• There’s finally enough funding to fully restore/rebuild the landmark Hat n’ Boots gas-station building in Georgetown. Yay!
• City officials now insist forcibly destroying homeless people’s camps is good for them.
• The bus tunnel was closed all day Wednesday and will remain closed Thursday. The culprit: The new computer system Metro installed to control all the tunnel’s systems. It’s not running MS Vista, is it?
• Is it really so bad for Port of Seattle cops to make a homemade music video showing off their anti-speeding radar guns? If it was made on public time with publicly funded equipment, maybe so.
• Nothing new on the “save the Crocodile” front.
• We DO know that the Comet has a new owner. We just don’t know who. (Let’s hope the new mgmt. hires less-unnecessarily-violent bouncers.)
• The Seattle School District wants to efficiently site a high school and middle school at the same location. Just think of all the ways the “tweens” could learn from the older kids: “You call that a beer bong? Let me show you how it’s really done.”

…and occasional rock star Sean Nelson’s got a handy guide to the worst movie endings ever.

• As the Crocodile’s sudden closing gets its much-worthy big splash coverage, the Seattle City Council finally passed tougher new nightclub noise laws, for which the Belltown condo crowd had particularly lobbied. Any Croc buyer might have to put some dough into extra soundproofing.
• Gov. Gregoire and Legislative leaders are proposing a big affordable-housing push, packaged in with a bill for flood relief.
• Seattle to White Center: “Maybe I still like you after all.”
• Madrona Creek has been “daylighted” after a decade-long volunteer effort to get the stream out from underground pipes.
• Meanwhile, King County’s trying a different kind of answer to recurring floods—don’t fight ’em, at least in yet-to-be-developed areas.
• Those state ferries that got abruptly retired, after having been used years past their pull date? The state had been selling “depreciation rights” to the boats, one of those weird derivative investment schemes that have been going around lately. The state may have to pay off the investors, to the tune of $2.73 million.
• Some Beacon Hill kids apparently think it’s fun to set elaborate traps in the road, with hidden spikes that cause instant flat tires.
• The Olympia Oyster House: It’s not a drive-thru restaurant. Someone apparently didn’t know this.

…this totally fictional (for now) ad would show up. (I found it at Seattlest; it’s been poppin’ up all over the local blog-O-sphere.)

As far as reality, there’s little more to report Croc-wise. The joint’s still closed. Stephanie Dorgan, its owner these past 16 years, isn’t talking to the media. At least one potential new ownership group has apparently shown up, but a lot of behind-the-scenes haggling would need to be done. Shows had been booked at the Croc into January (some touring gigs had been booked into next April); new venues or cancellations will be announced one show at a time.

I’m trying to figure what to say about the beloved, loud, crowded Croc, it of the tasty bar grub and the long lines, the way past-their-pull-date ceiling hangings and the exterior windows still (partly) commemorating the place’s 10th anniversary in 2001. The opening party for Loser took place there in 1995; I took care to place hand-scrawled signs at the door, warning that it wasn’t a secret Pearl Jam show.

I fell in love several times in that building, and out of love at least once. Darn, I hope someone figures out how to revive the place.

• Seattle to White Center: “Maybe I don’t want to hook up with you after all.”
• All those new jobs that were gonna result from Wash. state giving Boeing huge tax breaks? Not so much.
• I’ve only eaten at five of the Public Health Dept.’s 10 most-cited local restaurants.
• A new home for Opus: Woodland Park Zoo’s thinking of building a big new penguin habitat.
• You know those inflatable indoor playground thingies? Two adult males fell out of one, landed on a three-year-old, and accidentally crushed the lad’s skull.
• More nasty rumors about the Crocodile Cafe: Could they be closing up for good?

Tacoma’s own Ventures, kings of instro surf-pop lo all these years, have got their totally deserved berth in the Rock n’ Roll Hall O’ Fame.

