Sunday’s mass shooting at the Bite of Seattle on the Seattle Center campus has refocused attention on the city’s decades-long challenge of keeping massive festivals open and accessible but also secure.
The shooting, which left three dead and injured at least four, including a toddler, sent festivalgoers and vendors fleeing for cover.
“This is our first (Bite of Seattle), and our last,” said vendor Martin Coon, who dropped everything and evacuated after the shooting.
In the aftermath of the chaos, vendors, attendees and members of the public questioned whether event organizers and Seattle Center, a public campus run by a city department of the same name, had adequate security measures for one of the center’s most popular annual events.
The shooting has also left people asking what steps might be needed to ensure the 44-year-old Seattle tradition can continue — and even whether a free, open festival is still feasible. These questions come as the city prepares for Seafair Weekend Festival, which starts Friday. Seafair is a gated event with security screening at every entry point and is fully ticketed Saturday and Sunday.
“It breaks my heart to say this, but I think it can’t be free anymore,” said restaurateur Natalie Lindsay-Maylor, owner of Seattle-based Pie Bar and former Bite of Seattle vendor.
Given the security risks, Lindsay-Maylor said, “you have to have a paid event (so you can) spend extra money on police or security.”
The Bite of Seattle began in 1982, at Green Lake Park with a few dozen vendors and a first-year attendance of 75,000. It now markets itself as Seattle’s largest free-admission festival, drawing more than 280,000 people last year with hundreds of food vendors, as well as dozens of performers.
But the continued popularity of the Bite, as it’s known, comes as Seattle Center faces major challenges: Rising costs, aging campus infrastructure, uncertain funding and, now, questions about its security arrangements.
Julie Christine and Kevin Wang, CEO and COO respectively of FoodieLand, the California-based event group that acquired the Bite of Seattle in 2024, did not respond to email and phone call requests for comment.
But according to publicly available contracts between Seattle Center and event producers, including the Bite of Seattle, security at Seattle Center is a shared effort between center staff, festival producers and the Seattle Police Department.
Producers of events like the Bite of Seattle must submit a security plan, which includes recommendations from the city’s police and fire departments, to be approved by Seattle Center.
For example, under a contract with the previous Bite of Seattle producer apparently valid through 2027, organizers agree to jointly assess security staffing needs with Seattle Center staff, and maintain the agreed-upon level of security in the plan at all times during the festival. Seattle police decide how many of the department’s on-duty personnel are necessary for event security.
The Seattle Police Department and Seattle Center did not respond Monday to questions about staffing and security decisions.
Freely accessible, non-ticketed events including PrideFest and NorthwestFolklife Festival, which are among Seattle Center’s most popular festivals, don’t typically check bags or send people through metal detectors and security check points the way ticketed, fenced events like Bumbershoot do.
But in the wake of the shooting Sunday night, multiple people said they were shocked by the lack of security.
Caleb Mitchell, a Seattle resident and artist, said he was surprised to find no security checkpoint or metal detector when he attended Bite of Seattle on Friday.
“It immediately just felt off,” said Mitchell, who on Saturday posted a video on social media criticizing the event’s security. “I would just expect there would be more protocol, as far as protecting an area so toured.”
While personal videos of the shooting and aftermath went viral, Seattle Center has no CCTV cameras that connect to the police department’s Real-Time Crime Center.
As of Monday morning, there appeared to be no surveillance cameras installed along or near the perimeter of the Armory building, except for one affixed to an overhang outside the nearby Chihuly Garden and Glass museum, about one block away from the shooting scene.
This isn’t the first time Seattle has grappled with security challenges at the Bite of Seattle and other public festivals, where the very openness and accessibility that make these events so appealing also make security extra difficult.
The Bite moved to the Seattle Center in 1986 and has grown into a festival drawing hundreds of thousands of people.
But those crowds sometimes also attracted unwanted attendees, including suspected gang members, according to police and media reports.
In 1998, gunfire from an altercation touched off a melee with more than 1,000 people that resulted in arrests and injuries to police.
In 2006, a 16-year-old boy was reportedly shot near Seattle Center around the time the festival was closing for the day.
Other festivals and public events in Seattle have also faced security problems, including at the center. In 2008, a shooting at the Folklife Festival injured several people, and a shooting there in 2012 left one person injured.
