"Angular Shadows" by Ray Tracing It's entirely possible that these condos will never be more beautiful than they are in this picture. And all that beauty's on display in the Seattlest Flickr pool. Thanks for sharing!......

Photo by Grundlepuck from the Seattlest Flickr poolWorried about rising material costs, the Seattle school district has sped ahead with construction of new schools without waiting to get input from parents. "I mean, you could drag these things out for another two years...We have to say 'Did we do enough to move forward with the project?' That's what I'm really looking into," School Board member Harium Martin-Morris told the Times' Emily Heffter. Who are......

News of the Croc's closure sparked a lively conversation at Seattlest HQ yesterday. We suspect reactions at other blogs' virtual newsrooms were equally as visceral. The local blogosphere, if you will, seems to have turned temporarily into a Croco-sphere. Personally, we have found bittersweet solace in the words of Scripture: In 1966, I went down to Greenwich Village, New York City to a rock club called Electric Banana. Don't look for it; it's not there......

When traveling the country and trying to avoid the Cheesecake Factories, Cracker Barrels and Claim Jumpers that clog the arteries, we get excited whenever we see a Martin Luther King street exit. The same can be said for exit 157 off I-5 in Seattle, where, just to the north, you’ll find a diversity of delicious restaurants. But things are changing there before our eyes. We headed down recently for some bahn beo chen at Huong......

R.I.Pieces, IHOP. Check out another great angle by Seattlest Flickr pool member espalier. Thanks for sharing your great shots! Excavators are our favorite pieces of heavy construction equipment. They are the most churlish. They throw destructive tantrums with their Trogdor-like arm as their hydraulic motors exude that sweet sweet mechanical whine. On the other hand, we hate that they frequently, callously, and disrespectfully knock down things we like. In this case, Seattle's lost another......

After coming across yet another "we're trying to save the sign" campaign in the paper in regards to the big Leilani Lanes pin (the last we remember being the Wonderbread sign) Seattlest is struck that trying to make all of Seattle a big outdoor MOHAI doesn't really do much for actual preservation. The bowling alley is gone and we'll have to make do with Sunset (or the Garage, or any of the others that Contributor......

The snow is falling, our dear Seattle friends, it simply isn't falling here. Whistler just announced it is open for business, bagging the ultimate ski resort coup of cutting powder before we cut the turkey. Of course you want to go, but in fondly recalling the days of 1998 when the US-CA exchange rate swung wildly the other way, you fear you can really only afford to stay home and play Ski Resort Extreme Halo......

... in a couple of years, anyway. "After two years, it's definitely moving," writes invaluable neighborhood blogger Captain Columbia City. He talked to the market's coordinator, Karen, on Wednesday, the last day the Columbia City Farmers Market will be open this year. Of course, Columbia City Plaza was sold to a development firm on the east coast recently, and so when the Plaza owners lease expires early next year, they'll sign a new one......

Peter Steinbrueck, a soon-to-be--former City Council member, announced legislation today that would require all city departments that review the environmental impacts of projects to take greenhouse gas emissions into account. Besides the fact that it's kind of crazy that they don't already do that, we think this is a great idea. It's great because it's an attempt to take into account and limit all of those emissions that are usually ignored as too hard to......

Stand at the corner of First and Pike, and you almost hear the thunder of Seattle's hotel wars, the howitzers of the future as they battle for attention in the trades, the travel mags, the lifestyle glossies. First into battle: a new Four Seasons, across the street from the downtown Art Museum: 21 stories, 149 hotel rooms, 36 residential condos, opening 2008. If your memory goes back more than two years, you'll recall that Four......

"No more moons-over-my-hammy", documented by mary and filed in the Seattlest Flickr pool. We don't mean to steal Mary's thunder; however, her photograph moved us to write down some of the thoughts we've been having about the Ballard Denny's closure. We knew it was coming; however, just like the presence of vampires in Sunnydale, we didn't actually want to think about it. The light, the clouds, the darkness of the trees, and the Shell......

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......

Just when you think you've made up your mind about a place, about Tavolata specifically, along comes a dish of gnocchi akin to a religious experience. Regular readers know that Seattlest has been Seattle's lone holdout in the standing ovation for Tavolata. Ethan Stowell--who pays ferocious attention to his reviews--has not been happy with us, going so far as to purge a critical thread from one of the Chowhound discussion boards. Yet we keep going......

The Rainier Cold Storage Stock House--part of the beautiful and historic and absolutely irreplaceable Rainier Cold Storage campus in Georgetown--is being replaced. The building cannot be saved as Seattlest has previously discussed here and here, and a campaign to try to force property owners Sabey Corp. to preserve it as-is seems like it wouldn't hold up in the face of the condition of the building, despite the Seattle Historic Landmark status it currently enjoys. Brooke......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Well-known alterna-librarian Jessamyn West came to town recently, and finally had a chance to check out our flagship library. Her verdict? I saw a real disconnect beween the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to......

