The Seattle Times has a complaint from a Redmond woman who was taking two kids to the fireworks on the Fourth. On holidays, Metro's policy is that kids ride free with a paying adult. But it turns out the Fourth is not a holiday...well, not a Metro holiday. Metro's holiday was the Third of July, which as you know celebrates the day the Founding Fathers settled on the parchment for the Declaration of Independence. more ›

Microsoft's Zune sales plunged $100 million dollars, or 54 percent, this holiday season compared to last. CNET says iPod unit sales were up 3 percent, though Apple's revenue was down 16 percent. more ›

Hey, it's 2009 and it's time for our first happy hour of the New Year--cunningly scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr., Day so that many of you won't be at work to begin with. Join us at the old stomping grounds, the back of Moe Bar at Neumos on Capitol Hill, for happy hour specials and conversation and The Unforgettable Fire on repeat. We'll be there from 5-8 p.m. (happy hour specials begin at 3 p.m. if you get terribly thirsty early on). There will be nametags and markers, and who knows what-all. Hope to see you there! more ›

Being Swanson's virgins, we didn't know about the annual Reindeer Festival. more ›

Warning: First-person singular follows. more ›

Conference call this morning with Uncle Howard, who says there's nothing to worry about, really. Those Dunkin Donuts commercials, nah; America runs on Starbucks, folks. Micky D? A low-rent interloper. Cut the price of $4 lattes and you imply that Starbucks might not be a premium company after all. Coffee taste tests? Don't even think about it. Loyalty cards for sale in bulk at Costco, on the other hand, that's classy. The market lapped it up; shares jumped 8.5 percent. more ›

Busiest shopping day of the year, nexus of downtown Seattle commerce, the hard core of the retail core: Westlake Mall. And what do we have? Well, people doing their holiday shopping, of course. And getting ready for the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas Tree. But who are those spoilsports with the signs, already? Ah, that would be the protesters, the anarchists, the enemies of the public good. So nicely dressed, too. So polite, so well-groomed. Those signs, what do they say? Down with the capitalist state? No, the signs are actually encouraging commerce. "Buy More Stuff," they implore. "Hurry," they urge. more ›

Just in time for the holidays, Starbucks is teaming up with Costco to offer gift cards at a 20% discount: five $20 cards for $80. Regular gift cards in the Starbucks stores for 10% off. USA Today notes that it's high time Starbucks did something to reward its core customers, especially in these tough times. Shelling out (coughing up?) $4 for a double-tall may not be a whole $700 billion, but might cause some hesitation. Promotion starts November 4th; company announces third quarter earnings (losses?) a week later. more ›

BOMBS BURSTING, ETC: Happy Independence Day! Grill up some zucchini, down a beer or three, and enjoy your day off. Ivars is doing their exploding chemicals thing after sunset, so if you're into that, sedate your dogs/chickens/goldfish and enjoy the 23 minute show over Elliott Bay. Or wherever: check here and here for your options. more ›

Want to get away from the craziness that is Seattle during the Fourth of July? Try the San Juan Islands. This Seattlest will be packing her camping gear and kayak to explore the beautiful (and likely rainy, WTF?) San Juan Islands. more ›

So much for feeling all wonderful and relaxed after getting out of the city and off the computer for the three-day weekend. This is what greeted Seattlest at the 93 mile marker when we left The Gorge early "to miss concert traffic:" more ›

Seattle hiphop artist Kublakai (aka Ian Waller) released in early January, and we've happily kept tracks from the record such "Oh Lord" and "Power Food" in our frequent playlist rotation ever since. This week, Kublakai talked to Seattlest in an exclusive about jazz, Snoop Dogg, his mom, a budding film career, and more! more ›

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 Lincoln anymore, much less Millard Fillmore, say, or Grover Cleveland if we are to buy into this doubletalk about the inclusivity of the day. But--ZOMG--holy crap! Fry's has HDTVs on sale! more ›

Before we moved our worldly possessions across Elliott Bay to West Seattle, we'd never visited that neighborhood's Beveridge Place Pub. And we'd never tasted 3-Grid IPA, an excellently hoppy product of that neighborhood's Schooner Exact Brewing Co. Now that we pose as West Seattle regulars, we recognize both pub and brewer as priceless neighborhood gems; there's no better place to kill a few (happy) hours, and no finer micro-local IPA. more ›

If you're awesome, you don't get SAD, we see. You get BOLD! Awesome's John Osebold [MySpace] is filled with the spirit of the season:

Hello! Happy December. I love this month. I wish I could give you all something this holiday season but I'm not very good with cards or throwing parties.

