Think You Know Seattle’s Southside? Think Again. Coffee, UFOs, and Micro Adventures with Mark Everton

Coffee, UFOs, and Micro-Adventures with Mark Everton

Most people see SeaTac as an airport, Tukwila as a shopping stop, and Des Moines as a place to pass through. But there’s a lot more going on—if you know where to look.

In this episode of the Exploring Washington State Podcast, host Scott Cowan sits down with Mark Everton, President & CEO of Explore Seattle Southside, to talk about what most travelers (and locals) miss. Instead of chasing blockbuster attractions, Mark’s team focuses on micro-adventures—small, meaningful experiences designed for anyone with a few spare hours and a sense of curiosity.

You’ll hear stories about:

• Seattle Southside’s unexpected coffee culture—like single-origin Ethiopian coffee served for $1.50 at a family-run restaurant, and a bubble tea tasting flight with flavors ranging from classic to, well… bold.
• The Maury Island Incident, a UFO encounter that predates Roswell and features the first “Man in Black” sighting ever recorded in the U.S.
• How the region’s interactive trails make exploration easy and rewarding—with themes like bubble tea, happy hour spots, and extraterrestrial lore.

With more than 50 million people passing through SeaTac Airport every year, the goal isn’t to attract more people—it’s to help them look around. Whether you’re flying in, shopping nearby, or just driving by on I-5, this conversation might change the way you think about Seattle’s southern neighbors.

Guest: Mark Everton, President & CEO of Explore Seattle Southside

Mark Everton Explore Seattle Southside Episode Transcript

Scott Cowan:

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State Podcast. My name is Scott Cowan and I’m the host of the show. Each episode I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington state. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re going to like the show.

So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. I am sitting down this morning with Mark Everton of Explore Seattle Southside. He is the president and CEO of an organization that purpose is to promote and educate us on Seatac, Tukwila and Des Moines.

Scott Cowan:
So, Mark, welcome.

Mark Everton:
Oh, thanks very much, Scott. It’s great to be here.

Scott Cowan:
So when we were initially connected and you and I talked, I’d ask you a bunch of questions, but. But before I start peppering you with questions, I’d really like if you’d take a couple of minutes and give us a little bit of your personal history to how you ended up in this role and also how you see the purpose of Explore Seattle Southside. Let’s start with that. So first, how did you end up with the organization?

Mark Everton:
So a real brief bio on me. I spent, I don’t know if I add them up, probably 35, 38 years running hotels, primarily on the west coast in California and in Hawaii, through for a variety of companies, the big boys, the Hiltons, the Marriotts, the Four Seasons, and then spent a good number of years with independent hoteliers where the owner owned his own hotel and wanted somebody to operate it or manage it for them. And then also with a boutique hotel company that’s subsequently been acquired by Hyatt and it was called Joie de Vivre, very similar to Kimpton. And so they empowered me to take over their portfolio in Southern California, Hawaii. And so I had a wonderful time doing that. So anyway, I come from a hotel background and then just pre Covid, I happened to be looking for alternatives because Joie de Vivre was in the process of being acquired by a Hyatt affiliate. And things were going to be very different. And I happened to be based in Oakland at one of the properties in Jack London Square.

Mark Everton:
And one of the tenants that we had brought into the hotel into an adjacent building that we managed, was Visit Oakland, the Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau, who I had been a board member of and had been involved with for a decade or more. And the CEO departed. And so they were looking for a CEO and asked, primarily due to geography, if I would take over an interim position to go over and make sure that, you know, they weren’t making, you know, Gin in the bathroom. And things were, and things were, were chill and, and I got more involved in the day to day operation of it and thought hey, this is, this is pretty cool. This is much better than getting a call at 2 in the morning from a front desk person saying hey, I have an upset tummy and I’m going to go home, could you come in and finish running the audit for me or whatever. So I ended up putting my hat in the ring and got selected and spent a good number of years running Visit Oakland. So I kind of got the, what we call the DMO bug. DMO is destination marketing organization.

Mark Everton:
So that’s what Visit Oakland is for. Oakland, California, that’s what Explore Seattle Southside is for the Seattle Southside region you’re very familiar I’m sure with. There’s one in Wenatchee and one in Leavenworth and one for Lake Chelan county and Spokane and Tri Cities and Walla Walla. So I think there are at last count about 47 or 48 of them in the state of Washington.

Scott Cowan:
Okay, so a little, a little more than one per county for my listeners. Can you explain at a high level what you feel a DMO is and how it impacts and what its role is, how it interfaces in regards to tourism?

Mark Everton:
So we as DMOs, we wear a couple of different hats depending upon what the need is. Some of us are relatively small in the state of Washington and we may be the subset of a city economic development department or a, or a city chamber of commerce, which I think Anacortes Washington may be. And then there are others that are freestanding self funding organizations such as Visit Seattle. The rest of us either receive our funding through in Washington they have a unique, well they call it a tpa, a tourism promotion area, but it feels and looks an awful lot like a business improvement district that you would have where you’ve got a bunch of businesses in a downtown corridor, the band together and they self assess and they, they use that money for security and graffiti abatement and for, you know, ambassadors. We in Washington have a similar program and it’s called TPA and in this case it goes to hotels so hotel guests pay an extra fee, it goes to the state and then comes back to fund the organization. Other ones of us are funded as a direct line item on a budget for a city or a county and that’s typically through tourism tax or the hotel tax that guest staying and hotels pay. So whether it’s TPA or whether it’s hotel tax or it’s a subset of the city or a chamber of commerce. Our focus is all the same.

Mark Everton:
And you described it. It’s building awareness and promoting for tourism, for travel, for visitation or various areas. So it changes a bit. If you look at Leavenworth, one of their big focuses on us managing the Christmas activities that go on because they end up drawing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people during Christmas.

Scott Cowan:
Yes, they do.

Mark Everton:
I think in our conversation you chatted about being down in the Tri Cities area for an Ironman or a rock and roll event.

Scott Cowan:
It was an Ironman triathlon.

Mark Everton:
An Ironman triathlon, which again, probably had a lot of impetus from the DMO from Visit Tri Cities probably had some role in either bidding on that or securing that or helping to market. And we also mentioned that we just concluded a bmx, a national BMX race that was sanctioned by USA bmx. And the organization I work with was instrumental in putting that bid together and reaching out to USA BMX and saying, hey, for the first time ever, you should hold one of your nationally sanctioned championship events in the little city of SeaTac because we have this incredible track. So we pitched them and brought that business and as we talked, 5,000 people and a couple million dollars worth of revenue benefit for, for the city.

Scott Cowan:
Right. With regards to the Ironman and try and Tri Cities. Yes, Visit Tri Cities was instrumental in my understanding of it, but they were instrumental in the procurement of, of the contract and of the, I’ll say, the day to day overseeing of it. But you know, the day of event, they were, they were very much hands on throughout the entire process.

Mark Everton:
Right. And some, some cities or areas have convention centers. Seattle is a good example. So one of Visit Seattle’s responsibilities is booking and selling to a big degree. I understand the convention center. So they’re talking to groups and conferences and organizations, whether it’s the national association of Car Dealers or whether it was the American College of, you know, of pediatric Surgeons to come to Seattle and to host their 5,000, 10,000, 40,000 person event at the convention center. So every one of us plays a little different role. All right, you’ve got my mind spinning.

