It's safe to assume that Sharon Jones is cooler than you. The current queen of neo-funk/soul grew up in Macon, Georgia and Brooklyn, singing in church before ending up doing session work in the '70s as the anonymous vocals on dance and disco records. Without a solo contract of her own, she left the industry and took odd jobs like corrections officer at Rikers Island and Wells Fargo armored car guard. Fate intervened in......

It's become fairly commonplace for the brighter real estate bloggers, like Timothy "The Tim" Ellis over at SeattleBubble, to mock P-I reporter Aubrey Cohen once a month. See Cohen--the P-I's lead real estate reporter--writes an article about the state of the national housing market once a month when the industry standard Case-Shiller numbers are released. The Case-Shiller index (from S&P) tracks the changes in home prices for 20 US metropolitan areas each month as......

Despite what you may have heard the past few days--scuttlebutt about the sale of the Showbox Market and subsequent consolidation of venues at the SoDo location--it turns out that the original (and best) Showbox is staying right where it is, thankyouverymuch. Says Chad Queirolo, Talent Buyer/Manager for both Showboxes: It used to be once a year an especially virulent rumor that the Showbox lease would end in March. This has been happening for at......

Braiden Rex-Johnson's new book, Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining, is a fine complement to Kurt Dammeier's Pure Flavor (reviewed by Seattlest back in August). Affectionate portraits of leading players: wine makers Bob Betz Kay Simon, Harry McWatters; unique restaurants, cooking techniques, recipes. Rex-Johnson, a familiar name whose previous books include the iconic Pike Place Market Cookbook, writes a food & wine column for Wine Press Northwest and served as food editor at Seattle Homes &......

Last we talked with Carrie Akre, she was gearing up for the release of her latest CD, Last the Evening. Now, a couple of months later, the CD is officially out, and Akre is buzzing from the aftermath. Indeed, most of us music critic types have had nice things to say about the disc, which showcases her exuberant, imagery-laden lyrics and alt.country sensibilities, and shows off the great musicianship of her backup players. We......

Enough. It's Bacon Salt Backlash time. Seattlest got in our car to drive home last night and Bacon Salt came on the radio. We opened up the newspaper yesterday and Bacon Salt. Bacon Salt, Bacon Salt, Bacon Salt. Nothing against these guys personally, but if we are subjected to one more recounting of the glorious beginnings of Bacon Salt we're going to go nutso. Yes, well, little Bobby was playing baseball in the yard and......

Towards the very end of last night's People Talking and Singing, as the clock ticked past 10:00 and John Roderick announced he'd play another song and take a few requests from the audience, our butts chimed in: "Hey, this is starting to go on a little long." Our brains, and most of the rest of us, were enjoying themselves thoroughly. But Town Hall started life as a Christian Science church, and the pew we sat......

Last week we mentioned that Seattle's WaMu was accused of colluding in a appraisal-inflation scheme. Today, Bloomberg reports that the fall-out has fallen: "Washington Mutual fell $4.04, or 17 percent, to $20.19 at 1:15 p.m. in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest decline since the stock market crashed on Oct. 19, 1987." As a result, significant bets are being made:The risk of Washington Mutual defaulting on its debt soared to the......

Even that movie voice-over guy will be unemployed. You have heard of this impending strike, have you not? It may seem unrelated to you, the sad inner workings of Hollywood, but in truth, if you are someone who ever turns on their TV, if 8pm every day marks your celebration in the church of Stewart-Colbert, you best care. Without writers, the only thing left standing is Reality TV. We have known this for a long......

Did you know that there's only one credible real-estate industry voice in Seattle? It's a marketing firm in town that works with real estate developers. We've learned this from reading Aubrey Cohen's real estate reporting in the Seattle P-I. Here's a search on articles containing the exact phrase "Williams Marketing" -- they're quoted in at least one article per month since last November. (Who are the schmoes paying the P-I for ads when there's so......

Seattle is now one of the lucky few markets in the US to be getting beer from Port Brewing/The Lost Abbey in southern California. If you have not yet tried any of their beer, you have no idea how lucky we are....If you have tried their beer, there is a good chance you are likely rushing out your door to the nearest bottle shop right now. Tomme Arthur is the mastermind behind the wonderful beers......

Local filmmaker, occasional pub trivia host, and friend of Seattlest Dom Zook blogged on September 19 that he's moving to LA. I’ve been a stalwart Seattle fan for most of my adult life. I love this town, even though some of the people who govern it are slightly “challenged”. I love making movies in this town… but I think I’ve gone in depth about my issues here. Many have wondered why I’ve stayed so long......

