The Original Dick's by Seattlest Flickr photographer grundlepuck West Seattle Blog reports that former Garfield Bulldog, Washington Husky, and current Portland Trailblazer Brandon Roy, will be dedicating a new basketball court at the Delridge Community Center next Wednesday. We remember Roy as one of the tallest kids walking the halls of GHS and it's great to see him succeeding and giving back to the local community.Capitol Hill Seattle reports what we noticed aghast yesterday--Dick's on......

Tomorrow, Thursday 20th March, would have been Fred Rogers' 80th birthday. In his honor, Family Communications, the non-profit he founded, is asking you to wear your favorite sweater: We're asking everyone everywhere--from Pittsburgh to Paris--to wear their favorite sweater on that day... It doesn't have to have a zipper down the front like the one Mister Rogers wore on the program,it just has to be special to you. These festivities are all part of......

This folk-music-related post is about participation, not performance. Shapenote singing (aka Sacred Harp) has been part of American life for well over 250 years, and has been sung in Seattle for 30 or 40. A sizeable group of people will gather in Ballard this weekend, at the Pacific Northwest Sacred Harp Convention, to sing it again. When we first attended this event in 2004, we'd never tried singing in this style but, by the......

As an alumnus of Centralia Community College (out of boredom, we took a Latin class there one fall) and former southwest Washington resident, we've been following the flooding thataway with interest. A friend of ours just passed along two emails from K. in Centralia, and they can't be beat for a you-are-there feel that balances some of the apocalyptic news coverage -- let's face it, if nothing terrible happened to you, you aren't news. On......

Seattlest has found a reason for everyone to welcome bicycles on the city's streets. The origins lie in Virgin Vacations' (has anyone asked The Name Inspector to do a write up on Richard Branson's desire to cater to virgins?) naming of the world's 11 most bike-friendly cities. Unfortunately, Seattle didn't make the list (Portland came in at number 2), which uses five criteria created by The Bicycle Friendly Communities Campaign to judge a community's bike......

True story! The other afternoon we were IMing about some important work-related stuff with our friend Scott G. and he asked if we'd seen Spamalot at the Paramount yet, and and we said, "Nope, you?" and it turned out he had, so he started to tell us about it and we said -- in a flash of brilliance -- "Hey, would you mind if this ended up on Seattlest?" So you’ve been in a touring......

They're setting up for Sandfest 2007 at Westlake Park, which is this Saturday, the 25th. "Community sponsors" will have sculptures built, and then for a $1 suggested donation you can vote for whichever strikes your fancy. (It benefits the Moyer Foundation.) Actually, there's a little Friday night music from 5-6:30pm in Westlake Plaza, the Latin jazz sound of Sonando. Saturday the music runs from 11am-4:30pm, which is when the results of the sculpture competition......

The Community Theatre is staging performances of three Raymond Carver short stories, What's in Alaska?, Fat and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Centre in West Seattle. Seattlest attended the Friday night performance and can attest that the actors all did a serviceable job of capturing the dramatic awkwardness and tension that fascinated Carver so much. His minimalistic work about shy ordinary people feeling passive and acquiescent......

No longer do harried Capitol Hill denizens have to brave the typically non-working escalator to get to Bartell's above the QFC, a block south. A Walgreens is the "Now Open" tenant of the first-floor retail space in the 44-unit apartment complex Broadway Crossing at Broadway and Pine, across the street from Seattle Central Community College. Yes, apartments, not condominiums. Broadway Crossing is a Capitol Hill Housing project, a tax credit-financed property for renters earning from......

A meeting was held today between rival Seattle Pride factions and after last year's fancy, new and successful Downtown Pride we assumed that the result of this meeting would be the announcement of this year's fancy, new-ish and (financially) successful Downtown Pride. Despite the money problems that Seattle Out and Proud, the organizers of last year's events, have run into since then--they own Seattle Center a hundred grand--and despite the on-again, off-again stutter steps of......

After many on again, off again mis-starts Seattle Out and Proud is abdicating responsibility for Pride festivities this year, as expected. In 2007 Pride organizers Seattle Out and Proud (SOaP) voted in new leadership and SOaP’s primary concern was to produce a financially sound March and Festival in 2007. This week, after months of intense research and negotiation, it has been concluded that producing a Pride Event at Seattle Center is not financially prudent at......

Finally, someone else sees things our way. Like peanut butter and jelly, there has been one natural combination longing to be put together: having a beer and thinking about your favorite insurance company. Thank God Online providers Esurance have stepped up to the plate. Meshing together insurance needs with scenester whoredom, that's right, this year it's the Esurance Capitol Hill Block Party. The Esurance Capitol Hill Block Party is a huge, two-day explosion of......

Monday THAT STARBUCKS "I WAS A CHILD SOLDIER" GUY: At twelve, Ishmael Beah found himself fleeing rebels, wandering from village to village. At thirteen, he was a soldier in Sierra Leone, hooked on drugs and capable of things he would never have imagined. Now, rehabilitated and living in the U.S., he tells his story in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, in an attempt to raise awareness of the child soldier......

Monday WOMEN & MONEY: Personal finance expert and author, Suze Orman talks about the complicated and dysfunctional relationship that women have with money in her book, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 AGORAPHOBES TAKE HEART: Everything you’ve been told about dating is wrong. Love Will Find You is a new approach to love from dating expert Kathryn Alice. It may be the first dating......

Tomorrow is fake Viaduct Vote Day, and your meaningless ballots must be postmarked by then. The election is all mail, so you will not have the option to vote at the polls. If you want to skip the middle man and have your ballot lost directly you can drop it off at the following locations: King County Administration Building-- 500 4th Ave., Room 553, Seattle 98104 High Point Community Center-- 6920 34th Ave SW, Seattle......