Back when Seattlest lived in Wallingford, we went to the Fremont branch of the library once a week. We got to know the staff there very well -- hi, Carl! Hi, Joan! Hi, Betty! We served as one of two citizens on the committee that picked the architectural firm that handled the branch's remodel. While Fremont was closed for construction, we switched our regular patronage to the University branch. It's bigger than Fremont, and worked......

This week's Comment of the Week was posted as a reply to a post about an immigration announcement out of the office of Mayor Greg Nickels and uses the word "homo" six times, including such creative constructions as "homo liberals," "homo culture," and "liberal homos." Funny how homo liberals, choose not to see the real enemy in North America and they opt for hating America. Mexico has no culture except being forced into the Catholic......

The press release came in a short time ago and we haven't really had the opportunity to go through it with our hair pick of information discovery, but the fact that the Mayor even has an Immigration and Refuges Initiative is, itself, a good start. Look, World, Seattle has an immigration initiative and it doesn't involve the construction of any Great Walls, much less mass arrests or the floating of barges full of human cargo......

It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by poop. Finally D.C. contemplated taking Vermont's place as a state and marveled at the GOP lessons learned from the "Macaca Moment." Due to some sad shootings......

For years Wallingford residents have discussed what the old Safeway at Stone Way and 40th was going to become. We always suspected something as interesting as another grocery store, but when a hole was dug for a foundation recently, it became obvious that the site was being prepared for the Trump Tower of grocery stores. Condos on top of a QFC, it was determined, with maybe 30 stories of office space above that and underground......

When we first bought our house the "backyard" was a complete eyesore, replete with a tar-roofed carport next to a plot of head-high blackberry bushes held back by a sagging chain-link fence. We joked about renting goats to clear the whole thing, but in the end resorted to a backhoe. (And this past weekend, a mere 3 1/2 years after we moved in, we finally have a backyard, huzzah!). Apparently, we're not the only one......

Unopened moving boxes. Furniture in temporary locations. No clue where the closest pizza, Thai, or Indian delivery places are. All signs that even though we've moved all of our possessions from Wedgwood to Rainier Beach, Seattlest is still in the liminal period between our North Seattleite and South Seattleite identities. One of the many things long-time Rainier Valley residents have dealt with that we're learning: the MLK Way light rail construction. In the abstract, when......

Princess Cruises and Holland America are both currently in a kind of limbo in Seattle. They use Terminal 30 by Harbor Island which the Port wants to convert back to something that can be used by container ships. The plan is to move the cruise berths to Terminal 91 in Magnolia where they can be properly outfitted with shore power and whatnot, but the cruise lines aren't excited about it because that will mean a......

As we have reported in the past, Seattlest has been fortunate enough to witness the process of the gorgeous rebuilding of the approaches to the Fremont Bridge. It's mostly completed now, with only a few details being attended to. We can't wait for the grand re-opening; they've really done a beautiful job with the redesigned roadway. The other day, we happened to be walking by and noticed that the workers had scraped off a strip......

Are you looking for the finest pasta on the Eastside? How about some real, old country eggplant parm or chicken picatta? Kirkland boasts a trio of restaurants that proudly fly the green, white, and red flag. But which is best you may ask? Over the course of the next three weeks the Seattlest will sample the best of all three Italian-themed restaurants located in the heart of downtown Kirkland : Mama Lucia's, Ristorante Paradiso, and......

If you want to repair the aging 520 bridge, you'll have to pay tolls. We knew that. But State Treasurer Michael Murphy says you'll need tolls both on I-90 and 520 to pay for the project--and he won't issue bonds needed to finance construction without them:"I will not authorize the debt to be issued for a project that can't pay for itself," Murphy said. "In order for the thing to work, both bridges --......

The Sonics will play in their possible future home town tonight when they face the Oklahoma City/New Orleans Hornets in the brand new Ford Center. Oh by the way, the brand new Ford Center may not be brand new enough for the NBA. Let's say the Sonics come in the next couple of seasons. They spend a year or two bartering over arena plans. Spend a two or three years in construction. Suddenly it's 2013,......

"Patty Griffin" and "Rock This Town" aren't generally two phrases that go together easily. But, as tree-hugger, festival-going folk fans, by "rock," we generally mean "musically woo," or "melodically enthrall." Which is exactly what Patty Griffin does on her latest album, Children Running Through. The CD is full of parables and gospel songs, inspired by Griffin's inner child and intense memories of childhood events. She attacks each song with the wide-eyed anticipation and wonderment......

As usual, Seattlest has donuts on our mind. Since we are compelled to endure that barbaric time of day known in some parts of the world as morning, we can't help but have our thoughts wander toward more pleasant morning-related topics. It's not just us, however; our colleague-ists have been thinking about them too. Last week, Chicagoist wrote of a devious, healthy plot on the part of Krispy Kreme. Rightfully, they retorted with a hearty,......