This is the fourth part of a series that follows the Group Health Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic along its route, and explores the history and transformation of the Pacific Northwest through the communities and stops along the way. See here for part 3. At the intersection of Sussex Avenue and Sheridan Street in Tenino, a small stone stands erect on the edge of a vacant lot, with the words "Old Oregon Trail 1845–53" etched......

This is the first part of a series that follows the Group Health Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic along its route, and explores the history and transformation of the Pacific Northwest through the communities and stops along the way. At 4:45 a.m. Saturday morning, July 12th, 2,427 bicyclists set out from the Husky Stadium parking lot to make the 204.5-mile Group Health Seattle to Portland Classic in one day. Fifteen minutes before that, we were......

Guy Maddin films are not for everyone. With his love of silent film flourishes and his often bizarre sense of humor, Maddin can easily confound viewers. To wit: we have a good friend who lives and breathes cinema. He likes his films weird and dark and avant garde. But even he says of Maddin, "I just can't handle the guy." Well, think again Nick, because Guy Maddin's latest critically-acclaimed film, "docu-fantasia" My Winnipeg has......

Photo by Nils Geylen. Thanks! Calling all metric system nerds and Seattle history heads: today is the 217th anniversary of the day the French National Assembly said "Go!" to an official effort to create a metric system. In 1795, France voted the new "meter" into effect as the national unit of measurement and hasn't looked back since; it took the U.S. of A. until 1988 to pass a similar resolution and, 20 years later,......

This is the coolest collection of random, old Seattle photos we’ve ever stumbled upon while not working at work. For anyone who can’t imagine 3rd and Pine before crack, or the masochistic liberal who wants to marvel at a time when people would have paraded massive, old growth firs down the street in celebration, this is your time capsule. If you like slacking off at work or just appreciate a little cultural history, these......

Theatre: A production of Mr. Marmalade got introduced by Curtain Up thusly:If you've always associated marmalade with sweetness, you're likely to expect the title character of Noah Haidle's play to be a sweet, lovable guy -- just the sort of imaginary friend for a four-year-old moppet named Lucy. Well, think again. Playwright Haidle's Mr. Marmalade is a cocaine snorting, emotionally out to lunch businessman with a briefcase packed with kinky sex toys. Not a......

Like anybody else, we appreciate the sentiment of the Presidents' Day long weekend--well, for those of us who have that day off or are able to take it. It provided us the perfect opportunity to temporarily ex-patriate ourselves and pump money into Canada's economy. That's what it's all aboot, anyway. This so-named Presidents' Day has become just a reason for the commercial sector to entice us with Fabulous Savings. Nobody thinks about Washington or......

The February performance of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues is commonplace in cities across America. In Seattle, "V-Day" will be celebrated with a performance on February 24th at The Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). Sponsoring the event is the Seattle Office of The National Council of Jewish Women. To advertise the performance, The Council produced the colorful print you see to the right. The advertisement is running in The Seattle Weekly and JT News,......

Absurdistan is an allegorically rich comedy care of witty German director Veit Helmer and filmed in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the tiny titular land, a war of the sexes break out when the local aqueduct ceases to work, and the men are too lazy to fix it. The women declare a strike--no water, no sex--and two childhood sweethearts find themselves feuding instead of consummating their long-standing love. Looks like it's......

There's a nice little piece over at Crosscut this morning about Georgetown's Rainier Cold Storage Stock House (and the demise of), but just like the neighborhood opposition to the building's demolition, it's too little too late. To be fair, the building's owners broke their way through many walls (a much beloved building that defines a neighborhood, an official Seattle Landmark) with the wrecking ball of public safety: it's going to collapse onto Airport Way,......

Dennis McLerran, head of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is "pissed." Governor Schwarzenegger is suing federal regulators. According to more than 500 news articles, The Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s bill to place limitations on vehicle emissions, which would have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent in the next 10 years. McLerran claims in a Seattle Times article the EPA’s decision is purely political, not factual. Washington was one of the 18 states that......

We've been locking our keyboard in a drawer to keep ourselves from putting up any "this is the weekend the green line would have begun service" posts, both because it's been done and because it's history. Yes, it would have been great to have, but we decided against it. If there's anything like a blog to mark the day in the distant future when we'd have it paid off we'll be impressed. But a reader......

The past few months have seen Mr. “Wes C. Addle”—Eddie Vedder—looking more like Mr. Tinseltown than just another (incredibly talented) Easy Street customer. Times don’t look like they’ll be a-changin’ in 2008. Vedder recorded a song for the Cate Blanchett Bob Dylan study I’m Not There, penned two for the documentary Body of War, then a whole soundtrack for Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. He’ll appear in the upcoming singer-biopic spoof Walk Hard. He’s just......

Making up for weeks of hibernation and workaholism, Kim will hit the parties this weekend. Tonight, she’ll don her Groucho glasses for a lesbian function at Jabu’s celebrating the births of her two favorite Sagitarii. Saturday, it’s to the War Room for a company party with the missus and her workmates. Finally, she’ll ship off to the sub-tropics on Monday, where she’ll spend what remains of 2007. While his wife is taking a Wilderness......

We have to be honest: We were slightly annoyed when we read the email promoting Seattle School's (of Motel fame) latest event. Anything that calls an organization "insanely exuberant" and says that it is putting on one of the "craziest film events in the history of the city" is trying pretty hard to sound zany and exciting. But as we told Seattlest Audrey, we're a sucker for weird (you should have seen us in college)......

Hello out there in Seattlest-land, this is your friendly editor Seth. We've kicked a fair amount of ass, figuratively speaking, in 2007, but in 2008, we want to further our plans for world domination. To this end, we're going to hire a news editor. This person will be available during the day to break news, shine light on stories that are hiding in the dark corners of our city, and, of course, completely rip off......

