joybra.com, via seattlepi.com

• Dept. of Things You Never Knew You Needed: UW business students have designed a bra with a pocket for an iPhone.
• Seattle’s (the nation’s? the world’s?) longest running serialized stage play, the Asian American-centric Sex in Seattle series, ends after 12 years with episode 20, opening this weekend.
• Amazon’s quarterly profits are 35 percent lower than a year ago. To Wall Street, that’s seen as good news somehow.
• The Sacramento Kings’ arena deal is apparently dead. The team might or might not be put up for sale any week now. Seattle has a wannabe majority owner, a perfectly functional arena, and the land and initial plans for a new arena.
• Vancouver punk legend Joey “Shithead” Kiethley sez he’ll run next year for a seat in B.C.’s provincial legislature. He’s done this twice before, on Green Party tickets. But this time he’ll run on the ticket of the New Democrats (Canada’s official national “opposition” party). He’s putting into practice his old motto, “Talk – Action = Zero.”
• Gay Divorcee Dept.: A B.C. judge has ruled that a split-up lesbian couple has to split their jointly owned sperm-bank deposit.
• Are outspoken homophobes really gay but suppressing it? All I know is for me, other men’s bodies are like eggplant casseroles. I don’t wanna eat ’em but I don’t mind if you do.
• Will the Arab world need a full-scale “cultural revolution” before women have rights there?
• Nutella: not as “healthy” as some consumers apparently thought.
• The story about Egypt legalizing sex between widowers and their dead wives? A complete hoax.
• In an interview promoting her new film Hysteria (about the first electric sex tools for women and the “medical” excuses advertised for them), Maggie Gyllenhaal talks about why there are so few emotionally powerful sex scenes in U.S. movies. My theory: Most sex scenes in mainstream films are escapist in nature. Many serve as breaks from the plot, like the songs in many musicals. These include scenes choreographed to emphasize the woman’s responses. To use such a scene to reveal a character’s personality, emotions, and vulnerabilities, to show a female character with her sense of public decorum stripped away, is a rare feat.
• Did Romney only tell 10 major lies last week?

The renovation (read: upscaling) of the old Food Circus in Seattle Center’s Center House had one sad, unpublicized aspect.

The project pushed out the last Pizza Haven.

It was an unsung end to a company founded in 1958 by Ron Bean (son of Pay n’ Save Drug/Lamonts Apparel mogul Lamont Bean).

It started with a single dine-in location on University Way and a home delivery operation (the first of its kind around here). Instead of baking pies to order, Pizza Haven’s trucks originally cruised around with pre-made inventory in warming ovens, ready to go wherever radio dispatch operators sent them.

At its peak the chain had 42 outlets down as far as northern California, and even franchises in Russia and the Middle East. It had a cute cartoon “Mr. Pizza” mascot, and fun TV commercials with angels welcoming you to “Haven—Pizza Haven, the place all good pizza eaters go when they’re hungry.”

Then Domino’s came to town, and Pizza Hut added delivery-only stores.

Pizza Haven repositioned itself into slice stands in mall food courts. But fiscal troubles continued.

The chain declared bankruptcy in 1997. The following year, every branch except Center House closed.

Bean tried to relaunch Pizza Haven in 2001, but it didn’t get off the ground.

The Center House slice stand continued for another decade, feeding the tourists and the local old-timers who’d grown up with the brand.

Until now.

will deluxe junk's giant plastic hot dog become homeless?

