The “Save Our Sonics” rally outside the new Federal Courthouse on Stewart Street was far more exhilarating than anything seen on the KeyArena floor this past year (except the Obama rally).

The organizers scheduled it to coincide with the start of the city’s lawsuit trial inside the courthouse and with game 6 of the NBA finals. With the help of the local sports media, they drew more than 3,000 people to the courthouse steps.

Sonics legends were there (Gary Payton, Xavier McDaniel) to spur on the shouting. So were several men, and at least one boy, in Slick Watts getup.

As per the organizers’ permit, the 4:30 p.m. rally lasted just over half an hour, long enough to be covered live for the 5 p.m. local news. It served to drive home a crucial point in the city’s case against Clay Bennett and co.: We don’t want a settlement. We don’t want to be bought out of the team’s arena lease, at any price. We want our team. Period.

…blogged about Friday’s huge Obamapalooza at KeyArena. Allow me to interject a few thoughts of my own.

First, it was a spectacularly attended event. Here are about half of the people who didn’t get in. KeyArena was filled above its official capacity, far surpassing any SubSonics crowd this season. They’d said the doors would open at 11. I’d shown up at 10:15 a.m. The line was still snaking around the Seattle Center grounds. I barely made it into the upper nosebleed seats.

They all showed up for what turned out to be a simple, direct spectacle. The Obama campaign showed some of its commercials on the DiamondVision screens. Local musician Jake Bergevin showed off the pro-Obama music video he’d made with Pat Wright and Matt Cameron.

Warm-up speakers were kept to a brief, all-local lineup of Mayor Nickels, Rep. Adam Smith, and Gov. Gregoire.

The Sen. Obama gave the 50-minute version of his current stump speech. No podium, no graphic “slides,” only a few strategic banners. He essentially said what he’s been saying these past months: “It’s easy to be against something. But people want to be FOR something.”

You already know what he says he’s for: Peace, prosperity, affordable health care (sans mandates), unions, civil rights, competent government, choice, economic fairness, eco-sanity, gay rights (though perhaps not gay marriage), people coming together to work for a better tomorrow.

Some pundits have claimed the biggest differences between Sens. Obama and Clinton right now are their personalities and their brand images. If so, the question then is which of these personalities, which of these brand images, is most capable of trouncing Sen. McCain and the walking ghosts of the Bushies.

The Moore Theatre threw a delightfully casual centennial party Monday evening. It was a textbook lesson in how to mount a fun, populist gala. It hewed to the spirit of the Moore’s original purpose as a vaudeville palace.

The above view is from the now seldom-used top balcony. Originally, this was the only part where black patrons could sit; it was accessed from a separate side entrance.

Theater personnel gave informal tours of backstage areas. Buskers performed outside and throughout the lobbies. Free drinkies and snackies abounded. Original posters and playbills hung everywhere.

Civilians were invited to consume wine and popcorn on stage, while one act after another appeared: Operetta, tap dancing, trapeze, burlesque, modern dance, standup comedy, folk music, soul music.

The night started with an old-time theater organist. It closed with a pick-up rock band, including guitarist Kurt Bloch and singer Kim Virant.

Would that all theatrical parties were this much fun. (Hint hint, Seattle Repertory Organization.)

With a high “five” from John Curley to the big ‘KING Mike’ balloon/float, the downtown holiday shopping season is among us.

I know I’m not the only one who saw something subliminally S/M-like about the real woman locked up inside a giant snow globe.

Then, at the Black Friday parade’s conclusion, always comes the fake snow shot out from TSFKATBM (that’s “the store formerly known as The Bon Marche”).

The passing parade witnesses the demolition of the former Frederick Cadillac showroom, used more recently as the Teatro ZinZanni dinner theater, for a mega-high-rise condo project…

…and the arrival of what’s officially called the Seattle Streetcar, but is already unofficially known as the South Lake Union Trolley (for the acronymic possibilities), on a test run up Westlake Avenue. Passenger service is still tentatively scheduled to commence some time in December.

Drew Carey was at the George & Dragon pub in Fremont on Monday afternoon.

During a typically packed UK soccer day (there was a satellite TV match showing between Arsenal and Reading), Carey showed up in a chauffeured minivan with a small entourage. He plugged his recent status as a goodwill ambassador for U.S. pro soccer (you know, that game where nothing’s made up and the points do matter). Specifically, Paul Allen and partners have recruited Carey as a minority investor in their Major League Soccer expansion team, to launch at Qwest Field in 2009. (Rumor has it that somebody else sought the franchise, but they bid over the actual retail price.)

Carey’s big promo point during the speech (which he repeated that night as a Monday Night Football booth guest): The team will offer “club memberships.” For a projected $100/year, hardcore fans will (1) get an exclusive package of merch, and (2) get to vote every few years or so about the team’s future, even getting to fire the general manager.

He also got in a well-received dig about how such a fan-empowerment schtick might have helped with “that basketball team you used to have.”

Here are some beautiful, haunting photos of toy factories in China. The series oscillates between three extremes: The official “fun” expressed in the products themselves, the regimented factory atmosphere, and the close-up portraits of individual humans (mostly female) on the production lines.