Scott Cowan:
One of them. I appreciate the high level. So let’s, let’s, let’s lower it down a few thousand feet and talk about Explore Seattle Southside. How does your organization. Because when I think of Tukwila, I don’t really think of tourism. I know you and I had talked before, so I mean, kind of cheating a little bit. But Tukwila has the mall and I’ll always Forever call it South Center. That’s just.

Scott Cowan:
I’m old and I won’t. It’s always going to be Safeco Field, by the way too, you know, for the Mariners. So I don’t give up very easily. But then we have SeaTac. And with SeaTac, I think of the airport. And then in Des Moines, I do think of the, the water and in the town of Des Moines. So what is the. How do I want to say this? Let’s, let’s talk about 2025.

Scott Cowan:
What was kind of some of the high level focuses that your organization had for, had and has for 2025 to promote this into these three communities.

Mark Everton:
So what makes Seattle Southside unique is that we already have an awful lot of people that are coming into our area on a daily and on an annual basis. You have 52 million people coming through the airport. You’ve got 16 million people a year that step foot into the Westfield South Center Mall. You’ve got the city of Tukwila, which has about 30,000 residents, but about 200,000 daily visitors from outside of the city that are either passing through. I’m not talking about people driving by on i5 or the 405, but people, people that are actually in town for doing business or working there. So it’s an interesting dichotomy that we’ve got that number of people that are here. And what our focus is in for the last couple of years is how do we get their attention? How do we kind of get them to stop? You know, the old phrase, stop and smell the roses. How do we get them to stop and look around a little bit and spend some more time rather than focused on the myopic task that they have at hand.

Mark Everton:
You know, so a lot of people arrive at the airport and the very first thing they’re thinking is, I got to get my car rental. I got to get to Wenatchee because I got grandchildren to go see. How do we get them to change that and decide that they may spend a little bit of time here before heading on the road to Wenatchee? And the same is true. You know, you’re, you’re going to the mall to get, you know, jeans for your kid to go to, you know, to start school with. How do you get them to go do something else with, with the kid besides just point A to point B and then leave? So that’s part of our challenge. And I think we’ve, we’ve kind of taken an interesting approach to that. We’ve, we’ve created a Moniker that this area is curiously wonderful. And we’ve fashioned a whole series of micro adventures because we know that this isn’t a destination.

Mark Everton:
Nobody wakes up in Walla Walla or Richland and says, hey, honey, let’s go spend the weekend in Seatac or Tukwila. We get that. But if you’re going to be here anyway and you’re passing through, how do we get you to spend a little more time and go on a micro adventure? Whether it’s 20 minutes or two hours, there’s just a myriad of things to go explore and find. And kind of tongue in cheek, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. That’s why we call ourselves curiously wonderful rather than something a lot more academic.

Scott Cowan:
I find this fascinating because simultaneously to you and I being introduced, I received an email. I have to pull it up here. So I’m a little unprepared. But I received the email from Annie Sullivan. You know Annie, I’m sure.

Mark Everton:
Yep.

Scott Cowan:
And she sent this email out with the headline of Sip Spook and Squid Fall Adventures in Seattle Southside. And I was like, okay, so I’m reading this and I’m a coffee guy. I think. I think I’ve warned you about that. I had never really thought of Seattle Southside as having. I don’t say having coffee because coffee’s everywhere in Washington state. It’s everywhere. Everywhere.

Scott Cowan:
But, you know, Washington state, we have. I mean, well, up until very recently, we had Starbucks everywhere. But she sent a list of, I don’t know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 in the email. And then. And then it took me to an article on. On your website called where to find the best coffee in the Seattle Area. And I’m like, I want to check this out. I want to come over.

Scott Cowan:
And, you know, you had me at coffee, right? And I’m like, I had no idea that your three communities had. I knew you had coffee shops. I don’t mean like that, but I didn’t know that we had, you know, Kappa espresso with single origin Ethiopian coffee. I just didn’t think about this. And I like that you and I are talking because I’m thinking about coming over and checking out your coffee culture in. In the community. Right. I think of.

Scott Cowan:
I think of the. The pro rugby team. And I’m gonna. The Seawolves, Correct. Oh, that’s right. You know, the Sea Wolves. You have all these things going on, but we don’t. I mean, as I told you before, I grew up in Tacoma.

Scott Cowan:
I lived in Seattle. I worked in Seattle. For many years, I drove up and down I5 and on 405, countless times. And I’ve driven through your communities and I never really thought to explore them. And I think this is very. I, I like the idea of this, the micro adventures, the idea of, you know, spend an hour, maybe, maybe a little bit more, but go and go. Peel back the layer of the onion, if you will. Just one layer and what’s underneath the surface.

Scott Cowan:
I, I think this is very fascinating and your website’s kind of focusing, if you will, on creative. You know, here’s microventures. I mean, we’re talking about that. How long have you guys been focusing on this? Is that, how long has this been the focus of the, of your organization?

Mark Everton:
We’re about two, two and a half years. We changed our focus. I joined the organization just about five years ago in 2021, kind of right as we were coming out of COVID And the focus that the organization had was to be Seattle’s backyard. And so that was the way that it was presented and described. And I think they got some good reactions and a good understanding from people because Seattle south side doesn’t really exist. I mean, if you ask Google where Seattle south side, it’s going to scratch its head and say, well, we have South Sound and we have Soto and we have. I can’t find Seattle south side except for this web page and blah, blah, blah. So it’s interesting in how you define it and how you build that awareness for it.

Mark Everton:
And so when I came on board and we were kind of doing a complete 180 and we all sat around and chatted about it, we all felt that being in somebody’s backyard is not necessarily your best foot forward. And so, interesting story. We ended up reaching out to a variety of marketing companies and ended up finding a marketing company out of Vancouver, BC, who hasn’t really played a lot in the destination marketing side. They did some work for, for the, you know, Discover BC or whatever that British Columbia destination is, but not a whole lot. And so we were smitten by them and their approach and their different way of looking at things. So we tasked them saying, come down here, figure this out. What do you think our calling should be? And they came back and said, well, hey, I think you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously because you’re, you know, you’re three interesting cities, but each one on its own is not, it’s not incredibly significant. You put them all together and they work really well together.

Mark Everton:
And that’s kind of where this color Palette was born. And this idea of being curiously wonderful and setting up micro adventures and realizing that I’m not going to get you to drive whatever you are, four hours from Wenatchee to Sea Tac for a cup of coffee. But if you happen to be coming out here to go to a baseball game, to go watch the Rainiers, or you’re going to come over for the ALDS or ALCs at. @ lumen to watch the Mariners, then, you know, it’s like, oh, hey, you know, I’ve got four hours to kill. I’m going to wander down into Seattle south side and go check out some of these, you know, find out where these UFOs really are and where’s great coffee and some of the other things that we offer.

Scott Cowan:
I 100% agree with you, but I’m gonna. I’m gonna throw you a curveball. I have a good friend that lives just up the. Just east of you in Renton, and he’s lived in Renton almost all of his life. And I, I said, hey, Renee, take a look at this website. Referring to Seattle Southside. He’s like, I didn’t know this existed. I didn’t know this.