• On the heels of the development threat against the Bauhaus block on Capitol Hill, now comes another funky institution in danger. Deluxe Junk, a second hand furnishings and curios store, is the heart n’ soul of the Fremont district. It was just given an eviction notice by its landlords of 34 years, the Doric Masonic lodge upstairs from it.
• Is it the name? The phallic symbolism? Or just the taste? Whatever the reason, China (heart)s our geoducks!
• Seth Kolloen at The SunBreak analyzes local sports marketing: “The Sounders are a Mac, the Mariners are a PC.”
• C’mon guys! Somebody’s gotta want Beacon Hill’s PacMed building!
• What could be Puget Sound’s third major “economic cluster“? How about novelty gifts? Fringe theatre? Heck, let’s take over the music and film industries from their respective obsolete old guards?
• Today we might learn who won the auctions for the state liquor stores.
• One of the last remnants of Regrade Park’s pre-dog-park incarnation, the “Gyro Jack” sculpture, is under attack by some park users.
• While the media weren’t looking (or were obsessed with their own declines), arts employment in the U.S. has taken a severe nosedive.
• Update #1: The U.S. nuns whom the Vatican wants to censure or even disband because they spend their time caring about poor people instead of hating gays? They refuse to be shut up.
• Update #2: A few days ago we discussed the studio-imposed need for all movie theaters to acquire costly digital projection gear, and the trouble smaller operators might have affording it. Here’s one way they could. Fans of one mom-and-pop theater in little Harmony, Minn. organized a big $75,000 fund drive so their beloved local cinema could go digital. (The author of the above piece also has a long background article about the rise of digital cinema after almost two decades of hype.)

via 'what makes the pie shops tick' at flickr.com

• Today’s the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair’s opening day. It’s time to celebrate, especially for those of us who, way back then, fully expected the world to still be here now, and who hoped and dreamed for a glorious future. (And I for one am glad there aren’t flying cars now. You want drunk or out-of-gas amateur drivers plummeting from the sky?)
• The original QFC supermarket on Roosevelt Way will not live to see the chain’s 50th anniversary next year. It closes May 12, doomed by the light-rail expansion. (The store itself began in 1955 as a Thriftway franchise; in 1963 it merged with five other area stores to form QFC.)
• The fungus among us is dangerous to whales.
• Why did the Catholic hierarchy order the (virulently anti-gay) Seattle archbishop to “overhaul” (i.e., censure and punish and perhaps even disband) an association of U.S. nuns? Because these sisters are doing it for themselves. They’re speaking out against the church’s sexism and homophobia, and against its role in the right-wing war on women.
• Petitioners promise they’ll get enough signatures to put gay marriage repeal on Washington’s November ballot.
• Desmond Tutu used the power of faith to help end one of the most brutal regimes in the “civilized” world. Yet some wingnuts say that doesn’t qualify him to speak at Gonzaga’s commencement.
• Here’s more proof of how one-percenty Wash. state’s tax structure really is.
• From Afghanistan to Seattle: Here come the law-enforcement unmanned drone airplanes.
• From the Tenants’ Union of Washington State, Jonathan Grant claims 27,000 people in Seattle live in below-code, substandard rental units, constituting Seattle’s own “second city.”
• Ex-Sasquatch Books publisher Chad Haight, like many publishers, is bitchin’ about Amazon. But even before the days of “E-tail,” he recalls, publishers were already getting squeezed by the big bookstore chains, with their abusive return policies and their promotional-consideration demands. As we mentioned yesterday, corporations in any industry will do whatever seems best for their immediate bottom lines. One of the problems of this is myopic short-term thinking. In any long-term view, big book and e-book sellers need to help keep their suppliers alive and well.
• Joshua Holland at AlterNet avers that the real defenders of freedom and liberty are those who fight against the far right.

one of rob vasquez's many out-of-print 45s, via aarongilbreath.wordpress. com

(No snickering jokes from this corner about a certain three-digit number.)

