So you stocked up on canned goods, canceled your weekend plans, and all for just a few minutes of torrential downpour followed by the usual autumn sogginess. (Turns out the real storm here was at Friday’s homeless-bill hearing.) We additionally talk about Hope Solo’s possible next career move; a gay-rights garden planned for Broadway; a sidewalk with solar panels; how to make the police force more diverse; and an old, old town with a new name.

As the calendar turns a new page into the darker and wetter months, we can’t unsee Jeff Bezos’s (non-pocket) rocket. Plus: the feminist bookstore seen on Portlandia won’t be seen on it anymore; a lesbian pastor at PLU; how to make the police more diverse; good (non-French) press about a coffee genius; and a sorority’s “sacred secrets” get revealed (as if anyone cares).

That fancy new police building folks have rallied against? Sent back for further review. Among other topics this day: Loving portraits of GLBT Mormons; whether the police really needed to shoot Che Taylor; still more Chinese speculation money in Seattle real estate; the usual many, many weekend event listings; and a weird idea to give homeless folks “non-monetary donations” online.

Paul Allen’s next big local spectacular will be a music festival and industry confab, coming to Pioneer Square in May. And we also look at another Black Lives Matter march; a fish-processing plant proposed for the soon-to-be-ex Weyerhaeuser campus; feudin’ whales; and an ex-governor’s questionable real-estate sale.

There was a lot on the water this weekend: The fast boats on Lake Washington, a beached whale at Fauntleroy, and especially the annual Hiroshima remembrance on Green Lake. Additional topics today include the Dead Baby bike spectacle; determining whether anyone’s to blame for the Oso landslide; dying trees statewide; anti-police window stickers; and the Mariners winning big on Griffey tribute weekend.

Some King County bureaucrats are floating the (quite improbable) idea of moving county government functions out of downtown Seattle, so its buildings could be sold to developers. It’ll probably never happen but I’m still against it. Our other topics-O-the-day include one Central District businesswoman who’s NOT leaving; a way out of the false dichotomy between NIMBYs and free-marketeers i/r/t “affordable” housing; wildfires getting close to Hanford; the (obvious) problem with bus-only street lanes; and Amazon’s stock price exceeding that of Exxon.

On the 10th anniversary of the sale that doomed the Sonics, here’s a modest proposal: Instead of waiting (potentially forever) for the NBA’s brass to approve of Seattle’s existence, let’s start our own league!

Other topics this in your (for today at least) GOP-free newsletter include a battle over water in and near Leavenworth; Central Co-Op’s sudden Tacoma closure; another cleared-out encampment; and Boeing’s switch to “the cloud.”

At the end of a week of horrid violence and counter-violence, we at least don’t have to deal with the anti-trans bigots for the moment. Other topics today include the sad case of a drug-stealing nurse; a Chinese design firm helps make a park in Seattle’s Intl. District; alleged progress in artificial intelligence; and a few hundred weekend event listings.

The big anti-Amazon blogger’s making a kids’ picture book with a talking shipping box representing the company. We also examine the origin’s of Seattle’s newest newcomers; worry about hate-crime stats; listen to a Muslim “non-binary queer” person; mourn one of Belltown’s last pre-upscale businesses; and begin to lose patience with the miserable Mariners.

Video documentaries about the Donnie Chin murder and the “Home Alive” self-defense group are now online. We also examine a weird grisly murder in Federal Way; two different groups advocating women in tech; more trouble for local hospitals; and a bizarre new developer-coined nickname for the Denny Triangle.

Why would anyone want to vandalize the Bettie Page House? As you ponder that, also read about more irrational Seattle Times transit-hate; how we won’t have a trans woman in the Legislature this year; the horror of teen and preteen concussions; whether collecting “data” about homeless people might put them at more danger; and the Eastside’s new business slogan (yep, it’s trite).

The Fremont Solstice Parade (as mentioned on my main site) had an off year, but it did get in a dig at Mayor Murray’s plans to “sweep” homeless encampments. Also today: The women running high-end visual art here; the state Democratic Party (heart)s Sanders; way-overpaid CEOs (again); whether our current economy can support the previous economy’s infrastructure; and three local-sports-team losses and one tie.

Once again, the Fremont Solstice parade has arrived and left.

