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.

• The exodus of established stars from the decaying music industry continues, with Madonna signing a concert management company, not a record company, to distribute her next few CDs. Other artists, including space-heater heir Trent Reznor, are going further and selling direct to fans.
• That quintessential “legacy media” company, NBC, is buying up Oxygen (one of the last big non-conglomerate-owned cable channels) and vacating its historic studios in Beautiful Downtown Burbank. Under California laws intended to preserve media-biz jobs, the network has to offer the lot to a buyer that’ll keep it operating.The Tonight Show will move to the Universal Pictures lot, which NBC also now owns; the NBC News bureau, the KNBC-TV local news, and Access Hollywood will move to a new building nearby. The other network show still made on the Burbank lot, Days of Our Lives, is rumored to be ending in ’09.

  But by that time, the whole company might be sold off.

• Get ready for more Letterman “Network Time Killer” segments: The movie and TV industries are bracing for the first writers’ strike since 1988. The difference this time: The networks and cable channels might let a strike go on for a while, running a bunch of cheap reality shows instead of scripted fare.
• Our pal Sherman Alexie is in the running for a National Book Award. It’s for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a “young adult” novel about a Spokane Reservation teen who finds himself an outsider everywhere he goes.It’s also got fabulous illustrations by another of our ol’ pals, the one-n’-only Ellen Forney. It couldn’t have happened to two nicer folks.
• Looking for an industry even more moribund than recorded music? Try mass-market beer. Miller has already merged with South African Breweries; Coors has merged with Molson. Now both seek to merge their respective U.S. operations.The deal would turn the once competitive domestic swill market into a duopoly between “MillerCoors” and Anheuser-Busch. (The Pabst brands are now owned by a marketing company that contracts out its production to Miller.)

  I can still remember when there were five mass-production breweries in the Northwest alone, each operated by a different company.

  Fortunately, we now have a wealth of microbreweries, whose broad range of tasty product has long since rendered superfluous the likes of “Colorado Kool-Aid.”

• As the world gets hotter, it also gets humid-er.
• Ann Coulter inanity of the day: Now sez she wishes all Jews to “perfect” themselves, by becoming Christians.
• Office whoopee? Go right ahead, say many companies. Just don’t try to cover up the aroma by burning microwave popcorn in the break room.
• While other commentators wax nostalgic about the fiftieth anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, P-I business columnist Bill Virgin gushes undeserved laurels on the semicentennial of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (that other favorite novel of male virgins everywhere).Let’s compare n’ contrast, shall we?

  Both Kerouac and Rand are better known today for their celebrity and their ideas than for their prose stylings.

  But both authors’ rambling self-indulgences actually serve their respective egotisms.

  Both liked to hype themselves as daring rebels, valiantly crusading against the stifling anti-individualism of grey-flannel-suit America.

  Kerouac helped provide an ideological excuse for generations of self-centered dropouts and anarchists to proclaim themselves above the petty rules of mainstream society.

  Rand helped provide an ideological excuse for generations of self-cenetered tech-geeks and neocons to proclaim themselves above the petty rules of civil society and rule of law.

  But at least Kerouac’s devotees don’t go around declaring that the oil companies and the drug companies somehow don’t have enough power.

  (P.S.: Digby has much more lucent thoughts than mine i/r/t Randmania.)

As I mentioned a few days back, I’m working to make my music history book Loser fully available again. This time, I’m dealing with a print-on-demand outfit whose largest standard page size is smaller than the one used for the last Loser print run.

That’s little problem for the original 1995 pages; Art Chantry had designed them for a 10-inch-tall page, rather than the 11-inch-tall size the original publisher used.

But I subsequently designed the 1999 addenda (Chantry was living out of state at the time) for a full 11-inch page. I’ve been adapting those 45 pages to the smaller dimensions without cuting anything.

Now for the big question: How much updating should I make to the 1999-edition text?

…today’s overall downbeat theme, Belltown’s own legendary rock venue the Crocodile Cafe is going through a fiscal rough spot. Apparently it’s been, at best, only marginally profitable the past seven years, as newer and bigger venues compete for the top touring bands. But since founder Stephanie Dorgan’s divorce earlier this year from R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, there’s no longer rock-star zillions to plow into the place. Managers say business has rebounded a bit the past few months, but the Croc’s long-term future remains to be seen.

…a Courtney Love-branded perfume? Even she’s not so sure.

My ol’ emo/folkie musician pals Gary Heffern and Chris Eckman (the latter from the Walkabouts), most of whose recordings have only been issued by Glitterhouse Records in Germany, have released their first domestically-distributed music in years. Appropriately enough, it’s a track (called “Wave”) on
Song of America, a three-CD box set compiling new versions of classic American tunes, from “Lakota Dream Song” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” to “I Am Woman” and “Streets of Philadelphia.”

The mastermind behind this master mix? None other than America’s last law-abiding chief lawyer, Janet Reno. (No, unlike her immediate successor, she doesn’t pretend to sing.)