…(other than the spendorifical live book event occurrin’ tonight at 2407 First Avenue (note corrected address)):

• Another Gregoire big idea: Start charging tolls on the current 520 bridge, to help save up for a replacement span.
• After what seems like an eternity, the Northwest African American Museum will finally open in March at the old Coleman School building.
• The City’s new plan to deal more “humanely” with the homeless: Give ’em 48 hours’ notice before confiscating all their stuff.
• December retail sales: up at Costco, down at Nordstrom.
• SW Wash. floodwater makes livestock a little less live.
• Many more state residents are living in poverty compared to 2001.
• Laurelhurstians: So rich they can hire their own cops.
• Hanford’s got some nuclear waste that could possibly spontaneously combust if exposed to air. Officials say they’ve got a plan to deal with it.

• Some Washingtonians got beautiful, beautiful snow this morning. We don’t. Oh well.
• A small-town mayor in Oregon was caught posting underwear pix on her MySpace page. Some humorless citizens want her to resign. I say to these citizens: Don’t you believe in open government?
• Big UW donor (and ex-Everett mayor) to UW execs: If you fire the football coach, I’ll donate a hundred grand.
• The “passenger” dolls used by carpool-lane cheaters are getting quite artistic.
• A state senator wants to repeal the Port of Seattle’s taxing authority. As if that would solve anything; they’d just waste the money they get from airlines and shipping lines.
• Gov. Gregoire has a new plan for a new 520 bridge, with “road deck narrower than some earlier designs” above “smaller pontoons.” There’s no joke here; I just like typing the word “pontoons.”
• Seattle Center can go ahead and regulate street performers. Remember: When clowns are outlawed, only outlaws will throw pies.
• The state Legislature will debate whether to force school districts to buy more locally-grown lunch ingredients, presumably not including pot.
• There’s another lawsuit over alleged Catholic boy-abuse, this time involving O’Dea High School.
• Apparel chain H&M (not to be confused with K&G) will open three area stores this year.
• And Bill Richardson may quit the Presidential race, while John Kerry hearts Obama.

(Other than the NH primary, in which candidates won who hadn’t won in Iowa, leaving everything still pretty much wide open):

• Port of Seattle bosses told a citizen hearing they’ve got a surefire reform agenda in place. Citizens responded with a rousing chorus of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
• It’s cheaper to get homeless folks off the streets than to just let ’em wind up in emergency rooms and prisons.
• Larry Craig’s new line of defense: I only did it once. Try and prove I didn’t.
• Ex-Gov. Booth Gardner supports an assisted-suicide initiative. Current Gov. Gregoire doesn’t support it.
• Everybody loves Children’s Hospital, unless they’re Laurelhurst residents and the hospital wants to totally ruin their views with new tall buildings.

• Obama won the Dem side of the Iowa caucuses, with Edwards and Clinton the runners-up. Biden and Dodd are outta here; Richardson and Kucinich stay for now. (So is Gravel, despite what this site repeated from MSNBC Thursday night.)Among the Repo Men, Iowans heart Huckabee— hypocritical stances, pro-torture policies, and all.
• Gov. Gregoire vows to raze the Alaskan Way Viaduct, no matter what Seattle voters think.
• The state Supreme Court’s ruled the Seattle Housing Authority can’t stop tenants from decorating their apartment doors.
• A speeding driver tried to hide from State Patrol officers by burying himself alive.
• Allegations have resurfaced that the Seahawks’ fan-noise “12th man” might be artificially augmented.
• King County’s move to all-mail elections might not happen, at least not this year.
• A court’s told the Navy to make its sonar more whale-friendly.
• Copper thieves stole underground wiring on the Evergreen St. Coll. campus. The Greeners are already working on a hemp-based substitute.

• Letterman, and his writers, staged a gala comeback Wednesday night. Could this be the turning point in the election?
• Seattle’s Landmarks Preservation Board agrees with us that the Ballard Denny’s building is potentially worth keeping. Meanwhile, Robert Jamieson quotes the manager of Seattle’s last extant Denny’s as being mad as hell about Saturday night ruffians. And he’s not even on upper First Avenue.
• What with shrinking ice caps and endangered polar bears, what do the Bushies want for Alaska? More offshore oil drilling!
• Child Protective Services could use a lot more social workers. Gov. Gregoire wants to help, at least a little.
• Could Wash. state voters really have a pivotal role in the Presidential nominating process this time ’round?
• A coyote was seen in the general vicinity of Magnolia Bluff. Insert your own joke here.
• Tim Eyman hates transit, loves roads.

• There goes the most-recent great hope for cooling down the heat of violence in Pakistan and vicinity.
• The bus tunnel’s open again. But the SLUT has been stalling intermittently.
• Do Wash. state Republicans stand a ghost of a chance of survival, let alone renewed relevance? The Seattle Times would like to think so. As for me, I think the local GOP will come back only when it can again field candidates of an Evans (or at least a John Spellman) level, and actively try to appeal to those of us who believe evolution is real and wrestling isn’t.
• It’s the law: Don’t text and drive.
• Starbucks is experimenting with sugar-free latte syrup.
• The good news about Puget Sound’s housing market? “Not as grim as rest of U.S.”

• Wash. state insists on giving kids “medically accurate” sex-ed info instead of the federally-mandated abstinence-only nonsense, loses federal funding.
• MS and Amazon decide they’d rather fund Democrats, at least for this cycle.
• Would you like the King County Courthouse to continue looking like a poorly “modernized” ’60s efficiency-architecture victim or have it restored into the stately authoritative edifice it once was?
• A UW frat member was arrested for shooting a gun at tin cans in the frat house’s basement. Hey, at least he wasn’t aiming outside.
• What??? Evergreen State Coll.’s actively soliciting students from in-state???
• Huckabee (hearts) regressive taxation, Wash. state-style.

…post-shopping-season Sunday. This means the Sunday paper’s a much more compact product, stuffed with far fewer flyers and far easier to carry. Still, there is some news today:

• Who wouldn’t love a fancy home holiday display, depicting a full-size Santa on a cross?
• The American Stasi wants to know everything about you.
• Another old ferry has potential problems.
• Capitol Hill’s delightfully delapidated “Undre Arms” Apartments might give way to yet another mixed-use whatever blah blah blah.
• And my Belltown Messenger colleague Mary Lou Sanelli has a nice li’l essay, summarizing some of her thoughts about the novelty of urban living.

…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.”

• What to do with the historic, shuttered Seattle INS building? How ’bout selling it at an online auction?
• Would a fence deter potential Aurora bridge suicides? And if so, why hasn’t it been proposed ’til now?
• Gov. Gregoire’s budget proposal would keep more than $1 billion stashed away in the state’s “rainy day fund.” Gee, didn’t we have a few really rainy days this past month?
• A double-hulled fuel barge ran aground near the central waterfront. No spills have been reported as of yet.
• Onetime gym-equipment king Nautilus Inc. is now losing wads of cash, and is the target of a takeover attempt. The company’s fate was to have been decided this week, but now won’t be.

• 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.

• Seattle to White Center: “Maybe I don’t want to hook up with you after all.”
• All those new jobs that were gonna result from Wash. state giving Boeing huge tax breaks? Not so much.
• I’ve only eaten at five of the Public Health Dept.’s 10 most-cited local restaurants.
• A new home for Opus: Woodland Park Zoo’s thinking of building a big new penguin habitat.
• You know those inflatable indoor playground thingies? Two adult males fell out of one, landed on a three-year-old, and accidentally crushed the lad’s skull.
• More nasty rumors about the Crocodile Cafe: Could they be closing up for good?

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.