…to the 27 people who attended my li’l book event at the Form/Space Atelier gallery. If I’d known I’d have had a mike and a stage and a desk, I’d have scripted something.

IN SATURDAY’S NOOZE:

• Declared too damaged to be preserved, the City’s allowed developer David Sabey to demolish the Stock House at theold Georgetown brewery complex on Airport Way, the pre-Prohibition home of Rainier Beer.
• A marriage made in heck: Wife runs a street ministry to drug addicts in Tacoma, hubby sells crack in Seattle.
• Sonic Boom Records is leaving Fremont, in another instance of the arty and funky disappearing from neighborhoods that have been sold to home buyers on the basis of their artiness and funkiness.
• BankAmericrap is bailing out Countrywide Financial, onetime big blowers of the housing bubble.
• Wash. state challenges the Bushies on draconian anti-privacy regulations.
• The ferry system doesn’t know where to put all its out-of-commission boats.
• What? You mean to tell me old pier pilings are bad for the water?
• Pat Cashman has a 30-year-old son, who won some online joke-telling contest. In other passage-of-time news, Madonna will be eligible to join AARP this year.
• And in case you haven’t heard, the Seahawks play an extremely important playoff game this afternoon.

• The easy half of the equation has been solved, as Clay Bennett agrees to sell the Storm to owners who’ll keep the WNBA team here. The hard part, wresting the Sonics from his reverse-Midas-touch hands, now begins in earnest.
• Meanwhile, the guy who got us into this mess in the first place by selling the teams to Bennett is making new moves at his day job. Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz has fired his CEO, retaking the reins himself. Can he return the coffee chain to its former fast-growin’ ways, in spite of all the obstacles? (Among the latter: espresso drinks coming to McDonald’s.)
• Some folks got pretty snow this morning; the heart of Seattle, again, didn’t. Damn.
• The Port of Seattle’s fiscal shenanigans will be investigated by the Feds.
• House prices finally begin to go down in the area. (Insert your own “going down” joke here.) Still, local biz leaders insist it’s not that drastic really. Meanwhile, developers who’d planned to condo-convert Seattle’s historic Smith Tower are scaling back their plans; now only the top 12 stories will be converted.
• My second-ever adult job (such as it was), the student newspaper Polaris at North Seattle Community College, is a goner.
• Blacks are more likely than whites to get busted for having or smoking pot, even though that’s now the city’s official lowest law enforcement priority.
• In more positive law-related news, “serious crime” (as the FBI defines it) is way down in western Washington’s cities these days. That, alone, won’t stop the media from exploiting the occasional random shooting, or stop the talk-radio nebbishes from preaching the city=danger, suburbs=serenity meme.
• An election year’s underway. You can tell because a politician, in this case Gov. Gregoire, is trying to generate headlines on the get-tougher-on-drunk-drivers line, the encroaching-surveillance-state issue on which no one dares to disagree.
• Woodland Park Zoo tries again to make its own cute li’l baby elephant.
• The men’s fashion headline of the year is “Return to Elegance.” Just as it’s been every year since at least 1978.
• 12,000 people in Idaho lost electricity due to a stray cat wandering through a substation. Brian Setzer remains at large.
• Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert returned to their cablecasts, just in time to give writerless jokes about the New Hampshire primary.

…disappearing city-wise: Ballard’s Sunset Bowl, the last remaining bowling center north of the Ship Canal and one of Seattle’s last 24-hour eateries, has lost its real estate and is closing, probably by April.

And things aren’t looking that rosy for the lease of my fave new-book store, M Coy (the last non-chain general-book outlet in the downtown retail core). Details to follow.

• “A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole…”
• The film Dancer in the Dark notwithstanding, no woman has ever been sentenced to death in Wash. state. Sadly, this might change.
• Spokane Catholics have raised $8 million to help pay abusive-priest lawsuit settlements.
• Help a rural flood victim— donate a cow.
• Sonics fans (and, yes, there still are many of us) have a new mantra. During last night’s laugher against the even more pathetic Timberwolves (which the Sea. Times chose to cover on sports-section page D14), when fans were encouraged to make noise during an opposing-team free throw, the repetitive shout came loud and clear from the rafters on down: “Clay Bennett sucks! Clay Bennett sucks!” TV announcer (and all around good guy) Kevin Calabro responded with a brief giggle, before he returned to strictly commenting on the action on the floor.