Scott Cowan:
This is just two miles from my house. So you got somebody two miles from you in Renton who, when they think of Tukwila, probably thinks of the mall. When they think of SeaTac, probably thinks of the airport Des Moines, they think of Des Moines away, you know, as a small little community. But I’m pretty confident that he’s going to be joining me on my coffee journey as we go. As we go explore these coffee shops in the near future. And you’ve just made by. By me sharing your website to him. You’ve just made somebody more aware of something that’s two to seven miles away from him.

Scott Cowan:
I think that’s kind of funny to me, is two miles away. He’s like. He didn’t know a lot of this stuff. I like what you guys are doing. I. I genuinely think this is pretty interesting. And there’s a couple things on your website that I had. So I have to ask you, how is it that the, the airplane museum is in your.

Scott Cowan:
Is it. Does that really exist? Is that in Tukwila?

Mark Everton:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Huh.

Mark Everton:
It does. The Museum of Flight.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah. See, I would have thought that was a Seattle address. That’s a Tukwila address. Okay.

Mark Everton:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
So you’ve got.

Mark Everton:
I was surprised, too. It’s very much on the northern border. I think maybe the border actually crosses that airport, that field. But it’s right on that edge, which is wonderful. It’s a huge asset for us. You know, the Museum of Flight draws more people than Pike Place does. No, it’s the largest. Yeah.

Mark Everton:
The Museum of Flight is the largest attraction in the state of Washington.

Scott Cowan:
You’re kidding me. No, I would not have. You could have said, scott, I got a $5 bet for you. You ready to take it? And you would have gotten my five bucks. I would not have, no. Really? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Mark Everton:
Surprising.

Scott Cowan:
Very surprising. So let’s, let’s just talk about the Museum of Flight for a second. So how do you collaborate with that organization? What. How do you, how the, how do the two organizations work together to help? I mean, obviously if it’s the most visited place, you know, tourist place, it’s successful. But what’s your agency’s role?

Mark Everton:
Well, they are extremely successful in putting on their exhibits into and operating both the museum for visitors, but they also have a very in depth STEM program with thousands and thousands of grade school kids that are going there for, for education beyond what they’re getting in the public school. So, I mean, it’s an incredibly well run organization. So our role is really to support them from enhancing their marketing, from pushing out what’s going on. So every exhibit, every event, every activity they’ve got, we try our best to reach out to our broader audience. You know, and one of the, one of the challenges we’ve got is that we’re trying to talk to people that want to spend money in our hotels. So your, your, your BFF in Renton has probably not heard of us because it’s not in the sphere of the people that we’re trying to talk to. We’re really trying to talk to people in the San Francisco Bay Area, in LA and BC and you know, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, New York, and getting them when they’re out here to come spend time and explore. So it doesn’t surprise me that somebody two or three miles up the road, it’s like, oh, I didn’t know anything about this organization.

Mark Everton:
Yeah, because they’re probably not getting a lot of stuff from us and they’re probably. When we, when we’re pushing stuff out from the Museum of Light, we’re not pushing it out to rent. Museum of Flight definitely is.

Scott Cowan:
Right.

Mark Everton:
We’re pushing it out to a much wider audience.

Scott Cowan:
So you’re sending it out to your, your, your contacts in, in the Bay Area or in Denver as a. Yeah.

Mark Everton:
Or we’re doing direct marketing, you know, in those areas. Exactly.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. All right. Well, okay, so how does, how does that work with these? I guess I’m a little confused. You got these micro adventures, but then we’ve got the Museum of Light, which is huge. So the micro adventures, where are you, what, what’s your audience? For those, who are you trying to.

Mark Everton:
Attract for, for those, it’s a, it’s a pretty wide net. We’re trying as, as people we know are going to be coming through this area. We want them to be aware that there’s a there there and that there’s things that they can go and do. So we’ve got several million people a year that come through on a, to take cruises and the vast majority, 90 something percent of them are not Washingtonians. They’re people that are coming in from elsewhere and they’re typically staying a night before and a night after. So part of our messaging is stay longer. I’ll tell you a quick funny story to learn more about the cruise industry. I went to a cruise trade show that was in Fort Lauderdale and I flew down there during the cruise season and I got on a van at the airport to take me to a hotel.

Mark Everton:
And on the van was a family of cruise passengers. You know, you could instantly profile them because they’ve got way more luggage than most anybody you know normally would be traveling with. And I happened to sit next to the guy on, you know, on a bench seat in the back of the van and I asked him where he was from. And I can’t remember now but I think it was, you know, Iowa or Kansas. And yes, they were coming out for a cruise and it’s leaving the next morning. And I said, hey, did you think about coming out? Because this is like five, six o’ clock in the evening. I said, hey, did you think about coming out earlier and you know, a day or two before your, your cruise trip? And honestly, Scott, he did a full turn and looked at me and said, what on earth is there to do in South Florida? Why would anybody want to come here and have an extra day on their hands? And so I thought, well, there’s an interesting thing. Clearly South Florida is not communicating all of the micro adventures that one could partake in in the Fort Lauderdale area to wherever it was, Iowa or Kansas that this gentleman’ so that incented us to get that message out more.

Mark Everton:
Come early, stay later, go do a variety of things. You know, if you’re into coffee, we got coffee. If you’re into UFOs, we got UFOs, we’re into flowers or hikes or walks, you Know, we’ve got all those things.

Scott Cowan:
But do you have coffee and UFOs? Because that would be the. No, I’m just kidding.

Mark Everton:
Actually, when we get to talking about coffee, yes, we do.

Scott Cowan:
But.

Mark Everton:
So I’ve.

Scott Cowan:
Okay, so help me out here. I’ve lived in this state my entire life. I do not. I am not a. Paranormal stuff is not my. My wheelhouse. I’ve had some interesting conversations with people throughout the years, but that’s not something that I pay a lot of attention to personally. But I have never thought of Tukwila, Seatac, or Des Moines as being connected.

Scott Cowan:
What’s the story?

Mark Everton:
So I. And I’m a bit of a novice on it, so I can actually refer you to somebody that could fill your head with the UFO lore on a. On a. On a future podcast. But we have a situation here. This predates Roswell, New Mexico, by about three or four months. So back in 1947, there was a fisherman out of Tacoma who’s on his fishing boat and he’s traversing the sound between Des Moines and Vashon island, and he’s going north. And what appears above his ship are six circular spacecraft.

Mark Everton:
And those spacecraft are not doing much, except one of them appears to be in distress. Its listing, and it’s dumping molten metal out of what appears to be a mechanical failure occurring. And it happens to fly over the ship and ends up dumping a bunch of this molten slag on the ship. And the captain, out of fear, and the captain’s dog is killed and his son is injured, and the boat is damaged by this molten metal. And he immediately makes a beeline for Vashon island, and he runs his boat aground so they can get up into the brush where they felt that they would be safer than that. So that’s the Maury island incident. And what makes it even more interesting is that this captain, this Tacoma resident, was then visited by a man in black. And it’s the first noted sighting of a man in black or Men in Black in the United States.

Mark Everton:
And he’s told to suppress what he knew, and he decided not to do that. And so he told everybody and his brother about these spacecrafts. And they got picked up by the media and under J. Edgar Hoover. At that time, there was a conflict between the FBI and Army intelligence about who should be investigating UFOs. The army sent a B23 up from the Bay Area with two captains on board to go and investigate this incident right around the same time. And if you’ll look, you can look it up there was a sighting by a. I believe it was a United Airline commercial jet or plane of a bunch of unidentified flying objects on the backside of Rainier within a day or two.

