After a committee vote yesterday, the full City Council is set to decide on Monday if Seattle will adopt a 20-cent fee for plastic bags at grocery, drug, and convenience stores, as well as a ban on polystyrene food and drink containers. If passed, the fee and ban will go into effect on January 1, 2009. Stores that use the plastic foam containers to package meat will have a year to figure out an alternative......

According to the P-I, Honolulu's thinking about sending island-style trash our way. Walt Disney doesn't really tolerate landfill stench wafting over its new resorts, and there's only so much space on Hawaii for garbage (Walt Disney resort memorabilia aside), so companies are in the process of bidding for the privilege of hauling the refuse to a new mainland location. It's possible that Washington could be the trash's final resting place. Our proposal is to......

In New York, a place where we once lived, recycling does not--despite being mandatory--actually happen. Example--in our office building in the Flatiron District, we had, as mandated by law, little blue waste receptacles where you deposited only paper. But when the janitor came around, he emptied those blue receptacles into the same garbage bag where he dumped all the other trash. So perhaps it was to inspire the locals The New York Times ran a......

In the chapter on invasive species in David Williams' awesome book The Street-Smart Naturalist he says of blackberries: Ecologists don't like Himalayan blackberries because the dense thickets block light to other plats, reduce animal habitat, and hinder access to water in riparian zones, another area where blackberries flourish. With their rapid growth they can quickly outcompete natives and turn a diverse field into a monoculture. Himalayan blackberries, however, do have several features that make......

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......

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......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Ding dong NASCAR's dead. The ISC came a'knocking with promises of garbage bags full of tourist's cash if only the state legislators would agree to a tax-payer-funded track on the Peninsula. It seemed like kind of a longshot from the beginning, and NASCAR's local guys failed spectacularly at judging the state of things in the Puget Sound region. "Hey, guys, they just voted down a tax-funded basketball venue and it looks like they're gathering in......

Because we don't go out on school nights and we need to plan... SATURDAY: In addition to talks and tours, you and the kids can see live demonstrations of wood carving, drum-making, and weaving at the Opening Day Celebration for In the Spirit of the Ancestors, the Burke Museum's new exhibit of contemporary Northwest Coast Native art. 10:30am-4pm // Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture // All Ages // $8 general; $5 kids 5+;......

Last year Eddie Guardado had a terrible April and lost the M's closer job to J.J. Putz. He thought Mike Hargrove would give him a chance to win his job back, but, in his mind, he didn't get that chance. And he's not happy. Guardado tells the P-I's Jim Moore:Grover knows he gave me a bunch of bullcrap. I'm a man. I want people to respect me. I was told a bunch of lies by......

So. The Huskies. The team that's our city's best chance at a 2007 championship trophy, and they can't even beat the Cougs. Historical fact: No team has ever lost to Washington State University and gone on to win the championship of anything. But here's the good news: because the Huskies are in the nation's best conference, they have six more games against ranked teams, and three against teams ranked in the top 10 (Oregon, Pittsburgh......

How bad is it? So bad that anybody, anybody, can open a storefront on First or Second; within an hour it will be filled with dozens of under-30 bodies. Cute, pulsating, throbbing 20-somethings. They come in all shades; the females invariably petite, wide-eyed, smartly dressed, the males chunkier, slovenly, indifferent. They sip brightly colored cocktails and pick at whatever the kitchen has delivered. (It could be grilled garbage, for they seem to care.) No pleasure,......

Does anyone reading expect Trick or Treaters at their house tomorrow? Because every year we fall for one of those garbage bag-sized sacks of really tiny candy bars and then only five or six kids come to the door and we end up eating all the candy ourselves a dozen at a time. Those bags are expensive and we can't handle the tummy aches like we used to, but if a single little ghoul shows......

Local dance collaborative locust debuted the world premiere of their new dance-video-music mashup "Mockumentary" at On the Boards last night, and it was one of the most intriguing, beautiful, dark, and thoroughly enjoyable performances that we've been to in a very long time. The stage at On the Boards was surprisingly stark when we arrived, especially in contrast to our previous OtB experience with Constanza Macras' stuffed animal/garbage-ridden chaotic set design. Three large video screens......

Picture all the money in the state rounded up and stuffed into an enormous paper mache taxpayer suspended from the Space Needle. Blindfold Governor Gregoire and Mayor Nickels and hand them each a baseball bat. The mayor proposed a budget yesterday and hopefully the wonks are currently poking at it with those little CSI evidence sticks and ogling it through the magnifying glass helmets popularized by Rick Moranis in Honey I Shrunk the Kids. We'll......

The official word from Starbucks is that they're cool with the Ghetto Latte. "Customization is a fundamental attribute of the Starbucks Experience. We provide condiments to our customers so they can make their drinks to their liking and we appreciate their patronage. We trust our customers to make the choices that are right for them," Starbucks Gossip reports. The Seattle Times also saw fit to comment this week in an editiorial, the point of......

