lpcoverlover.com

• MISCmedia is dedicated today to the memory of Sylvia Robinson, the singer-producer-entrepreneur whose journey went from ’50s pop R&B to disco to (literally) the invention of hiphop.
• A little-noticed legislative loophole gives Safeco Field a parking-tax deal that could cost the city $300,000 a year. If the Mariners’ management only been that clever in running its baseball team…
• In honor of National Dwarfism Awareness Month. Caffe Ladro made its “tall man” logo shorter.
• A long-stalled Paul Allen Belltown condo tower project will now be built as apartments.
• More dirty business by the big banks: fees for debit card use.
• The allegedly latest thing among the ultra ultra rich: luxury camping, or “glamping.”
• Glenn Greenwald believes corporate-owned media have an agenda in ignoring or scorning anti-corporate activism.
• Toure waxes nostalgic for the good old days of centralized mass-media culture.
• Clean up your dog poop and keep it out of Puget Sound.

Twenty years ago this week, Seattle unleashed three monumental media products upon the world: Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and the first issue of The Stranger.

Hard to believe, but in what turned out to be the final years before the World Wide Web became a universal thing, when online media still meant pay-by-the-minute AOL and CompuServe, was born what may have turned out to be Seattle’s next-to-last important newsprint periodical (Real Change is a few years younger).

This week’s Stranger makes note of the 20th anniversary of a monumental media product. And the anniversary it makes of is not that of its own debut.

from smelllikedirt.wordpress.com

• Seattle’s rotting produce and other food waste goes to a composting plant in Everett. Our newest export: stink.
• If, as the Times‘ Danny Westneat claims, Microsoft no longer needs over $100 million instate tax breaks, does the Times still need its own state tax breaks?
• As the last beams at the old Boeing Plant #2 come down, Jon Talton notes that the old Boeing corporate culture is also now mostly gone, replaced by Jack Welch-style cost cutters and bean counters.
• Local essayist Seth Kolloen compares the early years of Pearl Jam to the Kemp/Payton era Sonics. At least we still have Vedder & company.
• Descendents of Capt. William Clark (of “Lewis and…”) built a symbolic canoe for a southwest Wash. tribe, to replace one the captain stole way back when.
• A few right wing writers and pundits have identified the biggest force restraining their corporate masters from getting everything they want. It’s democracy. Therefore, to these guys democracy is something icky that must be done away with.
• A few handy comparisons between right-wing fantasyland and reality.
• You’ll have to listen instead of getting to read, but here’s an argument for the premise that punk rock was invented by Jews.
• Sara Horowitz sees a new “middle class poverty” in which everybody’s treated as (and as badly as) freelancers, and envisions a “jobs plan for the post-cubicle economy.”

nordstrom photo, via shine.yahoo.com

• Those $85 Starbucks designer tees? All net proceeds go to Starbucks. One more reason Howard Schultz is in the Forbes 400 richest-people list.
• A Starbucks employee in Calif. posted a satirical song about his job onto YouTube. The song became popular; he became fired.
• After 18 years, the homey and low-key Rosebud restaurant/bar on East Pike is calling it quits. The management (which just bought the place from its previous longtime owners) homes to reopen nearby.
• Facebook’s got this big new feature that looks a lot like something already devised by a Seattle startup site.
• The Real Networks spinoff Rhapsody, a subscription online music service, has some sort of free trial thing going on via Facebook.
• Washington state: Now with even more poverty.
• You want across-the-board cuts in all state spending? Fine. Welcome some new early-release inmates, who won’t get the supervision past parolees got.
• Swedish Medical Center to lay off 150 staffers. So much for the aging-boomer-era medical boom.
• The on-again, off-again scheme to drastically redevelop the parking lot north of Qwest CenturyLink Field is on again. For now.
• An unfinished Kent parking garage will be razed and replaced by homes and stores.
• Tacoma teachers’ strike: over.
• Obama’s coming to town. You won’t get to see him.
• The always-lucid Feliks Banel sees the retirement of J.P. Patches in the context of the institutional decline of local TV (particularly local non-news TV).
• The “Occupy Wall Street” folk have finally proclaimed “our one demand”—11 of them, all big-big-picture stuff, essentially adding up to the complete re-orientation of the nation’s government, economy, and society.
• ‘Tis a sad, sad day for all who care about tradition, long-form storytelling, and frequently-remarried drama queens. The final network episode of All My Children airs today.
• On a much happier note, you can become part of a new tradition tomorrow, the tradition of the ped-powered urbanites.

