The locally based, globally minded music mag No Depression is calling it quits, effective with the May-June issue.

Cause of death: A dying music industry, whose endemic issues are finally reaching indie labels, who can’t afford to buy as many magazine ads as they used to.

For 13 years, ND has been the greatest chronicler of “alternative country,” “Americana,” and assorted other essential US/Canadian homegrown musics.

The big irony here: An institution dedicated to honoring longstanding or lost art forms, and to celebrating contemporary artists who keep those forms alive, is itself becoming history.

…publicly endorsed any candidates in Election Ought-Eight. (I’d briefly, privately, been an Edwards guy.) But here’s a local, unofficial pro-Obama music video shot at the Columbia City Theater, with gospel singer Pat Wright and Pearl Jam member Matt Cameron among its participants.

…a handy guided-tour-in-print to some of Seattle’s most beloved former rock clubs.

…arrives with the belated announcement of Gruntruck/Skin Yard frontman Ben McMillan’s demise, following an eight-year bout with advanced diabetes. McMillan was a hard-drivin’, hard-playin’, hard-livin’ hard rocker who never got his due piece of the Seattle Music Scene hype.

Can’t anybody stage a hiphop club night without somebody firing guns outside?

…anxiously awaits the long-threatened but still nonexistent Snowstorm ’08, here’s what else has been going on:

• That plan to restore the boarded-up, aluminum-clad windows at the King County Courthouse? Not gonna happen.
• That plan to channel state money for a Husky Stadium remodel? Not dead yet.
• Seattle’s finally getting a new strip club; sure enough, it’s situated right alongside the unofficially-named South Lake Union Trolley.
• The many human services groups based at First United Methodist Church are packin’ up and movin’ out. The last church service at the classic sanctuary: Easter, 3/23. That building’s being saved for commercial use, but the ’50s-era annex building’s going away.
• There’s good news for music lovers: Capitol Music, the city’s top vendor of orchestral instruments and sheet music for more than 90 years, has reopened in Roosevelt, a year after development consumed its last downtown location.
• Caucus or primary? Wash. state’s got both.

• Marshall Alternative School will finally close this year, its remaining programs scattered around the city.
• A Tukwila hotel manager turned himself in to face accusations that he stole $1.4 million from hotel guests’ corporate accounts.
• Gregoire’s next big idea for the 520 corridor: A mediation team.
• Makah tribal leaders want to go whaling again.
• How to keep school bus riders pacified: Use satellite music, specially curated to be squeaky clean.
• And the Mac universe impatiently awaits whatever Steve Jobs is going to announce this morning.

…a fountain of snowflakes descend upon the frozen tundra of Green Bay, I knew the gods would be with the other team, not with ours.

In other Sunday nooze:

• I’m briefly quoted in a SeaTimes obit for Gunther Woerne, who ran Woerne’s European Pastry Shop in the U District for several decades.
• How’s historic preservation going here these days? Eh, so-so.
• Could “social networking” dot-commers save the Crocodile?
• Damn, there was more gunfire outside a Belltown bar; this time the Spitfire Sports Bar.
• So-what’s-new dept.: A state ferry’s been drydocked for some needed fixing.

…we must say goodbye to one of the legends of “outsider” music, risque cabaret singer-songwriter Ruth Wallis. The creator of “Davy’s Dinghy,” “Drill ‘Em All,” and “A Pizza Every Night” had finally been (re) discovered in recent years with an off-Broadway revue of her compositions, Boobs! The Musical.

Why doesn’t the Music Choice cable channel called “Musica Urbana” have any bands from downstate Illinois?

…I hope, this evening (Friday), 6:30-8:30 p.m., for the fantabulous next book event starring yr. loyal web-author. It’s at Not A Number, an artistic and subversive gift and card shop on N. 45th in wondrous Wallingford.

IN OTHER, LESSER FRIDAY NOOZE:

• A shop after my own head, Bernie Utz Hats (sometimes inexplicably spelled “Byrnie” Utz), may or may not move next year. Seattle’s last downtown specialty hat store has been at Third and Union for 68 years.
• The next big thing, NW music-wise: That’s the current hype for Kimya Dawson, she of the K Records singer-songwriter stable, now featured on the Juno soundtrack.
• The bus tunnel is still shut.
• The Port of Seattle just got some worse news, in the form of a state audit questioning its spending and construction-project oversight.
• In the “DUH!” department, experts report that more commuters means worse traffic jams, drunk driving is a bad thing, the Bushies are stonewalling tougher fuel-economy standards, and the Okies want a pro basketball team.
• Willie Nelson’s giving $40,000 to charities in Vancouver USA, where he worked as an itinerant DJ back in the 1950s.
• Dumb criminal of the week: A guy who not only allegedly has sex with minors, but videotapes it, sometimes on public property.
• Feds are investigating whether Washington Mutual Bank deliberately used inflated property appraisals in selling mortgages.
• No Crocodile news, except for a benefit show for ex-employees on Sunday the 30th.
• The Neah Bay/Makah region along the Washington coast doesn’t just have rogue whalers. It’s also got ocean waves, which some believe can be used to make electricity.

• 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.