They were partying like it’s 1999 again last Friday when another WTO protest march took place. This one didn’t directly connote the anniversary of the Seattle trade-meeting debacle but rather noted this year’s meeting in Qatar, a land that doesn’t let such foolishness as freedom or democracy get in the way of making deals and bucks.

Of course, here in the U.S. it’s quite harder these days to demonize something with “World Trade” in its name, without giving an audience all sorts of other unfortunate memories. Thus the banner proclaiming WTC and WTO to be equally disastrous. The rest of the visuals in the march rehashed common protest topics not directly related to word trade (the Iraq sanctions, the drug war, and, of course, Mumia Abu-Jamal).

They’ve torn down the Flag Plaza Pavilion at Seattle Center. Another of the Center’s dwindling inventory of 1962 World’s Fair buildings, it hosted everything from cat shows and rave parties to the touring King Tut artifact show. Bulldozers are now at work preparing the lot for the replacement, Fisher Pavilion (KOMO’s parent company bought the naming rights).

The comforting sights of the Standard Time rainy season in the great PacNW include those of kids defiantly playing at the Center’s International Fountain and a Metro bus’s unwiped windshield portion glistening in another vehicle’s taillight.