Igor Kellor is a multimedia whiz and a very clever person. He’s the creator of the musical Mackris v. O’Reilly and the blog Hideous Belltown.

Now he’s got a CD out (also available online), Greater Seattle.

While billed under the band name Longboat, Keller provides almost all the instrumental sounds (mostly synths) and all the lead vocals.

Don’t expect any perky paeans to tourist vistas and real estate opportunities here. Kellor has more ambitious agendas.

He offers snappy, snarky cabaret ditties about 10 Seattle neighborhoods (including Harbor Island!) and five outlying communities. Each tune is influenced by a different musical genre. Some of the melodies and arrangements match the tone of the lyric tales; others starkly contrast with them.

“Belltown” is a dirge, befitting the chorus of “downtown’s afterthought.”

“Ballard” is a sad sea shanty, about the upscaling away of its entire heritage.

“Fremont” is an uptempo hoedown, even though Keller sings that “To me Fremont will always be/The gateway to Ballard.”

“Downtown” is a brisk calypso-beat tale about the police shooting of John T. Williams.

Some of the songs are more up to date than others. The opening track, “Bellevue,” features the standard stereotype of the Eastside’s largest city as a whitebread conformist nightmare. In real life, it’s becoming more ethnically diverse than Seattle.

Kellor also doesn’t care much for Mercer Island (“It’s clear that money can’t buy taste”), Buren (“Visiting here makes your mind go numb/It’s much like a bug in your cranium”), and Federal Way (depicted as an ideal home for “a violent modern man”).

And he absolutely loathes Edmonds (“A police state/Bad cops rule this town”), recounting a story of “teenage drivers against police cruisers.”

Kellor wraps up all this sharp civic commentary with a sharp change of pace and attitude, a pleasant rendition of “Seattle” (the old Here Come the Brides theme) joined in by a trumpet, trombone and tuba.

Greater Seattle is an ambitious, brusque love letter to the city, warts n’ all.

by marlow harris, http://seattletwist.com

Tuesday’s Nirvana Nevermind 20th anniversary concert at EMP was a total blast.

Even if you weren’t there, thanks to the live stream from, er, Livestream.com.

You can still view it. Though you might want to fast forward some parts. Thanks to band set-up breaks, it took three and a half hours to get through the original CD’s 13 tracks and 10 other Nirvana songs. Each tune was re-created by a different combo. (The exception: the Presidents with Krist Novoselic; they got to perform two, nonconsecutive songs.)

The evening started off with a total sonic blast, as the reunited Fastbacks (above) completely nailed “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Singer Kim Warnick, like many of the night’s performers, had known Kurt Cobain.

Warnick’s also an ex-roommate of Susie Tennant, the longtime local music scene promoter and publicist. (Tennant had staged the original Nevermind release party at Re-bar.) Tennant has gone through a cancer scare (thankfully apparently over); the concert was a benefit for her treatment and recovery.

The Livestream page had a chat-room corner. Some chatters made snide insults about Warnick’s middle aged appearance. (Just the sort of “fans” Cobain had vocally denounced.)

All the performances were loose, spirited, and enthralling, true to Nirvana’s own rough and tumble gigging.

My own faves included, in no particular order:

• Visqueen’s full-blast “Territorial Pissings;”
• new band Ravenna Woods’ sped-up “Breed;”
• the Long Winters’ emo-y “Something in the Way;”
• Shelby Earl’s soulful “All Apologies;”
• Pigeonhed’s eerie “Heart Shaped Box;”
• Steve Mack (the local boy who made good across the pond with That Petrol Emotion) blasting through “Serve the Servants” with his current band Stag—and with a bleeding head (!).

no, not *that* ziggy.