-"The Viaduct replacement tunnel will cost nearly a billion more than you thought," says Department of Transportation. "No it won't," replies the mayor. -Seattle City Councilman Richard Conlin has a new plan for the city's garbage. Actually, under the Zero Waste Strategy, there will be no garbage to get rid of. -Zillow made some changes to their site today, and now instead of Zillow telling you how much your house is worth, you tell......

News from Tampa that a culinary team from Swedish Hospital has won the national championship at the HFM cook-off . (That's the National Society for Healthcare Foodservice Management, dontcha know.) Swedish had already won the annual Ivy Award from the trade mag Restaurants & Institutions two years ago for serving the best, er, institutional food in the country. Now before you start snickering, ask yourself where it's written that sick people have to eat cold,......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

According to a recent discussion on the Hobo Bicycle Elite Message Board, there was an incident with some assholes who assaulted bicycle enthusiasts during last night's Critical Mass festivity. Allegedly the instigators later played the ingenious "PSYCHE! We're actually cops but we waited till after kicking your ass to tell you that" save. That's a good save to pull if you can get away with it, unlike, say, DMX, who wasn't all that convincing......

Seattlest joined a subdued crowd of about 80 at Greenlake's Kiwi and Kangaroo for this morning's US-Ghana game. Though we arrived in a red, white, and blue "Git 'er Done" hat and waving a small, plastic U.S. flag, our fellow fans displayed little national pride. A U.S. jersey there, a red and blue shirt here. Pretty pathetic. Ok, the last six years haven't been our best, but come on--first colony to break away from the......

Unlike Seattle's University District, the town of Whistler is a bit more used to living with, and near, bears. Over the past holiday weekend, we discovered just how close one can get, as the record-breaking snowfall from this past winter at Whistler means the bears coming out of hibernation this spring can't get very far up the mountain just yet. We're pretty used to seeing the occasional bear on the golf course, or even lurking......

Seattle's "urban primitive" community (aka drunk hobos with a fetish for bicycles, holier-than-thou bicycle-related political rhetoric and harrassing people at Critical Mass) have now formed an elite squad in order to better organize their drunk bicycle fetishizing efforts. Behold: "The Bikery!" Ostensibly "a new bike collective project that is about to explode all over town.... Working towards the goal of opening a bicycle resource center and community space for all folks who love bikes......

The kitchen garbage was pretty full this morning, and while we generally wouldn't think twice about leaving it sit until sometime later this week, today we wanted to get a look at the garbage outside, so we dumped the morning's coffee grounds, tied up the bag and hauled it outside. Seattlest lives in the top unit of a duplex and we share our garbage with the couple downstairs: that's Seattlest plus Seattlest's lovely fiance plus......

-The president of China is hitting Seattle for a little vacay next week and you absolutely cannot come to Seattle without stopping by Bill's for a little of Melinda's casserole. Hopefully he'll be taking a few souvenir Boeings home with him. -We're the smartest. College edumacated at least, for all the good it's done us. -We're the expensivest. Home prices still way up there. -We're set to become the stinkiest. The garbage strike still......

Teamsters Local 174 has voted to authorize a strike. Local 174 members work for Waste Management Inc. and Allied Waste Industries Inc. meaning, yes, they're garbage men or waste management engineers or whatever. They're looking for health coverage improvements, safer working conditions and less mandatory overtime from their contract renegotiations or they're going to stop working and we know you've always been a fan of organized labor and that a garbage strike sounds very New......

Something tells us that the world-beating, intense Ichiro who disliked his relaxed 2005 clubhouse is going to be none-too-pleased when he finally arrives in Peoria. Mariners spring camp has morphed into late 70s summer camp, with closer Eddie "Giggles" Guardado as the wacky camp counselor. In the past few days, Guardado's masterminded lighting Jose Lopez' shoes on fire, showering Kenji Johjima with garbage, and taunting Cuban shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt after his homeland lost the WBC.......

Zoo Doo is a program from the Woodland Park Zoo that allows Seattle residents to buy bear shit, ostensibly for their gardens. Want a garbage bag full? You can have it! A truck-load? Possible! Seattlest would like to know if we could just get a dime bag of the stinky stuff, but there's no mention of less than intent-to-distribute quantities in the press release. Not only is there a program to buy bear shit from......

After the city of Seattle decided to tear down the legal skateparks in the city (Ballard Skatepark and Seaskate) to purportedly "rebuild them at a future date", local skate kids did the unexpected: they started a blog. Well, OK, actually they started a grassroots volunteer group that is building their own skatepark under the West Seattle Bridge. And, they have a blog. "Underpass" recreation areas are growing in occurence in the northwest, both in reaction......

There was a great editorial in the P-I over the weekend in which the writer Daniel Jack Chasan said (and this is Seattlest’s Paraphrase): The Sound is a mess. The Sound was a mess in the 80’s and we said we’d fix it and we never wanted to foot the bill so the Sound is mess now and we’re saying we’ll fix it and we won’t foot the bill. That was the gist of it,......