Casual Friday with Andrew Walsh and Geraldine DeRuiter

0:00Seattle's economy is complicated. Inflation, tariffs, AI, layoffs, it's a lot to keep track of. That's where we come in. I'm Joshua McNichols and I'm Monica Nicholsburg. We host Booming, a podcast about the economic forces shaping our lives here in the Pacific Northwest. Every week we dig into the big questions about our economy and where you fit in. Find Booming on the KOW app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, good morning. I'm Patricia Murphy. It's Friday. This is Seattle now. This week Washington State is suing Albert Sins for deceptive Bogo deals. New stats from Pike Place Market say the car-free pilot could be helping increase business and Good Samaritan from Richland turned in a couple of overdue library books 64 years late. Too beautiful to live co-host Andrew Walsh and author Carol Dean DeRoyter are here to break down the week. But first let's get

1:01you caught up today is International Worker's Day or May Day. The Seattle May Day Committee is hosting a rally at noon at Cal Anderson Park. Thousands of people are expected to attend. Seattle will also join an economic boycott with cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. This year organizers are calling for better pay and working conditions and also a series of demands regarding ice. It's officially summer in Seattle or at least at Alcay Beach and Golden Gardens. That means both parks will be open from 4 a.m. to 10 30 p.m. closing an hour earlier than their non-summer hours. This early start to summer hours is part of a summer of safety effort from the Department of Parks and Recreation. Another part of that effort will be private security officers monitoring Golden Gardens after hours on weekends. And hey there, you know every day you press play on Seattle now to learn something new about the Puget Sound community. Just think back to some of the episodes that have stuck

2:03with you. Maybe it was a trip to the Seattle Art Museum or meeting some of the wrestlers at Rain City Sumo. Here at Seattle now we're dedicated team of local journalists, part of the whole KUOW newsroom following stories across the city to bring you news that matters. We also rely on support from our community. This may join KUOW at amplifying the impact of public media giving days with us. Giving now is a way to pay it forward in your community, ensuring everyone, not just those who can afford it, has access to high quality news. So tap the link in the show notes or visit KUOW.org and make a gift today. Thank you. We're back with more headlines on tonight's episode of Seattle now. It's finally Friday and it's the first of the month. So remember rent is due. Andrew Walsh is here. He's the co-host of the two beautiful to live podcast and recently became a new puppy owner. Andrew, how you doing? Great. I'm very tired.

3:06Thank you for having me. Geraldine DeRoyter is here too. She's the everywhereist and author and blogger. Geraldine, always good to see you. It's lovely to be here. Okay, you too. Before we dive in, a family of 14 decided to do some shopping in Ballard this week. This family was practically a flock. A mother and her 13 ducklings walked right in the front door of Spire Candle Company, which an employee captured on video. Then of course, posted on social media. The post shows the ducklings being led through the back door into an alley. You too, this mom of ducks seemed to know what she was doing. I mean, even leading her babies down some stairs at one point. Have you ever moved with this much confidence in your life? What must that be like? I don't have a sense of direction. So I was really upset. I felt like the duck was showing off. It was a very cute video. My Ballard pointed out the similarities to Nathaniel Peters, a neighborhood resident who went out of his way for years apparently to help

4:07ducks safely cross the street in here as apartment to get to Sam and Bay. He calls it the Ballard, Mallard Duckling Drop, which is cute. If you saw a family of ducklings in a precarious situation in the city, what would you do? Probably squeal with ducks. Yeah, first I squeal with like, oh my gosh. And then hope that someone more knowledgeable than me would come along. The ducks seem to know what they're doing though. I don't think they needed any help. They don't need us. That it seems that way. The State Department of Fish and Wildlife agrees and says, if you see ducks walking through Ballard, allow them to walk freely please as they are likely navigating to nearby water. Even if they walk right into your own personal space, right in your house. Let those ducks walk right in. Duck, you know what, there's no word in duck for boundary. All right, they're reminding you also keep a safe distance. Try not to herd or catch them and report injured birds to Fish and Wildlife and, of course, make your social media content people.

