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It's Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend, and before we get to the acts, let's recap on strategy.

• Daily tickets are $22 (no mainstage) or $40 (mainstage). Buy in advance, 'cause at the gate it'll go up to $30 and $50, respectively. All adult-accompanied kids 10 and under get free festival admission (doesn't include mainstage).
• Driving anywhere near the Seattle Center will be a pain, slightly less if you get there very early. Any number of buses will drop you there, including special festival shuttles. From Capitol Hill, it's the mighty #8. From downtown, you take the Monorail and arrive in style.
• You can meticulously plan an electronic schedule ahead of time using this online whirlygig or keep your options open by stocking your pocket with a printed PDF version
• Check the weather before you go and dress appropriately (or not, what the hell, it's your life). For the pack: water bottle, something blanket-y to sit on, sunscreen, sweater. Maybe an umbrella? The forecast looks like the festival might (again) live up to its namesake climate protection device.

More than the other two festival days, Sunday is the one with a mainstage lineup as likely to draw former fans looking for a trainwreck as current fans in seeking magical musical moments. In their heyday (aka "the nineties") the headliners released near-flawless and now-iconic albums and then became different kinds of unglued. As far as I'm concerned, Hole's Live Through This is an unassailable classic. Despite all of the tabloid drama, ditching the rest of the band, and the absurdly ungrammatical twitter breakdowns, that record and her rogue 1995 post-VMA appearance will have me on Team Courtney and hoping that her performance falls into the category of "unexpected brilliance" instead of unmitigated disaster.... (more)

Our correspondent Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years. When she's not busy trying to figure out what the French are saying, she's busy trying to figure out what to say to the French. She posts frequently at An American Mom in Paris.

The view window

We left Seattle New Year's Eve, 2008 and arrived in Paris New Year's Day, 2009. New year, new life. Isn't it just so damn poetic.

We packed up our Seattle things, rented our Seattle house, sold our Seattle cars, and passionately kissed our Seattle friends goodbye (we have boundary issues) to follow my French-Canadian husband's dream of living in Europe. It was indeed his dream, not mine. I'd been to Europe; it was neat.

I'd even been to Paris a couple times; it was pretty. But not once while visiting was I struck with the desire to throw my arms around the person next to me at a cafe and say, "Be my NEIGHBOR, Frenchie!"

I was content being a tourist. My husband, my Alex, was not. His job fortuitously offered him a relocation opportunity--Luxembourg or Paris for two years--and Alex stared at me with pleading eyes. I agreed, but only if we chose Paris over Luxembourg because, well, come on it's obvious. (No offense to Luxembourg; it's a helluva grand duchy.)

I also made Alex pinkie swear we would return to Seattle in NO MORE THAN TWO YEARS. He swore. On his pinkie.

(We’re going to be here longer than two years.)

It's been a wild ride. Here's the story, parts of it anyway, from the beginning:... (more)

I apologize for the stress I've put on the pun in the headline, but it's nothing like the stress, apparently, that the Gates Foundation put Seattle's Department of Transportation. Back in May, we were all made aware of the Foundation's discontent with how Sixth Avenue North fed cars to the deep-bore tunnel's north portal.

SDOT illustration

Currently, Sixth Avenue North does not cross Mercer Street. It bends along Broad Street between Harrison and Republican, and for a full block--Republican to Mercer--it doesn't exist before it snaps back to the grid north of Mercer.

SDOT initially planned to reinvent Sixth as a feeder to the tunnel southbound.

The northwest corner of the Gates Foundation campus being in the way, it would have tunneled underneath at a gradual grade (4.5 percent) and thus allowed cars from Mercer or downtown easy tunnel access.

The Gates Foundation, who are putting a building right there, made noises about millions of dollars in mitigation, and this has resulted in the street grid gaining startling curvilinear properties around the political gravity well that is the Foundation's campus.... (more)

There are one hundred or so lucky people in this city wandering around right now smiling. They are thinking back to their Saturday night and recalling things like s'mores, hot dogs, PBR, a bonfire, music, and a fantastic show. These smiling people were part of the first annual Jansport Bonfire Session.

The line began on the south side of Pike between 10th and 11th early in the morning. I spoke with the group that was first in line and they told me they had been waiting since 9:15 a.m. for their chance to get on a bus and ride to a secret location to enjoy more free stuff than you can shake a sharpened marshmallow roasting stick at. When they arrived, they told me that it was completely worth it.

