The Polar Plunge: A How-To Guide
By Rebecca Ratterman December 28, 2016
This article originally appeared in the January 2017 issue of Seattle magazine.
Feeling up to a frigid dip in Lake Washington to start off the new year? Hundreds of locals bathe themselves blue in the yearly Polar Bear Plunge at noon on January 1 at Matthews Beach (5100 NE 93rd St.). Seattle Parks Department employee Garrison Wan offers tips for how to prep for the plunge:
1. Wear a superfly outfit—you’ll be so cool you won’t even feel the water.
2. Layer: Wear your bathing suit under your clothing so you don’t have to change.
3. Bring fluffy towels and a friend to hold them so you can wrap up in .01 second post-plunge.
4. Wear water shoes. Not Timberlands.
5. Save the Champagne for after the dip. (No need to ice it, it will chill in your mouth.)
6. Run and take a great leap of faith: The faster you go, the less likely you’ll be to change your mind.
Follow Us
AANHPI Month: Where to Celebrate, Eat, and Learn Around Seattle
From festivals and museum exhibits to food tours and historic neighborhoods, here are a few ways to mark the month across the region.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—known as AANHPI Month—is observed in the U.S. each May. It began as a weeklong observance in 1978 and expanded to the full month in 1992. Asian, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States extend back much further, including to the late 16th century, when…
Black Panther Park in Skyway Becomes First Black Panther Park in the World
The new community garden honors the Black Panther Party’s legacy of food justice and the Skyway neighbors who helped bring it to life.
On a sunny Sunday earlier this month, at the corner of 75th Avenue and Renton Avenue South, the community gathered for the opening of Skyway’s Black Panther Park. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children program that compelled the federal government to provide breakfast in schools, Black Panther Park is a community…
Rearview Mirror: A Family Coming Apart, SIFF, and My First Fashion Show
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
The Family House A house can hold a lot, and Seattle Rep’s Appropriate knows that. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony-winning play, directed here by Timothy McCuen Piggee, drops the Lafayette siblings into their late father’s hoarded, falling-apart Arkansas plantation home for an estate sale, and lets the whole thing crack open from there. The sibling dynamics are…
Studio Sessions: Raili Jänese
The Kirkland painter brings a playful eye to daily life and the little rituals of being human.
Artist Raili Jänese pays close attention to the small stuff. It might be a goose on the move, a rabbit in the yard, or a person lost in the rituals of coffee or cooking. The Estonian-born artist, now based in Kirkland, makes colorful acrylic works that turn everyday behavior—human and animal alike—into something funny and…