5:12I was impressed with how quickly whoever filmed that had their phone out. Did you notice that? I did. They got the shot of the ducks walking through the door. So at first I was like, well this is staged, obviously. These are hired ducklings. But then on further reflection I thought, well, they're probably moving pretty slowly and they saw them approaching the door. But man, somebody was just like, I got to get this on video. Good on them. Yeah, which it's interesting that they didn't shut the door. Take up a little side. This does no ducks. Which moving out of a big story this week, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown says buy one, get one free sales at Safeway. Too good to be true. He's taking the parent company Albertsons to court. Brown filed the lawsuit on Monday. It alleges that from 2019 to 2024, Albertsons routinely raised prices on products, leading up to the buy one, get one free promotions, creating an illusion of savings while overcharging consumers. The AG alleges the company made nearly $20 million in

6:15Washington state by doing this. How much do sales back their interior shopping? Oh, I'm an absolute sucker for a coupon. I will buy things I don't need if I see it is on sale. And then I actually have to remind myself, you don't want this. You just saw that it was on offer. And it is now you now have 12 of them in your basket. And I need to like back away from whatever like mental information they're looking for. But here's the thing. Honestly, the only people who are taken in by this are people who are bad at math. Because if you raise the price of a single object, you still raise it less than two X. It's still a savings if it's buy one, get one free. But you have to buy two. I don't want to buy two things. But you're not buying two. You're buying one, Andrew. And you're getting one for free. Are you testifying in this lawsuit? By the way, I'm the surprise. Please don't

7:16make me defend a major conglomerate. But I will say if it is free, I am psyched and I will do anything to get the free thing, even if I don't want the free thing. But if they've jacked the price before they've done that, it's not free anymore. But it's not, it's not two X. No, I know, it is a savings if you take them both. But okay, so here's my deal. Nothing is more valuable to me. And I've said this many times before, the story came up. Nothing is more valuable to me than my storage space. And so therefore, I am not somebody who goes, for example, to Costco because I hate having too much stuff. I agree. I'd rather pay a little bit more, but then know that I can get something easily out of my cupboards. I'll pay more money if I can just get one of something. And when you apply this to something like watermelons, which was one of the examples in this story, I'm in the market for a watermelon. And then somebody says, oh, okay, we jacked up the price, but now you get two of them. That's what I'm going to do with two watermelons. No, that's great because if you're going to buy one watermelon, and somebody's like, would you like to? It's like, yes. But what are

8:19you doing with it? Are you going to eat that much watermelon? Evidently. And the way I think of it, and what I prefer, and I will say, I do prefer two for X price, right? I do prefer that. And I hate when they say you must buy two. Oh, I hate that too. I hate that. That one really bugs me a lot and sometimes they make you buy four. Yeah, that's sometimes sick. That's ridiculous. That's lunacy. What can you eat six of? But I will say I have for whatever I'm like, if I'm going to buy one watermelon, and somebody's like, do you want three? I'm like, yeah. Do I? I will. I because it's such an ephemeral food. Watermelon is good for like a month. And so not one watermelon is good for a month, but the season is short. So like, so you feel like it's worth it. You've got to eat watermelon when it's in season. So you just got to get sick of it. And that's why we're going to give you four of them. The Seattle Times reports that Albert sends pushed back on this. The company

9:21says the AG need to check their conclusions here. They say the lawsuits based on flawed analysis and data errors further. The company says they identified and raised these issues in conversations with the AG's office. AG Nick Brown says he's following the lead of other states here that have received customer complaints about similar practices. Albertsons paid out more than a hundred million dollars to a similar class action lawsuit in Oregon in 2023. Do you even price watch? Unfortunately, no. And that's where I'm really the victim of this, although I'm a victim of my own design because until recently, I really did not look at prices as a grocery store. I'm like, I need this thing or I don't. I'm going to buy it or I'm not. And you know what turned me was sumo oranges. You know, those are so expensive. And they're so good. Right. So what are the oranges? I don't buy. I don't buy oranges. Right now is in the grocery store yesterday and they're still at 499 a pound. And one of them and one of them is about a pound. It's about a pound. And one day I put a bunch of those or maybe I put like four of them or something in my

10:22cart. It said that there was some sort of digital savings. If I had the app and I was like, it'll all work out when I get to the front of the line. Like whatever. I'm sure that they'll just take it off anyway. I don't know why I thought that I came home. My girlfriend the next day, I saw her making fresh squeezed orange. It was like a horror. I have this happened with grapes all the time. I'll put my grapes on the scale and they'll be like $15. Like I love them. Yeah, me too. They're outrageous. And consider this alleged example from the lawsuit in 2020 in Albertson store in Gig Harbor raised the price of olive oil from $6.99 to $10.99 just before a bogo promotion. But it's not too axe. Back to $6.99 soon after. Other examples. Like you said, mini watermelon stuffed olives, hoagie rolls, Italian bread. Also, can we talk about bogo, bogo off? I know you have a problem with the marketing of this. That's right. I just don't