The buses pulled in to Bear Creek Studio out in Woodinville at about 7:00 p.m. and offloaded the lucky hundred into the woods behind the studio. Bear Creek is a special place for me, since it's where my band put down our only studio recording. More generally, you might recognize former visitors like Soundgarden, Built to Spill, Lionel Richie, Foo Fighters, Harvey Danger and a ridiculous list of amazing bands who all recorded there. Visiting the studio before the crowd got there was an awesome treat.... (more)

While we were down in Columbia City the other day visiting the Columbia City Theater, we stopped in for lunch at Geraldine's Counter and had a bowl of three-meat chili ($6.95) that it took some digging to reach the bottom of. After a quick conference, The SunBreak Breakfast Team moved Geraldine's up to the top of our breakfast hit list.

Geraldine's Counter (4872 Rainier Avenue South) is right around the corner from a lot on South Ferdinand Street full of 2-hour parking spots that cost exactly $1. (It's also, I will estimate, a 7-minute walk from the Columbia City light rail station.) That's almost thrill enough, but the ambiance of the place--booths to your right as you walk in, light pouring over tables set next to windows on your left, and just in front, the eponymous counter seating--exceeds expectations.

The place is rated highly by the Surly Gourmand, which makes sense because our lunchtime waiter, if not surly, must have made some crotchety vow of silence. There was never any warning or explanation for the fact that two bowls of chili, a cup of tomato soup, and three-cheese sandwich ($6.50: cheddar, Havarti, gruyère) ) took over half an hour to arrive. (In some circles, half an hour is lunch.)... (more)

+Russ is documenting how much weirder Seattle's gotten since the Lusty Lady closed in our Flickr pool. Methinks this bodes ill.... (more)

This is all that Marymoor saw of Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend were scheduled to play a show on Sunday night at Marymoor Park. Then a trip to the ER for severely inflammed vocal cords kept lead singer Ezra Koenig from the stage and resulted in a last-minute cancellation, wails of dispair, conspiracy theories, and a water bottle or two flung in the general direction of the poor guy who brought the bad news.

They've since found time in their merciless tour schedule to return to the area to make up for their unfortunate (and poorly handled) cancellation. This time they'll be within Seattle city limits for two nights at the Paramount on the 22nd and 23rd of September with the Head and the Heart. Ticketholders from the weekend will be able to trade their tickets for their choice of make up shows at no charge; those who opted to skip the outdoor non-performance will have two new chances to see the band. Tickets will cost $48 after all of the fees and handling and can be purchased online now.

If a weekday show doesn't work for your schedule or if the disappointment of waiting around for an hour after Beach House finished soured you on the Vampire Weekend Experience, refunds are available. The details for getting your money back, a regular choose-your-own-adventure based on the how and where of initial purchases, are included after the jump.... (more)

It's Bumbershoot this Labor Day weekend, and before we get to the acts, let's recap on strategy.

• Daily tickets are $22 (no mainstage) or $40 (mainstage). Buy in advance, 'cause at the gate it'll go up to $30 and $50, respectively. All adult-accompanied kids 10 and under get free festival admission (doesn't include mainstage).
• Driving anywhere near the Seattle Center will be a pain, slightly less if you get there very early. Any number of buses will drop you there, including special festival shuttles. From Capitol Hill, it's the mighty #8. From downtown, you take the Monorail and arrive in style.
• Check the weather before you go and dress appropriately (or not, what the hell, it's your life). For the pack: water bottle, something blanket-y to sit on, sunscreen, sweater.

Saturday Picks!

You can meticulously plan an electronic schedule ahead of time using this online whirlygig or keep your options open by stocking your pocket with a printed PDF version. But no matter what, there is a knife hidden in every Bumbershoot--an inevitable knife--that stabs the moment you realize two of your favorite things are playing at the exact same time. What to do? Me, I say roll with it and wait until you are there and need to make the call. Often you're in the mood for one or the other by the time the moment of decision rolls around.... (more)

The news about the Native American man who was shot to death after being found wood-carving in public continues to "develop," as they say. Now it is not clear that he approached the officer threateningly or otherwise, and his family says he was deaf in one ear.

Mayor Mike McGinn

"I think Chief Diaz is the right man for the job," McGinn is quoted saying, which has overtones of "Heckuva job, Brownie," coming the same week as King County prosecutors decided that a police officer who told an innocent Latino man he was going to "beat the fucking Mexican piss" out of him was not guilty of a hate crime. The city attorney could still file charges against Detective Shandy Cobane for misdemeanor assault, further endearing himself to the SPD.