Mark Everton:
And the description from the airline pilot very closely matched the description of what this fishing captain out of Tacoma had seen. Completely separate incidents, completely separate testimonies. So given both of them, the army sent these two guys out, they interviewed the captain, they took a bunch of evidence. They actually had some of the slag that had come off the deck of the ship and also some slag that had been on the beach over in. On Vashon. And they also got eyewitness corroboration from this commercial airline pilot about this instance. About 20 or 30 minutes after taking off to return to the Bay Area, the plane crashed and all lives were lost. So we have the Maury island incident, and we have a fabulous mural depicting this.

Mark Everton:
You can go to our website and learn more about it. We’ve also created a UFO Mysteries Trail. So we’ve got a whole series of stops that one can take throughout the area, including Des Moines and also over on Bashon, but also other areas that are of interest. We’ve put a whole exhibit together at the South Center Mall depicting this, including some AR interactive opportunities to explore more with your phone. And we actually took a 1970s payphone and turned it into an alien communicator where you can leave a recorded message that we’re beaming into through a company in England, beaming into outer space. So your messages, if they’re appropriate, can be sent off. And we are currently averaging about 1500 messages a month of people that are leaving voicemail messages for the aliens, either telling them the wonderful things that we’ve done with the area since they were last year and inviting them back and in some cases telling them to stay the heck away and you know, that they’re not. That they’re not wanted here.

Scott Cowan:
Or come and get my neighbor who’s mowing his lawn at 6am okay, so I’m on. Okay, so I’ve got. I’m on a page here, and it says, get your UFO Trail pass. And this is very interesting to me because it just says, UFO Mysteries Trail mobile exclusive, instantly delivered via text and email and no app to download. So your website walks us through how to receive this. So you’re setting these things up. I can literally sign up and commence my journey. This is fascinating to me.

Scott Cowan:
This is very cool.

Mark Everton:
So start your journey down at the quarter deck in Des Moines, which is really the epicenter of where the Maury island incident occurred because from there you can sip an incredible coffee drink and be able to sit on the outside deck and look out over the sound at Vashon Maury island. And from there be able to kind of experience what it would have looked like that day when the fishing boat encountered these flying objects. And then there are another, I can’t remember how many. There are 10 or 12 other stops that you can go and. Yeah, go and learn more. And it works. Yeah, it’s like it, like you just described. You don’t have to download an app, you don’t have to subscribe to anything.

Mark Everton:
It just, just, I don’t know, it magically appears on your phone and it tracks you geolocation wise. So it lets you know when you’re there and it provides you further information and it’s kind of like a, like a old school passport would be and it checks you off. And when you’ve, when you’ve gone to quite a number of these, you end up starting to receive prizes or gifts from us that you’ve, you know, you’ve been to five or 10 or whatever the number is.

Scott Cowan:
That’s okay. Is this the only. Do you have other adventures that are delivered the same way?

Mark Everton:
Okay, yeah, we have, currently we have two others. We have a happy hour trail which enables you and encourages you to go experience happy hour. And it’s not all alcohol related. I think we’ve got about 30 different stops on it. But it’s a fun thing to do in that happy hour window of time and go and explore and experience. And with that, I think after, I don’t know, five or seven of them, we send you a bottle opener that you can put on your refrigerator or the dashboard of your old car. And then when you’ve accomplished a few more, we’ve got some stainless steel tumblers like a wine tumbler, like a stemless wine tumbler that we’ll send you that you can use. Another trail we’ve got is the bubble tea trail.

Mark Everton:
So as much as a coffee aficiado as you are, I don’t know if you’re a bubble tear or not.

Scott Cowan:
I’m not, but I’m not opposed. I’m just not. I’m just found it right now. Okay.

Mark Everton:
So I had an opportunity to do a presentation at a business luncheon at the airport. And I knew that I was going to be speaking after a Port of Seattle commissioner and after the executive director of the airport. And I knew what they were going to talk about. They were going to, they were going to Be throwing out huge numbers, you know, 52 million people and a billion dollars worth of capital improvements to the airport over the next three years. And just, you know, how many, how many metric tons of cargo goes through the airport and how many jobs are supported, blah, blah, blah. Which is all great stuff. But I thought, well, what the heck am I going to talk about? So I threw the number 24 up and we have 24 bubble tea shops within a 2 mile radius of the airport as the crow flies. So how do you support 24 bubble tea shops? Because bubble teas are relatively expensive, you’ve got to have great ethnic diversity because bubble tea shops don’t thrive in non diverse communities.

Mark Everton:
B, you’ve got to have relatively high disposable income, which we do in this region. And three, you need to have a lot of travelers. You need to have an influx of people both passing through and working in the area, which we have in spades. So we absolutely met the criteria and that’s why we think we might be the bubble tea capital of the country here in. Yeah. Here on the Seattle south side.

Scott Cowan:
Do you like bubble tea?

Mark Everton:
It’s a little too sweet for me. I’ve changed my lifestyle over the last few years and I try to reduce the amount of sugar that I intake. So when I do have a bubble tea or a half a bubble tea, boy, I, I get, I get a, I get a sugar rush that Timothy Leary would appreciate. So.

Scott Cowan:
Okay, I’m putting you on the spot. What’s the bubble. What, what, what, what do you go for when you’re having a bubble tea? What? I mean, there’s so many flavors and I can’t even begin to, you know. But what do you get? What would you be getting?

Mark Everton:
I try, I try a lot of different ones and I’m also trying to stay away from dairy, so I look for those that are fruit based and so. Oh, gosh, Scott, you’ve put me on the. There is a black sesame one. I don’t know what the full name is. That’s just, it’s to die for.

Scott Cowan:
But you like the black sesame, okay?

Mark Everton:
I do, yeah.

Scott Cowan:
I think my experience with bubble tea is that they’re a little too sweet for my palate. Also, when I’ve had bubble tea and I’m standing there looking at the menu board going, I don’t know what half of these things are. I’m afraid to try. Oh, I’ve heard of durian before and it’s supposed to be horrible or you either love it or hate it. I’m going to skip durian. And so it’s like, what am I, you know, know, what am I going to, what am I going to pick? And so I, you know, I’ve never tried anything adventurous when it comes to a bubble tea.

Mark Everton:
You know, you see Mung bean. Yeah, yeah, mung bean. And you think, I think I’ll. I’ll try the passion fruit. I’m right. Passion fruit and pineapple. I’m a little more comfortable.

Scott Cowan:
There’s strawberry here. Okay. Yeah, it’s just, it’s very. Yeah. When I’m not. I would. No. I don’t know if we could do this.

Scott Cowan:
And we’re just totally. But you know how if you go to a winery or a brewery or even a distillery, you can have a tasting flight. You can, you can sample four different types of wine or four different beers. I might be willing to try a tasting flight of bubble teas. Just I don’t want to commit to the mung bean. But, you know, I’ll try it. Maybe, maybe that’s, maybe that’s what we could ask for is tasting flights.