• A pair of my ol’ punk era acquaintances have nice write ups. You may have already seen the Seattle Times profile of former Showbox impresario and current ACT Theatre honcho (and all around nice guy) Carlo Scandiuzzi. You may not have seen Aaron Gilbreath’s loving tribute to one of the scene’s greatest unsung guitarists, Rob Vasquez.
• And here’s one of Seattle’s smartest writers, Neal Stephenson, on the need for science fiction to relate to readers’ present-day real lives. (Update: Link now fixed.)
• For such a small, efficiently laid out building, could the legendary 5 Point bar/cafe really have a heretofore undiscovered secret room?
• There are several other lying memoirists out there. What makes Greg (Three Cups of Tea) Mortenson different? He used his allegedly partly-made-up book to raise $62 million for his own charity, money he’s accused of mismanaging and misspending.
• Starbucks is removing crushed-bug-based red dye from its strawberry-flavored cold drinks. (But that contributed half the nutritional value!)
• John Urquhart, who’s running for King County Sheriff, used to be the department’s PR guy. As such, he issued several interesting press releases.
• The city’s apparently afraid of another Occupy situation. It won’t let Real Change put up tents in Westlake Park to protest insufficient help for the homeless. Not even unoccupied “prop” tents.
• Greenpeace has a point about Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple opening server farms fed by coal and nuclear power. This “clean tech” takes an awful lot of electricity.

anti-riaa ad from the electronic frontier foundation; via university of texas

Two reasons why Hilary Rosen, Ann Romney’s recent verbal sparring partner, should not be considered a spokesperson for the Obama campaign or for any “progressive” thing:

(1) She became a PR shill for BP, post-gulf-spill.

(2) and most important: She infamously headed the Recording Industry Association of America during the start of that outfit’s notorious “anti-piracy” extremism.

Rosen didn’t just shut down Napster and Audiogalaxy. She fostered the music-industry lobby group’s policy of punitive aggression in the name of the Almighty Intellectual Property.

After she left the RIAA, the staff she’d hired served all those ridiculous suits for ridiculous sums against lowly individual file-sharers—and against some individuals who’d never shared a file in their lives.

Elsewhere in randomland:

• Talk about going dangerously mainstream: The Stranger won a Pulitzer Prize. (It’s actually for a good piece, the one about the survivor of the South Park killer.) (Oh, the Seattle Times won one of those Pulitzer things too.)
• Financial-software giant Intuit is celebrating Tax Day by closing part of Second Avenue downtown and (as per GeekWire) “inviting people to drive golf balls down the middle of the street.”
• Neither gubernatorial candidate has so far dared to even mention this state’s #1 need: to reform our ultra-regressive revenue system.
• There’s a new local news site in town. The nonprofit Seattle Globalist is all about the intersections between here at home and the whole wide world. The ethnic communities; the local impact of world events; world culture (film, food, anime, etc.). The site’s got a launch party on the 28th at Washington Hall.
• A sports analyst says the Mariners are “ripe to be sold,” should the team’s current owners decide to sell (which they haven’t).
• Here’s one more thing some folks are bitching at Amazon about: its membership (along with many other big corps) in ALEC, the notorious right-wing pressure group that supplies GOP state legislators with pre-written, megabuck-lobbyist-dictated bills. (It also files “friend of the court” briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases.)
• Just Plain Gross Dept.: The next stage in crash dieting is women who voluntarily live on feeding tubes for up to 10 days.
• Margaret Atwood claims “our faith is fraying in the god of money.”
• Alex Henderson at AlterNet believes America would be much better off, in several quantifiable ways, if the country could just shake off its “sexual prudery.” Some of these ways, he claims, would include lowered rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, and HIV infections.