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. more ›

What a glorious morning! The Sonics have won three of five, Edgar Martinez wasn't in the Mitchell Report, we've got a kickin' holiday party to attend tonight. more ›

WSF is still dead to us, but Governor Gregoire could make our "holiday card" list if she keeps it up. First the viaduct course correction, now she's scrounged up $100 million to pay for three new ferries. Budget, schmudget! She's all action! Plus, the Port Townsenders, come January, will be reunited with their cars on ferry trips, says the P-I:

Pierce County has agreed to loan one of its boats to the Washington State Ferries, beginning in January, to resume car service between Keystone and Port Townsend.

Maybe the first thing we should tell you about Striking 12 at CHAC -- besides the SAD tie-in, the rave reviews, or the fact that only 600 people in Seattle will have the chance to see it -- is that you can win half-off tickets to it. A limited number of $15 tickets are being held for those who correctly answer the following trivia question:

Name at least one of the bands featured the first year Dick Clark hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.

Bellevue is entertaining its crazed shoppers and downtown urbanites with daily holiday drum lines, snowflake lights and snow (yes, fake snow). We have seen it with our own eyes, and it is as if you chasséd on stage of a live performance of the Nutcracker. Snowflake Lane is a Bellevue tradition and is going on now until December 24, beginning at 7 p.m. daily. If shopping under fake snow doesn’t get you excited, you... more ›

Inspired by a random iPod event at Seattlest's Thanksgiving, a friend lamented the early death of John Denver and then launched into a diatribe about how he didn't pull a Kennedy; that is, Denver wasn't a dilettante pilot. He went on to explain that Denver was an experienced pilot who owned many planes and flew often. He died, our friend claimed, when one of the fuel tanks in the experimental plane he was flying... more ›

The way Seattlest's routine works out we're afforded precious little time down in Tacoma, so we're particularly unqualified to speak to the panhandling scene there as opposed to here. Maybe someone more familiar with the City of Destiny can explain the need for the panhandling ban there, though? We do spend a significant amount of time downtown Seattle, and there are panhandlers around, but they tend to either be so consistently present as to become familiar (hey "smile" guy) or passive almost to a fault. Or both. Still, hardly ban-worthy. Seattlest does have a slightly different experience whenever we happen to be downtown on a weekend. Around Westlake--particularly now, holiday shoppers--the crush of people makes it hard to identify panhandlers that aren't ringing a bell and standing next to a cauldron of some kind. In Pioneer Square when there aren't many people around, you can get approached somewhat aggressively by people asking for money. more ›

Look up the definition of “hot-to-trot” and you’ll find two sets of meanings: (1) willing and eager and (2) sexually exciting. more ›

Sometimes the world really is a beautiful place. Specifically when there's beer involved. Jack's meeting friends on Saturday for a session of oak-aged beer tasting at Brouwer's Big Wood Fest. He'll then spend the rest of the day rubbing his tum tum and smiling a lot. Thrilled about the possibility of the year's first snow fall, Kim will spend as much of the weekend as possible getting over the cold that's been lingering for a... more ›

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For a quarter century, Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, artistic directors of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, stood at the summit of Seattle's cultural elite. Russell founded the company's ballet school and still travels widely as a consultant. Among his many achievements, Stowell choreographed Seattle's holiday favorite Nutcracker before stepping down three years ago. So what's he going to do for an encore? Hold that thought. more ›

This weekend Mr. and Mrs. Seattlest drove out to North Bend to cut a Christmas tree down and haul it back to Seattle. No, we didn't hike up Si with an ax and harvest a sapling, although that does sound fun. There's a tree farm out there by the name of Crown Tree Farm. It was our first time getting a tree from anywhere other than those road-side dealies or the enclosures that pop up in big parking lots this time of year, or so we thought until we got on the phone with Dad in Illinois afterwards. "You don't remember when you and I and your brother went to cut down a Christmas tree?" he said. "So much for making childhood memories." We thought this was a Pacific Northwest thing, but apparently you can cut down your own Christmas tree even in the Midwest. more ›

Four Dickens Carolers are singing in lovely harmony. Children toddle by, then look back at the carolers, their eyes wide with wonder. Garland and lights are everywhere. more ›