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......

From the papers in Europe, and particularly in England, you'd think that UW student Amanda Knox had already been tried and convicted of sexually assaulting and killing her roommate Meredith Kercher in Perguia, Italy. The source said: "The flat where Meredith was killed was full of evidence, there was blood, fingerprints and other bodily substances. "It was obvious very quickly that those responsible were from a close circuit of friends and we were able to......

Well Dan, I guess you don't even need a bike and a mountain anymore. Here is a RedBull biking event in Budapest--I guess if we can build mountain bike trails under the freeway, they can race their bikes in the subway.......

Seattlest mentioned in one of our posts about Rick Steves' Town Hall appearance two weeks ago that a friend of ours was racing through Europe with Rick's tour company at the time. Meanwhile, the "Rick Steves' Politics Through the Backdoor with Rick Steves" thing at Town Hall was great (actual title: "Travel as a Political Act"), but we wondered who, exactly, he thought he was converting with it. Rick's a liberal, he was in front......

Eaten: An onion burger and brick of fries. Do you see that whiteboard to the right there? That’s the straw poll that the Republican booth in an exhibition hall at the Puyallup Fair has been conducting during the event. Fred Thompson by a landslide. He has more than twice the votes of Rudy G., his closest challenger, and three times the votes of Romney who just won a Michigan straw poll, yet we barely know......

When we were last up in Whistler, local stores had signs next to their cash registers that read: "Exchange rate: on par." We figured they just didn't want to bother with the shrinking exchange rate, but there still had to be one, right? We must still be in better financial shape than Canada, sheesh. No? Oh. Long gone are those heady days when we first made pilgrimage to Whistler and emptied our wallets to the......

Our postings have been light (OK, nonexistent) this summer as we gallivanted about the western US and Canada teaching people how to ride mountain bikes. We were most excited about a trip in late August to Blue River, BC, the spot of legendary Mike Wiegele's heli-skiing outfit. The plan was to get dropped at 9,000 feet via helicopter and escort about 40 people back down through fields of granite rock slabs and unending alpine......

Seattlest spent this weekend visiting friends in Spokane. We know, we know. "Why, in God's name would you go to Spokane?" Trust us, we've heard it before. But Spokane isn't all bad. It has a few great restaurants, a small but fascinating music scene made up alternately of young, unable-yet-to-escape kids in punk rock bands and older, happy-to-be-settled-down really good musicians all playing in a small town which is full of outdoor opportunities in urban......

Man, if the EU court that stuck it to Microsoft this weekend and Mr. and Mrs. Slowsky were in a race it would probably go off the board for betters. It's. Taking. For. Ever. The crime is Microsoft shutting out competitors by bundling Windows Media Player with Windows, which, to us at least, seems like an ancient issue. What are they going to go after Microsoft for next? Attaching round wheels to an axle? We......

The post we wrote yesterday about Rick Steves ("Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world.") seems reasonable if you only know the man through his travel shows on PBS. He was on the Town Hall stage for all of about four seconds last night before destroying that illusion. Actually, he lives in a few different worlds; one here, in Edmonds, Washington, U.S.A., and another in Europe where he spends a third of every......

Rick Steves. The man lives in a pleasant world. The voice, the haircut, the folksy European dinners with friends one after another after the other. Just once we want to flip to PBS in time to see Steves in Friedrichstraße going berserk on a ticketing agent, but it won't happen because the world is his oyster. A friend of Seattlest's is currently on a 5-week Rick Steves tour of Europe, which we love telling people......

Well, after two full days of filmery, we made it back from Toronto in one piece, but not before seeing our last movie of the fest, Sean Penn's powerful adaptation of Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer's mega-selling non-fiction book about the insatiable wanderlust that led a young man to drop out of society, tramp around the country for two years, and ultimately die alone in middle-of-nowhere Alaska (for a more detailed summary, check out......

Everyone is jumping on the reunion tour bandwagon these days, and the paleontologists greedy museum directors of the world are not to be left out of the mix. Lucy, the famous (if you prefer science over Hollywood) 3.2-million-year-old fossil, is going on tour too. She's got some contentious bones. The original set of fossils--representing the oldest, most intact human ancestor--has been swept out of Ethiopia, where she was supposed to stay in perpetuity, and is......

Monday started even earlier than Sunday with the Coen Brothers' heavily-touted No Country for Old Men. The elegantly slow-moving picture (care of cinematographer Roger Deakins) lives up to the hype, so much so that we can take it as their formal cinematic apology for their abysmal duo Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Ethan, Joel, we forgive you. Especially if it means that you won't sic scary-as-hell psycho-killer Javier Bardem on us. Next up was Juno,......

For the first time ever, we ventured to the sophisticated urban wilds of Toronto for their 32nd annual International Film Festival. TIFF is a big 'un, and, along with Venice, its perpetually strong line-up of award-bait always mark the official beginning of Oscar season. We hit the Canadian cinema circuit in an attempt to catch as many of the year's best films as possible. One film you won't find on 2007's best-of lists is the......

Seattle a sports town? After this weekend, sure. Hawks win! Huskies win! Mariners win! Cougs win! Shit, everybody wins. Ah, not so fast. Mustn't forget soccer. Saturday's World-Cup rematch between France and Italy brings together a couple dozen Seattle restaurateurs to root raucously for les Bleus...or cheer boisterously for gli Azzuri. The venue is a plasma TV at Sorrentino's, on Queen Anne, hallowed ground of sorts, since Mamma Enza comes as close as anyone in......

