If you weren't glued to the Women's Event Finals in the Floor Exercise at the Olympics tonight like we were, you might have seen a pretty cool lightning storm in the sky to the East of the city. Thankfully our windows lit up so we caught it. Unlike most lightning storms around here, this one lit up the clouds and included a bunch of beautiful bolts. (Our wife says it's the first time she's seen......

Nothing says "Happy anniversary" like a group show, so that's how Kirsten Anderson and Roq La Rue are celebrating the gallery turning 10. Anderson didn't have any experience running a gallery when she started Roq La Rue, but she loved lowbrow (we don't think she'd coined "pop surrealism" yet) and thought it deserved an awesome venue. Mission accomplished. It's a gallery beloved by BoingBoing and Fodor's alike. Come celebrate tonight with cupcakes and beer and......

LOCAL LIT: Tired of living la vida loca after pride weekend? Sick of the sun and the heat? Want to retreat back into your dark, shade-drawn house and dream of the rain? Of course not, which is why it's so hard to recommend you spend your Monday at a literary reading. Still, local author and medical expert Carol Casella has a reading tonight down at Elliott Bay Books, for her debut novel Oxygen. Casella, a......

If there's one thing you can say that the artists whose shows opens tonight at Roq la Rue have in common, it's that they both really like women. Esao Andrews, an NYC-based artist, likes to contort the feminine form into the oddest situations: stuck inside the bowl of a flower vase, riding a giant swan, or with a head blasting hot air into the sack of a hot air balloon. Japanese artist Fuco Ueda is......

There's some sort of primeval or subconscious part of our brains that remains fascinated with the potential magic of spaces we can't enter, whether it's down a rabbit hole, on the other side of a mirror, or the life of things within the walls of our home. The work of Dutch artist Femke Hiemstra, which goes on display at Roq la Rue tonight, captures that fascination with whimsy and wit. Her paintings demonstrate a miniaturist's......

We asked, Jeanine Anderson answered: she shared photos from Friday night's pop surrealism opening at Roq La Rue in our Flickr pool. late fauna of north america: who goes to the Roq? Thanks, Jeanine! We managed to snap a couple as well. Here's the crowd at 7:30: And here's Little Miss Seattlest requesting that we stop looking at art or taking pictures and go to dinner (at Marjorie, across the street, which was yum):......