This is NOT how the new Amsterdam Starbucks will look. Courtesy of Flickr Contributor Amsterdam Asp Despite closing stores all over the world, Starbucks announced today they'll be opening their first non-airport store in Amsterdam in 2009. Sadly, the mermaid has decided not to go the traditional Amsterdam coffee shop route, which means no Purple Haze with your Frappucino, folks. Starbucks' official reason for not allowing its patrons in the Netherlands to smoke a bowl......

At least not in Mason County. County officials have declared the barely-dressed baristas at local coffee stand Espresso Gone Wild are actually "erotic entertainers." Since the coffee stand is not zoned for erotic entertainment, the baristas are going to have to put some clothes on or close shop. Would you support the "stripper or barista" trend if it came to Seattle? Or do you prefer your coffee-puller fully-clothed?......

During tomorrow night's three hour nation-wide Starbucks closure, local coffee shop Caffe Vita will be giving away free coffee and espresso drinks. Yes coffee fiends of Seattle--so that's basically all of you--that's good free coffee, just because the big chain that you feel slightly embarrassed about going to is closed. Lovely! Caffe Vita makes fabulous coffee at locations on Queen Anne, Capitol Hill, Fremont, Seward Park, and south of us in the state capitol,......

The local deliciousness that is Top Pot Doughnuts has opened a new neighborhood location. Queen Anne has been blessed (truly) with the fourth installation of the local doughnut and coffee shop. The new location had its grand opening this week, with hopes to create a whole new neighborhood of Feather Boa addicts. The new Top Pot is located at 325 Galer Street and is open 7 days a week to satisfy your Homer Simpson-like......

We see on CL that Richard Hugo House is now accepting applications (deadline April 11) for its writer's residency program. Only two writers will be selected, who will have the chance to teach in the Hugo House's writing classes. The residency starts this September 1, 2008, and lasts one year. The highlight is you get to live, subsidized, in one of the “Hugo Huts”—Seattle’s historic Belltown Cottages. The rent subsidy doesn't include utilities, jackets with......

Speaking of snappish baristas, this weekend we stopped by a neighborhood coffeeshop we've been visiting since 2003, and handed over a prepaid card good for our usual drink. A new-ish barista took it, looked it over, looked us over, sighed a little, and -- as if he were doing us a favor -- checked off one of the drinks. "You know," he said, "these cards are supposed to be signed by the baristas when they're......

Seattlest wishes it was at a coffee shop on Saturday, when the snow was falling in swift, wet flakes. We imagine sipping a delicious doppio espresso, protected from the cold and watching the snow fall. Instead, we are braving the pouring rain and have ended up here, in Fremont, at Cafe Ladro. We're wet, cold and crabby. Ladro is bustling with the young professionals crowd. An entire table of six is covered in laptops, another......

It's pouring rain and it's exhausting looking for a new hard drive, so we pull over on Greenwood Avenue, right in front of Herkimer Coffee. It's bustling with people, despite the rain, and we anticipate a long wait. To our surprise, the line moves lightening fast and we're soon faced with two adorable and cheerful baristas. If you want to feel trendy without being surly or "holier than thou," Herkimer Coffee is your place. Although......

We love the Frontier Frittata Bagel Sandwich at Frontier Café. We proved it here. Its tantalizing taste that embraces all things dairy and flour keeps us moving in the morning. With this in mind on our way to work, we were more than animated to receive a free espresso coupon from the kind employees at Frontier Café as we walked into our building on 3rd and Cherry, (we do NOT condone soliciting buildings with advertisements......

Biodiesel drivers rejoice! There's a new place to fill your French-fry-smelling tanks thanks to Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks grand opening of a new, and may we say much more accessible, location, in the Ravenna neighborhood on Friday. When Seattlest dropped by the Espresso Express on N.E. 65th and 15th Ave. N.E. to check out the scene, we were too late for the speeches and celebrations, but did arrive in plenty of time for the yummy......

On our way out of Kirkland, we decide to stroll along the waterfront. While stepping through an alley (as dubious as they get in downtown Kirkland), we hear indie-acoustic music coming from the cappuccino haven on Seattle’s Eastside, Kahili Coffee. Without hesitation, we advance. Seattlest is no stranger to Kahili Coffee, but it has been forever since we heard music from its couch-enclosed living room. The music emanating was Zeek and The Lightning Bolts (ZTLB......

For those (like Seattlest) who are too lazy to actually visit in person the South Lake Union coffee shop Kapow! to get their S.L.U.T. tee shirts (which they may or may not even have), they are now available online. Remember a week ago when the SLUT poster first appeared on Seattlest? A few days later the P-I, King5, the AP caught on. Joe Whatshisnuts from forty miles east of Boise is going to crack his......

Funny picture just turned up in the Seattlest Flickr Pool: In the neighborhood where I work (South Lake Union) there is a fairly unpopular project going on to create a trolley line that serves no real transportation purpose other than perhaps to give some office workers more places to eat lunch. In the meantime the construction of this project is wreaking havoc with all other attempts to get around, and the tracks are an enormous......

We're up late on a Sunday morning and find ourselves riding the #17 through a lovely residential neighborhood in North Seattle. We round a corner and see Caffe Fiore.A coffee shop? Time to ring the bell and jump off the bus. Like the corner we've just swung around, everything about Fiore is round: the outdoor seating area, the espresso bar and pastry case, the mid-90's Chihuly-esque glass light fixtures and customer's smiles. The coffee shop......

