Baseball is back, the forecast is dry, and we are choosing to accept this without asking questions.

The Mariners kicked off their 50th season tonight at T-Mobile Park - one year after coming 8 outs from the World Series. That's still a hard sentence to sit with. Logan Gilbert on the mound, Cal Raleigh in the lineup, Julio Rodríguez ready to remind us why we believe in things. Hope springs eternal, as they say, which is also what people say right before something breaks their heart. But that's a problem for September.

Worth knowing before you go this weekend: Rick Rizzs is calling his final season after 40 years with the team. If you didn't know that before reading this sentence, you're welcome and we're sorry.

The Kraken, meanwhile, are 31-29 and quietly packing for the offseason two weeks early. They play in Tampa tonight and Buffalo on Saturday. Somewhere out there, a playoff spot is not theirs.

The weather, at least, is actually cooperating. Mid-50s, overcast but dry Saturday and Sunday. This is the version of Seattle that everyone here describes to out-of-towners while conspicuously avoiding eye contact with a calendar. Get outside!

Mariners Opening Weekend at T-Mobile Park - Games continue Saturday and Sunday, with the Guardians in town until Sunday at 4pm. Saturday's game features a Cal Raleigh 60 Home Runs bobblehead giveaway - first 20,000 fans through the gate. If you've been meaning to go to a game "sometime this season," here's your nudge. It's the 50th season, the park is good, and Sunday's opponent is the Yankees, which is objectively the most satisfying team to beat.

Stand By Me: The Film and Its Stars, 40 Years Later at the Paramount Theatre, Saturday March 28 at 7:30pm. The cast returns for a screening plus conversation 40 years after the film. River Phoenix is gone and Wil Wheaton has a podcast now. Some things age better than others. The film, for the record, holds up completely.

Holi: Seattle Color Festival at Mural Amphitheatre, Seattle Center - Saturday March 28, 11am to 7pm. A full-scale color powder festival on a dry spring day at Seattle Center. This is the correct use of a Saturday. Wear clothes you have accepted as lost causes.

Gorgon City at Hangar 30 at Magnuson Park - Saturday March 28, doors at 6:30pm. The London house duo takes over one of Seattle's best-kept venue secrets: a functioning aircraft hangar transformed into a dark warehouse floor. If you need a thing to do after the game and before Sunday, this is it.

Moisture Festival at Broadway Performance Hall, Capitol Hill - running through April 12, shows this weekend Friday through Sunday. The nation's largest comedy and variety arts festival is mid-run on the Hill. Aerialists, acrobats, clowns, live music, and adults-only Frisky Friday shows for those who know. Tickets start at $10 for Pay-What-You-Can shows. Genuinely one of the most Seattle things you can do with two hours.

Grand Kyiv Ballet - Swan Lake at the Moore Theatre, Sunday March 29 at 4pm. Ukraine's Grand Kyiv Ballet performs Tchaikovsky on Second Avenue. Whatever your relationship with ballet, this one carries a little more weight than usual. Worth your Sunday afternoon.

TWB Seattle Neighborhood Tour - Saturday March 28, 11am-5pm. Travel content creators Marlie and Anthony Love are running a guided 5-hour cultural neighborhood experience starting from the W Seattle. Stops include MOHAI, Arte Noir, Footprint Wine Tap, and We Rise Wine Bar - with transportation, wine tastings, museum entry, and lunch all included. This is the tour for people who want to actually know Seattle, not just photograph it through a ferry window.

Tacos Cometa at 1620 Broadway - Officially open as of last week. Brothers Rey and Osiel Gastelum built a devoted following running a late-night taco cart at Nagle and Pine before getting health-department'd into finding a real address. Their Sinaloan-style charcoal-grilled tacos are the product of two chefs who came up in Michelin-starred kitchens and decided Seattle's street food scene needed them more. Open until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays, which is the kind of sentence this newsletter was made to report.

Cafe Lolo at 806 E Roy - Soft-opened March 20 in the Loveless Building on northern Capitol Hill, taking over the Cook Weaver space. Three farmers market veterans building a seasonal cafe around local grains, fresh pasta, and drinks that are actually thoughtful rather than performatively so. It's early days - no full menu published yet - but the bones of the concept (and the provenance of its cooks) make this worth a visit while you're still getting in before anyone tells you about it.

Fremont Sunday Market - Opening Day on 34th Street - Sunday March 29, 10am-4pm. The 36th season of the Fremont Sunday Market opens this weekend with the full two-block stretch along the canal. Vintage stuff, food vendors, the occasional philosophical conversation you didn't ask for. Free to wander.

WA Brewery Running Series Kick Off Party at Old Stove Brewing, Ballard - Saturday March 28, noon to 4pm. Free event launching the 2026 run series season. Twenty percent off all Old Stove beverages, brewery tours, and giveaways. A crowd that has correctly identified that running somewhere and then drinking beer is a fully coherent life philosophy. RSVP encouraged.

DAVID Jumbo Sunflower Seeds, 12-pack - It's Opening Weekend. You need sunflower seeds. Not the concession stand kind at $9 a bag, the kind you smuggle in your jacket pocket and crack with practiced efficiency while Cal Raleigh bats in the third. Buy a 12-pack on Amazon, throw a few bags in your bag, feel like a real baseball person. The BBQ flavor exists and it's correct.

Ortizan Portable Bluetooth Speaker, IPX7 Waterproof - You're going to Fremont Sunday Market. Or Holi. Or both, somehow. Either way you're outside on a dry March day in Seattle, which statistically only happens a few times before June decides to act like March again. This thing is 24W, 30-hour battery, fully waterproof, and well-reviewed enough that it doesn't feel like a gamble. Take the win while the weather is cooperating.

So to wrap this all up...

Tomorrow is the first full weekend of spring. You will not be able to tell. The clouds have not received the memo. Saturday and Sunday as Mid-50s. Mostly gray. Occasionally cooperative. Classic.

What we do have: Opening Weekend of the Mariners' 50th season, where the Yankees come to town Sunday and a Cal Raleigh bobblehead goes to the first 20,000 people through the gate. A color powder festival at Seattle Center that will ruin your clothes in the best possible way. Gorgon City turning Hangar 30 at Magnuson Park into something you'll describe as "actually kind of perfect" on Sunday morning. Tacos Cometa - a year of open-air Capitol Hill nights, health department citations, and rain-soaked Fridays - finally with four walls and a door. And two reader submissions that made the cut this week: a neighborhood tour built around the places that actually make this city worth living in, and a brewery running series kickoff that correctly identified "run somewhere, then drink" as a complete lifestyle.

We also want to say: Rick Rizzs is calling his last season. Forty years. If you haven't listened to a Mariners game on the radio in a while, this is the year to remember what that sounds like.

Baseball's back. Fremont's back. The weekend is dry. That's three reasons to leave the house and we only needed one.

If you know someone who's been staring at their walls since November, send this along to them. Everyone deserves a plan, right?!

We'll be back Monday with whatever Seattle did while you weren't looking!

-- The Drizzle