JUST IN TIME for the tenth anniversary of his leaving us, fresh Cobain shirt designs are in the tourist shops.

ANYONE REMEMBER Professor Egghead?

THE MIDWAY DRIVE-IN on Highway 99 north of Tacoma, more recently just used as a Swap & Shop site, is gonna be razed for a Lowe’s and a strip mall. Where’s Joe Bob Briggs when we need him? Oh yeah–he’s got religion now.

IN HONOR of the passing of the darkest 13 weeks of the pagan year, some random rain pix for Photo Phriday.

For the third year, the Pioneer Square Mardi Gras was a low-key battle between the citizen proponents of fun and the official enforcers of no-fun. This year, an informal truce seemed to have been reached. Nobody I saw tried too hard to act high and/or rowdy; the police seemed more interested in traffic control than with forced attitude adjustment.

An accurate photo essay on the event would have nine pictures of cops and one of participants, instead of the other way around.

No wonder Polaroid’s in Chapter 11: An enterprising entrepreneuse sold digital pix of the low-key revelers, which she instantly churned out on a portable mini-printer.

JUST ANOTHER BUNCH of random Photo Phriday stuph.

JUST SOME pseudo-random street abstractions for today’s Photo Phriday. Enjoy.

…to Linda Dershang and the hard-workin’ gang at Linda’s Tavern on Pine. Hipster hangouts have notorious attrition rates, so the continued thriving of Linda’s is particularly praiseworthy.

My favorite personally-viewed events at Linda’s:

• The night the place was taken over by just laid-off Amazon.com workers, who cheerled the whole room into rousing chants of “FUCK AMAZON!”
• The cinema night on the back patio with Bette Davis’s evil-twin scenery-chompin’ performance in Dead Ringer.
• The election-night party for the sponsors of the first Monorail Initiative. For one brief shining moment, it looked as if the likes of Dick Falkenbury and Grant Cogswell really could change the world. And who knows, they still might.

Linda’s is also one of the last places where Cobain appeared in public, as you’re bound to hear next month as the media get ready to hype that, less happy ten-year anniversary.

It looks increasingly possible after Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses in seven states. The candidate was so confident about those contests, he (and Dean) came here, to rally the respective faithful for our own caucuses on Saturday.

The Kerry rally at the Sheraton ran late, as these things usually do. It was scheduled for 7:30, but at 8:15 people were still being herded into the big ballroom. Inside, the event turned out to be the Kerry & Gary Show, with Gov. Locke (seen here to Kerry’s right) introducing the candidate and warming up the crowd.

Kerry’s speech was standard boilerplate stuff. Get a decent health-care system, save the environment, stop sucking up to “Benedict Arnold CEOs,” dump Ashcroft, get some integrity back in D.C., elect a president who’s been on an aircraft carrier for real, bring it on. Some of the comments by audience members were more telling, particularly the catty talks about other audience members who showed up with Dean buttons.

One thing was sure: From certain angles, he looks remarkably like Jon Stewart, or maybe Clutch Cargo. On CNN later that night, the panels-O-pundits (particularly Mo Rocca and Wolf Blitzer) couldn’t get over how Kerry’s emerged as the most manly Democratic candidate in many an election cycle. Thankfully, CNN hasn’t switched to HDTV yet, so you had to imagine Mo and Wolf salivating and sweating at the thought of ol’ Ketchup Boy’s eyebrows, his dimples, his rugged war-hero shoulders.

The other thing I noticed on CNN Tuesday night: Everyone who mentioned Kerry’s speech on the channel used the annoyingly belittling qualifier “Seattle, WASHINGTON,” except, thankfully, for local-boy-gone-big Aaron Brown.

FAO Schwarz’s Seattle store closed last week after eight and a half years as the city’s premier emporium for all things play-like.

Seeing a once-proud institution collapse like this was sad, but perhaps not preventable. Yeah, management claims Wal-Mart did ’em in; but the FAO stores were in downtowns and major malls, far from the Wal’s exurban big boxes. I smell mismanagement, perhaps on a big scale. But it makes little difference now.

For mass-market toy merchandise (the Barbie-level stuff, as opposed to the Beanie Baby-type stuff sold more exclusively at indie stores), in-town Seattle shoppers are largely stuck with Fred Meyer, the Bon, and the Northgate Toys “R” Us.