• Also from T-Town, somebody wants to replace part of the historic ex-Heidelberg brewery with a hotel. Yep, preservationists don’t like the idea.
• Columbia Winery will move its winemaking and bottling operation from Woodinville to eastern Washington. Its retail and “hospitality” operations, which employ more people than its wine production does, will stay on this side of the mountains.
• And the old Olympia brewery might be “sold on the courthouse steps” if a bankruptcy trustee, representing the bottled-water venture that tried to buy it, can’t negotiate a sale.
• In allegedly healthier drinkies, a big Colorado agribiz operation has been selling “organic” milk in several states. Health-food advocates call foul, claiming the big agribiz operation’s breaking or bending the rules on what can be called organic.
• Mayor Nickels’s son Jacob was sentenced for his role in a casino scam operation. Insert your own “Nickels slots” joke here.
• As you might have already heard, twelve ex-Mariners are on the Mitchell Report list of baseballers who’ve allegedly used or trafficked in steroids. Meanwhile, P-I columnist Art Thiel compares the whole scandal to “a look through the keyhole at a ballroom full of elderly, naked dancers. Something exotic is going on, but exactly what isn’t clear, and few are in any trouble aside from embarrassment. At least the line for the keyhole is short.”
• A GOP state legislator from the Eastside decides he’d rather be a Democrat.
• Another urban church is thinking of selling its historic building. University Baptist, a local leader in diversity and social-justice causes for more than two decades, hasn’t decided what to do yet, but has decided to offer up the building and see what offers show up.
• Gov. Gregoire’s latest plan to end the worn-out-ferry-boat crisis: Build three new boats ASAP (insert newsreel footage of the Kaiser shipyards in WWII here), lease one boat from Pierce County immediately, and run special foot boats from Seattle to Pt. Townsend. (I’m holding a group excursion on one of these boats in the next week or two; keep watching this space for details.)
• Sound Transit showed off its plans for an elaborate University transit station. In keeping with the current UW pecking order, the light-rail stop would be close to the football stadium and the medical center, farther from the upper-campus liberal arts buildings.

• It’s your first day to ride the SLUT, though city fathers hope it won’t be your last.
• Corporate consolidation hits the “alt” music world, as LA-based megapromoters have bought the Showbox and Showbox Sodo nightclubs. Ex-Showbox owner Jeff Steichen will still run the clubs for AEG Live/Anschutz Entertainment Group. That company’s owned by Philip Anschutz, the Denver financier and promoter of various right-wing social and political causes. Outfits he owns, in whole or in big pieces, include Qwest, Regal Cinemas, a string of free daily tabloids in DC, SF, and Baltimore, and the film company that made The Chronicles of Narnia and Atlas Shrugged. Organizations he’s supported include Seattle’s own Darwin-deniers at the Discovery Institute, as well as the astroturf lobby that’s been generating almost every “indecency” complaint sent to the FCC. It’d generally be safe to say he’s not the kind of chap indie-rock folks might want to give money to.
• Someone who’s likely one of Anschutz’s least fave politicians, Sen. Obama, made a quick campaign stop at the Showbox Sodo Tuesday.
• If you thought Rainstorm 2007 was dreadful, which it was, just be glad it didn’t wash away part of 405.
• My old hometown has become a leading source of weird crime stories lately. The latest: A father charged with drugging his own baby.
• Seattle’s rep as Eco-City USA? T’weren’t always thus.
• Should the City condemn land owned by the the Central Area Motivation Program and replace its food-bank building with a fire station? As you might guess, many say no.

…a certain ex-Seattleite you know, is living the not-so-high life in London, eating a macrobiotic diet (but still smoking Marlboros), hiring Orlando Bloom’s Buddhist chanting instructor, and hanging out with the Stings.

• Seattle’s first snow scare of the season was, as I’d expected, a bust, but here comes another.
• What the P-I calls “affordable-housing developers” (what, you didn’t know there were any of those?) rant that the City of Seattle doesn’t provide enough zoning and other incentives to let ’em profitably build more units for folks closer to “median” income levels. Of course, with the few megarich driving “median” income levels ever higher, the definition of for-profit “affordable” housing inches further away from what working families can afford.
• Meanwhile, Bellevue officials ponder regulations to deal with suburban “megahomes” that flaunt their materialistic corpulence over their neighbors.
• The last of the four Pine-and-Belmont bars has closed prior to condos taking over the half-block. Manray’s demise ends a tradition that goes back nearly 20 years, when Squid Row took over what had been a dive-bar space called Glynn’s Cove. Squid Row begat Tugs Belmont, which begat Kincora. Then came Bimbo’s/Cha Cha, Manray, and the Bus Stop (which begat Pony). The strip’s demise got the expected long mega-coverage in The Stranger; the Cha Cha had been the longtime favorite watering hole of several Stranger staffers.
• The P-I catches on to a story first iterated a year or more, I believe, by the Weekly, that Costco treats its workers nicer than the Wall St. investment community thinks it should, resulting in greater sales and profits. Why, if word of this leaks out, the whole economic excuse for screwing the masses could collapse!
• You don’t have to go to Wash. DC to see Democrats cowering in submission. They’re right here, ramrodding an emergency session of the State Legislature to appease Tim Eyman.

…longingly wishes, “I’m only sorry Kurt Cobain left us before he could give the world his Christmas album.”

(Actually, Cobain did a solo guitar track on a William Burroughs holiday-related spoken word EP.)

