We Also Read the Weeklies: Overstuffed Edition

Weeklies: Please, enough with the dueling themed issues. Is this some weird contest of who's going to back down first? Alright, then. We give! Uncle! The readers have folded first, now can we get back to regularly scheduled programming.

Stranger, you don't want to do a fashion issue or a food issue - Just don't to it then. You don't have to throw up an anti-fashion issue or an anti-food issue just because that's what the Weekly's doing. The Weekly is getting pretty good at preempting you anyway. The Old Spaghetti Factory article in The Weekly did a much better job of ranking on the foodies than you did with the street food stuff. Seattle Weekly, Seattle magazine did their food issue a few weeks ago and, um, it's pretty good.

Both of the papers had some great stuff this week if you could stomach wading through all the food crap. Charles Mudede is incredible in this week's Police Beat, which is really the pinnacle of the form. Charles, you can pass the column on to a younger protege now - You've attained perfection. The article about alleged ass kicking by the SPD is a winner, too. As an aside, whenever Seattlest is taking pictures of the police or anything else we think people might not want us to take pictures of, we upload them to our provider (or better yet flickr) immediately.

We're hating on the Stranger food section, but there is a bright spot. Al pastor. Every time someone suggests a new "Mexican" place to us we hurt, because we know that al pastor is not available there. "Yeah, it's great, huh? Do they have al pastor? Or is it another burrito filled with rice and beans?" Seattle, there is life after "mission style" in the realm of Mexican cuisine. Please wake up to this fact. Stranger, thank you for letting us know we're not alone in our search, and for giving us a few places to check out.

Back to the hating, though. A whole pullout section on street food wouldn't be a bad idea in some other cities. Portland, for example, has diverse and delicious street food options. Street food sucks here, though, if it exists at all. Erica C. Barnett's article "Obstacle Course" would seem to Seattlest to nullify the whole section:

Seattle is a shitty town for street food. Citywide, a mere 18 vendors offer hot dogs, popcorn, and espresso from open-air carts throughout the city, where, for half the year, they cower under temporary canvas shelters, struggling to keep the rain from colonizing the condiments.

That, right there, about says it all. Erica runs down various officials who shuffle blame back and forth in a typically Seattle fashion. Great idea, well researched. This article was all that was necessary to comment on SW's food issue.

Finally, it's obvious that no one on The Stranger staff is much of a sports fan. If any of them had ever been to a Mariner's game that at least one of them would have thought of commenting on the street food available alongside Qwest Field before games. Seriously, guys, haul yourselves down from Capitol Hill some time and check it out. You don't even have to go to the game, but doing a street food issue without commenting on what's available from vendors outside a Mariner's game is not excusable.

The Seattle Weekly, consistently just barely on the dark side of the "alternative" divide, has extensive restaurant listings this week that really don't need to be cluttering Seattlest's living room floor right now. The iPod download is a great idea. They should have left it as an electronic-only feature, though. Why do we need that extra paper on the living room floor? Do they think there's not enough down there for a serious fire hazard as it stands? It needs to be searchable, and a paper version can never do a good job of guessing how people will want to search it. By neighborhood? Sometimes. By cuisine? More likely. Outdoor seating? Happy hour? Name chefs? Price? You can never tell, so leave it online, or on the iPod. And get it off our living room floor.

There wasn't much that really excited us in the news section of the Seattle Weekly this time around aside from their small article on the city's co-ops. We also enjoyed the Earth Day coverage, and think that that would have been a better focus for an issue theme, despite the recent environmental issue they did.

In the Arts section we're happy to see that Book-It Reperatory is back on track with Giant. For some reason their review of the film "Old Boy" isn't on their site, but we're tired of people acting like this movie will scar you for life. Try "Irreversible" for that. [Ed. Note: The Old Boy review clearly is up on the Seattle Weekly site.] We do appreciate the short piece about the Seattle Polish Film Festival that kicks off this weekend.

We can't believe that both weeklies were relatively silent on popes, both new and old. Expect it next week.