Turns out I’m not the only one who’s become fascinated by old blank signs.

…autumn unofficially arrived last night, in the form of a spectacular thunderstorm.

This morning, the skies over Seattle have returned to their diffuse, impressionistic low-light pattern. It’s refreshing, it’s cool, it’s beautiful. Really.

I first visited the Pike Place Market in 1975. More than three years after city residents voted to “Save the Market,” the big renovation/restoration was still underway. Much of the South Arcade was boarded up, with “artistic” grafitti and murals painted on the plywood barriers. One board bore the simple message: DON’T FIX IT UP TOO MUCH–SAVE THE MARKET.

The Market voters had “saved” was a homey, funky, rundown warren of stands and shops, a place of proletarian dreams and honest hard work. The fixed-up Market maintained this look, even as the surrounding First Avenue sleaze district shrank.

As the years passed, it became a mecca for civic self-congratulation. More merchants geared themselves to tourists, using such gimmicks as the infamous fish throwers. Luxury car dealerships shot magazine ads along Pike Place (“No Ordinary Supermarket, No Ordinary Car”).

New York financiers, supposedly “silent” investors in the Market’s real estate, suddenly claimed ownership. The city fought ’em and won. The city argued the financiers intended to “fix it up too much,” destroying the Market’s soul for the sake of upscale retail revenues.
Now, it seems the city bureaucrats running the Market might just be “fixing it up too much” on their own. Some of the powers-that-be want to promote the place as the ultimate high-end retail destination for the condo crowd.

I say the Market’s role as “the soul of Seattle” is more vital than competing against Whole Foods.

Sure, sell fancy stuff. But still sell the basics. Make the place a refuge for products downtown people need but high-end retail doesn’t offer.

And Keep It Funky, God.

…Seafair parade, here’s an official Seafair Pirates eye patch. It’s sponsored by AT&T Wireless, made of space-age rubberized plastic, and made in China.

…we must offer one last bourbon-and-soda for lounge pianist Howard Bulson.

Here are the sights of the Seattle Art Museum (version 3.0) all-nighter, full of Cinco de Mayo drunks, patrons, ravers, kids, and aesthetes alike.

When SAM 2.0 first opened downtown in 1991, the Robert Venturi-designed structure was a tribute to PoMo monumentalism. So what if it didn’t work as a public space or as an exhibition site. It was by a world-class architect, and little else mattered.

A decade later, Washington Mutual decided it wanted an office tower on the former Rhodes of Seattle department-store site, adjacent to and owned by SAM. The museum and the bank arrange for a bigger SAM as part of the project.

This time, they went to Portland and Seattle architects and designers. The new design befits Seattle’s legacy as a City of Engineers (and the status of director Mimi Gardner Gates, seen above, as Microsoft Bill’s stepmom). The new space is a lot less flashy and showy than the old space. It’s functional and organized. It’s built to exacting standards of crowd flow, presentation, and preservation. (The big exterior windows can be darkened in exacting degrees, to provide natural light without fading the paintings.)

The new space almost doubles SAM downtown’s exhibition space. Additional floors, which have been built for SAM but leased back to WaMu for now, could almost double it further.

The extra room allows for more art in more different, spacier, settings. Of particular note is the big, prominent area for modern and contemporary art, which helps make the whole place more current and more relevant to the hipoisie.

(Now, if they could address the common local-art-scene perception that SAM (heart)s Seattle collectors but cares less toward living Seattle artists.)

During the fund drive for the new SAM downtown and the Olympic Sculpture Park, SAM’s become Seattle’s wealthiest cultural institution. This time, they’ve spent this largesse wisely.

…this is the week when a major Seattle aesthetic institution marks a new opening, in a much larger, fancier space.

I speak, of course, of the Queen Anne QFC.

This 45,000-square-foot palace of sensual pleasure is twice the size of the chain’s prior unit six blocks west (a site acquired in 1974 from the once-mighty A&P). The new gallery of edibles is at the ground floor of a behemoth condo development, on land vacated by another once-mighty retailer, Tower Records.

The “store,” if you must call it that, contains all the departments you’d expect and more–a fish market, deli, “bistro,” sandwich bar, walk-in wine cooler, walk-in flower cooler, pharmacy, and, natch, a Starbucks stand.

As for product selection, it includes almost all the sometimes obscure brands I sought. It’s got HP and Pickapeppa steak sauces, Fisher scone mix, Session Lager, Hungry-Man frozen dinners, Millstone coffee, whole-wheat spaghetti, and liquid smoke. It didn’t have Moxie pop, but a manager promised it would show up next week. As for two other products it lacks, Campbell’s pepper pot soup and Arizona diet green tea, the folks in charge said they’d look into getting ’em.

This ongoing tribute to the wonders of human taste is open 24 hours a day, with no admission charge (though it’s hoped you’ll purchase some merchandise while you’re there).

As for that other local aesthetic institution opening an expanded space, the Seattle Art Museum’s grand new digs at First and Union are open free for a 35-hour marathon today and Sunday, for art lovers and Cinco de Mayo amateur drunks alike.

…are gonna love Stephen Cysewski’s new collection of mostly old street-scene photos, “Wandering in Seattle.”