• Remember how the Bellevue Art Museum had this big cash crunch that led to a drastic restructuring? Turns out part of its problem was its former chief financial officer. She’s charged with embezzling $300,000 from the organization, because, police say she said, a recent divorce had left her “financially compromised.”
• We won’t have the Sugar nightclub to kick around anymore.
• In the “you call this higher education?” dept., unnamed members of a UW frat house allegedly shouted racial and anti-immigrant slurs at a random Asian-looking guy walking outside, and threw a water balloon out at him from their window. Police are investigating it as a “malicious harassment” case.
• A couple tried to have bathroom sex on a Southwest Airlines flight from Seattle to Vegas. The plane made an unscheduled stop in Portland, where the forbidden lovers were kicked off.
• Today’s best dumb criminal, as Keith Olbermann would say: A 42-year-old metal thief. Cops found an electric sign had gone out along I-90 near Snoqualmie Pass, discovered wiring was missing from the sign’s control box, and found the stolen wires in the bed of a pickup parked nearby. The driver was in the truck’s cab, sleeping.

I’m on “special assignment” the rest of this week. That’s right, another marathon temp gig. I’ll report when I can.

UPDATE: Karen Hansen has some newer info about the late local rock singer Ian Fisher:

“Earlier this evening, I got a call from Jack Hanan, long-time friend and former bass player of the Cowboys. Jack had spoken with Ian’s brother and relayed the following:Ian Fisher had a heart attack in his beach hut in Thailand, in the company of friends (not on a bus)

.

His body has been cremated, per Ian’s wishes, and we’re not sure if he is in Seattle yet or not. His ashes will be scattered in San Diego and Aberdeen.

A memorial event, complete with a big jam session, is in the planning and we’ll keep you posted on the date.”

…word’s gotten out that former local rock singer Ian Fisher of the Cowboys has died in Thailand. Further details are scarce at this time.

Fisher and his band were anomalies in the pre-“Seattle Scene” Seattle scene. Back in the early 1980s, local rock bands that sought commercial success played covers of big hits in big bars. Bands that insisted on writing their own material were stuck with far fewer, far smaller venues, and catered to the more specialized tastes of the “alternative” crowd. The Cowboys created their own image and their own music (albeit heavily influenced by the likes of the Knack and the reggae-era Clash). They aspired to, and got into, the big clubs. They didn’t tour much, and never got a national record contract. But Fisher got to live the rock star image, and flamboyantly did so for nearly a decade.

IN MUCH MORE PREDICTABLE NEWS, Clay Bennett did what everybody said he would do from day one, despite his claims that he wouldn’t. He said he intends to move the Sonics to Oklahoma City.

But it’s not a sure thing, despite the fatalistic mumblings of some local fair-weather fans.

There will be legal wrangling.

There will be local potential buyers.

There already are save-the-team booster groups.

There are the hearts and souls of everyone who remembers the Sonics in their ’70s and ’90s primes, who knows the Storm’s more recent triumphs, who knows what a team can do to bring families and communities together.

And we have people who see the sport’s changing economics.

The NBA’s business model, as we’ve said before, is way broken.

The influx of cable TV rights money has peaked or will peak soon, as total viewership declines and fractures among ever-more viewing choices.

As the upward centralization of wealth in America continues, there will be only so many zillionaires to buy luxury boxes and corporate suites.

What’s left for teams to pay superstar salaries from? Shoe endorsements? Team-logo mouse pads?

Pro b-ball needs to stabilize, around its home towns.

It needs to again be a sport of fan loyalty, of community outreach, of human-scale, street-level attention. In this sense, the NBA needs to become more like the WNBA.

And for that to work, the league has to give up on the short-term fixes of subsidized arenas and threats to move. It needs, as Ross Perot or someone said, to “dance with the one that brung ya,” the fans and cities who grew up with the sport.

…of these already, but there’s a need for another benefit concert for a musician who doesn’t have health insurance. This time, it’s our ol’ pal and Fastbacks/Visqueen legend Kim Warnick. She’s come down with something that landed her in a hospital, and we’ve gotta help her out. The usual parade of local music all stars and major raffle prizes will occur Tuesday, Oct. 30 at the new Cha Cha Lounge, 1013 E. Pike.

As more new-music pioneers like Warnick enter the golden years, we’ll have to hold more and more of these benefits. Unless we get our politicians off their collective posteriors and establish a sane health-care system in this land.

Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla digitally recorded his first solo album in Vancouver. A recording-studio employee was bringing the finished tracks to Seattle when U.S. border agents seized the hard drive. The hereby-linked AP story says “some music publications hinted” the dispute might have been due to the “politically charged” content on the album. Walla discounts this conspiracy theorizing, noting the agents let tape copies of the songs go through. Barsuk Records says Walla’s album, Field Manual, will be out in January. The feds still haven’t returned the hard drive.