costco store-brand whiskey, from rebelbartender.com

• The initiative to Costco-ize Washington’s liquor business? Less popular now than in previous polls.
• Good news, or as close to good news as we’re likely to get, i/r/t govt. budgets. The proposed city budget doesn’t cut human services, and the county budget doesn’t cut anything.
• MTV’s The Real World is coming back to Seattle. In other news, MTV still exists.
• Some people would apparently rather wear their vegetables than eat them.
• A Boeing 787 was finally turned over to an airline, three years late. How’s that whole outsourcing/union-busting thing workin’ out for ya?
• Nobody was hurt when Gov. Gregoire’s car was sideswiped by another car on I-5.
• You can always count on College Republicans to believe racist “jokes” are cool.
• The “Occupy Wall Street” protests finally get some media attention, thanks to brutally over-reactive cops.
• The potential price of eco-friendliness: “A car wreck that involves an electric vehicle or a hybrid can pose grave risks to emergency personnel.”
• Sean Penn, diplomatic superstar?

Some 50 people attended our fantabulous Walking Seattle event Saturday at the Elliott Bay Book Company.

At least half of those followed along as we took a short stroll through upper Pike/Pine during a lovely equinox early evening.

Thank you all.

from smelllikedirt.wordpress.com

• Seattle’s rotting produce and other food waste goes to a composting plant in Everett. Our newest export: stink.
• If, as the Times‘ Danny Westneat claims, Microsoft no longer needs over $100 million instate tax breaks, does the Times still need its own state tax breaks?
• As the last beams at the old Boeing Plant #2 come down, Jon Talton notes that the old Boeing corporate culture is also now mostly gone, replaced by Jack Welch-style cost cutters and bean counters.
• Local essayist Seth Kolloen compares the early years of Pearl Jam to the Kemp/Payton era Sonics. At least we still have Vedder & company.
• Descendents of Capt. William Clark (of “Lewis and…”) built a symbolic canoe for a southwest Wash. tribe, to replace one the captain stole way back when.
• A few right wing writers and pundits have identified the biggest force restraining their corporate masters from getting everything they want. It’s democracy. Therefore, to these guys democracy is something icky that must be done away with.
• A few handy comparisons between right-wing fantasyland and reality.
• You’ll have to listen instead of getting to read, but here’s an argument for the premise that punk rock was invented by Jews.
• Sara Horowitz sees a new “middle class poverty” in which everybody’s treated as (and as badly as) freelancers, and envisions a “jobs plan for the post-cubicle economy.”

(NOTE: Due to time constraints of an employment-related variety, these might not appear as frequently during the next few weeks.)

• Seattle’s not the only city with no NBA basketball these days, as the lockout cancels the first preseason games.
• Just as we’d figured, the Illinois company calling itself Boeing has been out to bust its unions by dumping its Washington heritage.
• Seattle ranks #7 in a list of the top transit-using metro areas.
• Novelist Anne Marie Ruff has a theory why there’s no cure for AIDS yet—because a cure wouldn’t be as profitable for the drug companies as expensive lifetime treatments are.
• Canada’s hard-right federal government is imposing harsh minimum sentencing laws on pot growers caught with as few as six plants. B.C. provincial officials fear it could swamp its already overcrowded prison system.
• A guy in Montana was attacked by a bear. The guy’s friend fired a gun at the bear. Missed the bear. Hit the guy.

There’s one thing I sure don’t want you to miss. It’s at 5 p.m. today at the new Elliott Bay Book Co., on 10th Avenue between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill. Be there or be trapezoidal.

nordstrom photo, via shine.yahoo.com

• Those $85 Starbucks designer tees? All net proceeds go to Starbucks. One more reason Howard Schultz is in the Forbes 400 richest-people list.
• A Starbucks employee in Calif. posted a satirical song about his job onto YouTube. The song became popular; he became fired.
• After 18 years, the homey and low-key Rosebud restaurant/bar on East Pike is calling it quits. The management (which just bought the place from its previous longtime owners) homes to reopen nearby.
• Facebook’s got this big new feature that looks a lot like something already devised by a Seattle startup site.
• The Real Networks spinoff Rhapsody, a subscription online music service, has some sort of free trial thing going on via Facebook.
• Washington state: Now with even more poverty.
• You want across-the-board cuts in all state spending? Fine. Welcome some new early-release inmates, who won’t get the supervision past parolees got.
• Swedish Medical Center to lay off 150 staffers. So much for the aging-boomer-era medical boom.
• The on-again, off-again scheme to drastically redevelop the parking lot north of Qwest CenturyLink Field is on again. For now.
• An unfinished Kent parking garage will be razed and replaced by homes and stores.
• Tacoma teachers’ strike: over.
• Obama’s coming to town. You won’t get to see him.
• The always-lucid Feliks Banel sees the retirement of J.P. Patches in the context of the institutional decline of local TV (particularly local non-news TV).
• The “Occupy Wall Street” folk have finally proclaimed “our one demand”—11 of them, all big-big-picture stuff, essentially adding up to the complete re-orientation of the nation’s government, economy, and society.
• ‘Tis a sad, sad day for all who care about tradition, long-form storytelling, and frequently-remarried drama queens. The final network episode of All My Children airs today.
• On a much happier note, you can become part of a new tradition tomorrow, the tradition of the ped-powered urbanites.

luna park, west seattle; deran ludd collection via vintageseattle.org

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is going away.