Last week was a bad one for pioneers and philosophers of our favorite beverages. On Thursday, beer (and liquor) guru Michael Jackson passed away at 65. A day earlier, Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee, died in his Ashland, Oregon home. He was 87. Had we known Peet lived in the Pacific Northwest, we would have made a pilgrimage to his home. We would have loved to pick his brain on bean-growing regions and roasting......

Lottie's Lounge, located in Colombia City, is a coffee shop, diner and bar, rolled into one. It's an experiential panacea for those who like to center their lives around one neighborhood joint-- not that Colombia City doesn't already have a lot going on. Lottie's is smack dab in the middle of a re-gentrifying neighborhood, filled with junk stores, boutiques, dive bars and...Starbucks. We walk in and are greeted by retro tables and chairs and what......

Rachel Hynes is a former barista and yet still enjoys spending time in espresso places. She reviews them for us. We're driving home from the Coleman Pool in West Seattle, looking for a place to rest after an afternoon of splashing in the sun. After traveling a short distance on California Avenue SW, we pull up in front of C&P Coffee Company. We're not home but we might as well be. We pad up the......

... and a $50 gift card. Back in July, a retired Methodist minister in California was accidentally scalded by a Starbucks barista. Early this month, his son Matt Smith reported on Starbucks' response in the SF Weekly: Before Dad picked up the coffee, the barista bumped it off the counter. It spilled on the front of Dad's pants, burning his crotch, then running down his legs and settling into his shoes. Instead of running to......

When we were young, our parents bought a house in Craftsbury Common, a tiny town in the Northeast corner of Vermont. There's a post office, a general store, a church, a library and frankly, not much else. The isolation of this place was troubling in former years (at sixteen, for example), but now it is to us, a tonic: a place where there is no coffee shop directly below our apartment, no cell phone reception......

South Lake Union is currently under water after a 20" main was broken by contractors this morning. Some businesses in the area aren't getting water and the area around Harrison and Dexter is flooded. "I just took my dog for a walk, and when I came back I saw a river coming down Harrison," said Nic Roussouw, who is working on opening a coffee shop at 404 Dexter Ave. N. "I imagine the city must......

Who knew such bitter emotion roiled beneath the placid surface of the local independent baking industry? A couple of weeks ago, Seattlest mentioned that the Sugar Shack Baking Co. was about to open on Lake City Way. All seemed well -- people in the pastry-light area were ready for espresso, scones, and German chocolate cake. Then last week, Stephanie Crocker of West Seattle's Sugar left a comment: Geeze, everybody. Can't anybody who starts a......

Our own Madame Hooky divines whether it's worth calling in sick Friday and heading for the slopes. She'll conjure your excuse and tell you where to go. As I stare into my crystal snow ball, I see you sitting at your desk tomorrow. You are frustrated, and you are not alone. Last week brought some of the most magical conditions to Alpental I've ever seen, and the predictions were for another front to move in......

It's like we were just saying about Starbucks the other day, only if we were the Washington Post instead of a city blog:For most Seattleites, what Schultz called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience" is stale news -- akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet. "Like, duh, I have felt that way about Starbucks for......

Bill Virgin, writing in last Thursday's P-I Business section, shed light on memo sent out by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (courtesy here of Starbucks Gossip). Since then, news of the memo has traveled the internet a few times over. On the one hand, the wiseacre in us says, "you made decisions to expand from 1,000 to 13,000 stores and nobody thought about the dilution and commoditization of the experience???" Please. Even at 1,000 stores,......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

Paula Abdul wouldn’t be as thrilled to discover an extra Vicodin stashed in her bangs as we were to meet our favorite band’s drummer at our favorite coffee shop this weekend. We’d just paid for a pound of Peet’s beans and stepped aside to wait for them when our girlfriend asked, "Does that guy look familiar?" She cocked her head at the guy at the counter beside us: tall, thin, close-cropped blonde hair, distinctly lined......

No, not the game company. (We'd love to know how many hours Cranium's lawyers spent agonizing over Cranium's Collectibles, though. And whether or not Cranium will be buying craniums.com.) Cranium's has been shuttered for months, but Ericka at Outer Limits reports that the coffee/collectibles/record shop, a popular outpost of funky in nothern Seattle up at 123rd and Lake City Way will not be reopening. We never actually went to Cranium's. When we lived in......

Editor's Note: Earlier this year, Seattlest Clint's favorite coffee shop was shuttered. What followed was a series of indignities that should chill the heart of any coffee-loving Seattleite. By which we mean, any Seattleite. We present Clint's harrowing story in five parts. Here are Parts I, II, III, and IV. Dear Peet’s Coffee & Tea, If you’ve been reading Seattlest lately, you’ve seen that we love you, your coffee, and everything you stand for. You......

Editor's Note: Earlier this year, Seattlest Clint's favorite coffee shop was shuttered. What followed was a series of indignities that should chill the heart of any coffee-loving Seattleite. By which we mean, any Seattleite. We present Clint's harrowing story in five parts. Here are Parts I, II, and III. We admit to making snap judgments based solely on the perception of a snooty atmosphere. If a place appears hoity-toit, we usually hold our nose and......

Editor's Note: Earlier this year, Seattlest Clint's favorite coffee shop was shuttered. What followed was a series of indignities that should chill the heart of any coffee-loving Seattleite. By which we mean, any Seattleite. We present Clint's harrowing story in five parts. Here are Parts I and II. Our incorrigibly responsible girlfriend—and carpool mate—cannot be late to work. Not by 30 seconds. If she's late, she'll miss her daily, five minute, strike-of-eight meeting, and she'll......