Vegan Vortex, a tofu bánh mì with the pickled veggie works and vegan mayo.
Saigon Drip’s delish vegan tofu bánh mì
In addition to featuring this tasty sandwich—a soft and crispy baguette, quality tofu, dripping sauce, fresh carrots, daikon, and cucumbers—the mod and brightly lit Saigon Drip is located at the epicenter of the action off Occidental Square and S. Washington St. This is the Pioneer Square strip that also includes my favorite new music club, Baba Yaga [I’m All Lost In, #69, 2/8/25], a vintage clothing shop, a burger and fries diner and dive, an art gallery, and just around the corner, a sexy bar.
Before I get to this week’s list proper, here are a few more follow-ups:
First, the New York Times obviously reads my weekly dispatches. They ran a piece this week titled “Denouncing Antisemitism, Trump Also Fans Its Flames.” Yes, please. You may remember back in late April [I’m All Lost In, #79, 4/20/25], I wrote an item titled: “Trump’s antisemitic fight against antisemitism.”
Second, I was psyched to see that one of my favorite new Capitol Hill coffee shops, Seasmith [I’m All Lost In, #49, 9/21/24]—isn’t only expanding its hours (open until 9pm now), but they’ve also added a couple of sleek shared tables to the seating mix; a necessary move given that it’s been hard to find a spot to post up at Seasmith lately.
Seasmith adds new seating, 6/5/25
The crowded coffee shops and on-point new seating are also emblematic of how busy Seattle is right now. From heading down the stairs to see a punk show in a crowded basement club on a Sunday night, to jamming into a booth at a busy Mexican restaurant on a Thursday night, to cheering last second shots with a roomful of default NBA fans at a neighborhood dive bar on a random weeknight, Seattle is lit.
My young friend Rob’s punk band Fell Off sets up shop downstairs at the Cha Cha Lounge for a Sunday night show, 6/1/25.
Poquitos on Capitol Hill, Thursday night, 9/5/25
Finally, as I noted last week during Week 1 of Roland-Garros, I’ve been glued to the screen, 2 am and 4 am matches included and welcome.
Watching Daffy Saby beat her thorny rival, World No. 8 Qinwen Zheng, 7-6(7-3), 6-3 early Tuesday morning in the quarterfinal, and then watching her officially dethrone Iga Swiatek 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-0 (!) in the semifinal on Thursday morning further defined Sabalenka’s 2025 runaway year as World No. 1. With a tour-best 34 match wins now and 3 tournaments titles after making 6 finals, Sabalenka leads the rest of the pack by 4,000 points this season. Meanwhile, there was the wild Lois Boisson story, the out-of-nowhere wildcard French player who blazed through to the semifinals. Tearing her way through the tournament, Boisson ascended from No. 361 to No. 61 with a yesteryear game of lobs and looping slices that bewildered opponents such as World No. 3 Jessica Pegula and World No. 6 Mirra Andreeva who Boisson dispatched in the later rounds this week. It was as if Boisson had stepped out of a time machine from 1970 giving contemporary fans the illusion of watching today’s stars face off against Margaret Court. Additionally, Boisson’s flat, grim demeanor, triathlete physique, and 7th grade gym class fit (a sleeveless tank top and running shorts) all added to her disarming aura.
Posting episodes daily from Roland-Garros, The Tennis Podcast crew was bewildered by Boisson
Boisson’s Cinderella run finally ended on Thursday morning with a 1-6, 2-6. semifinal loss to World No. 2 Coco Gauff. Cue up Sabablenka v Coco for Saturday’s final.
A final note on Roland-Garros: The sexist scheduling, including tournament execs refusing to give Boisson’s big match versus Gauff a prime time slot, led to an outcry in the righteous tradition of Billie Jean King. As the NYT reported, there have only been "4 women’s matches in 55 night sessions since their introduction [at Roland-Garros] in 2021."
Okay on to this week’s official obsessions:
1) Green Tea Leicha
Known as “pounded tea” for all its smashed up beans (soy, mung, adzuki, pinto, jack) and crushed seeds (black sesame, pumpkin) plus a grocery store aisle worth of other finely ground ingredients such as rice, barley, sorghum, millet, green peas, black eyed peas, chickpeas, buckwheat, oats, corn, yam, ginko, and green tea leaves, Leicha is a powdered Hakka Chinese tea billed as a “centuries” old “health brew” according to the Leichacha brand homepage.
The green concoction—it looks like matcha— does appear to be a magic potion. The long list of benefits touted on the website include lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, repairing muscles, aiding hormone production, supporting the immune system, protecting against chronic diseases, promoting a healthy gut, and “ensuring regular bowel movements.”