In its place on and near Seattle’s central waterfront, some big ideas have been proposed. Ideas for wide expanses of concrete and sod, creating more of the same tasteful boredom that plagues many of our new or redesigned public spaces.

I prefer a human-scale vision for the waterfront’s future. The People’s Waterfront Coalition offered such a vision in 2006.

But I’d add something to it.

Something that builds on the waterfront assets we’ve already got. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, Ivar’s, the Miners Landing carousel.

In other words, the kitsch.

Lots of people who aren’t politicians or landscape architects like kitsch.

It’s fun. It adds life. It replenishes the spirit.

My idea of a “people’s waterfront” would include an active entertainment area. My inspirations are pre-Trump Atlantic City, England’s Blackpool, West Seattle’s old Luna Park, and, yes, Coney Island.

Pier 62-63 has to be rebuilt anyway. Let’s rebuild it as a great old-fashioned amusement pier. Call it the Puget Pleasure Pier, or “P Cubed.”

A big one, perhaps twice as large as the current 62/63. It would extend south to the Seattle Aquarium and north to the Bell Harbor marina.

At its end would be a big, brightly lit Ferris wheel, shining out toward the bay.

On its north side, as spectacular a roller coaster as can fit in the space.

On its south side, smaller rides and attractions including kid-sized ones.

In the center, under a colorful roof, carny and arcade games and concessions.

Everywhere, laughter and shrieks and enthralled folk of all ages. It would not just replace the mourned Fun Forest but outshine it.

It would all be publicly owned, but leased to private operators as a profit center for the Seattle parks system and/or the overall waterfront rebuild.

You ask, but what about the rainy season?

Outdoor amusement parks in New Jersey and Wisconsin operate profitably on a seasonal basis. And their winters are far more extreme than ours. Wild Waves is open weekends until Halloween. The Fun Forest’s rides opened for spring break; its indoor arcade operated year round. Our P Cubed could have a similar mix of warm-weather and all-weather activities.

The P Cubed would not be upscale. It would not be laid back. It would not be world class.

It would just be fun.

And it would make money, and generate foot traffic to the Aquarium and the rest of the area. But mostly it would be fun.

Don’t we all deserve some fun these days?

(Cross-posted at Citytank.org.)

from 62worldsfair.com

• Joel Connelly looks back at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, whose 50th anniversary looms. He sees a city then and now insecurely seeking validation from outside, yearning to be “put on the map.”
• Neighborhood activists on Beacon Hill want to create an “edible landscape” area in Jefferson Park, full of fruit-bearing trees and shrubs.
• The City of Seattle wanted to lease Building 11 at Magnuson Park, now used as art studios and a kayak shop, to a commercial developer. Then it changed its collective mind and put conditions on the deal, designed to help current tenants keep their spaces. The developer’s suing.
• The Washington State Liquor Stores’ top sellers include the cheap stuff, flavored vodka, and Jaegermeister.
• A hundred people demonstrated near the ex-WaMu HQ against corporate tax breaks (state level).
• R.E.M., which became a “half Seattle band” in the mid 1990s, is finally calling it a day.
• Headline of the day (by Nick Eaton): “Blue screen of death is a little cuter in Windows 8.”
• Amanda Marcotte believes far-right “tea party” congresscritters and supporters are so sociopathic because they come from the suburbs. I believe that’s a lame excuse. There are caring, uncaring, and violently anti-caring people everywhere.
• There’s something really, really fun this Saturday, if you haven’t already heard. And there will be only caring people at it.

Igor Kellor is a multimedia whiz and a very clever person. He’s the creator of the musical Mackris v. O’Reilly and the blog Hideous Belltown.

Now he’s got a CD out (also available online), Greater Seattle.

While billed under the band name Longboat, Keller provides almost all the instrumental sounds (mostly synths) and all the lead vocals.

Don’t expect any perky paeans to tourist vistas and real estate opportunities here. Kellor has more ambitious agendas.

He offers snappy, snarky cabaret ditties about 10 Seattle neighborhoods (including Harbor Island!) and five outlying communities. Each tune is influenced by a different musical genre. Some of the melodies and arrangements match the tone of the lyric tales; others starkly contrast with them.