Mark Everton:
So. So let’s talk a little bit about that. So we’ve got a shop over in Tukwila called the Neighborhood Cafe. It’s Filipino based, owned by a Filipino family. They’ve actually got a couple of outlets in the Seatac airport. So if you’re actually inside the airport, you can also find the Neighborhood Cafe. And I don’t know if they do this at the airport, but they do in the Tukwila store. They’ve got about 30 different bubble teas on their menu.

Mark Everton:
And you can create your own flight of four, like one ounce or one and a half ounce tastes of these. And if you are as you and I am, were a little sugar sensitive, that’s great because you’re not drinking a 16 ounce bubble tea. That’s especially cool if you’ve got somebody with you and you don’t mind sharing, you know, oversized shot glasses with. To be able to do this tasting and the kind of. And it gives your ability to do the durian. Durian or the mung bean without. Without thinking. Well, that was a waste of $9.

Mark Everton:
Right. So you could. Right. Get that experience. So we’ve got that. So the Neighborhood Cafe in.

Scott Cowan:
See, I, I’m gonna, I’m adding that to my list now for the coffee thing because honestly, I would go try durian or mung bean or some other. To me, obscure, odd thing because I might. You don’t know. I mean, I’m not Probably willing to try a, you know, like a $9 durian bubble tea. I’m probably not going to do that, but if I got a sample of it and I liked it, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. But, you know, it’s. It’s dipping my toe in versus jumping in into the. Into the lake.

Scott Cowan:
Okay, this is. This is interesting. So, see, to me, this is. You know, the whole thing about my show is I. I look at the whole state, and what I’m finding is more and more. And I’ve been doing this a long time, but lately I’ve been coming across things a little differently. And that is even in communities that you wouldn’t think of as being, quote, unquote, interesting from a tourist perspective or interesting to spend an hour, an afternoon in. I’m wrong most of the time.

Scott Cowan:
Like, you’ve given me four hours worth of coffee by the time I drive around and look at these locations and I go check out a couple of UFO places, and now I’m going to go have bubble tea. I’m spending four hours in your. In your region, in your. Your area, and who knows what else. I’ll discover why I’m there. I like this.

Mark Everton:
Well, and let me put another wrinkle on, because we talked about our avoidance of going into a diabetic coma after having a bubble tea. So there is a bubble tea shop also in Tukwila called Natalie’s, and it’s Vietnamese, and the family has a sugar cane plantation in Vietnam, and they ship raw sugar cane to this store. And so they don’t use conventional processed white sugar. They use the juice from these sugar canes, and they actually crush them as you’re standing there and they’re making your drink. And so it is. It. It’s still. It’s still a sweetener, but it’s a.

Mark Everton:
It’s as natural a sweetener as you could get. It’s not processed white sugar like we’re used to.

Scott Cowan:
Mm.

Mark Everton:
It’s the. It’s the juice of the sugar cane. And they can moderate how much they put in. So they ask you, you know, on a. You, you know, they don’t just ask light, medium, you know, heavy sugar. They, you know, you. You’re able to say about a 2. You know, could I get it.

Mark Everton:
You know, could I get it like a one and a half? And they. And they make it that way for you. So you’re able to actually get all of the flavors of the bubble tea and the experience without, you know, for me, anyway, without having that you know, my head spinning in circles for the next three hours, so.

Scott Cowan:
Well, if I’m going to combine the bubble tea and the coffee together. Yeah. We’re going to have to, you know, somebody’s going to have to tether me down because I’ll be a little too, a little too.

Mark Everton:
Somebody else will have to navigate.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, somebody else’s. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mark Everton:
So let’s talk coffee.

Scott Cowan:
Let’s, let’s. Okay, Gee. All right. If we have to. Yes, let’s talk coffee.

Mark Everton:
So you got. Annie sent that blog out about coffee and there’s a couple that have some flights also. I don’t know if they were on her list or not, but I came across this coffee store, coffee shop, unlike anyone that I have ever been in. And like, not to your degree, but I very much enjoy coffee. And so this is, it’s called Star Coffee and it’s in CTEC just adjacent to the, to the airport. But it’s, their name is Star Coffee, but it’s really an Ethiopian restaurant.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Mark Everton:
And so they serve brewed single origin Ethiopian coffee and it’s a dollar fifty and they do lattes and macchiatos and you know, all of the regular, you know, specialty drinks and they’re $2.50.

Scott Cowan:
Wow.

Mark Everton:
So it’s almost, I think it’s almost a trick. It’s to get you in there for the coffee. But then they have this incredibly robust, interesting menu of authentic family Ethiopian dishes. And so you go for the coffee, but then you’re like, oh my gosh, I need to get a piece of the injera, the, that, that spongy flatbread, you know, that the Ethiopians use both as a plate and also as a utensil. You know, you, you tear a corner of it off and you use it to dip, you know, the, the, the, the beans and the rice and all the other, you know, spicy foods that they’re providing. Meanwhile, you’ve got this just incredible cup of, of, you know, very humble, very non overblown single origin Ethiopian coffee that they brewed.

Scott Cowan:
Well, we’re going to, we’re going to go out of order here. My little routine, I always have. So I’m going to put you on the spot now because we’re talking coffee and I told you about this, so I’m kind of aware. Right, and you just, you just mentioned Star Coffee, which I’m looking on your site about them and I’m reading this and I’m like, this is very cool. Once again, did not know. First question for you about coffee. What’s your go to coffee drink of choice.

Mark Everton:
For me, it’s an Americano.

Scott Cowan:
Americano. Okay. Hot and why hotter iced hot.

Mark Everton:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
All right. Why?

Mark Everton:
Because it’s very simple ingredients. I get to control, except for the espresso and the hot water, I get to control what else goes on with it. So I’m never disappointed that it’s too cold because it’s always with boiling hot water. So you know, it’s always going to be, it’s going to be hot, which is a great way to start rather than getting, you know, a very tepid drink. And you’re like, oh, damn, I wish this was hotter. Well, it’s not going to get any hotter. Right. So but with the Americano, it’s like, darn it, that’s hot.

Mark Everton:
That’s okay. Just wait a few minutes and you’re. And it will be perfect. Right, Right. And then, and then if I, if, if I want to put oat milk in it or I want to put almond milk in it, I get to control that side of it. Rather than, than getting something that’s too flat or too foamy or 21, I like to go that way with it because I, I like the, the essence of the espresso in a controlled way.

Scott Cowan:
I always put everybody on the spot. Where’s a great place to get coffee? We’ve got lots of them to choose from. But what, where have you been going lately? Is there a spot that’s in rotation for you?

Mark Everton:
Well, we talked about two store coffee being one of them primarily because I go for the food and the coffee is so unassuming. Quarter deck down on the, on the more or less the boardwalk down into Moines. Maybe not so much now that it’s dropped 20 degrees and it’s rainy and drizzly, but on a nice day, oh my gosh, it’s absolutely a great place. And I’ve arranged several of my meetings with people, especially city officials, to go down to Quarter Deck and be able to sit there because it’s just a gorgeous environment. The other one that I really like is it’s kind of a drive through coffee spot that also has some indoor seating and it’s called Impresso Espresso. And it’s also in ctec and I like it because it is very family friendly being that the proprietors, family all seem to work there. And as you, and as you sit there and you listen to the conversations going on at the drive thru, you know, you found a pretty good place when the, when there is that much banter going on and there Is that much friendship?

Scott Cowan:
Right, right.