Starbucks, give 'em credit, is able to do more than one thing at a time. Mark of maturity, that. The papers are full of its plans to expand into every corner of the globe; this week it's Russia. On the domestic front, meantime, they're promoting a slogan to follow up on last year's "Geography is a Flavor." The new catchphrase: "Coffee is Culinary." Half a step back to the very American notion, articulated by New......

One of the great things about Seattle is that it's the gateway to the United States for lots of foreigners. Alaskans, for example, regularly show up at Sea-Tac, wild-eyed and ready to reach for a knife at the first sign of a bear. They've been fleeing the wilderness and arriving on the shores of Seattle since way before regular air service was established. However, last week a particularly 21st century chain of events led one......

Seattle-based journalist Dave Neiwert posted this video today of a "border patrol" down south taking pot shots at alleged border crossers. The video is not produced by the Minutemen border freaks who have an outpost up in Blaine, Washington, but it's a spinoff of that group and Dave uses it to illustrate the fact that these guys are not fucking around. Q: What do you shout at a Canadian before you shoot at him? Dave......

We've been trying to keep abreast of the latest strike news via the networks as well as our singular Canadian television channel down here but both the quantity and quality of coverage has been most unsatisfying. So we took matters into our own hands. (Confidential to Metroblogging Vancouver: If you don't provide any sort of contact address, we cannot reach you for guest/expert commentary.) We contacted The Vancouverite because we believe in their attractive......

Seattlest took a little jaunt up to downtown Pacific Rim Canada the other weekend. Vancouver is the Toronto of western Canada and, just like its gritty eastern counterpart, we just *big throbbing heart* the place. We love its density, its layout, and its landscape. We love the architecture, even its endless kilometers of glass and steel high rises. Moreover, it's a walkable city. If you're a reasonably able-bodied tourist, you should be able to stomp......

There's a film crew all set up and shooting some kind of car/shoot 'em up scene right now at 1st and Stewart. We noticed them from our office perched high above the director's chair and ran down to get some shots of our own. When we asked a woman who looked like part of the crew what they're filming, she rubbed her eyes wearily and said in a thick German accent, "German television." Um, OK.......

If you need to experience an entirely different kind of pride, head over to Buckley, WA (near Enumclaw) for the second day of the annual Buckley Log Show. If you're like us, you won't know what most of the events actually are, but you've no doubt passed these kinds of competitions on ESPN2, as lumberjacks go head to head to slice, chop, and climb. It's loud and a bit disorienting, but there's something refreshing in......

Strasbourg--seat of the European Parliament--has a population of 265,000, less than half Seattle's, yet in the past 15 years it has built four interconnecting lines of light rail with some 50 stops. That's in addition to 35 bus lines, over 250 miles of new bike paths and plenty of bike racks at tram stops. Another element in the plan: integrated municipal parking. Nineteen new parking garages for 6,000 cars in addition to 10,000 street spaces;......

On the phone, Jim Haynes invites us to come for dinner on Sunday, something he's been saying to visitors for decades. By now, well over 100,000 people--most of them total strangers--have accepted his invitation. Mostly, but not exclusively, American visitors. In a not-particularly-fashionable neighborhood in the southeast quadrant of Paris, a high metal gate swings open. We walk into a courtyard and enter a high-ceilinged artist's studio. Jim is on a stool next to the......

Air France is announcing daily direct flights from Seattle to Paris today, beginning June 11. Wow, just in time for that early summer get-away we've been trying to plan. The Port's email release focuses more on Parisians coming to Seattle, of course: “Having a non-stop flight is likely to bring new European travelers into our market and into our economy.” said Visitors Bureau CEO Don Welsh “Leisure travelers from France typically spend about two weeks......

A Canadian mining minster in British Columbia recently flamed someone who wrote in about a policy decision via email. He pretty much tore the guy up and attacked him on the grounds of the guy's questionable Canadian pedigree ("It is my understanding that you are an American, I don't give a shit what your opinion is on Canada or Canadian residents"). Big story. The guy seems to have resigned over it. Shit's in the P-I.......

We'd like to be able to say in full confidence that we'd never attend a rave at a pig farm in the country surrounding Vancouver, B.C., particularly if we were invited by this guy, but you never know. That guy is Robert or "Willie" Pickton and he's on trial in Vancouver right now for killing two six people, although it seems like he'll eventually be charged with many more. Like serial killer more. He claims......

While Seattlest Jack was at Crystal, we made a run for the northern border, with promises of a huge dump of snow up at Whistler. We were buzzing as we drove up the Sea-to-Sky from Vancouver, as there was snow on the ground starting in North Van. It was the most snow we've ever seen in that area, the entire drive up from Squamish was a powdered-sugar-covered winter wonderland. Saturday delivered 18" of new, Utah-light......

This past weekend Seattlest visited Gothamist's stomping grounds. We were there for the farewell shows of Rainer Maria, but had our days free to see the sights and take in the New York experience. We stumbled upon a once-in-a-lifetime event in the world of street art, and amazing as it was, we couldn't help but to be struck by what lessons it could have for Seattle. The building at 11 Spring Street was a......