When we found that Gorditos was getting out of the lukewarm kitchen that is Queen Anne hill’s restaurant business, we started keeping tabs, via a biweekly stroll, on the eateries closing (and, less frequently, opening) in the neighborhood. That wasn’t often enough. Down went Banjara. Firefly croaked, but from its chrysalis came the more expensive, presumably more flavorful Sorrentino. Pete’s Pizza was shuttered—long live the Calzone King. On last pass, Q’s window still bore a......

Monday AIR SUPPLY: Eric Klinenberg’s new book, Fighting for Air, examines how corporate ownership and control of local media has remade American political and cultural life. Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, is interviewed by Michael Fancher, Seattle Times editor-at-large. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 Tuesday PANEL OF POETS: Sherman Alexie, Chelsea Rathburn, Richard Wakefield and Eric McHenry present "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rhyme": a roundtable discussion......

Monday LOCAL AUTHOR, LOCAL AUTHOR: Clear Cut Press presents two of its novelists: Matt Briggs' Shoot The Buffalo is about a boy growing up in Snoqualmie during the '70s. Stacey Levine's Frances Johnson, set in a small town in Florida, details the random choices made by the eponymous Ms. Johnson. 7pm // University Bookstore // FREE SCI-FI SALON: One of the finest authors on the "humanist" wing of American science fiction and fantasy, Paul......

Seattle Snow Queen 2007, meet the Freeze King. We first noticed the news of this guy's 202-day swim streak in the P-I. Sullivan, 39, has been swimming in Lake Washington every day since June 24. Today will be day 203. "I figure I'll just keep going until it gets too cold," said Sullivan, a residential counselor for CPC Community Psychiatric Clinic. It's not clear what kind of weather would constitute "too cold." So far,......

King County Journal has the rundown of which areas are still without power, and when they're likely to get it. But more outages could be on the way. A relatively mild storm is expected Wednesday , and the Times gets this dire prediction from a City Light spokesperson:"If we get even moderate winds, we may find quite a few of those trees that were just on the edge may tip over, and we may have......

The weather outside will be frightful, but the hoops will be f-ing delightful at Bellevue Community College Saturday for the Les Schwab Hoops Challenge. Sadly, the name is not meant to be taken literally; the players assembled will not be competing against Les Schwab himself, who will turn 90 in February. Instead, you'll get to see some of the best talent on the West Coast, including Kevin Love, the #1-rated center in the country and......

Clarence Trent (at right, via Scout.com) is unstoppable in the high post. This is not the only reason that Gig Harbor is destined for a deep run in the state 4A tourney. There's also their skilled post men, Ryan Stanley and Mathias Ward, and a dangerous long-range shooter, Geoff McIntire. But, mostly, it's because Clarence Trent is unstoppable in the high post. Trent (rated the 6th best small forward in the Class of '08 by......

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......

Amy Goodman, host of independent news program Democracy Now!, spoke at a benefit for KAOS and Thurston Community Television last night in Olympia. Seattlest got stuck on the I-5 but got there five minutes before the scheduled event time; Goodman, coming from SeaTac, was not so lucky, and arrived about half an hour late. In the meantime, the sold-out crowd heard Chaplain James Yee describe conditions & treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.......

Wednesday, October 25 >>>Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater, 7:30-10pm. Are you afraid of the dimmed lights in a theater? A Guide to Visitors presents their annual Ghost Story night. Spooky stories about haunted office buildings and ghost quests, told by people such as the woman who leads a ghost tour of Pike Place Market. The press release says the Jewel Box is haunted, so maybe the dead will chip in a tale or two themselvs.......

You can't buy tickets for the next Seattle Erotic Art Festival until January -- the show isn't until March -- but there is one thing you can do to get ready: Paint your horny little heart out. SEAF '07 is officially accepting submissions: The CALL FOR ART is now open. Artists 18+ are invited to submit work that explores the diversity of erotic art - explicit, subtle, unconventional, beautiful, shameless, and beyond - to SEAF's......

It may be one of the subjects the P-I used to deride the City Council lately, but we're happy to see someone paying attention to a form of recreation in this city that doesn't involve fleece, lycra or gortex. Skateboarding exists in the collective mind of the city government - That's a good thing. This is from a flyer we picked up over the weekend at Gasworks: That's a lot of skateparks. It's a pretty......

Alternative energy in the Pacific Northwest can mean biodiesel, ethanol, nuclear, hydro-electric, pedal power or a sticker on the back of your Volvo complaining about the war, but rarely do we hear much about wind farms. You’ve seen the photographs of wind farms and they always look really cool in a kind of sterile future-topia way and you get how they work: Wind turns windmill, windmill turns turbine = electricity that doesn’t require unsavory......

Strapped for reading material at a Dairy Queen this weekend, Seattlest picked up a guide to the Evergreen State Fair. An article touting the benefits of taking transit to the fair caught our eye. "Good sign," we thought. "Transit options up north!" But here's how they're selling it: You can get $1 off your weekend fair admission. A $1 coupon is available in the fair bus schedule... Ooh! Sounds good! $1 off! Bus fare......

We're one of the most educated and literate cities in the country, and we don't exactly have a shortage of tree-hugging hippy liberals, either. On top of that, we've got one of the most booming music scenes around, and it's been going on for over a decade now. So why is it that we seem to be missing out on the new folk music revival that's infecting left-leaning, bio-diesel driving bibliophiles in equally as savvy......