A Lakewood, Wash., 17-year-old and her infant son are lucky to be alive after a natural gas explosion blew their home off its foundation Wednesday afternoon. Around 3 p.m., Kristine Manues came home and noticed the smell of gas, so she went to a neighbor's house. Within five minutes of leaving her home, infant in her arms, an explosion rocked the neighborhood. Lakewood Police believe the explosion was no accident and arrested Manues' ex-boyfriend on......

It was a terrifying night for former Garfield and UW basketballer Tre Simmons, who's playing in Israel this year. Israeli basketball fans are notoriously crazy, but the fans--or at least one fan--got a little too crazy yesterday at a contest between Holon (Simmons' team) and Jerusalem. A Jerusalem fan (presumably) threw a firecracker at the Holon bench. An alert security guard who tried to pick the explosive up and toss it away got his hand......

Caribou. Caribou. Caribou. So noisy. So dreamy. So indie. Andorra's "Melody Day" will fool you into thinking this is throwback '60s guitar pop, complete with breathy vocals. Daniel Snaith tootles on a variety of recorder, on one of those breath-powered keyboards. But the live show is a dual-drummer powered, electronica explosion -- the caribou are stampeding. The vocals disappear into the thudding beats and swirls of sonic fragments, and the songs become frenzied, pell-mell jams......

Musical hyphenate-extraordinaire Shawn Smith has been fronting bands and playing solo in Seattle for about 15 years. As recent, local music history goes, he’s as seminal a figure as Kurt Cobain—and more prolific—though not nearly as high-profile. He should be. Always busy, Shawn’s currently spending time with Kevin Wood, covering Malfunkshun tunes (and writing new ones) as From the North. His band Brad has a new album recorded and will, he’s confirmed, play in......

Few foods are more fun – or more perfect – than xiao long bao. Originating in Shanghai, xiao long bao translates to “little basket bun,” but they are more commonly known as soup dumplings. Steamed in bamboo baskets which hold six to eight dumplings, the doughy wrappers serve as pouches for a fantastic filling of meat and meaty broth. Eat them hot, but not too hot, dipped in black vinegar with thin slivers of ginger.......

We ran across this blog post awhile ago--from a 6-6 Microsoft program manager recounting getting dunked on by Nate Robinson. Turns out the guy, Tim Getsch, also recently founded a pretty cool sports card sales site, CheckOutMyCards.com. We emailed him questions, he emailed back answers. How did you end up playing basketball with Nate Robinson? It just fell into place. I was playing in a summer league at the Redmond Athletic Club, and Jamal Crawford......

For those of you just tuning in, yesterday we wrote a little piece about the steam pipe that burst in New York. Apparently it pissed a bunch of people off, and we have to concur that actual true (non-sensationalist) details have been slow to trickle in over here. Everything we've read the last couple of days focuses on a "geyser of steam and debris," which seemed like an overblown fearmongering catchphrase at first, but......

Seattlest got the news from a coworker yesterday: an explosion in midtown Manhattan had resulted in a collapsed building (MSNBC); then that no, in fact, it was a transformer that exploded, leaving a nearby building "shaky" (CNN). What in fact happened was that a steam pipe burst, sending what the media is--we think amusingly--calling a "geyser of steam and debris" (and, we should add, asbestos) into the air. What's more terrifying than a burst steam......

Pearl Jam’s singer and most frequent songwriter will be releasing a solo album bunch of songs later this year. Without the four guys who, surrounding him, comprise the one band that survived the grunge explosion/implosion and still rocks today. It seems he and Sean Penn think so much alike (politically? Madonna-ly?) that Vedder recorded a near-recordful of songs for Penn’s latest directorial effort, Into the Wild. (Eddie contributed to previous Penn projects I Am Sam......

It's always good to be reminded that here in the other Washington, our Republicans are just as nutty, corrupt and paranoid as their cousins in D.C. Today, David Postman over at the Times reports on his blog that state Sen. Joe Zarelli recently hosted right-wing Israeli politicians and others at a two-day conference down in Vancouver, to fan the flames of Islamophobia. Known as the Convergence Northwest conference, Zarelli invited "[m]embers of Israel’s Knesset, former......

Yes, we're Folklife enthusiasts. Where else can you get a funnel cake, a hip-hop spitfest, a latin dance party, and a contest for liars, all in one place? We quoted Prince in the headline because we wouldn't be surprised if he showed up at Folklife this year. There is so much shit going on this weekend, and you don't have to drive all the way to the silly Gorge and pay through your nose......

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......

Seattle already has tons of great beer to offer, so why make your own? Because it’s cool. There is something special about getting a buzz from a tasty beer that you brewed yourself. Brewing can be easy, and you can turn out some fantastic beers right away. Many (if not most) of the local brewers started off in their own kitchen. We have started doing batches on the stove in our own one-bedroom apartment.......

Former UW (and Seattle high school) stars Brandon Roy and Nate Robinson combined for 55 points last night as the Blazers beat the Knicks 92-86. Where were you guys two years ago this week--we could've used 55 points in the Louisville game! Nate led the way with 31 points, including 8 of 9 from beyond the arc. Those good at subtraction already know that Roy had 24 points. There are many Knick fans who don't......

