The all-new lower Queen Anne Safeway just opened today on the site of what had been one of the chain’s smallest surviving Seattle outlets. That building, a classic ’60s box structure, had been razed for a big half-block condo complex with the unfortunate name of “Tribeca”–a moniker intended to conjure images of old iron Manhattan warehouses redone into nouveau-riche loft dwellings, not brand-new stick structures.

(BTW: Safeway, while once the world’s biggest food chain, has never had a store within 300 miles of NYC.)

The store, while twice the size of its precursor, is still a compact and urbane work of “retail theater.” It has narrow carts and aisles, tall shelves, and a slightly darker color scheme. Its internal layout’s also different from the standard grocery cube we’ve known all our lives. The single entrance is toward the building’s narrow south side. The checkouts are placed diagonally along the south side, leaving space near the entrance for special promotions. The produce coolers are in the middle, not along a wall, freeing more wall space for higher-profit-margin operations (pharmacy, deli, video rentals).

It’s a pleasant, even quasi-happy place. My only gripe: Just as with Safeway’s late-’90s rebuild on 15th Avenue East, the new lower Queen Anne store abuts the sidwalk instead of hiding behind a moat of parking–but doesn’t have an entrance at its peak foot-traffic spot (in this case, Mercer Street).

…The official beverage of summer romances.

PLACEHOLDING AT A PARKING SPACE in beautiful downtown Madison Park.

NOW YOU KNOW how the good ship Goodtime gets its times so good.

SOMEBODY doesn’t like Hummers. (But nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.)

SOMETIMES a blown lighting fixture can reveal more than it conceals.

AS PROMISED, here are some of the pix I took but was unable to upload last month, starting with what’s commonly known for short as the “Gay Pride Parade” (the official name’s almost as long as the parade itself).

This year’s parade was to have been hardly different from any, except for the larger and more numerous surrounding beer gardens. (They’re here, they’re queer, they’re drinking beer.) But recent news events gave the paraders a couple extra things about which to feel proudly.

First, a court in Ontario ruled gay marriage legal in Canada’s most populous province. The move capped a half-year in which the Great White North, once seen as quaint and stuffy, suddenly attained a reputation as North America’s bastion of Euro-progressivism and (relative) political common sense.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court, in a rare victory for libertarian conservatives instead of authoritarian conservatives, said Texas couldn’t criminalize “sodomy” (a code-word for gay-male sex). G.W. Bush, who as Texas governor had supported the law, was uncharacteristically quiet about its overturning.

Thus, an event that, as late as a week before, might have held a mood of brash defiance, instead took on an air of only slightly-muted celebration for lesbians and gays, and for everybody who’s been yearning achingly for even the slightest hope.

Hope for a way out of the right-wing nightmare.

Hope for an America that would run on compassion and common sense, instead of greed and fear.

Hope for not just a more prosperous future, but for any future at all.

The new age people say anything we do to maintain a positive attitude will help us achieve our goals. Let’s hope this time they’re right.

…posted to this site in the past week, here’s some nice clean romance pulp-novel covers courtesy of the Private Screenings boutique in Fremont.

I JUST KNEW that decade-old “menswear for women” fad would finally get its logical counterpart.

…to so skillfully manipulate his wand that a beautiful girl ends up on her back, smiling angelically and floating beyond the bounds of earthly reality. (Found at the Pioneer Square Magic Shop.)

WHEN MCDONALD’S REOPENED its Third and Pine branch earlier this year (it was shut while the upstairs was remodeled into moderate-income housing units), they didn’t bring back the loud country music they’d formerly blasted out onto the sidewalk in a futile attempt to repel street loiterers. Instead, they had Ronald himself give a proxy warning.

(BTW: A fan site called McBurgers offers recipes it claims resemble the chain’s original formulae, and insists McD’s current market-share troubles would be solved if the company went back to the way it used to make things, before the efficiency experts and cost-cutters started messing everything up.)

A SURE SIGN OF SUMMER in the city: An elegant barefooted lady relaxing with her PowerBook.

Public displays of patriotic bombast were thankfully sparse at this year’s Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s gathering.

Perhaps it’s a positive sign that folks, at least around Seattle, have gotten bored by the past one-point-five years of force-fed flag-wavin’ and jingoism-spoutin’.

Abundant, however, were all the new massive condo projects just over the railroad tracks from Myrtle Edwards Park. Many of these glass boxes are still somewhat less than fully occupied.

It was a refreshingly ordinary Fourth, full of low-key people of all ages waiting around all day for a good view of the big boomies later that night. One disappointment: The musical bookings for the Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s were a lot less diverse than in prior years, emphasizing the rote-aggressive “blooze” bands that have been Seattle’s official establishment music since the ’70s.

I didn’t stay in Myrtle Edwards for the big blast, having been invited to a deck bash at a FIrst Hill condo, from which the rival Gas Works fireworks show could supposedly be seen.

But with the Metropolitan Park towers rising like twin cans of Spam (the meat product, not the email) between the condo and Lake Union, we could only see the largest or tallest of the fiery boom-booms. Still, a splendid, if cold and windy, time was had by all.

…this past First Thursday. Independent art vendors were moved one block north from Occidental Mall to Occidental Park, instead of getting banned altogether (which some of the corporate art galleries wanted).

So the unofficial, un-curated, anything-goes art bazaar continued, with more square footage and just as many buyers and sellers. The only police trouble came when Greg Kucera (one of the bigtime gallery operators who’d pushed for the indie art-sellers’ expulsion) was almost arrested while wearing a second-hand police uniform shirt.

Meanwhile, the kind of outdoor art sale the corporate gallery guys would prefer took place at the Harbor Steps development, west of First and Union. Everything was clean, slick, and quality-control-committee approved. Glass bowls and cutesy sculptures dominated. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all completely dull.

SOME MORE ENTRIES in our Space Available photo series.

…here’s something to remind you of the joys of winter, sort of.

…over spilled ranch dip.