• RIP: Ziggy comic creator Tom Wilson Sr. (Wilson Jr.’s been drawing the panel for several years now.)
• The Nirvana Nevermind 20th anniversary concert occurs tonight at EMP. It sold out the hour it was announced. But you can still experience the show (a benefit for longtime Seattle music figure Susie Tennant’s cancer treatments). The whole thing will be streamed live online, at 10 p.m.
• The Seattle Storm won’t repeat as WNBA champs, having been knocked out in the first playoff round.
• The owners of the old Twin Peaks sawmill are accused of causing flooding in the town of Snoqualmie, by putting fill dirt on part of the site, thus interfering with drainage.
• The anarchist storefront meeting hall and music club has closed. As would be expected, its operators blamed the cops and “rich, whiny” neighbors.
• Sen. Maria Cantwell’s re-election theme: She’s stood up to Wall Street more than Obama’s done so far.
• Greg Nickels threatens to run for mayor again.
• Now being test-marketed at Costco stores (though not at any around here): wedding dresses.
• PETA now wants to get rid of fishing, at least fishing with hooks.
• Criminals have a new way to learn how to break into businesses—by breaking into their WiFi networks first.
• There’s a “Moving Planet Seattle” rally at Lake Union Park this Saturday. People are converging there from all over town, using any means of locomotion other than fossil-fuel motors. And when you’re done celebrating foot power there, you can head over to Capitol Hill for another celebration of foot power….

designsbuzz.com

• The Seattlest gang’s putting out, in installments, a revised and updated “guide to Seattle stereotypes.”
• Neighborhood activists are starting a tiny but intelligently stocked mini-grocery in the Lost Valley of Delridge, an area bereft of places selling anything more nutritious than Budweiser.
• What’s the biggest fear of people buying into a 33-story condo tower? That somebody will block their view with a 40-story condo tower a block away.
• Let’s try to get this straight. A candidate for King County Council has a brother who administers an arts program for at-risk youth. Said arts program puts out, for the first time in its history, a “student made” newspaper. Said paper includes several mentions praising the administrator’s sis and several other mentions disparaging her election opponent. Oh, and the thing was partly made with City funds.
• Microsoft’s immensely profitable. Its stock price has essentially been “flat” for some time. One more reason for America’s socio-economic nabobs to stop believing in the Almighty Stock Price as the all-determining value of everything.
• Progressive economist Remy Trupin looks at Wash. state’s no-end-in-sight budget hole and insists that from this point on, “further cuts are not an option.”
• A hundred years ago, eight destitute young women were killed in an accident at a Chehalis explosives factory. Their joint grave has finally been rediscovered.
• The Illinois company now calling itself Boeing has friends among the House Republicans. That body just approved, in a symbolic gesture certain to sink in the Senate, a bill to strip Federal protection for workers whose jobs were outsourced as punishment for union organizing.
• If we must say goodbye to Cyndy’s House of Pancakes on Aurora (closed as of July after 53 years), at least we can be consoled that housing for the formerly-homeless will go up on the site.
• There was a hearing about a plan for a homeless shelter in Lake City. The senior-housing developer SHAG bused in residents to speak against the plan. One of these speakers called the homeless “garbage.” Brutal insensitivity: It’s not just for Republican campaign events any more.
• Couldn’t happen to an un-nicer guy: There’s an FBI corruption probe of figures surrounding Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and cronies.
• The 3-D movie craze? Dead already. Again.
• How will the record labels survive? Some are diversifying into other businesses. Such as, according to a Federal indictment, international cocaine smuggling. (I know what you’re thinking. Drugs in the music industry? Never!)
• We go out on a snarky note with some books Borders can’t even give away.

• Lake City’s legendary, recently-closed Rimrock Steak House is saved! Well, maybe.

• Starbucks gave away download codes for a “free” ebook. The document turned out to exclude the novel’s ending, telling readers they had to get the paid version to learn what happens.

• Get ready for Sleepless in Seattle, the Musical. In preparation for years, it’s set to open in L.A. next summer.

• The Longview longshoremen’s strike might be ending.

• J.P. Patches, who announced his retirement from public appearances earlier this summer, will make his last one this Saturday at Fishermen’s Terminal.

• Darn. Just when we were getting used to Dennis Kucinich, turns out he’s probably not coming to stay.

• The Republicans have a master plan for winning the White House. It has little to do with actually fielding a mass-appeal candidate (or even a sane candidate), and everything to do with voter suppression and making the Electoral College even more unfair.

• Earlier this week, we discussed an LA Times essay asking where today’s great recession documentarians were. Well, here are two more places to find them—Facing Change and In Our Own Backyard.

The place to be on a perfect mid-September day was the NEPO 5k Don’t Run. It was a series of art exhibits, installations, performances, and conceptual pieces strung along a three-mile route from Pioneer Square to the top of Beacon Hill.

The name came from the fact that the organizers couldn’t get a permit for a running event, which would have required a lot of street closures.