• Even architects can’t afford to live in Seattle these days without special programs.
• The end of Netscape Navigator as a web-browser brand doesn’t mean all that much. The best of Netscape lives on in its open-source successor Firefox.
• One of the ex-Mariners named in the Mitchell Report has admitted to using steroids and uppers in 1999. His explanation: All the other kids were doing it. (Except catcher Dan Wilson.)
• It’s the law: If you’re stoned, don’t install other drivers’ tire chains.
• You can tell it’s a slow news day when every TV station reports the following: “Woman doesn’t want dog in bathroom during couple’s shower.”
• Betcha didn’t know there was anything historic in Tukwila. Except it’s not there anymore. It’s being barged to Seattle.

• Downtown Bellevue’s getting a bowling alley again! The last one, Belle Lanes, closed 15 years ago; Barnes & Noble’s in the elegant arc-roofed building now. In a separate deal nearby, an 11-screen cinema megaplex is being turned into offices.
• To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Amazon.com announced it’s moving its HQ to south Lake Union. The dot-com may occupy parts of as many as 11 buildings sprawling over six blocks.
• A sports blogger insists KeyArena’s not so bad a joint, as long as you’re not a greedy team owner.
• The grocery biz is more efficient than ever. That means, among other things, fewer surplus products going to food banks.

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.

• In the absence of even an unorganized “save the Fun Forest” campaign, the beloved old fashioned amusement park in Seattle Center will close in 2009.
• Washington Mutual Bank, whose national fortunes have risen and fell with the housing bubble, is laying off over 3,000 workers.
• Some 380 gallons of diesel fuel spilled from a factory-trawler boat at the Port of Tacoma.
• The current ETA on fully restoring car-ferry service to Pt. Townsend? Perhaps a year.
• Barack Obama’s coming to Seattle tonight (Tuesday). The campaign event, at the Showbox Sodo (formerly Premiere, formerly Fenix) costs $100.
• UW athletic director Scott Turner is this year’s sacrificial lamb for football mediocrity.

(Via Steve Mandich):

“Nice update on the Mercer Arena from Wednesday’s Nooze, though according to Jeff Obermeyer’s cool Arcadia book Hockey in Seattle, the Mets actually played at the Ice Arena at Fifth and University from 1915 to 1924. The Mercer Arena (nee Civic Arena) didn’t open ’til 1927. Here’s more from Obermeyer’s site.”

…longingly wishes, “I’m only sorry Kurt Cobain left us before he could give the world his Christmas album.”

(Actually, Cobain did a solo guitar track on a William Burroughs holiday-related spoken word EP.)

• The Seahawks pulled off a come-from behind miracle victory in St. Louis, cemented when the other team couldn’t score from First and Goal in the last minutes.
• The Seattle Marathon: More profitable and less charitable than you may have thought.
• Do state citizens really suffer from “tax fatigue”? Perhaps not.
• That surplus ferry boat that was gonna be sold on eBay? Not surplus no more.
• Critics accuse software titans of being too mercenary toward little guys caught using file-shared warez.
• Nationally, old-line Southern retro-segregationist Trent Lott will resign from the U.S. Senate; perhaps so he can more quickly join the lobbying biz.
• Despite attempts by an online-retail trade association to promote “Cyber Monday,” the first office day after Thanksgiving’s not yet replacing “Black Friday” in the shopper’s lexicon.
• Besides, Bill Clinton’s treasury sec’y sez recession’s a-headin’ our way.

• It’s the end of the line, sad to say, for onetime Northwest timber giant Pope & Talbot. A court has approved a plan to auction off all of P&T’s remaining assets.
• A Bremerton area woman was arrested for gambling with counterfeit money at the Clearwater Casino. Authorities say she had meth in her purse at the time. Trust me: When you’re sober, those Hell Bank Notes from Chinatown gift shops don’t look a thing like U.S. currency.
• Some of Dino Rossi’s major donors in the 2004 gubernatorial election are backing incumbent Christine Gregoire this time around.
• The Everett Elks Club, the old Mill Town’s predominant social club and nightlife institution for pretty much ever, is being demolished for condos. Once boasting 5,000 members (about a third of the town’s adult male population), it peaked in the ’30s and ’40s, when private clubs in Washington were allowed to have slot machines and were the only places allowed to serve liquor by the drink. I was only in the current Everett Elks building (built in 1962) once, on a father-and-son night. I remember it as a vast, labyrinthine place, with a huge meeting room on the top floor, a male-only “Stag Room” bar and a showroom on the ground floor, and athletic facilities in a series of basements and sub-basements (swimming pool, gym, handball courts). Everything exuded an air of genteel masculunity, albeit toned town to fit the more prole tates of the local community. By that time, though, the Elks had begun their national decline; younger adults were far less interested in joining a group with an official pro-war stance and a white-males-only membership policy.
• And, oh yeah, the Cougs won the 2007 Apple Cup against the Huskies, with a spectacular last-minute touchdown run by the highly appropriately named Alex Brink.