"On October 1, when tickets went on sale for the Seattle premiere of Jersey Boys," the press release solemnly informs us, "all 5th Avenue Theatre box office records were broken." Obviously someones of a certain age miss their white doo wop. A big money-maker on Broadway, Jersey Boys is the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons and how they ruled the airwaves between 1962 and 1967, on the strength of Valli's signature falsetto.......

The most unfortunate victims of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--which happened 66 years ago today--were surely the 2,333 military personnel who lost their lives. FDR called it, "a date which will live in infamy." Perhaps in 1941, a surprise attack on another country's military was infamous. But considering that in 1986 the U.S. launched a surprise attack on another country's civilians, 12/7 looks a lot less infamous than the direct domestic aftermath, felt especially......

Franklin vs. Garfield is one of the Seattle sports events that you just shouldn't miss. Here's what we wrote about it for The Stranger in September:True local hoops fans don't miss this game between two perennial inner-city basketball powerhouses, even at the cost of connubial tranquility. The 2005 game at Garfield fell on Valentine's Day, but happily married Husky basketball coach Lorenzo Romar was there anyway. A win in this game means neighborhood bragging rights......

No. But that doesn't make this factoid from a political campaign article in today's P-I any less disturbing: "If it's OK to notify a political campaign about this guy, what about the neighbors he lived near for months?" said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, pointing out that [Mitt] Romney's aides were warned about [Daniel Thomas] Tavares's presence here during the candidate's recent campaign swing through Seattle, though Troyer's own office......

We haven't read a ton of military history, but we've read enough to know that the most grievous mistakes by battle commanders aren't those that lead to defeat, but those that are made in the wake of victory. The biggest mistakes are by commanders who, having driven their opposition into full retreat, fail to press the advantage, chase the retreaters down, and destroy them. To cite just one example, had Confederate General P.G.T Beauregard ordered......

Seattlest was so tired last night, coming down with a cold we've been coming down with for a couple of weeks now, and hearing rumors of snow. All of this honestly made us just want to curl up under a thick blanket and watch the re-runs of Man Versus Wild that have been backing up on our TiVo. But alas, we had agreed to check out some band from Portland called Casey Neill and......

So you're gonna look at that score and think this game was a blowout, but the Sonics--despite a career-high 39 from Dwight Howard--were actually within one point with as late as 4:22 left. They got there--despite having been down 15 at the start of the 4th--because P.J. Carlesimo finally figured out a way to make Kevin Durant an asset on defense instead of a liability--by having him front Howard while Kurt Thomas kept between Howard......

Please, oh please bring the Shaolin: Temple of Zen exhibition to Seattle. From the Aperture Foundation:For the first time in history, the notoriously guarded warrior monks of the fifteen-hundred-year-old Shaolin Temple—a Chinese Buddhist sect dedicated to preserving a form of kung fu known as the "vehicle of Zen"—have allowed their secretive society to be documented. With the blessing of the main abbot, Justin Guariglia earned the trust and full collaboration of the Shaolin monks to......

Seattlest sucks at the harmonica, and so has always had a healthy bit of reverence for people who can really play the damned thing. We're not talking about Alanis-style "harmonica playing," but real harmonica playing. It's one of the world's most portable instruments, which satisfies our folkie sensibilities, and the history of the instrument is pretty interesting as well. So it is with great relish that we encourage you to head to the Triple Door,......

Amazon released an eBook reader today, it's three years in the making. They call it Kindle. Here's a big 'ol Newsweek piece about it. Barnes and Noble has seen its stock drop 5% today (as of 3:01 EST), as investors ask and answer the question--is print dead? (Note--you aren't reading this in print.) News of the Kindle launched a spirited discussion amongst various Seattlesters touching on the merits of eBooks, of iPods, book history, and......

Placekickers are held in low regard by their football teammates. No, that's too generous. Placekickers are held in no regard by their football teammates. Imagine if the Superfriends had a guy whose sole power was to instantaneously hard-boil eggs. Batman and Aquaman would, we suspect, have the same respect for "The Ovomaster" that NFL players do for their kicker teammates. But, Sunday, in the Seahawks' 30-23 win over the Bears, Seahawks kicker Josh Brown made......

We're not yet convinced that the current War on Plastic Shopping Bags/Global Warming will stand the test of time, but we sure are intrigued that everyone everywhere seems to be trying to make the eco-friendly message stick (do you really think NBC's "Green Week" is destined for the history books? Neither do we.). We're feeling equally ambivalent about "Geography," the latest piece from local choreographer/composer duo Scott/Powell Production, premiering this weekend at On the Boards.......

Saturday, Tera will give herself a VIP tour at the opening of Aritzia. She will follow this potentially hectic event by introducing a friend to her newest wine obsession - Twisted Cork. Sunday she will trek to Qwest and root for Chicago, uh, eh, oops...Seattle. Yes, root for the Seahawks. Jack's heading to the Showbox proper tonight to see Canadian indie pop band Stars. Sunday, he's hoping to see Rex Grossman slip into old......

Attention Pearl Jam fans and Flatstock attendees: You need the new, superfancy art book Pearl Jam vs Ames Bros: 13 Years of Tour Posters. The book is a compendium of the band's 1995-2007 gig posters by artists Ames Bros and Brad Klausen, PJ's exclusive print-design minds. Though (sadly) it doesn't date back to the Golden Days of Grunge, at 229 posters, it's an exhaustive collection. But it isn't just poster reproductions. Pearl Jam vs......