Because we haven't said enough about Starbucks this week, and because we haven't said enough about local coffee shops today, we figured we'd jump in on this story. Starbucks has to give their California baristas $87million (plus 7 percent interest). According to LA Times, some baristas could get $10,000. Apparently, the rule has been that all tips are pooled at the end of the day, and then shift supervisors get to take some of......

Today Seattlest welcomes our new sports correspondent to the fold. Drew Milam is a longtime Seattle resident who recently returned to the Emerald City after some time in the Bay Area, and claims to be super tight with fellow Santa Clara alum Steve Nash, Brandi Chastain and NFL referee Mike Carey. No word on if he got the gig because he is a Hillary supporter (pleasing Editor Kim) and a Garfield alum (pleasing Seattlest David).......

Washington lumber giant Weyerhaeuser and California's Chevron Oil and Gas Company have announced a partnership to develop a new bio-fuel. The planned fuel would be created out of wood fiber--something we imagine Weyerhaeuser has plenty of. The 50-50 partnership was announced on Friday afternoon in a joint statement. The venture has been named "Catchlight Energy." The new company will use staff and resources from Weyerhaeuser's Federal Way office and a number of Chevron's plants.......

Looking to get your bluegrass on this weekend? Hot Buttered Rum is ready to put a smile on your face and get you on your feet. The bluegrass band from northern California will be at Neumos on Saturday evening for a co-bill with the Waybacks, also from CA. Hot Buttered Rum will close. We've only seen them once at Wakarusa a few years ago, and it was a hell of a show. They can......

My God, it's beautiful outside. When did that happen? Here we are sneezing and coughing and oozing from every orifice on our face when we look outside and Holy Obamalove, Batman! It's really nice out! We recommend leaving your office job early and skipping through Cal Anderson Park (or whatever facsimile exists in your neighborhood). Pick up an iced latte. Go have a margarita. Take your dog and your little sister. Put your hair......

Theatre: A production of Mr. Marmalade got introduced by Curtain Up thusly:If you've always associated marmalade with sweetness, you're likely to expect the title character of Noah Haidle's play to be a sweet, lovable guy -- just the sort of imaginary friend for a four-year-old moppet named Lucy. Well, think again. Playwright Haidle's Mr. Marmalade is a cocaine snorting, emotionally out to lunch businessman with a briefcase packed with kinky sex toys. Not a......

Theatre: We often short West Seattle because...well, we forget why, just like we forget they're over there, doing whatever they do in West Seattle. At the moment, though, they're doing Rebecca Gilman's The Sweetest Swing in Baseball and it's made critic Joe Adcock a believer:As a play crafter, Gilman is a wonder. Every scene, every character -- every speech, practically -- contains a surprise. The surprises build to neatly engineered climaxes and conclusions. But......

Documentary: Los Angeles and art don't have the strongest association. (Glen Hansard at the Oscars, shaking his statue at the audience, "Make art! Make art!") But it's more of a signal-to-noise problem. The documentary The Cool School explores the lives of the founders of L.A.'s artistic "cool." Regina Hackett describes the situation: Back to L.A. in the early 1950s: Progressive artists had nothing going for themselves except themselves. New York didn't bother to spit......

Forbes Magazine must have gotten tired of making the same "Richest People in the World" list, because the magazine has moved on to ranking the "Nation's Most Sinful Cities." In order to do so, Forbes came up with measurable methods to rank the proclivity for each of the seven deadly sins in America's urban populations. (For example to measure the sin of "wrath" the magazine used murder rates for cities.) Of course, you're curious, just......

No, Seattlest is not just a fan of alliteration and 80's slang, as the headline might suggest. Burying the beef, is the current plan of the Seattle Public School District to rid itself of 230 cases of possibly contaminated beef. The beef, provided to school districts through a USDA lunch program, came from a California slaughterhouse in the center of the largest beef recall in USDA history. Nearly two-thirds of the school districts in......

Current Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan is in the middle of a another controversy. This is the same Logan who was in charge of King County Elections before they lost ballots, credibility, and eventually him. Nine percent of the county's completed ballots show no vote for president. Apparently some voters didn't mark a circle at the top of the ballot signifying that they were voting Democratic. Normally we'd be sympathetic with the Election's Department;......

A couple of Sunday nights ago we wandered up Aurora towards The Pub at Pipers Creek, located just north of the intersection at 105th and Greenwood Ave. Going to bars we've never been to before is always exciting, especially those that have a great tap list. We had heard that the Baron Rauchbier was on tap here, and that was the primary reason for visiting. At 6pm on this Sunday evening, the bar itself......

Wait, before you answer, one detail: Costco's private label hef will be brewed by beloved local micro-operation Gordon Biersch. With an abundance of local breweries producing excellent beers--and a freaking commission created specifically for the promotion of Washington brews--you'd think Issaquah's warehouse overlords would have kept the hop-dollars local. But no. Hef, amber and pale ales will be brewed fresh in San Jose, California. Cheers?......

Seattlest rarely ventures into Bellevue because really, who needs it? But the last two nights found us cruising Bellevue Way, looking for dinner while the fiancée’s car got its crevices inspected. On Wednesday night we chose a place called Orexi because a) we had an Entertainment Book coupon and b) we hadn’t eaten Greek in probably over a year. (This Seattlest is no foodie.) First red flag: The place was deserted. The waitress/hostess lady......