artist's rendering; via kiro-tv

• Millions in the making, the big Seattle waterfront roller coaster is finally on the way! Estimated opening: July 4th.
• You all need to read Judy Lightfoot’s piece at Crosscut about people forced to live in their vehicles at highway rest stops—even people with full time jobs.
• On a related note, the state’s (official) jobless rate has dropped just enough to disqualify the state’s unemployed from 26 weeks’ worth of extended benefits.
• The state’s finances, services, and basic sense of humanity are swirling down the drain. Tim Eyman, of course, doesn’t give a shit.
• Dept. of Correction: It turns out public breastfeeding is already legal in Wash. state. Yesterday’s “Random Links” piece implied otherwise.
• Queen Anne Books has got itself a lucky new owner.
• It’s official: there’s a whooping cough epidemic in our state.
• Seattle Center asked the public for input on new public-space designs for the place. Only they announced it on Tuesday with a deadline of Wednesday. And we’re asked to choose between three plans, all designed by out-of-state firms, and all reeking of “world class” emotional coldness.
• Three deserving local theatre troupes will get to share the performance space at the bottom of a new mixed-use development on Capitol Hill.
• Who doesn’t look at a bizarre press release issued on April 1 with at least a little skepticism? The Puget Sound Business Journal, that’s who. (The hoax was from Ivar’s, announcing a 100-flavor chowder dispenser to rival the Coca-Cola Freestyle pop machine.)
• The Mariners are acting all NIMBY-y about getting a basketball/hockey arena next door.
• As the Seattle Times finishes up its recounting of every complaint anyone’s got against Amazon (including some pretty serious allegations), labor advocacy group Working Washington is inviting people to register their own snark on the etailer’s sales page for a “Fair Share Pie Cutter.”
• Despite the plethora of comic book-based movies and related merch, actual comic book sales have collapsed in recent years (even more than newspapers). But one reviewer sees a ray of hope emerging amidst the pall of gloom. It’s the new higher-res iPad.
• Just declassified and in hot demand, it’s all the data from the 1940 Census.
• Celebrity-snark writer Dustin Rowles depicts sitcom has-been Kirk Cameron as a complete douchebag, albeit one of the pseudo-Christian rather than the regular Hollywood variety.
• Morley Safer snarks at the bigtime art world. New York mag’s Jerry Saltz snarks back.
• Your daily dose of political outrage: Paul Buchheit at Buzzflash lists some “preposterous but persistent conservative myths;” Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info lists 40 particularly disgusting quotes by GOP politicos demonstrating the “values Republicans want to destroy America with;” and Laura Clawson at Daily Kos recounts the utter failure of a particularly dorky would be right-wing sting operation against a commuity organizing group.
• And let’s all get ready for Easter with (direct from the Betty Crocker Kitchens) the original “Bunny Butt Cake.”

sherriequilt.blogspot.com

• Arts consultant Colleen Dilenschneider believes museums need to stop depending on huge blockbuster shows and do more to build regular day-to-day audiences.
• Sorry to say, but the Village Green Nursery in West Seattle isn’t out of the underwater-mortgage woods yet.
• It took a year-long special investigation to determine that no, an instructional assistant at a Seattle elementary school did not kiss a student’s foot.
• Sometimes whole swaths of the universe can coalesce at a single moment, such as a meeting on whether to allow a McDonald’s at Sea-Tac Airport.
• Here are more pix of the new 520 bridge, images that are far prettier than the real thing will ever be.
• And here’s a pic of the new Capitol Hill mixed-use project with live-theater spaces on the ground floor, an image far prettier than that real thing will ever be.
• The bid to keep the NBA’s Kings in Sacramento (and hence out of Seattle) has hit a few snags; while a new developer has a new arena scheme, that would be built on land he doesn’t own and isn’t for sale.
• State Sen. Val Stevens, tireless opponent of gay rights and corporate-lobbyist suckup extraordinaire, is retiring. Fun fact: Stevens used to be a director of ALEC, the infamous megabucks lobby group that supplies right-wing state legislators across the country with pre-written extremist legislation.
• Syndrome of the day: Now you’re supposed to worry about yourself if you keep too many files on your computer.
• Jim Hightower has more details about the right wing war against the Post Office.
• James Silver at the Atlantic claims perhaps 1 in 10 Wall Street operatives is a “psychopath.”
• The story of a movie song, and the need to acquire the right to its use, is a tale that meanders through Iran, France, Portugal, Florida, Connecticut, a leaking boat, and the cast of As the World Turns, until it stops with a retired female airline pilot.
• We close with fun ’60s pop-star collage covers from 16 magazine.

via boingboing.net

a&p store in wallingford, circa 1938; via pauldorpat.com

My former employers at the Stranger have come out with a new ad-heavy arts quarterly. Its title: Seattle A&P (for “Art and Performance”).

It gives me an excuse to discuss one of my personal obsessions, with the company known as A&P (its official name: The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company).

