Maybe you're a parent who's just moved to the Seattle area and wondering what the natives do when The Grim strikes again for the winter. Or maybe you've got young visitors coming into town, and you're not sure how to entertain them. Here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate autumn with the kiddos in Seattle. more ›

Bumbershoot correspondent Sam Parker reports on eclectic loopers Nice Nice and sultry synth-poppers Little Dragon. more ›

Did you make it over to the boat show this weekend? The normal part was "indoors" at the exhibition center, while the exhibitionist part was "afloat" at Lake Union. Today our old photo from MOHAI kills two waterfowl with one grayscale stone. more ›

"cocoon man" by Jessica Warren (jessiqua), from our Flickr pool more ›

"Gasworks cloudy sunset" by imtboo, from the Seattlest Flickr Pool more ›

August 8, New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat rolls through Seattle with a stop at Gasworks Park. The tour celebrates "all things bicycle," and one of its annual traditions is that someone will actually sign over their car at the event as a sign of his or her commitment to commute by bicycle. In exchange, this year the car-less bicyclist will receive a custom-made bike from Black Sheep Bikes. So here's your chance--the tour still needs a Seattle participant! To enter, visit their Facebook page and submit an essay or video explaining your desire to be car free. Time's running out, so jump on it ASAP. more ›

"The Crowds got Larger..." by Aimee Wenske (cloverity), from our Flickr pool more ›

Video from last night's episode of the Colbert Report, regarding our precious Benjamin Schroeter. more ›

As if one cancelled fireworks show this year wasn't bad enough. One unpatriotic son-of-a-gun and environmental activist is suing the City of Seattle to stop this year's Fourth of July celebration and fireworks show at Gas Works Park. Don't you want to see the Chase Family 4th try to top the now defunct WaMu's past shows? His rant: the city's alleged failure to do an environmental assessment. The city's rebuttal: no need, for a one-time event on city property. May we suggest another tactic: LEAVE. Here is a far-from-Seattle firework-free weekend retreat. more ›

"Cow Kite Launches" by Brian Dewey, plucked from our Flickr pool more ›

Almost three years ago, we walked around Lake Union for your entertainment. That seemed like it took all day, so this time we rode our bike. Much quicker! more ›

• Big Blog won points with a post about The Bachelor's ex-wife and her YouTubed guest spot as a groupie on local band Out From Underneath's Seattle-heavy music video. Onwards and upwards, Gas Works Park.
• The blog formerly known as bigasscity is quoting none other than ZZ Top while crunching the numbers about Metro's projected budget shortfall and how much money the city could have saved by rejecting the bored tunnel viaduct replacement option.
• Cliff Mass thinks it's "pretty definite": we're looking at more snow, probably on Sunday. Actually, that works well with our schedule. How kind of the gods to check with Seattlest HQ's Google Calendar before sending the cold front!

"these are the days to be happy..." by Viv | Seattle Bon Vivant, from the Seattlest Flickr pool more ›

"complex machinery" by Seattle rainscreen more ›

The Tour de Fat bicycle festival, sponsored by New Belgium Brewery, took place at Gasworks Park today. Naturally we bicycled over to see what it was all about. On the way, two guys in a pickup pulled up next to us and rolled down the window. Uh oh, we thought. "Hey, nice bike!" they yelled. "And nice shirt!" (We were wearing the cream of our Hawaiian shirt collection.) They gave us a thumbs up. Then they roared off again. Tour de Fat was kinda like that. more ›

In the wake of a brutal tussle between car and bicycle last weekend, it's good that New Belgium Brewing's Tour de Fat, the "traveling celebration of all things bicycle," arrives in town on Saturday, opposite the carbon-spewing, combustion engine worship-fest that is Seafair, what with the supersonic jets and souped-up motorboats. more ›

Just in case you forgot why you live in Seattle, a photo-refresher course. A rum drink really sets the mood, if you have anything like that handy. more ›

Independence Day in Seattle was a cloudy affair. Several people commented to us that they weren't even going to bother with the fireworks, because it was too overcast for the display to be worthwhile. Just before sundown, though, the sky moved off. We turned the corner along the Burke on our way to Gasworks Park, and there was the city, across the water, in all its reflective glory. Buildings casting shadows against one another, and a breathtaking sunset shone from their windows. more ›

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Two events occurred this weekend that damaged our long and strongly held opinion of Wallingford as a sleepy bedroom suburb-within-the-city this weekend. Yes, Wallingford still tears down 4-unit rentals in lieu of 4500 sq ft single-family monstrosities at a prodigious pace, and can only get riled about an issue if it involves people using Gas Works for anything other than leisurely walks, but this weekend it showed signs of life. more ›

Gas Works Park may not recover its former place as our #1 greatest park ever after its little tar leak last week. We took a walk over there yesterday and wandered around what was basically an empty space on a gray and prematurely cold day, pressing our nose up against the chain link here and there and dwelling on what exactly this park sits on top of: benzene, mercury, lead, etc. It's gross. more ›

A big 'thank you' to Seattlest commenters for making the previous two posts on the Gas Works Park Mystery Party the definitive places for speculation and conjecture. Just this morning an unregistered guest indicated that they'd received an email asking for actors to "protest" the party at $100 a head, which kind of dulls the luster on a previous commenter's note that Melinda Gates's birthday is August, 15. Anyway, in lieu of any actual, factual new information on our part we'd like to point you once again to those threads and leave you with these bad photographs and the lyrics to the seventh song on Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 album The Sounds of Silence. more ›

And I figured if anyone would know, it would be you guys. more ›

Hello, retro. Josue.blanco used a Kodak Duaflex IV for "Monstrosity," a gorgeous shot of the gasification plant at Gas Works Park. It's part of his Through the Viewfinder series. Be sure to check out the whole Gas Works set. We're showcasing some of our favorite shots from the Seattlest Flickr Group. Want in? Sign up, share your favorite shots, and you might find yourself featured in Seattlest Pix -- or elsewhere on the site.... more ›

--A five-car pileup on I-5 yesterday was caused by a guy looking at his BlackBerry while driving. more ›

For someone who generally thinks of himself as a words guy, Seattlest is uncommonly fond of maps. We dig 2-dimensional representations of physical space for some reason. Maybe we just like knowing where we stand. Maybe we're fond of where we stand. Who knows. Add photos to the mix and we're running for paper towels. more ›

Our favorite radio weatherman, Cliff Mass, says that it is going to be nice and sunny this weekend. With highs getting up into the 80s (you're laughing at us, rest of the country, aren't you?). more ›

-A new use for the Wawona and Kalakala can be found in today's P-I. more ›

Where is it? We were at Golden Gardens yesterday and it was packed, but packed is not the problem. You kind of want it to be packed unless there's absolutely no space to stake out as your own with a blanket or towel. It's the parking. REI had some kind of event that privatized half the upper parking area, so things were pretty dire. We'd given up and were headed home before a divine intervention parted the cars for us. So given that it's a hot day early in the summer and there's a race of some kind going on, where the hell do you park? Do you try to score something at Shilshole and walk over? Do you keep driving up the hill and rapel down from where ever you find something? more ›