“Belltown” is a dirge, befitting the chorus of “downtown’s afterthought.”

“Ballard” is a sad sea shanty, about the upscaling away of its entire heritage.

“Fremont” is an uptempo hoedown, even though Keller sings that “To me Fremont will always be/The gateway to Ballard.”

“Downtown” is a brisk calypso-beat tale about the police shooting of John T. Williams.

Some of the songs are more up to date than others. The opening track, “Bellevue,” features the standard stereotype of the Eastside’s largest city as a whitebread conformist nightmare. In real life, it’s becoming more ethnically diverse than Seattle.

Kellor also doesn’t care much for Mercer Island (“It’s clear that money can’t buy taste”), Buren (“Visiting here makes your mind go numb/It’s much like a bug in your cranium”), and Federal Way (depicted as an ideal home for “a violent modern man”).

And he absolutely loathes Edmonds (“A police state/Bad cops rule this town”), recounting a story of “teenage drivers against police cruisers.”

Kellor wraps up all this sharp civic commentary with a sharp change of pace and attitude, a pleasant rendition of “Seattle” (the old Here Come the Brides theme) joined in by a trumpet, trombone and tuba.

Greater Seattle is an ambitious, brusque love letter to the city, warts n’ all.

by marlow harris, http://seattletwist.com

Tuesday’s Nirvana Nevermind 20th anniversary concert at EMP was a total blast.

Even if you weren’t there, thanks to the live stream from, er, Livestream.com.

You can still view it. Though you might want to fast forward some parts. Thanks to band set-up breaks, it took three and a half hours to get through the original CD’s 13 tracks and 10 other Nirvana songs. Each tune was re-created by a different combo. (The exception: the Presidents with Krist Novoselic; they got to perform two, nonconsecutive songs.)

The evening started off with a total sonic blast, as the reunited Fastbacks (above) completely nailed “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Singer Kim Warnick, like many of the night’s performers, had known Kurt Cobain.

Warnick’s also an ex-roommate of Susie Tennant, the longtime local music scene promoter and publicist. (Tennant had staged the original Nevermind release party at Re-bar.) Tennant has gone through a cancer scare (thankfully apparently over); the concert was a benefit for her treatment and recovery.

The Livestream page had a chat-room corner. Some chatters made snide insults about Warnick’s middle aged appearance. (Just the sort of “fans” Cobain had vocally denounced.)

All the performances were loose, spirited, and enthralling, true to Nirvana’s own rough and tumble gigging.

My own faves included, in no particular order:

• Visqueen’s full-blast “Territorial Pissings;”
• new band Ravenna Woods’ sped-up “Breed;”
• the Long Winters’ emo-y “Something in the Way;”
• Shelby Earl’s soulful “All Apologies;”
• Pigeonhed’s eerie “Heart Shaped Box;”
• Steve Mack (the local boy who made good across the pond with That Petrol Emotion) blasting through “Serve the Servants” with his current band Stag—and with a bleeding head (!).

defunct connecticut strip mall, from backsideofamerica.com

• Mark Hinshaw at Crosscut says Seattle’s wrong to demand street level retail in so many mixed-use developments. He says there just aren’t enough viable businesses to put in them. It’s actually a national situation. Even before the ’08 slump, analysts claimed the country had become “overstored,” with too many malls, strip malls, big box outlets, etc. for the available business.
• One successful local retailer, kitchenware king Sur La Table, was bought by the same financiers who also own big chunks of Gucci and Tiffany.
• The big Nevermind 20th anniversary concert opened with the reunited (for now) Fastbacks nailing “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Perfect in so many ways.
• “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is done for. There was a big coming out party for GLBT military personnel at Lewis-McChord.
• For once, a local art work made for display at Burning Man will actually be shown here!
• Tacoma’s life size Boy Scout statue is missing. Scouting officials fear the thieves could just melt it down.
• Thankfully, there will be no Oklahoma or Texas teams in the Pac-12 (previously Pac-10, previously Pac-8) conference. Some sporting traditions should remain sacred.
• U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Spokane) thinks schools spend too much time and resources on “nonessential curriculum” such as gay history and the environment.
• The big Netflix shakeup is explained by that prime explainer of everything, The Oatmeal.
• BBC Ulster commentator William Crawley explains how to be a Christian anarchist. Hint: It ain’t easy.
• Is the “Occupy Wall Street” protest a bigger thing online than it is as a real-world event? And what are the protesters for, anyway?
• Has Facebook really created 180,000 jobs, as the company claims? Or is this just a new version of dot-com hype?
• Current TV’s next lib-talk franchise: The heretofore Internet-based gabfest The Young Turks, featuring ex-MSNBC dude Cenk Uygur. Still can’t get the channel on my cable system.
• The feds claim the gaming site Full Tilt Poker has degenerated into “a global Ponzi scheme,” funding operations out of money owed to its winning players.
• Soon you’ll be able to preserve the remains of your deceased loved ones in handy liquid form.
• The annual Coffee Fest trade show is at the Convention Center this weekend. It’s intended for people in the business of importing, roasting, selling, and serving the stuff, though many parts of it are also open (for a fee) to those who simply love the java a lot. Of course, there’s also something else this weekend to pump up your pulse.

no, not *that* ziggy.