McGinn's political deafness has instigated a completely avoidable kerfluffle with MOHAI. Yesterday the Slog reported that the city was making a grab for state funds allocated for MOHAI's SR 520-prompted move from its Montlake location to the South Lake Union Armory. ... (more)

I have a bone to pick with Forbes about their "Top 10 Coolest Cities" list. (I also have a bone to pick with the 2,000 Americans polled who thought Las Vegas was cooler than San Francisco.) There's not much to the poll--people were literally just ask to rank cities by how cool they were--so Forbes decided to crank up the page view count by making it a "slideshow"--that you have to refresh the page to advance.

New York's photo is an interracial couple in a park. Las Vegas has an Elvis in front of a Las Vegas sign. San Francisco has the Golden Gate. San Diego, a beach. Seattle gets...shopping bags. How cool is that?

Whew! That was fast. A year ago a few of us pushed off from the shores of Seattlest on our own little raft of words. 165,654 unique visitors and 413,021 page views later, we know a lot more about the people and places of Seattle than when we started, thanks to a staggering amount of arts & culture interviewing from Jeremy Barker and Tony Kay--and of eye-catching contributions to our Flickr pool, which now has 3,200 glimpses of Seattle life in it.

Our top two stories, according to Google Analytics, were "An Atheist's Defense of 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day'" and "Who Killed Belltown's McGuire? The Cast of Characters," the latter a story I lucked into when our hiking contributor John Hieger emailed me to say he'd gotten an odd note from his property manager.

Seth Kolloen (who's moving on to a life of even more sports) gave us a memorable, sometimes harrowing year in the life of a Seattle sports fan, while Audrey kept tabs on film and TV, especially Seattleites in film and TV, and Josh did everything humanly possible to introduce you to the work of Vincent Moon. We've just welcomed Constance Lambson for books coverage, and Jay Friedman of Gastrolust to our food section--and you'll soon see more on jazz and Paris living (for reasons I'll explain later), as we explore what it means to be a Seattle online magazine.... (more)

Suddenly, it’s September, and though summer seems to be slipping away, here’s perhaps one last chance to salvage some sunny vibes.

Sunday, September 12, will be the fourth annual Seattle Chefs Collaborative Urban Picnic, from 1-4 p.m. at the Rainier Square Rooftop Courtyard in Downtown Seattle (between University and Union on Fourth Avenue).

Chefs Collaborative, founded in 1993, is a national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of cooking local, seasonal, and artisan foods. 

This mission is reflected in the food of the day, as you can expect stellar bites from:... (more)

From the Great Beyond, in our Flickr pool.... (more)

The Columbia City Theater (Facebook) is a music club to fall in love with. It re-re-re-re-opened (the old vaudeville hall has been around since 1917, in various guises) in June of this year, and vaulted into the Seattle Weekly's "Best of Seattle" list less than two months later.

Before we go behind-the-scenes, here's the lowdown. You'll find the Theater at 4916 Rainier Avenue South, which is just beyond the Columbia City Cinema. (Take the #7 or #8 bus or light rail--the last light rail train leaves SeaTac for downtown at 12:10 a.m., Monday through Saturday.) It's adjacent to the award-winning pizzeria Tutta Bella, who serve up the eats in The Bourbon, Columbia City Theater's bar. The bar is open seven days a week, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

The bourbon-heavy cocktail list ($8-$10) features pre-Prohibition favorites (Mint Julep, Derby, Commodore), as well as some rye (Red Hook; Fratelli Cocktail, with Fernet Branca; Diamondback). Bar entertainment ranges from djs to karaoke to live music, and on nights when there's a show in the theatre, you can watch the show projected live on a screen. Happy Hour most of the week is 4-7 p.m., and all day Monday, and brings you such wonders as $5 pitchers of High Life and $3 wells.... (more)

Wednesday, September 1

• Turtle Island Quartet performs a suite of four Jimi Hendrix pieces (taken from Electric Ladyland) @ the Triple Door
• FREE: It's TV Dinner night, with four episodes of The Golden Girls @ Central Cinema
• Just two more nights of the un-pc animation extravaganza @ Grand Illusion