Mark Everton:
You know, as much. As much as, you know, Starbucks and Pete’s and, you know, some of the others go. At times they become a little too. I don’t know, a little too assembly line, you know, and they’ve. They’ve kind of gotten past that connection. So Imprezo has that family connection, and it also has kind of that third room, the ability to go there and have a meeting or ability to go there and catch up with an old friend.

Scott Cowan:
All right, so we’ve done over 300 episodes. I’m warning you, I’ve never asked this question of any guest before, so I. You. You couldn’t have been prepared for it. I’m curious, though, but you’re a California guy. Thinking back to California, where’s a great cup of coffee down in the Bay Area? Oakland. What do you like?

Mark Everton:
So in Oakland, I would either go to Red Bay Coffee or I would go to Blue Bottle would probably be two of my choices. And there’s another one up by Lake Merritt, and I want to say it’s called 1867.

Scott Cowan:
Interesting. Okay.

Mark Everton:
I don’t know where they got the name from, but it’s. Yeah, their coffee is all from, I think, the Patagonia region. All from very, very, very south. South America.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. Blue Bottle. Yeah. I’m not surprised by that. That gets mentioned, you know, when I talk to my friends that are down there, they’re. Blue Bottle. Is it fils with a Z?

Mark Everton:
Yeah. And there’s also Phil’s. I’m a little too old for Phil’s. I always. I’ve stopped in at Phil’s, but I feel that it’s a. It’s a. It’s a generation or two that really appreciate it.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Mark Everton:
Much more than I do.

Scott Cowan:
All right, that’s reasonable. What’s on the horizon for Explore Seattle Southside? What. What do you. What do you think’s gonna. What are you guys focusing on over the next six to six months, to 24 months?

Mark Everton:
Well, we’ve got World cup coming to the Seattle area, and so, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to travel through the Puget Sound region. And they’re all going to come and go from our backyard, from our next door at the airport. So we’re expanding our ability to talk to them and let them know that there is a there there. And hopefully when they do the draw in December, we’ll have an understanding of which teams, which countries, so that we can tailor those messages in a language that’s easily accessed by them. So that’s kind of the short term. The longer term is to continue to build on our, to build on our trails, to build on the curiously wonderful micro adventures. We’re launching a best of program and we’ll have our first inaugural selection of Best of coming up in February. So we’re continuing to push that out because you’re, I’m sure you’re intrigued when you want to go someplace, well, where is the best burger? Or where is the best taco? And so we’re, we’re helping to facilitate that by creating this best of list.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Mark Everton:
We’re also launching some self guided tours. We found a very cool company that enables you to put tours using geolocation on your phone. So as you’re traversing or following this trail, your phone is updating you on what’s around without distracting you so that you can get ongoing dialogue as you travel down military road and understand more about the history of that or whether you’re wanting to follow the trail of Jimi Hendrix. And it will give you the history of his performances at the Spanish Castle. And oh, so it’s a, it’s an audio tour. But one of the cool things about it is when you stop and your phone realizes you’re no longer moving, it will now show you testimonials and videos and real, real documents relating to whatever the theme is. So we’re madly putting those together as a way again to kind of get a little diversion. Get you when you come out here and you’ve had your two cups of coffee and you’re thinking, what am I going to do now between now and lunch? You’re going to see, oh, hey, here’s, you know, here’s a cool tour that I will be able to go and explore and experience.

Mark Everton:
So I think those are the three things that are kind of top of mind for us at this point.

Scott Cowan:
All right, that’s okay. So you, you said lunch. So you, you just segued into my next of the stock questions. Where should I go for lunch? Where’s a great place for lunch in the area?

Mark Everton:
Well, the, that lunch spot that we talked about earlier, the neighborhood cafe with some Filipino food is very much Filipino comfort food. That’s a great place to go and I think you would enjoy that. The cool thing about the Tukwila, as you’re well aware, it has virtually every restaurant you could possibly think of in a very concentrated area. And there are a couple of restaurants that I frequent that have noodles and noodle bowls. And so I’m pho. Primarily that I’m excited about. So if that’s, if that’s in your wheelhouse, that would be a great opportunity.

Scott Cowan:
Well, as we always, I mean it’s kind of, it’s fall as we’re recording, I think of as I don’t think of it during the summer. And that to me is cooler weather food. So that’s good timing on that.

Mark Everton:
Yeah. So we got a great tool on our website to help you find a place. So it’s kind of a searchable directory based on what your interests are both in crafting microventures. We created a pretty cool opportunity where it asks you, are you? And if I can Scott, I can ask you this question. Do you consider yourself curiously carefree? Are you a self guided globetrotter or are you a wandering wanderer? Which of those three would best describe you?

Scott Cowan:
I think I could wear all three of those hats depending on the day, but let’s do wanderer.

Mark Everton:
So if you think of yourself as a wandering wanderer on our site, there’s an ability for you to identify yourself as that and then ask a couple other questions as far as what are of interest to you. And we will custom put together itinerary for you and give you a bunch of options of things to go and explore micro adventures to do. So it’s a pretty novel way of using AI and using our web resources to be able to give you a better understanding of what you can do in either a matter of minutes or a couple of hours, depending on how much time that you’ve got.

Scott Cowan:
And from a tech stack standpoint, how long have you had this running?

Mark Everton:
It’s I think a little over a year at this point. We’ve tweaked it a couple of times, but I think we launched it just about a year ago. And it’s one of the more popular opportunities, especially when whale watching is in season and the cherry blossoms are blooming. We seem to get an awful lot of people that, that are choosing those as options and we can give them great insight into where to go to find cherry blossoms in our area and also of course the greater Puget Sound area and also about whale watching.

Scott Cowan:
All right, as we kind of wrap this up, I’m on a site here that we haven’t discussed anything about this, so I’m going to put you on the spot. Seattle Southside Savings Pass. What’s going on there?

Mark Everton:
So we’ve kind of taken the old school gold book. I don’t know if you remember that. My mom always had one. She’d buy it from the I don’t know, the high school marching band or the high school football team. And it had coupons in it, lived in our glove box. So whenever, you know, whenever we had to go out and get dinner or, you know, go out and do something, she’d pull out that gold book and she’d say, oh, well, we’re going to Straw Hat or we’re going to Luigi’s because there’s coupons in there. So we’ve kind of taken that same concept and put it in digitalized it so that if you’re here, we both have a Des Moines Savings Pass and also a Seattle Southside Savings Pass. There’s discounts and benefits for using that pass to go to certain stores and restaurants while you’re here in the area.

Scott Cowan:
Mine was, my parents would always get the Discover Book, I think is what it was called. And it was, it was like, that was paper coupons and. But there was also a punch card that you could have. And I just remember as a kid, my dad would, we would go to the place that would never punch the card so you could keep getting the discount over and over again. So those were, those are, you know, wherever that might have been. I don’t. Long time ago and I don’t remember, but I do remember. Or they would buy a couple of the books because, you know, they carefully calculated out that the book, if the book cost, you know, 20 bucks, that they would save $30 at this one restaurant over the next year and they knew they would go there more than that.

Scott Cowan:
So they’d buy two books. You know, it was, you know, all mathematics. Interesting. So that’s interesting. How long is, how long is this?