Besides, if you ran you’d miss the smaller, more intimate art along the way, such as Ollie Glatzer’s four Thread and Nail pieces installed on telephone poles.

Some of the art walked along with the walkin’ audience.

And some of the art involved the audience in little games, such as Encounters at the End of Hing Hay Park.

Unfortunately, the event’s official program did not list all the performers, including this dancer who worked with a twenty-foot train in the back of her costume.

(Update: Carrie Clogston’s blog Gingham and Gold identifies her as Keely Isaak Meehan.)

Once the walkers crossed the Jose Rizal (12th Avenue) Bridge, it was a sharp left turn onto the I-90 Trail. That’s where Amy Ellen Trefsger (also known as “Flatchestedmama”) performed A Good Reminder to Sign Your Work, a series of poems delivered via semaphore.

Erin Shafkind turned parts of Equality, a permanent work in the park (co-designed by my ol’ pal Rolon Bert Garner), into mini versions of the Mad Homes installation seen previously this summer on Capitol Hill.

Laura Dean and Ryan Worsley’s Flock of Disproven Theories Written as Facts comprised original black and white drawings pasted into hardcover books, which dangled from trees with plaques describing these theories dangling from the books. This work also included the Don’t Run’s only overtly political statement, as seen above.

Josh Peterson’s Tree-Map re-used audio chips from novelty greeting cards, which played sounds as triggered by the breeze.

As the trail turned left, walkers were instructed to take a soft right onto 18th Avenue South. This longest stretch of the Don’t Run was on a normally quiet residential street, where old and abandoned-looking houses sit next to ultramodern designer homes. Sarah Galvin read narrative poems in front of an unoccupied house. Behind her in the front yard, anonymous performers portrayed a dissolute man (drinking from a gasoline can), his quietly crying wife, and their grass-eating daughter.

Ken Turner’s Red Dot Genuflection Station invited the non-runners to place red dot stickers (the mark of a successful gallery sale) on an obelisk entitled Little i. It symbolized money as today’s only standard of success.

Mike Pham, clad in gold lame tights, smoked and drank and pranced on the roof of a ’50s Chrysler in L’apres-midi d’un Pham.

Another re-imagined vehicle was this pedal car, adapted from a 1982 Toyota pickup. By the 18th Avenue stretch, the pedalers needed a little help.

In another unannounced attraction, don’t-runners honked a series of old fashioned horns installed along a pipe at a child’s eye level.

Finally at the foot of 18th, one block actually was closed off, and don’t-runners were asked to run to the finish line—in slow motion.

Jessie Wilson’s You Are Here invited the gathering throng to place badges on a wires labeled with the spectrum of human emotion.

The end of the line was NEPO House (“open” spelled backwards). It’s the actual home of artist Karla Glosova and her family. Glosova has staged exhibits and events in and outside the house for more than a year now. This time, it held music acts and little performance shticks well into the night.

A splendid time was had by all.

And if it turned anyone on to the idea of urban walking adventures, well I’ve got a little something that can help in that regard….

scene from antiwar protest downtown, march 2003

After all the recycled bluster about the police and the firefighters and especially the troops, about the valiant politicians and the flag waving celebrities, about the need to never forget the horrible day which begat the horrible decade of the endless wars and the mass intimidation and the institutionalized fear mongering and the ugly racism and the corruption of democracy, what more is to be said?

Quite a bit.

We can remember the World Trade Center’s Seattle architect, Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986). His local works include Puget Sound Plaza, Rainier Square, the Pacific Science Center, and the IBM Building (based on his early WTC design work).

Yamasaki didn’t live to see the towers attacked. But he knew the consequences of war-inspired fear and prejudice.

It was only the intercession of an early employer, and the fact that he was working in the northeast at the time, that got him exempted from the WWII internment of western Americans of Japanese ancestry.

We can remember the opportunities for international cooperation to build a safer world. And how those opportunities were deliberately quashed by the Bush-Cheney regime.

We can remember the Patriot Act, the TSA, the “total information awareness” domestic eavesdropping scheme, the media’s ignoring of an initially strong antiwar movement, and all the big and little ways the regime waged war on its own citizens.

We can remember the Americans troops still in harm’s way in Afghanistan and, yes, in Iraq. And those who didn’t make it back. And those who are back home but seriously harmed physically and psychologically, and who have received insufficient care.