11:22think it should be bogo. I think it should be bogoff. If you buy one and get one, that is simply buying something. I thought one and I got one. If you buy one and then you get one free. That's how we grew up saying it is bogoff. Let's start a campaign. It just rolls off the time really. All right. Moving on to our next topic from Safeway to Pike Place. New data suggests that limiting car traffic at Pike Place market may be leading to increased sales and foot traffic. The Urbanist report sales at retail stores within the market rose 9%. Restaurants seeing a 10% boost between May and September last year. There's also been an uptick in people who live within 30 miles of the market visiting. So it is more than tourists were talking about here. How did you feel about cars in the market? I'm still mad when we opened up Pine Street traffic. For those of you playing along at home happened in like 1995. So Pine Street used to be closed in for the better part of the early 90s to street traffic. In the downtown area.

12:27In the downtown area. Wow. It was dope. Wow. Yeah. You could walk through it. And so it never made sense to me why there were cars like it is. It seems like a completely pedestrian area. There's people crossing the street, whatever. And then there is a car inching through. It's the ridiculous sense. It's like the scene in Argo or something like that. It's just like why do you want to drive your car through that massive humanity? It's like a slow car, slow tourists walking around like everybody owns the joint. To be fair, I've always blamed Google Maps because Google Maps puts people there. Yeah, because I've been with I've been with Uber drivers and I'm like no, no, no, no. What have you noticed that's different at Pike Place since they made the change last year? I have been down there and here's what I do notice. It is so much quieter. Like seriously, I know that the tourists and pedestrians didn't mind the cars. Like they just walked around them, but it's a totally different vibe without cars. And some do still get through like delivery trucks

13:31and ADA placard vehicles can can drive in, but it's a totally different vibe. It feels like what the market should be. It feels like it has that summer vibe kind of all year round. And so if the numbers are saying that business is actually up, what's the argument against? So High Place and its Historical Commission have been reluctant to make this change permanent partially because some of the vendors are saying they've lost long time customers as a result of this who work car customers. This is something that is a pilot to be determined has been extended once already. It was initially set up last year, but it's extended to Labor Day through the World Cup. The Pike Place Development Authority and the city are working on what the future looks like. I think there's another aspect of this too, which is public transportation is getting better and better and better in this city and cities now that we're connected to the east side. Like you can hop on a train in Redmond and basically take public transportation all the way to the market now.

14:34Now some people might not want to do that, but it is an option for you and I take public transportation almost everywhere. And so I do think that that goes hand in hand with this as well. It's not like, oh, I don't live next door of the market. I can't go anymore. Well, would you be surprised if they went back to the old way at this point? So here's the thing. I understand the market association's hesitancy to make it permanent just because I've tangentially worked with that organization before. And I realized like if you it's what 120 year old organization, you don't want to put anything in stone. So I do think they are going to continue to renew it though. That's how I see the permapilot. Are we talking about a permapilot? That's what I see happening just because there's that hesitancy because if something happens in the future, how are they going to undo it? But I can imagine them just continually doing this. But also there are still parking spaces. And yes, so very close. People in the market, so I don't know if I should reveal this, but I have their permission.

15:39A friend of mine recently got a parking pass to park in the market from one of the vendors in the market. So if you are a regular customer, if you go to the market a lot, they can hook you up. I've never heard of it happening to anyone and granted my friend is very attractive. Excellent. Now says, but apparently, apparently there are ways and there's there is by the way parking lots very close to the market. I have secret space. I do too. I do too. Maybe we'll act try to. I bet we have the same one. We might. We might. Well, this is pretty serious because a representative from friends of the market said in their newsletter this month, some businesses are actually questioning the viability of staying at Pike Place, especially the legacy grocery sellers who may take a sales hit. They say if people aren't driving, they're shopping there. Geraldine is not buying this. It's important to point out, yes, there is parking at the market. It is not totally car free either. It's just a lot quieter. Do you see Pike Place as a grocery

16:44shopping utility or is it a specialty place? Oh, I mean, if it were closer to me, I would go there all the time. If I lived downtown, I think I would be there constantly. And when I worked downtown and I worked near the market, I was there. I would pick up groceries there regularly. So for me, it's just a matter of convenience, but I do go there very often. And I would say on a weekly basis, I'm cooking with groceries from the market. I do think that there's one of the pleasures of the market. While I'm not there as the frequency that you mentioned, Geraldine, one of my favorite things about it is that it is both a tourist attraction, but also just a working market. So I understand that. And when they say like, we want to keep this just like a place where people can go to get flowers, some of the best deals on flowers. I absolutely love it. You cannot beat Pike Place Market in the morning for all the crowds show up. It's my favorite time to be there. I actually have to say I really like it at night when everyone's gone. Yes, I'm not a night lady, but yes, yeah, man, it is one of my favorite places in Seattle.