We're not actually gloating over WaMu's travails -- there are too many lives involved likely to be disrupted. But there's no denying the majesty with which its home loan mortgage unit steered into the subprime iceberg. The Seattle Times headline reads: "WaMu posts first quarterly loss in a decade," thanks to a $1.78 billion writedown by the home loaners. Oddly, the bigger news -- "For the full year, WaMu reported a $67 million loss —......

Boom! Governor Gregoire comes right out of the gate at the new legislative session with a new bill laying "the groundwork for concrete limits on greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012." And, in just four short (or long, depending on how you look at it) years, the bill "would give the state Department of Ecology the authority to regulate those emissions," reports the P-I. The main thing is that "big polluters" in Washington State would......

Picture a small town in the south (southern Italy in the 1950s, as it happens) where people talk slow and not much happens until the sun goes down and the church bells ring. (Think Faulkner, Song of the South, Porgy and Bess.) Then a travelling circus comes to town, a whole troupe of clowns (those irrespressible pagliacci), squeezed into a real clown car, a tiny black Fiat 500. You can guess what happens next: sex,......

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer's market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs. There may not be a better image in all of football then Packer fans standing......

In previous posts, we’ve name-dropped the mighty Meyer Lemon at the slightest provocation, but it is our fear that mere passing mention may have failed to entice you to leap from your seat and immediately buy one; which is of course the only sane reaction to the arrival of these splendid fruits. So here goes, our most desperate and heartfelt plea. Of all the "fancy" produce around these days, the Meyer Lemon is hands-down our......

Vedder’s first solo music video—for his critically lauded and Grammy-nominated Into the Wild song “Guaranteed”—airs on VH1 (and VH1.com) on Monday. Perfect timing, then, for the ever-more-famous guy to bump into his 1992 self while browsing Easy Street’s vinyl bins. Serendipity! 1992 Eddie (strokes soul patch; sings to himself): I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution… take a bow for the new revolution… 2008 Eddie (spots 1992 Eddie): Hey, are you ... ? Young......

It turns out, it wasn't our booze-addled brains: The Seattle Center fireworks display on Monday night was messed up due to a computer program glitch (Y2K strikes 8 years late!). According to the Times: About a minute before midnight, technicians with California-based Pyro Spectaculars realized that the computer program that controlled the display was not going to work, said Mary Bacarella, a spokeswoman for the Space Needle. They rebooted twice, then decided to do......

Dennis McLerran, head of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is "pissed." Governor Schwarzenegger is suing federal regulators. According to more than 500 news articles, The Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s bill to place limitations on vehicle emissions, which would have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent in the next 10 years. McLerran claims in a Seattle Times article the EPA’s decision is purely political, not factual. Washington was one of the 18 states that......

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...with the recent trend of oak aging beer, we were pumped to hear about Brouwer's Big Wood Fest starting this Thursday at the Fremont bar. Brouwer's will clear their taps to have 40+ wood aged beers pouring this weekend. They won't discriminate; Belgian style sours, big, burly stouts and everything in-between will be lined up side-by-side. What is wood aged beer you ask? It is exactly what wine makers......

This time of year we start seeing fewer and fewer IPAs coming out. But, there are still quite a few interesting ones showing up around town. If you're someone who loves to bitch about how out of control American brewers are getting with their IPAs, just move on to another article. Lagunitas Hop Stoopid - With 100+ IBUs of pure citrus hops, this one is definitely for us hopheads. It is considered an Imperial......

The Chemistry That Keeps Us Together, The Purrs' long-awaited follow-up to their breakout LP The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of, dropped a couple weeks ago, and we've been listening to it steadily since. Earlier this year, they promised us the album was moving in a new direction, exploring harder rock material, exemplified by the song "She's Got Chemicals," which has been in their set list for over a year now. It opens with......

Keith Johnson / Dancers is the creation of Keith Johnson, currently Associate Professor who teaches both composition and contemporary dance techniques at California State University Long Beach. This past summer (well, "summer"), he was part of the Strictly Seattle Festival. We found a review of this show at St. Olaf, written by an opinion columnist who rigorously avoids having a strong opinion of the piece. God we love Minnesota. Here's the program: Brink explores the......

Will every software guy in the audience who's ever thought about cashing in the badge and putting on a chef's coat raise your hand? Wow, a lot of you, great! Some of you aren't so sure... You there in the front, did you read Kitchen Confidential? Yeah? Did that help push you out the door or keep you in front of the keyboard? OK, keep them up there. Now, keep them raised if you've actually......

Woody Guthrie was, and in many ways still is, one of the most important figures in the history of American music. He's responsible for hundreds of songs, some of which are still being found and put to music. His contributions to the American songbook include, of course, "This Land is Your Land," but also "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Pastures of Plenty," and other topical tunes by which topical songwriters continue to measure their worth. He also......

Seattle is now one of the lucky few markets in the US to be getting beer from Port Brewing/The Lost Abbey in southern California. If you have not yet tried any of their beer, you have no idea how lucky we are....If you have tried their beer, there is a good chance you are likely rushing out your door to the nearest bottle shop right now. Tomme Arthur is the mastermind behind the wonderful beers......

There's nothing like the prospect of a smart hip-hop show to build up our anticipation on a Saturday night. One where we know that the act we're going to see can't fail to deliver, cranks that up a little higher than we can generally handle when we're forced to first stop by a friend's party before the show. To all those in Shoreline that we bored with excited chatter about Lyrics Born and Blackalicious......