It was once the largest grocery chain in America. At its peak it essentially owned the food biz east of the Rockies, and also had outposts in Seattle and L.A.

It was even considered a dire threat to the existence of small business.

But after decades of mismanagement, the brand today only exists in the New York suburbs. (The company also owns five other Northeast regional chains acquired over the years.)

The last Seattle A&P stores were sold or closed in 1974. The largest single batch of these selloffs (five stores) went to QFC, forming a major jump in that chain’s drive toward local dominance.

ap photo via newstimes.com

• At the time of this writing, the Seattle Mariners are in first place as the winningest team in Major League Baseball! (This may be subject to change by the time you read this.)
• In other sporting news, the Husky men’s basketball team valiantly lost its NIT semifinal game in overtime; thus tying for the status of this year’s 71st best college team.
• You might be able to ski on the Fourth of July around here this year.
• Two years in the making, the downtown Target is set to finally open on July 29.
• Metro Transit’s downtown Ride Free Area ends two months after that.
• Meanwhile, Washington’s first food-only Walmart store is about to open at an ex-Kmart site in Bellevue.
• One-third of all homes sold in King County these days are sold for all cash (i.e., to speculators or rental operators).
• An Army PR guy says Joint Base Lewis-McChord is “not having any issues that other Army bases aren’t having, too.”
• This is from October but still fascinating—an in-depth look at the Columbia River, its watershed, its hydroelectric industry, its fishery, and the people who try to balance the needs of each.
• Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon would really like you to know there really are non-wingnut Christians out there.
• The rumored Apple-branded TV set is still just a rumor. But Farhad Manjoo at Slate reports that Microsoft’s XBox already brings the magic of online streaming-video search to TV sets.
• Slate also has a fond remembrance to the inventor of the frozen bagel and a handy guide to Quebeçois cuss words.
• Now we know why Bud, Miller, and Coors all sold out to foreigners. Light-beer sales are in a nosedive, perhaps a permanent one.
• John Cassidy at the New Yorker claims the right-wing assault on health care reform, as seen this week at the Supreme Court, is “a very bad joke.”

• As a treat for those of you who actually read these things (and I know there are at least a few of you out there), here’s the original version of the song that was at the center of last night’s Mad Men season premiere. It’s “Zou Bisou Bisou.” It was originally recorded in 1960 by Gillian Hills. One of the stars of the French “ye ye” genre, she also appeared in the landmark British films Beat Girl, Blow Up, and A Clockwork Orange.
• Questionable medical study of the day: Somebody says regularly eating chocolate can make you thinner.
• Here’s the site for the folks who want to bring the Seattle monorail project back from the dead. (By sticking with the previous monorail proponents’ planned Ballard to West Seattle route, they’re also inheriting its high cost, requiring two major all-new bridges.)
• Here’s WashDOT’s CGI video of how the new 520 bridge will look. Without, you know, the highway noise or smell.
• And here’s what Amazon’s proposed three new high rises would look like.
• “Unemployed Nation” is a series of “hearings,” in which the mayor, city council, and others will “listen to the men and women who have lost their livelihoods and more.” The sessions are Friday afternoon at the UW’s Kane Hall and Saturday afternoon at City Hall.
• There’s a new site up helping locals find affordable rental housing.
• The fired transgender Miss Universe Canada contestant from Vancouver would like you to think of her as “a woman—with a history.” (The protest petition is now online.)
• How to make money despite being in the news business: A Houston Chronicle society reporter was outed for moonlighting as a stripper. Apparently at least as much for the money as for any undercover writing gig (though she has made a pseudonymous blog about her stripping life).
• Under the British common-law heritage, prostitution per se has been quasi-legal in Canada. But businesses facilitating prostitution have been banned. Now, the province of Ontario’s highest court has approved legalizing brothels. The common-sense reason: it’s better for a sex worker “to work indoors, in a location under her control.”
• Another country where hooking is legal, but making money from other people’s hooking isn’t: France. That’s where the ex-Intl. Monetary Fund boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn, already disgraced from sexual assault charges, has been accused of involvement in a pimping ring based at luxury hotels. (I know people who believe those IMF/World Bank guys have always been pimps for the corporate elite, but this is something different.)
• Big Brother Dept.: A public school district in Brazil is issuing school-uniform T shirts with computer chips sewn in, capable of tracking every student’s every move.
• If you believe the New Yorker, the most influential and sleaziest newspaper in Britain isn’t owned by Murdoch.
• Even before the Legislature revived state tax breaks for filmmakers, one feature project (from a local writer-director) was already underway. And it’s got such great stars—Lee Majors! Gary Busey! Margot Kidder! Edward Furlong! Seahawks player Marshawn Lynch! I tell you, I sense a date with Oscar!