The magic part to me, though? Leichacha brand leicha tastes like nutty malted milk, right down to the sweet goopy silt that settles at the bottom of the cup. Maybe it’s the soymilk powder and cane sugar that’s in their mix as well.
Leichacha is a Hakka family business, and their tasty concoction is available at Mixed Pantry, Belltown’s Asian imported goods store.
2) North Seattle City Council Member Cathy Moore Resigns
Erica does a thorough job at PubliCola reporting on first-term Seattle Council Member Cathy Moore’s sudden resignation this week. Mainly, Erica documents Moore’s stuck-in-the-1990s agenda with its “neighborhood character” appeal to slow growth. This includes Moore’s recent support for slowing down Sound Transit expansion (which the Urbanist’s Ryan Packer reported on as well) along with Moore’s ongoing efforts to keep upzones out of neighborhoods that have historically been zoned exclusively for detached single family homes but are now required by state law to allow density. (I’ve editorialized on PubliCola about Moore’s intransigence as well.)
Erica goes with my bitchy headline for her PubliCola editorial
Moore’s resignation is a great moment for Seattle. Or at least I’m savoring it. While Moore dismisses the opposition to her slow-growth POV as an uncivil mob that won’t respectfully give her the mic, what she’s really identifying is this: The public has soured on longstanding city policy that keeps 75% of Seattle off limits from multi-family housing development and, in turn, has driven up rents. Logically, the public has also soured on listening to council members like Moore who speak from the same old NIMBY script that seconds these persistent policies. Thirty years on, a vocal movement that has paid the price for exclusionary zoning and the resulting affordability crisis is now seeking a new approach.
Moore’s resignation confirms that the public doesn’t believe in the old policies Moore is stumping for. Her opponents are simply articulating a critical response to legislative proposals like hers that maintain the housing status quo.
3. The Pavement Documentary Mockumentary
Actor Joe Keery, upside down top right, plays himself playing Stephen Malkmus, right side up bottom right.
Class clown ‘90s indie rockers Pavement are one of the very few alt rock era bands I actually like. But I was hesitant to see independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, the new documentary about the band, because as I told my pal Annie (who invited me to see the movie last Friday at SIFF Uptown), I’m not sure I want to listen to Stephen Malkmus talk for two hours; Pavement front man Malkmus is the sardonic floppy haired singer/electric guitarist/free verse songwriter whose bratty slacker sarcasm and general boredom with everything is generally unbearable. His blasé wit and stream of consciousness brain are best confined to rock albums where they’re paired with the band’s raucous and dissonant DIY guitars, herky jerky rhythms, and catchy melodies. In that context he’s a delight. Think of Pavement as drunk Nirvana, but without Nirvana’s macho riffage. Pavement’s electric guitars are certainly badass, but they are less sludgy, heavy homages to 1970s rock than they are off-kilter and totally kidding.
Anyway, I’m glad I decided to go to Pavements; the film’s title is a reference the time the band was misidentified (as in, the internets) by Stephen Colbert on live TV.
The plural also refers to the clever conceit of the movie which transcends the rock doc format by blurring real life Pavement with several imaginary story lines. The actual documentary here— contemporary footage of the band rehearsing for a 2022 reunion tour interspersed with archival film and video of old interviews and performances—is frenetically mixed and matched on split screen with a series of mockumentaries. Mockumentary #1 is a faux behind-the-scenes doc about the making an imaginary Pavement Broadway musical. Mockumentary #2 is about an imaginary Pavement MoMA exhibition (Malkmus’ notebooks behind glass). And best of all, and nearing comedic brilliance thanks to Stranger Things actor Joe Keery playing himself playing Malkmus, Mockumentary #3 pretends to tell the story of a make believe Pavement biopic. The connecting, comedic premise behind all four threads, including the real one about Pavement themselves, is that Pavement was supposedly a supergroup that achieved massive commercial success. (One thing I actually learned from this movie: Pavement was never as big as I thought they were at the time.)
Not only does Pavements’ hyper meta narrative mirror Pavement’s own evasive Gen X sensibility, but the movie strikes sarcastic topical gold with the biopic story line by (accidentally?) spoofing Timothée Chalamet’s earnest turn as Bob Dylan. Keery (playing Keery as an overwrought method actor playing Malkmus) hilariously mocks Chalamet’s Dylan just as, circa 1994, Malkmus and Pavement hilariously mocked Smashing Pumpkins.