--Yeah dude, that's a pretty weird dream. --The News-Tribune's Dave Boling points out that the two former Huskies playing in the Super Bowl are assholes. --The Stranger's Christopher Frizzelle will tell you if you look good in a red dress on Saturday, Feb 10th. (Via Tina's Blog) --Most minor league basketball teams are run like a hotel in a Marx Brothers movie, but Sports Logo Pundit says the owners of the IBL Everett Explosion are......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Wednesday, November 8 >>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. >>>Pacific Science Center......

Those beknighted souls with web-enabled cell phones will now get places faster than everyone else, because the Washington State DOT has created small screen versions of their wildly popular real-time traffic maps. The larger real-time maps, launched in 1994, receive 400,000 daily page views. (Though state officials admit that much of this comes from people who've Googled "Seattle Traffic" in search of local reunion concerts of the seminal 1960's Steve Winwood-fronted band.) Until now they've......

Fresh off our unfortunate dining experience at Chinoise in food-bland Queen Anne, Seattlest is lamenting the lack of good dim sum in our Chinatown-ed town. Why are all of our dumplings and buns and rolls and cakes so soggy and stale and limp and lame? Go to any of the local food boards and the dim sum debates rage on: "Who's got the best dim sum in Seattle?" In the near corner, the Seattle/Chinatown contenders......

Friday's Junior Boys show was pretty much what you saw in the preview post video from the West Hollywood show. Three guys on stage (although the drummer was barely visible way in the back), playing beautiful songs that melded rock and electronic elements ("electro-rock" as some will call it, but more Cure than Ladytron). If you actually watched the video rather than minimizing the window to listen, you will have noticed that there wasn't really......

The best show bills can tell a story through their various acts. The narrative might not be entirely fleshed out, but it's there to be noticed by those lucky enough in attendance. It's a rare show where the different acts come together in a musical Voltron, stronger in aggregate than separate. For Seattlest, Saturday's triple-bill at Neumos told the story of the eruption Mt. St. Helens. It's an admittedly clumsy metaphor, but one that we......

The Melody Unit's Kevin Kelly On a Life Spent in SeattleMusic, Why the Band Never Made It, and Why He's So Ambivalent AboutTheir Latest (Greatest) Album We were getting a little antsy sitting around Kai's Bistro in the U-District, because our interview subject, Kevin Kelly, the leader of the band The Melody Unit, seemed to be running late. Finally, a little confused, we stood up and held a copy of the band's last album, Songs......

If you've been feening for a film festival since SIFF ended, and you didn't make it to Toronto, New York, or Vancouver, you can catch a movie at one of the upcoming area fests. First off, the new and improved Northwest Film Forum is hosting the 8th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival, which opens tonight and runs through next Wednesday, the 12th. With Local Sightings, Northwest Film Forum opens its cinemas every year to showcase......

There are a number of arts events going on this weekend (as every weekend) with perhaps the highlight being the Degenerate Art Ensemble raising the funds at ConWorks on Saturday with the help of Seattle School. This promises to be a very smart and interesting event and will only set you back the suggested donation of $5-15. However, preferring our arts events free and stupid, as we do, Seattlest will be attending what will surely......

Fans of the "rock'n'roll" genre will presumably enjoy tonight's "Art of Modern Rock" exhibition held in conjunction with the Flatstock poster show series presented by the American Poster Institute. The Seattle Times already scooped Seattlest's team of investigative journalists on the story, but we think the show merits worth mentioning again, in so much as this may turn out to be the only part of the Bumbershoot festival certain members of Seattlest will see this......

The other evening Seattlest went to see Funny Ha-Ha at the Northwest Film Forum, not quite knowing what to expect. We can get like that. It's best to just let us go. Now, while we genuinely liked this film, it was clear to us that it's for a particular audience. Are you that audience? That isn't clear yet. We'll see. We just want to make sure you have a good experience, it's not a......

The scofflaw gun-fetishists behind local funny book factory Fantagraphics Books pushed the avant-garde comics publishing envelope even further on Sunday, August 14th when they blew up a lawn mower (photo credit Eric Reynolds) in the Sultan river basin during their semi-annual summer shoot-out event, a tradition that goes back more than a decade and has even included the blowing up of cars with dynamite in years past, not to mention the senseless shooting of a......

Well the Seattle International Film Festival continues and Seattlest is busy trying to get in some good flicks. So far our nomination for best documentary is The Gits. Granted we are biased towards this punk band that came of age in Seattle in 1989, back when rent was dirt cheap, Capitol Hill was still a bastion of truly starving artists, and there was an explosion of new sounds on the scene. The band lived in......

" src="http://www.seattlest.com/archives/bbbelltown1_small.JPG" width="126" height="252" hspace="5" vspace="5" align="right" /> Seattlest has been known to enjoy many great First Thursdays, but we've always secretly asked ourselves why Pioneer Square should have all the fun. It looks like we weren't the only ones, given the recent explosion of new walks all over the city. Kick off the neighborly art exploration boom by putting on your (fashion-forward) walking shoes and heading to tonight's Belltown Night Out. This monthly "art-fashion-design-and-shopping......