LET THEM EAT CAKE: Essential Baking Company is celebrating their 15th birthday, which means a taste of their signature chocolate hazelnut birthday cake is on the house today--for every customer making a purchase and while supplies last, of course--at both the Wallingford and Madison locations. After the free cake has run dry, both locations will be selling $1.50 cupcakes until October 14 in honor of the occasion. Considering the amount of Seattle boutique cupcake shops, we have obviously proven our love for cake and would recommend showing up early before the free cake disappears into everyone else's mouths. more ›

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How to describe Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) to an American public? Where to pigeonhole him? Part world-weary lounge lizard, part genius musician, he was the archetype of the French artist as intellectual and sexual predator. On television: heavy-lidded, cigarette, old in his youth yet youthful when his face became lined with years. On records: a voice that percolated through a haze of smoke. In person: consort of Brigitte Bardot, France Gall, Jane Birkin. more ›

• If you haven't figured out by our continuous posting of Seattle Municipal Archive Photos and links to Vintage Seattle, we have an affinity for all things, well, vintage Seattle, as it were. So we were thrilled to see that the Central District News has started a feature called "CD Rewind," which takes a look into the CD's past. The first edition shows what 23rd and Madison looked like in 1957.
• We also really like alliteration...but Beacon Hill Blog may have taken it a little too far with this one.
• We had no idea there was such a job as seal sitter, but apparently there is and seal sitters are attentively watching West Seattle beaches.