• RIP: Ziggy comic creator Tom Wilson Sr. (Wilson Jr.’s been drawing the panel for several years now.)
• The Nirvana Nevermind 20th anniversary concert occurs tonight at EMP. It sold out the hour it was announced. But you can still experience the show (a benefit for longtime Seattle music figure Susie Tennant’s cancer treatments). The whole thing will be streamed live online, at 10 p.m.
• The Seattle Storm won’t repeat as WNBA champs, having been knocked out in the first playoff round.
• The owners of the old Twin Peaks sawmill are accused of causing flooding in the town of Snoqualmie, by putting fill dirt on part of the site, thus interfering with drainage.
• The anarchist storefront meeting hall and music club has closed. As would be expected, its operators blamed the cops and “rich, whiny” neighbors.
• Sen. Maria Cantwell’s re-election theme: She’s stood up to Wall Street more than Obama’s done so far.
• Greg Nickels threatens to run for mayor again.
• Now being test-marketed at Costco stores (though not at any around here): wedding dresses.
• PETA now wants to get rid of fishing, at least fishing with hooks.
• Criminals have a new way to learn how to break into businesses—by breaking into their WiFi networks first.
• There’s a “Moving Planet Seattle” rally at Lake Union Park this Saturday. People are converging there from all over town, using any means of locomotion other than fossil-fuel motors. And when you’re done celebrating foot power there, you can head over to Capitol Hill for another celebration of foot power….

• Where the state bugged out, private promoters are pitching in to promote Wash. state tourism.
• The final public appearance by J.P. Patches was a heart rendering occasion, even for those of us who weren’t there.
• As Frank Sinatra once sang, “Oops there goes a million kilowatt dam.”
• Word from Spokane is the feds still hate the medical marijuana movement.
• The best part of the Emmys was what didn’t happen.
• Today’s instance of a right-winger “joking” about how fun it would be to murder all the liberals: Andrew Breitbart.
• Netflix’s grand strategy is now revealed. The online streaming-video service and the DVD-by-mail service will be split into two separate brands, requiring separate memberships. The DVD service will be rebranded “Qwikster.” About as insipid a name as I’ve heard, at least since the first dot-com crash of a decade ago. (You know, those bygone days of Beenz, Kozmo, Flooz, MyLackey, HotBot, Go, Go2, Go2Net, et al.)

The downtown Seattle Borders Books closed earlier this week after 17 years. (The Redmond store closes Sunday, among the busted chain’s final outlets to close.)

• At Friday’s Park(ing) Day display at the Seattle Art Museum, a videographer from a Chinese-language cable access show tapes an interview using a Flip-like digital video cam, a mini spotlight, and a small Steadicam-like camera stabilizer.
• Former P-I book critic John Marshall is still unemployed, and writes for the Atlantic about receiving his final unemployment check.
• The Jo-Ann Fabric store in Olympia has a Halloween crafts section. It recently had a bat in it. A real bat. With rabies.
• A survey co-sponsored by Microsoft’s MSN.com named Seattle North America’s sixth worst-dressed city. Vancouver was #3; the top spot went to Orlando.
• Seahawks fans this Sunday will not only face a formidable opponent on the field (the dreaded Steelers) but also extreme frisking.
• Another gay/lesbian event, another would-be censorious program printer.
• Pierce County: Now with 35 percent less transit.
• Netflix: Now with higher prices and 1 million fewer customers.
• The corruption investigation against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his inner circle turns out to have begun with comments to blog posts.
• Why didn’t anyone tell me there’s a Barbie Video Girl doll with “a video camera embedded in her chest”? You could use it to reenact the cult film Double Agent 73!

(Remember, my big book shindig is one week from today (Sept. 24). See the top of this page for all pertinent details.)

from inmagine.com

There seems to be a growing book genre, about Seattle white women telling their life stories via their yoga experiences.

First was Presidential sister Claire Dederer’s Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses.

Now we’ve got Suzanne Morrison’s Yoga Bitch: One Woman’s Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment.

In which, I presume, Morrison attempts to conquer skepticism, cynicism, and cigarettes, and achieve some form of enlightenment.

Is there room for more than one self-reflective yoga queen in this town?

And if not, how will they duke it out?

Perhaps they could stage a stand-off (or pose-off) on the stage at Hugo House. A series of increasingly difficult poses, to be maintained for at least two minutes each.

By the time they get to the upward-facing two-foot staff pose, we should have our winner.