🐹 Salty SeaDawg 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Good morning, Bellingham. This is your Friday update from The Hamster Wheel.

I’m running a couple weeks behind responding to emails but I’m hoping to catch up this weekend. If you’ve reached out over the past weeks, and don’t hear from me by Sunday, send a follow-up and I’ll try to respond promptly. 🙂 Happy fall y’all! 🍂

Have fun, and stay safe out there!

~ Evan

Or, hit reply to send me photos via email. 📧

With the onset of fall comes another installment of Bellingham’s fishiest festival. Bellingham SeaFeast runs through the weekend, bringing delicious local seafood, live music, and a slew of activities that celebrate Bellingham’s maritime history and culture.

With over 25 vendors in this year’s lineup, there’s bound to be something for every palate, but standouts for us last year were the buttery and tender pan-seared scallops from the Alaska Weathervane Scallop Truck, and the not-to-be-missed Fish-On-A-Stick BBQ Salmon from Lummi Seafood Market’s Čha•k’os 🔥 Fire Pit BBQ. Yum! 😋

Plus, there’s a new offering this year in the form of a SeaDawg 👆. “What is a SeaDawg? A SeaDawg is a Pacific Northwest-inspired take on the classic hot dog. This flavorful salmon sausage, made with sockeye, keta, and coho salmon, is nestled in a soft, buttery brioche bun and topped with our in-house-made jalapeño, pepper, and onion relish, tangy pickled onions, and a bright lemon-dill aioli.”

In addition to the food, there will be a seafood market, a cooking demonstrations with local fishermen, and self driving cars shuttling folks from Bellingham Technical College to the waterfront. There will also be live artists and chainsaw carvers, plus a long list of local groups and organizations with booths around the festival grounds.

A few experiences require separate tickets. The Oyster Expo at the Squalicum Boathouse includes samples from several local oyster farms, while Saturday tours of All American Marine offer a look inside its Bellingham boat-building facility. There are also hour-long Chuckanut Bay cruises and guided dock tours that trace how seafood moves from the working harbor to the plate.

Now that your belly is full of fish and oysters from SeaFeast, mosey on down to Beach Cat Brewing’s South Paw for Fish Tales & Ales, a free after-hours gathering featuring the people who actually catch the stuff.

Commercial fishermen from around the region will swap stories, sing songs, and share a little poetry about life on the water. The third annual gathering runs from 6 to 9 pm tomorrow, Sept. 26 at Beach Cat’s C Street location.

A slightly personal note, local Bellingham author Dave Scoboria, who also happens to be my dad, will be at Village Books tonight, Sept. 25 at 6 pm to talk about his new book, Voices of My Fathers: A Five-Hundred-Year Journey. The novel traces roughly 500 years of Scoboria family history across nine connected stories, blending documented family history with fiction to imagine the lives, places, and upheavals behind the names on the family tree.

Dave spent more than 40 years working in commercial construction in Seattle and Bellingham before retiring in 2019 and turning his attention to writing. Voices of My Fathers moves from Cornwall and the Napoleonic Wars through later generations and into the 20th century, gradually shifting from imagined stories toward events drawn directly from family history. Friday’s event is at Village Books in Fairhaven, and reservations are recommended.

The Herald Building turns 100 this month, and on this Saturday’s celebration offers a chance to poke around one of downtown Bellingham’s most recognizable buildings. From 11 am to 3 pm, the six-story landmark will be open for free historical tours, tracing its life from a state-of-the-art newspaper headquarters to the offices, restaurants, and businesses that occupy it today. There’s also a Historic Herald Passport with stops around the building, followed by a big centennial group photo out front at 3 pm, recreating a community photo taken when the building opened in 1926.

The building has accumulated some solid stories over the past century. Roughly 6,000 people reportedly toured it during its grand opening, and local merchants successfully pushed to rename Elk Street as State Street because the new Herald Building deserved a more “metropolitan” address. After Saturday’s tours, the celebration shifts into a 1920s-inspired Prohibition Party from 3 to 6 pm, with food, drinks, music, and optional period attire.

LOCAL READS

A Ghostly Parasite
By Eric Worden · Whatcom Watch
Ghost pipe lacks chlorophyll and gets its nutrition by tapping fungi connected to Douglas fir roots, emerging above ground only briefly to flower and set seed. Eric explains how this unusual three-way relationship works and notes that several equally strange relatives live in local forests. Read more →

· · · · · · · · · · · · ·

‘The Living’ lives on in NW literary canon
By Ron Judd · The BellingHammer
Annie Dillard’s 1992 novel The Living grew from years spent teaching at Western and living on Lummi and Waldron islands, where she researched 19th-century Whatcom County. Ron explains why the book remains an unusually durable account of how settlement, landscape and local history shaped one another. Read more →

CIVIC CORNER

Friday
What. Co. Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force, 11:00 am, Whatcom County Council Office