We can remember the thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis who had nothing to do with the original attacks but died in the ensuing wars and occupations.

We can remember we still need exit strategies from both occupations, strategies that will protect Iraqis and Afghanis of all sexes and ethnicities.

We can remember the terrible damage wrought on the U.S. budget by war spending, combined with the millionaires’ tax cuts and the rest of the neocon economic misadventure.

And remembering all that, we can say, yes, “never again.”

Never again will we be manipulated by fear, either by foreign civilians or by our own leaders.

Never again will we let peace and reason be treated as dirty words.

Never again will we invade first and ask questions later.

Never again will we strike against entire nations over the horrendous crimes of a few dozen individuals (most of whom had never lived in either invaded nation).

Never again will we allow fear of “Islamic” fundamentalist repression to become an excuse for “Christian” fundamentalist repression.

Never again will we sacrifice our freedoms under the excuse of protecting them.

• Radical activists associated with Adbusters magazine want to organize a long-term “occupation” of Wall Street, with the aim to force an end to the “politics of greed.” Paul B. Farrell isn’t so sure it’ll work.
• Bad news of the day: Espresso Vivace general manager Brian Fairbrother was badly injured in a cycling accident. (Yes, he wore a helmet.) On Wednesday, loved ones decided, in accordance with his previously stated wishes, to remove life support.
• Good news of the day: The INSCAPE arts center in the former immigration building got a $10 million grant for needed structural upgrades and interior refits.
• Eh? news of the day: Wash. state’s slashing of higher-ed support was only tied for worst in the nation, with three other states.
• Update #1: The Belltown substance-abuse center boss accused of trying to rape a boy? He wasn’t the psychologist he’d claimed to be.
• Update #2: That Snohomish County stink mentioned here yesterday? It’s chicken byproduct.
• The long-delayed development at Ballard’s former Sunset Bowl site is finally underway.
• Turns out that creepy plastic faced “king” mascot wasn’t the only scary thing about Burger King.
• Tacoma: The city that knows when to say no.
• The City’s got this “Only in Seattle” program, promoting local businesses in various neighborhoods. The program’s Belltown edition was unveiled Wednesday. The four honored outfits were two upscale restaurant-bars, one upscale furniture emporium, and Federal Army & Navy Surplus.
• Coming to a 7-Eleven near you (depending on where you are): A locker where you can pick up your Amazon purchases. 7-Eleven in Japan has had this for years. It’s great for people who work during the day and live alone (or with other people who also work during the day).
• The Wall St. Journal discovers grunge nostalgia.
• The Seattle Weekly/Village Voice Media/Backpage.com sex ad mess just gets messier, as politicians of more stripes use it for cheap grandstanding.
• Cartoonist Ruben Bolling seems to wish George Lucas could digitally alter the past 10 years.
• The St. Petersburg Times fact checked Wednesday’s GOP Presidential debate and came up with at least two statements deserving the ultimate “Pants On Fire” rating.
• Our ol’ pal Tim Harris appeared with C.R. Douglas in a great segment on KCPQ on the topic of “Homeless in Seattle.” If you’re wondering how something this insightful got on a program entitled Q13 Fox News, let me repeat (for what seems like the umpteenth time): KCPQ has no connection to the Fox News Channel (except for airing the latter’s Fox News Sunday “spinterview” show). KCPQ is an affiliate of the Fox Broadcast network. KCPQ is really owned by the (Chicago) Tribune Co. I wish the station itself would make this clearer.

• A victim of the war-on-terra hype some folks would like brought back: busking musicians on ferry boats.
• Here’s CNN’s take on the scandal of Border Patrol agents unfairly harassing Latino locals on the Olympic Peninsula. The headline: “Border agent says there’s nothing to do, says money being wasted.” In other words, if it weren’t for the war-on-terra hype, none of this would be happening.
• There’s a reason all the local media latched onto the aging Hall and Oates as this year’s big Bumbershoot stars. It’s because they were the only act this year both famous enough and old enough for media people to have heard of. (Apparently, the big name acts now want a cool half million per show. And you were wondering why you haven’t heard many recessionary protest songs by said big name acts.)
• The Neptune Theater’s official re-opening, later this month, will include a one-night nod to the U District house’s roots. I speak, of course, of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which played midnight shows at the Neptune for more than a decade.
• Recession Sign #1: More parents are discovering public schools are just fine after all.
• Recession Sign #2: Realistic novels and stories about the socio-economically struggling are back in vogue.
• Adam Doree wants Steve Jobs to finally get around to donate a few buck to charity already.
• Sady Doyle really, really hates the Game of Thrones books. And Alyssa Rosenberg doesn’t particularly care for Doyle’s putdowns of the books. The point-O-contention: The novels depict women enduring some of the violent brutalities one might find in a violent, brutal fictional setting.
• Elsewhere in genderland, Hugo Schwyzer wants you to define the word “man” to mean not-boy, instead of not-woman.
• The Guardian, ever on the prowl for American weirdness with which to addle and astound its Brit readers, has discovered the “muscular Christianity” in evangelical-fringe books such as No More Christian Mr. Nice Guy. The writer seems to have never heard of the Church of the SubGenius and its “real FIGHTIN’ JESUS.”