'water wood' by bette burgoyne; via roqlarue.com

• In deservedly glowing terms, Emily Pothast reviews Red Current (Sweet Fruit), the all-local (and all-female, though that part isn’t advertised) group show now on display at Belltown’s raucous Roq La Rue gallery. If you were there at the even-more-packed-than-usual opening night, go back and actually look at the art.
• Next step for the Seattle “Storefronts” program, in which art-related entrepreneurs take over vacant retail spaces: Auburn.
• Think Bellingham’s full of sports-hatin’ hippies? Think again, as we congratulate the WWU men’s basketball team for winning the NCAA Division II national title.
• There’s just one indignity after another in the sordid tale of a 62-year-old Spokane woman who was ordered to reapply (at less money) for her her food-service job after 19 years. With the new reduced offer too little for her to live on, she turned it down. Then she was denied unemployment benefits. Then her ex-employer contributed a Spokesman-Review guest opinion calling for harsh crackdowns against “bogus” unemployment claims. She eventually got her unemployment back, but she’s still out on her own with no health insurance and not enough retirement savings, at an age when it’s damn tough to get back into the workforce.
• Microsoft is now in the business of raiding botnet-spam operators.
• You might wish otherwise, but most holders of major public offices, and major candidates for those offices, just aren’t comfortable with supporting legalized pot. They don’t believe there’s enough mass support for it. They don’t think it’s an issue worth sticking their necks out.
• The Occupy Tacoma protest was held at a state DOT-owned park near downtown. The state’s not only closed and fenced off the park, they’ve now put it up for sale.
• A flashback to the ’00s: Some folks want to restart the plan for a Ballard to West Seattle monorail!

washington beer blog via seattlepi.com

First, thanks to the more than 50 people who crowded Roy St. Coffee and Tea for the History Cafe presentation on old Seattle restaurant menus Thursday evening. And thanks to my fellow panelists Hanna Raskin and Taylor Bowie for making it easy for me. Each of them had so many insights about the old restaurants, their menu designs, their food items, and their respective places in cultural history, that I didn’t have to say much.

• Seattle’s newest microbrewery has a gimmick. It puts out its pilsner in old fashioned steel cans that need a can opener. The company’s appropriate name: Churchkey Can Company.
• Annie Lowrey at Slate has the strange tale of a true “computer hacker” in the old, non-criminal definition of the term. He was a programming genius who supplied his innovations to, and supported the goals of, the open-source software movement. Before he abruptly and completely withdrew from public life.
• At least half the traffic on the Internet isn’t supplied by human computer users, but by automated spambots, information-stealing “scrapers,” and search engines.
• America’s most progressive-leaning broadcaster (or at least the outfit with that reputation) has just hired a union-buster consulting firm.
• Branding consultants Susan Lee and Jenny Laing claim the Occupy movement represents a great new opportunity to sell stuff.
• “The world’s most annoying song,” according to one Jason Richards, is not “Paradise City.” I see no reason to believe anything this Richards person says.

After you’ve had your Caesar salad to celebrate the Ides of March, join me in celebrating the ghosts of meals past.