Thursday, September 2

• It's first Thursday, and among other showings, Joe Vollan has an exhibition of his "surreal, steam-punk landscapes inhabited by skeletal figures, animals and robots" @ Flatcolor Gallery
• Cyndi Lauper thinks you're beautiful, like a rainbow, so go see her on her Memphis Blues tour @ Zoo Tunes
• The not-for-children puppet show Frankenocchio ends its run on Saturday @ Seattle University's Lee Center for the Arts
• Hopefully it won't be during The Kora Band's lunchtime afro-jazz concert @ City Hall

The running of the nerds at PAX past, care of Penny Arcade

Friday, September 3

• "Your arm's off!" Be warned, it's a Monty Python & the Holy Grail quote-along @ Central Cinema
• You also have your choice of Pasolini's Mamma Roma (with Anna Magnani) or Wheedle's Groove (chronicling "Seattle's oft-overlooked history as a hotbed of soul music") @ the Northwest Film Forum
• The Bumbershoot visual arts free preview allows you to check out the art before the crowds descend. It follows the afternoon Mayor's Arts Awards ceremony, and the exhibits feature an improvisational jamming robot! @ Seattle Center
• Roll the twelve-sided die to get a +3 on agility at PAX through Sunday @ Convention Center
• The Tango Lesson doesn't sound like a very good movie, but we'll take any excuse to hit up the new free Friday night dance film series @ Century Ballroom...

Often when people have a bulky item they want to get rid of, like old furniture and appliances, they first think of going to the dump to get rid of it. Did you know that you can have your bulky item picked up curbside? The cost could be the same or less than making a trip to the transfer station. Either way you’ll be saving:

• Time from the trip you don’t have to take.
• Money from gas and possibly having to rent a truck.

Schedule a bulky item collection: Call Seattle Public Utilities Customer Service at (206) 684-3000 to request a bulky item collection. The person(s) responsible for the utility bill must be able to authorize charges on the account.

Bulky item charges: Charges for bulky item collections will appear on your utility as follows:

• $30 per item
• $38 per item for items containing CFCs (such as refrigerators)

Also compare potential savings for extra garbage or yard waste curbside versus going to one of our transfer stations.... (more)

An afternoon Sounder loads up at King Street Station.

The Sounder trains from Seattle to Everett and Tacoma are largely for commuters to Seattle, which is the first thing you notice when checking out their schedules (it's an hour trip for both destinations). The bulk of the runs to Seattle are in the early morning, then back to Tacoma and Everett in the evening. And of course it's weekdays only.

You only have one or two chances to make a reverse commute, depending on where you're headed, but it is possible. If you want to spend the night is Tacoma or Everett, then everything becomes easy as pie. Either way, at just $4.50 (Everett) or $4.75 (Tacoma) each way, it's a bargain, and one that you can use your new ORCA card to pay for, if you're so inclined.

If you disembark from the last train in the evening, you may hear the engine chugging away for some time. Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc., supplies the F59PHI locomotives, and tells me that the engine is usually busy recharging batteries and otherwise transitioning from its day's work. It's self-monitoring and can shut itself off when all systems are back to "green." Even idling, these are large engines and I wondered how green they really were.... (more)

From gabemeier in our Flickr pool.... (more)

Do not think about heading to Downtown right now, unless you're going on foot.  And if you're already Downtown, well, you're gonna be there a while.  A Seattle police officer shot and killed a man armed with a knife near the intersection of Boren and Howell, so several streets are shut down, meaning traffic and buses are being re-routed.  It is not pretty.

(Thanks as always to Seattle 911 blog for being a reliable go-to resource in just these situations.)... (more)

Not all alcohol is created equal. Wine has more beneficial effects than, say, grain alcohol.

"Why do heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers?" is the title of the TIME magazine article (among others). The surprise result from a study published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (which does not seem to be funded by Jack Daniels) is that the mortality rate for nondrinkers is even higher than heavy drinkers.

This is no flash-in-the-pan study, either; its 1,824 participants were tracked over two decades. (Caveat: 63 percent were men.) Participants were between 55 and 65, and the study controlled for "for nearly all imaginable variables--socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on," says TIME.

