Washington state has a pickle of a sport: Today So Far

• Pickleball will soon be Washington's official state sport, and there's already plenty of support for the game.
• Starbucks employees in Seattle approve a union.
• King County Council considers forming a public concrete operation.
• Pierce County will pay $4 million to the family of Manuel Ellis.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for March 23, 2022.

I recently took a walk around Green Lake and noticed a lot of folks on the tennis courts, but they weren't playing tennis. They were playing pickleball which has grown ever more popular in recent years — so much that pickleball will soon be Washington's official state sport.

The game was invented on Bainbridge Island in the 1960s at the home of Joel Pritchard (Congress member and former Washington lieutenant governor) to cure some family boredom. Since then, it has grown into a significant sport with national and international associations. Much of the gear is purchased through Pickle-Ball Inc. over in Kent. When Gov. Jay Inslee eventually puts his signature to the recently-passed pickelball bill, Washington will become the 16th state to have an official sport. And as Northwest News Network's Tom Banse reports, there is a thriving community to support it, which includes professional players living off of tournament winnings.

Employees at a Seattle Starbucks store have voted to approve a union. The Starbucks at Denny and Broadway on Capitol Hill is the first unionized location on the West Coast. In other worker-related news, there's an idea floating around the King County Council to solve the conflict between workers and concrete companies — King County Public Concrete. The idea is not yet cemented and is only being considered by the council. The public concrete operation would be owned by the government, and bypass a lot of the issues that are currently stalling negotiations and construction projects throughout the region. However, given the time it would take to move this through the government, and then get it up and running, this solution would be more relevant to the next holdup.

Pierce County is going to pay $4 million to the family of Manuel Ellis to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought by Ellis' family. Ellis was killed in March 2020 after officers held him down and put him in a chokehold before placing a spit hood over his head. The county medical examiner later concluded that Ellis died from a lack of oxygen during the interaction and that his death was a homicide. Eyewitnesses said that officers approached Ellis while he was walking home after buying doughnuts and a bottle of water. A lawsuit against the city of Tacoma and Tacoma police officers is still ongoing.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Staff of the Owl and Thistle bar in Seattle's Pioneer Square. With pandemic precautions easing up, it's one business that is hoping for a good year ahead. (Joshua McNichols / KUOW)

DID YOU KNOW?

There are a few theories for where the word "OK" came from. But I've always felt that this one was, well, OK.

The very first time "OK" was documented was March 23, 1839 in The Boston Morning Post. One historical source notes that the hip youth of the 1830s, particularly the witty intellectual crowd, thought it was quite fun and smart to intentionally misspell words. Basically, if those kewl kids could see our modern times, they would likely think Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" would be a work of comedic genius.

They took a common term, "all correct," and intentionally misspelled it as "oll korrect," which was eventually shortened to OK. Another version was turning "all right" into "oll wright." But OK became so popular that it ended up in the newspaper and has stuck with us ever since.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

In a reversal, the Taliban bars Afghan girls from attending school beyond 6th grade

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers decided against opening schools to girls above the sixth grade, reneging on a previous promise and opting to appease their hardline base at the expense of further alienating the international community.

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