This year, the threat of rain may have kept the audience smaller than previously.

Not in short supply were the body-paint bicyclists (and more-or-less clothed bicyclists, and just plain nude bicyclists, and walkers, and skateboarders).

Much as the Seafair hydro races have become, to many fans, the sideshow to their own intermission act (the Blue Angels), the Solstice Parade has become, to many, merely the footnote to its unofficial and unorganized prelude.

As the annual corps of paint people and their pals has grown, the parade itself has shrank. This year’s edition barely ran 45 minutes.

There were the usual ethnic and pseudo-ethnic dance troupes.

There were the usual floats and dancers celebrating summer, environmentalism, nature, and wholesome “quirkiness.”

There was a tribute to Prince with a purple-boat float.

The main “political” statement at the parade was made by homeless advocates. They depicted Mayor Ed Murray with a broom, trying to literally “sweep” away a bunch of street people and car-dwellers; while marchers carried signs (conforming to the parade’s traditional rule against written words) exhorting people to call Murray to support housing and denounce sweeps of encampments.

I’d hoped to, but didn’t, see anything in the parade expressing solidarity with the Orlando victims and families, and forthrightly expressing LGBTQ solidarity. Apparently that happened too soon for parade volunteers to build moving artwork and costumes.

The bike brigade did include several folk proudly sporting rainbow-flag paint. These two held barbells labeled LOVE.

While other “alt” gatherings around town, such as Pride and Hempfest, remain big, Solstice this year seemed to be in decline.

Is it that Seattle’s finally getting done, after all these decades, with the cultural aesthetic of baby-boomer mellow? Or is it that Solstice has no specific, single “cause” behind it?

Parade organizers do plan to do something about it, starting next year.

They want the bicyclists to register as official participants, subject to official event rules.  They don’t specifically say they’ll order the bikers to cover up, but they’ll assert the right to make such decrees.

If Solstice does have a “cause,” it’s celebrating an extended family, a virtual “tribe,” built around creativity, joy, and personal freedom.

If its leaders try to rein in the event’s most basic (and most popular) expression of such freedom, its decline could get worse.

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POSTSCRIPT: The Fremont Solstice Fair is much larger than the parade itself. There’s the big street fair. There’s the HONK! Fest West, a festival of alternative “street bands.” There’s the display of art cars. And there’s the live music, which this year was even more impressive than in past years. Even if the parade declines in interest, the rest of the fair still goes strong.

Someone (actually, the incredible shrinking Seattle Times) actually looked for answers to some of our city’s problems toward another city that isn’t San Francisco! Amazing! Also in your midweek missive: More Orlando reaction (not all of it healthy); no Seattle NHL team this year; Boeing (heart)s Iran; Rhapsody doesn’t want you to call it Rhapsody anymore; and Amazon’s $350,000 fine over a gallon of drain cleaner.

As I’d promised in Monday morning’s MISCmedia MAIL newsletter, here are some images from Sunday evening’s celebration/vigil in Cal Anderson Park, following the hate-crime massacre at a gay bar in Orlando FL.

As I wrote then:

The worst single civilian mass shooting on U.S. soil (if you don’t count old massacres against Blacks and Native Americans) took place in a once-minor town that for 46 years has been one of the globe’s top tourist destinations. It’s a place where the particular set of weirdnesses that is Florida co-mingles with every other culture from everywhere.

Specifically, the disaster occurred at a gay nightclub, a type of place where violence has been threatened in many cities (including at Seattle’s Neighbours). There was also an attempted shooting at an L.A. pride parade by a man who was caught just in time.

(As a HuffPo essay said, the massacre is an extreme example of “the dangers LGBT people live with every day.”)

Violent homophobes can be of any race or religion. They only have to believe they’re so Perfectly Good that they can do horrible things.

As the UK Guardian said after the Umpqua College shooting in Oregon last fall, “Thoughts and prayers are not enough” to stop all the mass shootings—not as long as the Gun Lobby keeps Congress, and us all, in its grip.

Among the speakers at the event: Mayor Ed Murray and Gov. Jay Inslee. Murray finished his short remarks with a paraphrased passage from Romeo and Juliet:

“And when they shall die,

Take them and cut them out in little stars,

And they will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.”