Charles Holahan

While no one's suggesting heavy drinking is good for you (69 and 60 percent of the study's nondrinkers and heavy drinkers died, respectively, but only 41 percent of moderate drinkers did), it may be that stress and lack of social interaction is worse for you than brain damage and increased cancer risks. (Moderate, by the way, is one to three drinks per day, so it's not a path of ruthless sacrifice.)... (more)

It's a relatively quiet week for the Seattle literary scene, due to the closure of all Seattle Public Library branches, and the hoopla of Bumbershoot. On the bright side, this means that no Library materials are due and no late fines are accrued, for a week. On the less bright side, the Library is closed! Oh, the horror. And there is horror aplenty on this week's calendar, with genocide, environmental destruction, and yet more evidence that U.S. immigration policy and procedure has been less than stellar for many, many shameful decades.

Next week there will be a happy, fluffy bunny reading if I have to make it up.

08/30/10 12 a.m. The Seattle Public Library
The Seattle Public Library system is closed Aug. 30 through Sept. 6
In order to help meet $3M in budget cuts, the entire system is shutting down for a week, saving about $655K. This year, as opposed to last, some online Library services will be available. To leave a comment for the city librarian or the Library Board, call 206-684-0471. Be polite.

08/31/10 12 p.m. Seattle Mystery Bookshop
Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz)
Midnight Crystal
The (not very) pseudonymous author will sign book three in her Dreamlight Trilogy.... (more)

Photo: SDOT

SDOT's blog mentions that they're painting Ts on traffic signal actuators buried in the street, so bicyclists will know where to place their front wheel for best results.

Technically, it's your bike that trips the signal, not the front wheel alone. Even a carbon fiber frame probably has enough metal on it somewhere (gears, cranks) to work. The T should help newbie cyclists especially not to ride right over the actuator, and give them confidence they won't make the fuming line of motorists behind them miss a turn cycle.

There is nothing more wonderful than cycling for looking into how in-group and out-group behaviors develop. This is one instance. When you can't, on a bicycle, get a turn signal actuator to work, you're usually stuck in the middle of traffic. Neither option available (dismounting and using the crosswalk; or making the turn anyway, when traffic permits) inspires confidence in the drivers around you, who more than likely have no idea you can't get the light to change.... (more)

Heh. "Annie Wall." It's like a pun or something. (Thanks to the indelible lwestcoat, one of our Flickr pool superstars.)... (more)

You know it's a week full of quality movies on DVD when the biggest release is a television show. Yes, the biggest DVD for the week was the sixth and final season of Lost, which includes (zomg) another eleven minutes of never-before-seen bonus scenes of Ben and Hurley on The Island. There's also a new crazy-ass box set of the whole series.

Besides that, the next biggest release is The Back-up Plan, Jennifer Lopez's getting knocked up and then meeting the man of your dreams rom-com. There's also City Island, a family-with-secrets comedy that's actually one of the top box office earners amongst indie films this year. There's a mediocre movie version of Dorian Gray and the latest zombie installment from George A. Romero, Survival of the Dead.

Ajami is well-reviewed, but to me the intersecting storylines just sound like Crash in the Middle East. Shirin is an experimental film with Juliette Binoche, in which a theater audience watches a film based on a poem, while The Square is a noir thriller from Australia. Nightfur is a sci-fi romance with a soundtrack by Band of Horses, and Abandoned looks to be the final (direct-to-DVD) release with Brittany Murphy.... (more)

You know that mournful, mysterious train whistle you hear sometimes downtown? Here's the culprit: a freight train emerging from the South Portal of the Great Northern Tunnel.

Perhaps encouraged by the Seattle Times Truth Needle series, people are taking it upon themselves to correct the Times' reporting: Previously, the Seattle Bike Blog has fisked Joni Balter and Nicole Brodeur columns for their specious car vs. bikes set-ups (and let's not forget Sightline's succinct "Seattle Times Flunks Math").

Now Jon Scholes, vice-president of advocacy and economic development for the Downtown Seattle Association, has written an open letter to the Times to point out that enforcing parking limits is not, in fact, an anti-business move. That doesn't mean the Times doesn't write good stories; just this morning there's a great piece on why it seems like there are so many spiders around lately.

After years of crying out in the boom-erness, Seattle Bubble is now becoming our own Paul Krugman of real estate, getting quoted far and wide on how a home is different from a retirement account. TechFlash is covering Paul Allen's Friday patent freak-out. Crosscut suggested that Mayor McGinn might be some kinda new-Jerry-Brown-style leader. (Where have I read that before?) Publicola has outsourced a temp column to Mexico City's Grant Cogswell, who, judging from the comments section, has still got that gadfly "it" factor.... (more)