• Despite what Republican politicians would have you believe, Washington state actually leads the nation in new business creation these days.
• One of these new businesses will be a downtown JC Penney store, in the old Kress five-and-dime store building at Third and Pike. That’s just a block from the old (1930-82) Penney store (Target’s going in on that site later this year). It’s great news, but what will become of the loveable, and vitally needed, Kress IGA supermarket in the building’s lower level? Its operators insist they’ve got a long term lease and are staying no matter what.
• It’s not just the state civil payroll that’s ethnically un-diverse. The state legislature is only 6.8 percent nonwhite.
• Local theater blogger Jose Aguerra asks whether local troupes are being too coy and inoffensive, even in their depiction of female orgasms. (In my day, Seattle’s live theaters prided themselves on presenting edgy, daring material, even if the promise was grander than the product.)
• A UW Medical Center administrator got caught embezzling a quarter mil from the hospital. You’re only hearing about it now because the state auditor made a statement publicly praising the U for how it investigated and prosecuted the inside thief. A potential huge scandal was thus turned into a low-key moment of triumph for the administration. At least if you read the Seattle Times version of the story. KOMO offers a far more critical spin on the affair.
• Grist.org’s David Roberts ponders what the heck Friends of the Earth is doing getting involved with right-wing lobby groups in proposing a “green” federal budget slashing scheme.
• The link we ran last week about the electric-guitar company? The company that got raided by federal agents, who were supposedly looking for endangered imported wood? The company flatly denies all allegations. And the Murdoch Wall St. Journal, ever eager to bash anything environmentalist, claims the feds could next go after folks who own old vintage instruments that contain now-restricted components.
• Should any of us care about speculation about the new Apple CEO’s private life? Ars Technica says no.
• Birth rates are dropping in many countries, especially those where female fetuses are sometimes selectively aborted. The Economist calculates some countries, at their current rates of decline, could totally run out of people in 600-700 years. Of course, if you’re not a dystopian scifi fan you know trends don’t stay the same, at the same rate, forever.
• Sasha Brown-Worsham believes “we should parent more like they did in 1978.” More Boo Berry and daytime TV; less overprotectiveness and constant fear.

from alleewillis.com

• The Martin Luther King Memorial in DC will not be dedicated this weekend as scheduled, due of course to the hurricane. That gives more time for critics to bash the whole thing—for being designed and built in China (allegedly by unpaid labor); for being backed by big corporate interests King might have protested against; and for generally depicting King as a “dreamer,” not the rabble rouser and afflicter of the comfortable he really was.
• Veterans’ activists allege the suicide of a Ft. Lewis soldier a few weeks ago should be considered murder, committed by a military that utterly fails to tend to Iraq vets’ post-traumatic and other disorders.
• Campagne, the longtime upscale Pike Place Market restaurant that’s produced the annual Post Alley Bastille Day fetes, will now be called “Marché.” I guess it’s OK since that outfit a couple blocks away isn’t using the word anymore.
• The Boeing 787 was officially approved for passenger travel, more than three years behind schedule.
• Erica C. Barnett asks why the $400,000 the City contributes toward Metro Transit’s potentially doomed Ride Free Area couldn’t instead be used to buy automatic ticket-selling machines. Because that’s not free downtown transit for the people who need it, that’s why!
• In other transportation news, the Sightline Institute has the good news that young adults are driving a lot less these days.
• MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan has a new name for the billionaires and their cronies grifting from the rest of us for their own needless gain—”corporate communism.”
• Was your favorite American-made electric guitar built with endangered imported wood?