I’m participating in a History Cafe session about old Seattle restaurant menus. It’s 7 p.m. Thursday at Roy Street Coffee (the off-brand Starbucks), Broadway and East Roy on crunchy Capitol Hill. It’s sponsored by KCTS, HistoryLink.org, MOHAI, and the Seattle Public Library.

• Good News Dept.: It looks like the Volunteer Park Conservatory is a lot closer to being fiscally preserved than was implied in previous reports.
• The Husky men’s basketball team had to settle for playing in the NIT, despite winning its conference’s regular season title. But that wasn’t as demeaning as the team’s ultra-lousy attendance at its first round NIT game.
• Whatever patina of respectability the megabanks had is peeling off in the late-winter rains. There’s the blistering breakup letter by the ex Goldman Sachs exec. And there’s Matt Taibbi’s even more blistering exposé of BankAmericrap as “a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time.” And yet Megan McArdle at the Atlantic insists what we really need is a “massive deregulation” of banking. What?
• Meanwhile, here’s another good-riddance letter by a techie who left Google for Microsoft, claiming the former had devolved from “an innovation factory” into just another “advertising company.”
• The copyright police have convinced U.K. authorities to ship a Brit college kid to the U.S. for prosecution, all for the supposedly heinous crime of running a TV-episodes linking site.
• Some Catholic bishops in Missouri have decided the best way to respond to continued exposés of child-abusing priests is to mount vicious legal attacks against the exposers.
• To end this batch on an upbeat note, here are four illustration books and a comic-strip collection based on classic literature.

stephen crowe via brainpickings.org

Today, go out and celebrate Pi Day (3/14). Tomorrow, learn about pies of the past.

I’m participating in a History Cafe session about old Seattle restaurant menus. It’s 7 p.m. Thursday at Roy Street Coffee (the off-brand Starbucks), Broadway and East Roy on cantilevered Capitol Hill. It’s sponsored by KCTS, HistoryLink.org, MOHAI, and the Seattle Public Library.

• We now know what’s going in where the parking garage on Second north of Stewart had been until last weekend. It’s (wait for it) a beyond-upscale luxury apartment tower, the “Viktoria” (yes, with a K). The developers are employing all the usual buzzwords (including their vow that this will be “the signature residential building in Belltown”). Construction starts within a month.
• Next threatened landmark that needs saving: The Funhouse, that delightfully seedy and decidedly downscale rock club, situated within easy jeering distance of EMP and Ride the Ducks. Yep, it’s due to yet another “mixed use” project.
• Wash. state’s next big contribution to the music world is a Korean American “pop lothario.”
• Public-school advocates calling themselves “Occupy Education” show up at Gates Foundation HQ to pick a verbal fight, about what the activists call the foundation’s “corporate brand of education reform.” Hilarity ensues.
• SeattlePI.com’s list of “most hated Seattle sports figures” relegates Clay Bennett to the #2 slot behind Howard Schultz, the man who made Bennett’s team-theft possible.
• Co-ops, locavores, Kickstarter, Etsy—Sara Horowitz at the Atlantic calls it all a revival of 1890s “mutualism.”
• Mike Lux attempts to explain why so many professed Christians behave so not-Christlike. (Lux mainly blames the Apostle Paul.)
• William K. Black at AlterNet would like to see the same kind of attention paid toward Wall Street’s corporate crimes that’s paid toward blue-collar street crime.
• Village Voice Media continues to defend its Backpage.com sex ad operation, even within an article about a group of accused child abusers who are charged with using the site to pimp out their underage victim.
• Encyclopedia Britannica, having sold only 8,000 print encyclopedia sets in the past two years, announced it won’t print any more after 244 years.
• We know junkies were stealing copper wire, but liquid Tide?
• Charlie Jane Anders at i09.com offers advice on how to be a better sci-fi/fantasy writer by being less annoyingly “clever” about it:

Try writing the same line of dialogue three different ways: 1) the quippy version, 2) the version that simply conveys the meaning of the line, and 3) the emotional subtext of the line. And then try to find the version that combines 2) and 3) as much as possible. You might find you end up with a line that’s more quotable than the witty version you originally had.