Mark Everton:
This has been going on for quite a while. This is an ongoing project that we’ve got. It’s difficult, it’s difficult to keep the, the merchants engaged and keep updating it and offering special deals. So there’s, it’s a bit of a labor, it’s a bit of a labor of love to get them to follow through. A lot of times they’re, especially of late, they’re short staffed and kind of myopically focused on today rather than being able to think forward and saying, hey, help us out and let us promote you. So, all right. It’s one of the challenges that we run into.

Scott Cowan:
So you, you’ve been in this job for about five years. This is my last question for you. Once again, I’m blindsiding you with this question. But you. I’m going to paint a little picture. You were down in Oakland and You found yourself being aware that this position was open and it was. You were curious enough to. To investigate it.

Scott Cowan:
And you went through the interview process and ultimately you’re sitting in the chair that you’re sitting in today. What’s the one thing you didn’t expect about this area that you found once you became intimately involved? That makes sense.

Mark Everton:
It does. Coming from Oakland, which I had grown up in the Bay Area and spent decades in and around Oakland, I realized or have known inherently that Oakland was a very diverse city. There are, you know, scores of languages spoken in the Oakland public school. And my folks had lived, when they were alive, had lived up in Laconor. And my dad had always said that, you know, Laconor, Mount Vernon, Skagit Valley area, there’s only, you know, there’s only two nationalities of people. They’re either Norwegian or they’re Swedish. And so that was his, that was his take on it. So I assumed that this would be, you know, I don’t know, northern Minnesota, northern Michigan, like that it would be very white and very.

Mark Everton:
With a lack of diversity. And so I think that’s the thing that has surprised me the most, that when we looking at the diverse nature of the restaurants and of the people that live here, it is incredibly diverse. In fact, I think Seatac may be one of the most diverse cities from a resident standpoint in the state. Their last thing I heard is there’s like well over 100 languages spoken on the Highline public school system.

Scott Cowan:
Wow.

Mark Everton:
The thing that really blew me away is I thought, not by intention, but I kind of expected it to be very, very non diverse and found that it is absolutely the opposite as some of the restaurants we’ve described. You know, it’s. It’s some of the places that I enjoy going to the most. It’s because of the diversity and how. And how well we celebrate it here in the. In this region.

Scott Cowan:
So I have one last question. I prepped you for this, told you I wouldn’t tell you what the question was. You were going to, and you agreed to play along and you promised me that you would answer is a simple question. It may not be easy for you to answer. It may be very easy for you to answer. But here we go. Cake or pie? Why? I.

Mark Everton:
I would go cake.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Mark Everton:
And not your typical cake that, you know, you buy at, you know, a sheet cake that you buy at Costco just because there are so many different varieties of baking techniques that you can incorporate in cakes. So as somebody that watches the great British baking show, they don’t bake a whole lot of pies. They bake an awful lot of cakes. I’ve been enamored and I’m a home bread baker and so I do a lot of bread baking simply because I like playing around with tweaking it and seeing what would. And I think cake is the same way. So I’m, I’m a cake guy.

Scott Cowan:
Is there a particular type of cake?

Mark Everton:
I think I’m gingerbread based more than anything else. I like the, I think I like the spice side of it.

Scott Cowan:
Interesting. Okay, so first off, there’s no right or wrong answer to that question. You were kind of in the middle of the pack as to your, your internal process of picking. You know, some people, it’s like I asked them to, you know, pick their favorite child. Some people are, it’s like it’s cake and you. Everybody else is wrong, you know, and they’re so adamant one way or the other. But in all my times I’ve asked this question, nobody has said gingerbread.

Mark Everton:
Oh, look at that.

Scott Cowan:
Nobody. I mean, but I would say unofficially, and I keep saying this, I keep saying I’m going to go back and calculate all the, all the responses so that I’m no longer guessing. I just haven’t done it. I would say pie is in the lead. Okay. And I would say that apple pie is probably in the lead on pies, which makes sense in this area. Right. But nobody, I do not recall a single person who said gingerbread.

Mark Everton:
Interesting. You know, and it’s funny, you say pie down, down in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. And I haven’t seen it up here. Somebody had a great idea and it’s a, it’s a pie shop that started at a farmer’s market somewhere in the Bay Area. And they, they started putting these freezers in Ace hardware stores. It’s like one of the little freezers that you would normal with a sliding glass top on it. You know, normally it would be filled with like, you know, ice cream, convection, you know, popsicles and stuff. This is filled with pies.

Mark Everton:
And they’re simply, they’re in a pie tin. They’re, they’re pre, you know, they’re, they’re pre made, but they’re raw. You need to bake it for the full, whatever, 45 minutes or whatever. And then they’re kind of shrink wrapped with a, with a, with a sticker on it, so they’re not in a box there.

Scott Cowan:
And.

Mark Everton:
Was working on a project at home and went in early one Saturday morning to the Ace Hardware down the street to go get something. And as I was waiting in line, I looked and it must have been just filled because you barely could get the sliding door closed, it was so full of pies. And I had gone back in on a Sunday afternoon to go, I don’t know, get a drill bit or something. And I looked and it was like maybe 20% full. So in that 48 hour period, they had sold probably 35 or 40 pies and they sell for, I don’t know, 10, 12, 14 bucks a piece. I was blown away. So when you said pie, pie comes out as number one. There’s not a lot of places to get pies anymore, you know, at least in urban areas.

Mark Everton:
Unless you’re really looking for it, right? Or you’re going to buy, you know, something that’s really not all that good, you know, Sarah Lee or, you know.

Scott Cowan:
Something from the grocer’s freezer case. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Everton:
Conagra product or a Nestle product. But these are actually homemade pies like you would find at a farmer’s market or at a, you know, apple festival or something. So, yeah, I think that doesn’t surprise me. The pies are way ahead then.

Scott Cowan:
That’s, that’s interesting. All right. What didn’t we talk about that we should have talked about?

Mark Everton:
We talked about our trails, we talked about. You normally start off by saying that you, you like talking to real and interesting guests. That’s the way you start off most of your, your initial introductory monologue. Have I, have I done that? Have I given you that today? Do you feel I’ve given you the real and the interesting component of it?

Scott Cowan:
Absolutely. And I don’t mean any what have gone. Pick my words very carefully here because I could, I could step on my, my tongue here. Let me, let me put it to you this way. No disperse, no disrespect to Seattle, and no disrespect to Pike Place or the Space Needle. I don’t know how my website and my podcast could in be of value to them. Space Needle has captured the eyeballs of the globe. They don’t need my help.

Scott Cowan:
I did talk to a guy who’s been a bartender at the space for 45 years. I found that to be pretty fascinating.

Mark Everton:
Okay, that it would be.

Scott Cowan:
And I didn’t know that there was a basement in the Space Needle. So, I mean, it was a very interesting conversation, but I don’t go and necessarily seek out large, well defined topics. Hilton Hotels does not need any help from me to talk about one of their. Their locations. I do. So we don’t spend a lot of time focusing on Seattle because Seattle has its well established promotional engine going for the most part. There’s. There’s lots of wonderful little things going on in the city.

Scott Cowan:
Don’t. I understand that. But I love finding out that there’s a coffee trail in Tukwila, that there’s a place I can go try a bubble, bubble tea tasting. It’s SeaTac. I wouldn’t think of these things. Right. I think of SeaTac as the airport. I told you that on the phone.