17:49So very authentic Seattle. When my husband brought me to dinner at the pink door, I knew he was serious. I knew this guy had like some level of like quality go. Yeah. All right, one last thing before we go, make sure to take a look on your bookshelf folks after two books were returned 64 years overdue to a Richland Washington library. Someone who Northwest Public Broadcasting describes as a good Samaritan, just inherited an old book collection and noticed two biographies of Henry Ford, which were due March 17, 1962. Andrew, what's the longest you've ever held onto a library book? Have you ever had to pay late fees? I mean, when I was a kid, we'd go to the library and you'd get, you know, physical books usually for me, it was like choose your own adventure or hearty boys or something like that. And it was like literally it felt like getting candy, just like when you leave with this huge pile of books. And then of course, I mean, I'm a slow reader. I was then I am now. And so of course, there's going to be like, you know, overdraft fees or

18:50overdue fees, I should say. I always found them to be very reasonable. I was like, yeah, five cents? Sure, like five cents a day. That's great. Like it always seemed like a good deal to me. I used to get cut off at the library with my young son because well, he would we would return the books and we'd have them at home and they would be like, sorry, you got to pay a little bit on this fine or return some of those books before you get anymore Seattle Public Library thankfully eliminated late fees in 2020. Do you think the library loses fewer books by eliminating the late fees? I mean, no shame. Well, I think fewer people are actually checking out physical books, right? Let's talk about the Libby app, right? So so the Libby app is wonderful. It's, you know, it's an app that allows you to digitally check out a book, but they snap that sucker back. Yes, they do. Yes, a rep from the rich and library says they thought it was pretty funny and they don't judge for late returns. I don't know. Are you the type of person to forget to give something

19:53back if you borrow it Geraldine? No, no, because Trish, I believe you and I both have Italian lineage. And so we do not like having debts to know debts. It's very serious. It comes with, it comes with a high price. So no, I always I will return things if you leave a dish in my home, it'll have cookies in it when I bring it back. Oh, wow. Wow. All right. Well, the library estimates the two books could have racked up about $3,000 in fines, but not really because late fees get capped at some point. And Richland is one of many Washington libraries that no longer charges late fees. They say more lost books turn up now that there are no fees. See, no shame. Just bring that book back. Well, I'm actually wondering if shame, maybe we should lose the fees, but keep the shame. Like shame is a powerful tool, especially like maybe you should ring a bell. Oh my god, man. Say shame, shame, shame. It's just, it's just a panel of like people's elderly relatives.

20:57They don't even say they're just looking. They just stare and they're like, is that how long have you had that book? Notice it on your shelf a lot. I don't believe, are you even reading it? Really? When's the last time you open that book? And we're going to leave it there. Andrew Walsh co-host The Two Beautiful to Live Podcast. Geraldine DeRoyder is an author and blogger. Thanks, Geraldine. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks. This was fun. Appreciate you listening to Seattle now. And thanks to our generous financial donors. Hey, your support is long overdue, maybe even 64 years at this point. So take some time. Rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app or even share it with a friend. Today's episode was produced by Vaughn Jones. It was edited by Andy Hurst. Our production team also includes Caroline Chamberlain Gomez, Brooklyn Jamerson Flowers, and Paige Browning. Greg Kramer does our theme music, Seattle Now, and KUOW Public Radio are members of the NPR network. I'm Patricia Murphy. See you tonight for evening headlines.

22:03You took this book out in 1971. Yes, and I returned it in 1971. Yes, 71. That was my first year on the job. Bad year for libraries. Bad year for American. Music festivals and fan conventions, art walks, author events, and reading parties. The next few months are amazing for arts and culture in the Seattle area. And every week KUOW's arts and culture podcast, Meet Me Here, will give you the inside scoop. From inspired recommendations to surprising chats with artists, you'll discover what's truly special about Seattle's creative communities. Listen to Meet Me Here on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.