With the Sonics’ continued slide of ineptitude (13 losses in a row, counting last season’s last five games), some observers are wondering whether management’s deliberately trying to lose, a la the movie Major League, to help smooth the road for a move out of town.

Of course, such a strategy would require Clay Bennett and co. to have some degree of intelligence and competence, neither of which they’ve evinced thus far.

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.”

I was at the Mariners-Angels game on Aug. 28. The first inning was fantastic. As for the rest of the game, (insert Mad magazine-style, gross-out sound effect words here).

But some local players still ended the evening coming out ahead. They’re the kids and teens who attend the Rotary Boys and Girls Club, 201 19th Avenue.

That’s due to Tom Herche. He runs United Warehouses, in the (for now at least) industrial district south of Safeco Field.

No, his company’s not the old United Furniture Warehouse, of once-ubiquitous musical TV commercials. It’s a general storage facility, where small manufacturers, importers, and distributors can stow their wares at modest rents.

Every August, Herche buys a block of up to 500 tickets to a Mariners home game. He then resells them to friends and friends-of-friends at $25 each, with all the money benefitting the Boys and Girls Club. Folks who buy four or more tickets get to park in the warehouse’s lot, one long block south of the stadium.

He also treats the ticket buyers to a “Tailgate Bar B Que” at the warehouse. He springs for the burgers, hot dogs, sodas, and pony kegs of Coors. The drinks are served inside the building, the food outside.

The tailgate party was a perfect early evening, held in a perfect setting. United Warehouses looks like a warehouse ought to look. It’s got a curved roof and bare-wood support beams. A delightfully rundown-looking front office emits that vital “we don’t waste our customers’ money” look.

Herche’s company also has three larger, newer facilities out in Kent (plus one in Portland). But his Occidental Avenue building is a classic of warehouse architecture. And it’s a shining example of why the city should fight to preserve industrial uses in the old industrial district.

For one thing, it’s hard to imagine a scene in the big-box Kent Valley like the Tailgate Bar B Que.

The scene outside: Standup “tables” made of shipping palettes with Costco tablecloths. Hundreds of casually dressed adults, and a few kids, basking in friendly chatter and the late-afternoon sun, avoiding both the rush-hour traffic and the stadium parking jam.

The scene inside: Grownups sipping refreshing beers in the refreshing shade, standing amid stacks of cases of soft drinks, gardening tools, small appliances, and whatever else was staying in the warehouse this day.

But after a mere two hours of this, it was time for all of us to march en masse up Occidental Avenue toward the ballpark.

Sure, the seats were up in the right field nosebleed section, but nobody complained—at least not about that.

The game itself, you either know about or have tried to forget. The Ms scored five runs on four hits (including an ultra-rare three triples) in the first inning. It all went downhill from there. Our boys lost their fourth in a row (in what would become a nine-game losing streak), dashing hopes that they’d overtake the Angels for the division lead.

But everyone in the tailgaters’ group still had a swell time. Today’s Mariners organization, unlike the early Kingdome-based outfit, knows how to put on a complete show.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about the night’s real winners.

The Rotary Boys and Girls Club began as the Rotary Youth Foundation in 1939, begun by the Rotary Club of Seattle (still a major supporter). In 1947 it affiliated with Boys’ Clubs of America, which went coed in the 1970s.

The club serves more than 700 children from the Hill and the CD, ages 6-18. More than 200 show up on any given after-school day. Programs include education and career prep, “character and leadership” development, health and life skills, and the arts, as well as sports and recreation.

The club’s been blessed over the years by major supporters. Besides the Rotary Club and United Warehouses, Microsoft and auto dealer Phil Smart Sr. have made big contributions.

But they could always use more cash and volunteer hands, to help keep their programs going strong. You can contribute by calling 206-436-1880 or logging on to rotarybgc.org.