After each case, city and center officials struggled to find a way to prevent such violence without curbing the energy of a popular event.
After the 1998 Bite of Seattle incident, some called for the festival to charge admission as a way of filtering out troublemakers.
But Seattle Center officials rejected that idea, noting that when the festival had charged a $3 admission in the mid-1990s, “crowds dropped from about 200,000 to 110,000 people,” according to a report in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Greg Nickels, who served as Seattle mayor from 2002 through 2009, says the city was constantly trying to balance the need for security with the desire to maintain an inviting festival atmosphere.
He said the city dealt with a number of security incidents related to festivals during his tenure, including a murder and sexual violence at a Mardi Gras celebration in 2001 and a mass shooting on Capitol Hill in 2006 that left seven dead.
Nickels conceded there were no easy fixes. Efforts to curb shootings by banning concealed weapons ran into questions around whether those bans are constitutional.
Similarly, efforts to boost security by adding screening or reducing the number of entry points also come with consequences.
One high-profile example of that is the Gorge, where security was stepped up after a fatal 2023 shooting in the site’s campground during the Beyond Wonderland festival. According to some fans, those measures, coupled with inadequate staffing, led to hourslong wait times at a recent concert.
Many festival organizers are weighing similar questions.
“We hear from our fellow event producers that people want more security,” said Egan Orion, organizer of PrideFest, the Seattle Center’s one-day LGBTQ+ celebration that usually attracts more than 100,000 visitors. “And then when more security is put in place, they have to wait in long lines and are annoyed by waiting in long lines and complain about it. So there’s definitely a balancing act.”
Orion said it wasn’t out of the question that more security measures and infrastructure could be in store for next year. “Safety and security changes over time to respond to vulnerabilities and threats,” Orion said.
Earlier editions of PrideFest Capitol Hill, for example, didn’t have the robust vehicle denial security setup it now does. With the recent deadly van attack at Pride festivities in Berlin in addition to Sunday’s tragic events, those changes are especially front of mind.
Some businesses near Seattle Center said the violence is atypical for the neighborhood, but they fear it could become more common.
Miguel Gaspar was working behind the bar at nearby Agave Cocina & Tequila when he saw a stampede of people run into the restaurant’s open doors Sunday night, crouching behind the restaurant bar and crowding into the bathroom.
“Definitely it would be nice if we had more security around,” he said, noting the nearby Seattle Center is home to a number of popular events like Bumbershoot. “If it happens once, it will probably happen again.”
Nickels said the most successful deterrent for festivals and other public events is a heavy police presence.
After the 2001 Mardi Gras violence, the city changed its security tactics to boost the visibility of police officers “in the crowds,” Nickels said.
“We weren’t in riot gear. We were welcoming people, letting them know that they were welcome to have a good time, but there would be zero tolerance for violence, and we found that to be very effective,” he said.
In 2008, the state Department of Corrections and Seattle Police said they patrolled Bite of Seattle and the Seafair Torchlight Parade looking for felons and parolees violating the terms of their parole, The Seattle Times reported.
But Tim Burgess, a former police officer, City Council member and mayor, worries such tactics are much more difficult today, given the Seattle Police Department’s staffing problems.
Those realities may increase pressure for more automated security, including more security cameras.
According to former city officials, the city did not regard Seattle Center as a priority for additional surveillance cameras during a 2024 push to modernize police technology.
“We wanted to add CCTV cameras in places in the city that had three types of crime: gun violence, human trafficking and persistent felony crimes that were anchored at specific locations,” said Burgess, who advised then-Mayor Bruce Harrell on the modernization policy.
“Seattle Center did not qualify, and that’s good news,” Burgess said, adding that “Seattle Center is generally a very safe place.”
“Of course this event will heighten fear and make folks question what could or should have been done,” said Reese Tanimura, Northwest Folklife’s managing director, stressing that Seattle Center and its event producers engage in multiple strategies and layers of safety and emergency planning.
“But the whole point of having events that are open to all to attend is to increase the opportunities for connection and community care,” Tanimura said.
Seattle Times reporters Catalina Gaitán, Lauren Girgis and Angela Lim contributed to this report.