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

Saturday
Birchwood Park/Squalicum Park: Join Recreation Northwest Trails Coalition and the City of Bellingham to care for the Bay to Baker Trail. You will remove invasive species and litter, apply mulch, plant native plants, and learn trail stewardship practices. Details

Lake Whatcom Park: Join Whatcom Million Trees Project, Whatcom County Parks and Recreation, and Whatcom Land Trust to remove invasive English ivy from a forested area along a trail at Lake Whatcom Park. You will help save trees and make way for native undergrowth to regrow and thrive. Register

Chanterelle Trailhead: Join the Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition to help build and maintain trails at Brown Pow. You will spend the day supporting the trails at this Wickersham-area site. Register

Bellingham Theatre Guild
The Importance of Being Earnest (theatre) | Thurs-Sun

The Claire
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (theatre) | Thurs-Sun

FireHouse Arts & Events Center
12 Minutes Max Bellingham (dance, theatre) | Fri, Sat

Unity Spiritual Center
Midnight Mystery Players (theatre) | Fri, Sat

New Prospect Theatre
Fractured Fairy Tales (dance, theatre) | Fri-Sun

The Upfront Theatre
Various performances

Contra - Fairhaven Library - Sat 7 pm
Beginner Ballet - Karate Church - Sat 10 am
Beginner Contemporary - Karate Church - Sat 11:30 am
Dance Fusion - BSAC - 10:30 am
Salsa Collective - The Majestic - Sun 5:30 pm
Open Floor Conscious Dance - Bellingham Fitness - Sun 10:30 am

The Rock Orchestra by Candlelight brings 14 classical musicians to Mount Baker Theatre tonight, September 25, at 8 pm for a 90-minute program built around rock and metal. The ensemble reworks songs by Metallica, AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine, My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, System of a Down, Guns N’ Roses, Evanescence, Aerosmith, The Cranberries, and others. Tickets

The Bellingham Chamber Music Society opens its 2026-27 season with Impressions at Hotel Leo’s Crystal Ballroom on Sunday, September 27, from 3 to 5 pm. Inspired by Leah Broad’s book Quartet, the program highlights music by Rebecca Clarke and Ethel Smyth alongside works by Pierre Vallones, Anthony Sidney, and Lukáš Sommer.

Red Sky Riders brings old-school bluegrass to Stones Throw Brewery tonight, September 25, from 6 to 8 pm. The local Bellingham string band works with guitar, mandolin, banjo, and stand-up bass, leaning into older bluegrass covers with a touch of gospel.

Laughs at Larrabee w. Corey Bennett, Larrabee Lager Co – Live stand-up runs from 8 to 9:30 pm with Corey Bennett headlining the $10 comedy show.

Refinery Bus Tour, bp Recreation Area – A free open house from 10 am to 2 pm includes a poster session on refining and one-hour guided bus tours inside the Cherry Point Refinery, with reservations required for each visitor.

Friday Music & Trivia →

BCMS Rebecca Clarke Lecture, Hotel Leo Social Lounge – Christopher Johnson, Rebecca Clarke’s great-nephew, discusses the composer’s life and music from 2 to 4 pm, drawing on his work cataloguing her compositions during the final decade of her life. Register

Fish Tales & Ales, Beach Cat Brewing South Paw – Commercial fishermen share stories, songs, and poetry from 6 to 9 pm about life and work on the water at this free Bellingham SeaFeast after-hours gathering.

Fresh Hop Block Party, Stones Throw Brewery – From noon to 8 pm, help pick fresh hops for a community brew while catching a Willie Nelson tribute with Trace Rezideux, Willie Reavis and his Weary Boys, Saltwater Cowboys, and Cascade Cody.

Hoedown for Housing, Stemma Brewing West – A free, all-ages fundraiser from 4 to 9 pm features line dancing, live music from Veronica North, a maker’s market, raffles, carnival games, and a country icon costume contest benefiting Lydia Place.

Dahlia Day, Hovander Homestead Park – The WSU Whatcom County Master Gardener Program hosts a free event from 11 am to 2 pm with free dahlia bouquets.

Saturday Music & Trivia →

Open Mic Night, Aslan Depot – Pace Rubadeau hosts an open mic from 7 to 10 pm, with performers of all kinds welcome and sign-ups beginning at 6:30 pm.

The Illusion of Color, Whatcom Art Guild – Robert Bystrom, also known as Newman Love, presents paintings, brush and ink work, and kinetic sculpture from 11 am to 5 pm, with sale proceeds supporting the Collective Human Intelligence Project.

The Not-Creepy Gathering for People Who Want to Fall in Love, Stemma Brewing West – A structured 21+ social gathering from 3 to 5 pm uses guided activities to help people connect without the usual dating-app or bar-scene format. Register

Sunday Music & Trivia →

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