Scott Cowan:
You know, I told you in my quote unquote, other businesses. I sell real estate and I helped some people sell a condo in SeaTac. And when I went over there, I thought, no, this can’t. You know, I don’t think of SeaTac as a. As a city. I think of it as an airport. So this conversation’s been great because you’ve very nicely shared a lot of interesting, smaller places that I didn’t know about. And I’m going to guess, not that I know everything, because I don’t.

Scott Cowan:
But if I don’t know about it, I’m going to guess most of my guess. And certainly my friend Renee, who lives in Renton, is going to know way more than he did before. He listens to this episode. Right.

Mark Everton:
And.

Scott Cowan:
And I like that. That’s what I like. You’ve been great at sharing what’s going on in the communities and what your organization is doing. I like the fact that I’m getting the impression you haven’t come out and said it, but I get the impression that the emphasis is on helping your smaller businesses gather awareness. I like that.

Mark Everton:
I like that a lot.

Scott Cowan:
And so, yes, this has been very enjoyable for me and I genuinely am looking forward to coming over to my friend Renee’s picking him up, and we’ll go try coffee and bubble tea in SeaTac and Des Moines and Tukwila.

Mark Everton:
Wonderful. We’ll reach it. Reach out. I’ll join you.

Scott Cowan:
Oh, that. I will take you up on that. That would be. That would be absolutely lovely. But so is there anything else? I mean, I don’t think so.

Mark Everton:
I think you’ve done a really good job today, kind of covering everything that. Well, one thing we didn’t talk about.

Scott Cowan:
There is one thing we didn’t talk about. And we didn’t. We really. We kind of. We. We touched on it. And you mentioned the BMX thing, but you have a pro rugby team in.

Mark Everton:
Tukwila.

Scott Cowan:
From an economic standpoint, how do they impact that area?

Mark Everton:
Professional rugby is really interesting and it’s a huge benefit for us from a couple of reasons. From pure economic benefit, it brings people starfire. The facility that they use holds about 4,000 people, 3,500, something like that, in the stadium where the pitch is and the matches, predominantly on the weekends, bring people to come early and especially it’s very kid friendly. This isn’t, you know, this isn’t Sea Wolves where you’re, or Seahawks where you’re, you know, buying $150 tickets. So you’re not, you know, you’re not bringing the three or four year old. In this case, you are because tickets are very reasonably priced and it’s a fun environment and there’s fun things to do. So they’re coming to the Tukwila area and they’re spending time doing family friendly things and spending money, which is great economic benefit. The other thing that’s cool is all the visiting teams stay in Tukwila.

Mark Everton:
It’s part of the requirement of Major League Rugby. So the home team home hosts the visiting team. And part of our agreement from a sponsorship standpoint is that everybody has to be housed in Tukwila. And the new players and the signings that they bring on for the Seawolves, they also stay in the community until they’re able to get established and get an apartment or share a house or whatever they’re doing. So we can look at that direct economic benefit of having those hundreds of rooms being filled by the visiting team members and coaching staff and training staff and media that come with them. So those are all very positive. And then the other side of it is that we’ve reached out and are promoting the Tukwella region to the visiting teams. And when we first did this sponsorship and we reached out to Major League Rugby and said, hey, we want to start talking to the people in Columbus, Ohio or in Dallas or in New Jersey that are supporting their team and may be coming out here or happen to be out here.

Mark Everton:
And they, they, they realize that their team is going to be playing in the Tukwila area. We want to communicate with them and let them know that they’re welcome and encourage them to come stay with us. And don’t stay in, you know, Bellevue or downtown, but to stay near, you know, near the pitch. And Major League Rugby was, I don’t know, somebody in their headquarters shook their head and said, you know, Tukwila wants to talk to people in Columbus, Ohio and in New Jersey And Las Vegas. Yeah, we do. We want to encourage them to come out and visit the games. We want to give them a discount. We worked out a visitor discount package, ticket package for the Seawolves so that they could come out at a discounted price.

Mark Everton:
And we put together kind of itineraries and packages for them to come out and stay in the hotels. So it’s great to host a team. You know, you and I have talked, talked a little bit on our call about sports and kind of some of the minor leagues and some of the semi pro teams and I think it’s good because all of them are good because they give the community an identity and they give them something beyond just the 4th of July parade for them to be interested in and proud of. Whether it’s the Walla Walla Sweets or whether it’s the, you know, whether it’s the, you know, Kent Thunderbirds hockey team or, you know, whether it’s our Seawolves.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, I agree. And you know, as, especially as the pro sports, you know, the Seahawks, the Mariners have gotten pretty darn expensive and it’s hard to take your family, you know, family of four to a Seahawks games. I could spend a thousand bucks pretty easily and not have. I would not be on the field. You know, I would. That would not be the most luxurious experience. It would be. Be a very nice experience, but not.

Scott Cowan:
Not. And so the Sea Wolves. The storm. Is it the rain. The.

Mark Everton:
Correct.

Scott Cowan:
The. Oh gosh, I’m sorry. The Ballard Ballard. Ballard FC in the USL2 soccer. There’s a team in Olympia, the Tacoma Stars. This second tier, if you will of pro sports are. I think they’re very important to the community. I think the Tacoma Star is actually playing Kent now.

Scott Cowan:
I don’t think they actually playing in Tacoma anymore. The point is, is that a family can afford to go the inter. The they can cheer on and get to know the players and build that connection. Whether it’s a rugby, a rugby player or if it’s, you know, the starting quarterback for the Seahawks. And I think it’s. I think those dollars impact our communities in very good ways. And I agree with you. I do like the fact that all these once again, no disrespect to Seattle, but Walla Walla, Yakima, all these places that have summer collegiate ball, the.

Scott Cowan:
The fish sticks there in. In white setter.

Mark Everton:
Right.

Scott Cowan:
You know, that’s all very important to our region. I think it’s important to the community and to building a sense of identity around, around the region.

Mark Everton:
And I agree, you know, and I come from a. When I first took over Visit Oakland, we had three professional teams. We had the Raiders, the A’s and the Warriors. And near the end of my tenure there, we, we had none. Right. So three professional teams to had moved. Well, one moved to Vegas, one moved across the bay into San Francisco because the investors built them a new arena to play in and the other one’s playing in the huge megalopolis of West Seattle. So it’s, you know, is, is Oakland any of the worst for that? No, I honestly don’t think they are.

Mark Everton:
Are they better because they’ve got some teams that were overshadowed that can now come out of the shadows and be able to build like the Ballers and some of the other teams is, are they better off because they’ve got that. I think they are actually. You know, I’m not an economist, so I can’t do the whole economic spreadsheet on the value of a professional team versus not. But, but anecdotally having a small semi pro community based organization that’s being supported by the community, I think pays dividends for, for our kids and for the community.

Scott Cowan:
I do. I do as well. Well, Mark, I appreciate your time. This was extremely informative for me. I learned a lot, which is the whole purpose of me having this podcast is selfishly I get to learn things. Thank you again and best of luck and continued success to, you know, the, the region and that and that the Seattle south side continues to go. I’m going to, we’ll put some links in the show notes here to people so they can cheat and just click right on the link and go look at things. I’m going to encourage us to check out those micro adventures and next time we, next time you go to the mall or the airport, plan a little extra time before or after and go look around.

Mark Everton:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Scott for giving me this opportunity. It was great to meet you and chat with you.