IF TOMORROW, “Super Sunday,” is America’s biggest day for macho horseplay, last Friday night was Seattle’s night to celebrate beauty.

First, there was the lavish opening party for Spa Noir, a new posh pampering palace in the former Confounded Books space at Second and Bell. Above, owner Jessica Norton receives a bouquet of flowers and a socket wrench to celebrate having finally gotten the space ready.

Spa Noir offers all the favorite day spa services (facials, massages, manicures, etc.), but offers them until 10 p.m. Appointments can be made for even later at night, so bar and nightclub workers will have something to go to after closing time besides the suburban casinos.

Just a block away, the Rendezvous hosted the Nerd Rock Fashion Show A Go-Go, a sprightly little fashion show featuring local designers and benefitting the fledgling DIY arts orgalization Hometown Gravy.

Then, down by Terry and Mercer at Consolidated Works,, came the lavisher-than-lavish opening night gala for the second Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. You’ve got to get there this weekend. It fills Conworks’ cavernous exhibition space with hundreds upon hundreds of paintings, drawings, sculptures, Etch-A-Sketches, installation pieces, and more. They mostly are figure studies of lone females and males in provocative poses. There are also many fetish action scenes, some gay action and lesbian action scenes, and even three or four images of heterosexual coitus (the one category noticeably missing at last year’s festival in Town Hall).

It was often hard to see the beautiful art because of all the beautiful people in the way. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of flirty gals and dashing guys swarmed the joint, reveling in their fabulosity.

The festival organizers didn’t let me take pictures last night. (Hey, some of ’em are BDSM people, so you have to expect they’ll love to make rules.) I did, however, persuade a finely-coiffed party attendee named Alisha to pose outside the building. (Her outfit was designed by print MISC contributor Jen Velasco.)

As Seattle’s winter overcasts continue their reign of darkness, something like Beauty Night should be an annual ritual.

BOWLING, BOOZE, and free WiFi–the three great tastes that taste great together! And they can all be found, perhaps exclusively in the world, at the lovely Leilani Lanes in north Greenwood.

That’s where I and over two dozen others were on Wednesday night, for a webloggers’ bowling party.

Pictured above, none other than our Confounded Books pal Brad Beshaw. He wasn’t in our group, but just happened to be at the alley the same night.

Besides knockin’ the ol’ pins down, many of us played the Dance Dance Revolution game. Pictured above, “TYD” and Anita Rowland.

…offers great deals on those two great tastes that taste great together–candy bars and diabetes test machines.

JUST SOME RANDOM shots today. Have a nice weekend.

“Clinic,” the weekly live-music showcase at Re-bar, is still going on, despite the decline and fall of its co-sponsor Tablet.

Tuesday night’s edition went like they all did. Three bands played (pictured below: the unabashed loudness that is The Octabites). An improv troupe of “naughty nurses” told a few jokes and mingled among the crowd, passing out promotional tchotchkes for Tablet and Toys in Babeland.

After three years and change, the last fortnightly Tablet tabloid is out. Officially, the soft ad market did it in, along with its also-ran status in the local “alt” media universe and its confusing every-other-week schedule. But I’d add that the paper’s concept was contradictory from the get-go.

It never paid its writers a cent; expecting them to work just for the privilege of getting their statements made.

But, aside from a few political conspiracy-corner columns (which never challenged the orthodox-“radical” views of the paper’s target audience), its content was almost uniformly perky and light. The rag acted as if it was daring and rebellious by printing only positive reviews and by running lotsa puff pieces for advertisers.

In the end, Tablet had become a thin publicity sheet, not a true “alternative” at all. Its instigators plan to resurface later this spring in a monthly “magazine” format (no, I don’t know what that means) selling ads to both Seattle and Portland youth-culture businesses. I wish them success, and hope they’ll use the opportunity to reformulate their approach.

IT’S THE LAST INSTALLMENT of our snow pix. By now, five days have passed since Snow Day. It already feels like a million years ago. (Sigh.)

AS THE BIG SNOW rapidly becomes the Big Slurpee, here’s the second part of our look back at the wondrous simpler time that was this past Tuesday. At least one more batch-O-pix will follow.