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then,......

Tonight the Elliott Bay Book Co. hosts a trio of writers touring as the "Akashic All-Stars." Akashic is a small literary press based in New York (specifically, Brooklyn--is anything cool left in Manhattan?). Only ten years old, Akashic is a sign of a promising future for American letters. Like the music industry, publishing is being transformed by technology, allowing for smaller firms run by people with both business smarts and passion for what they......

Rockstar Seattlest commenter (ex; you're dead to us, Jake) 8bitjake had the scoop earlier this week for those that were paying attention. He got an email from a friend at the Eastside game studio Bungie: "So heres my big secret. You should google Bungie + Microsoft + separation this week. You know that big ol BILLION dollar franchise Bungie has created for Microsoft, to show their appreciate Microsoft is letting Bungie leave. Of course Microsoft......

"No more moons-over-my-hammy", documented by mary and filed in the Seattlest Flickr pool. We don't mean to steal Mary's thunder; however, her photograph moved us to write down some of the thoughts we've been having about the Ballard Denny's closure. We knew it was coming; however, just like the presence of vampires in Sunnydale, we didn't actually want to think about it. The light, the clouds, the darkness of the trees, and the Shell......

With all the great films finally starting to hit the mainstream theaters, it's certainly the most wonderful time of the film year™. But don't forget your local indie moviehouse, as the NWFF kicks off their 10th annual Northwest film fest, Local Sightings: Northwest Film Forum's premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever, October 4-11, 2007. The festival, which happens at NWFF's theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest......

So, you think you have been to a beer festival before? Maybe you went to Fremont Oktoberfest , or maybe you even went to the Seattle International Beer Fest this summer. If you really want to go to a beer festival, get yourself to Denver in 10 days. The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is every beer lovers dream. 408 breweries. 1,884 beers. One huge convention center. 3 straight days of goodness. Can it......

Man, if the EU court that stuck it to Microsoft this weekend and Mr. and Mrs. Slowsky were in a race it would probably go off the board for betters. It's. Taking. For. Ever. The crime is Microsoft shutting out competitors by bundling Windows Media Player with Windows, which, to us at least, seems like an ancient issue. What are they going to go after Microsoft for next? Attaching round wheels to an axle? We......

This afternoon at two o'clock the city council will vote on proposed new nightclub regulations, bitterly opposed by Seattle's entertainment industry. Yet even as the council prepares for the vote, controversy continues to swirl over SPD's nightclub sting op from Saturday, Sept. 8. This morning, The Seattle Times reported on inaccuracies in its article from a week age today on elements of the sting operation, including the disputed claim that a gun made it......

Overheard at Seattlest HQ: "I can see how the guy might have a case, but it's pretty common knowledge in the industry that you don't fucking sell AutoCAD on your own -- at least not on obvious places like eBay." That Seattlest was referring to Timothy Vernor, a local guy who filed suit against Autodesk because they used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to have eBay pull auctions where he was trying to sell used......

We're living in the town that Microsoft Office built, and all in all it's not too shabby. Every once in a while we're struck by something and think, "wow, someone paid upwards of $300 for a graphical representation of a talking paper clip and we used the money to build this..." But generally it's been a pretty good deal for Seattle. Time marches on, though, and what was once the raison d'etre for personal computers......

Last week was a bad one for pioneers and philosophers of our favorite beverages. On Thursday, beer (and liquor) guru Michael Jackson passed away at 65. A day earlier, Alfred Peet, founder of Peet’s Coffee, died in his Ashland, Oregon home. He was 87. Had we known Peet lived in the Pacific Northwest, we would have made a pilgrimage to his home. We would have loved to pick his brain on bean-growing regions and roasting......

Dogfish Head (DFH) has been a rock for the craft brewing industry for years. Never afraid to go out on a limb and try something different, DFH offers a variety of adventurous beers. Sam Calagione, founder and president, is the master and brains behind many of their beers. Although located in Delaware, we can get most of their beers at bars and bottle shops around the NW. Below is a sampling of DFH beers available......

Quick, someone come up with a word for the blog you write in order to get the last word in after quitting a job. We're not even going to attempt it because we suck at that sort of thing and there's no need to burn a stick of embarrassment in here. Here's the post-firing tell-all blog of the moment, though, lovingly written by Kevin Ken Vincent, long-time KUOW employee, freshly unemployed: KUOW has always had......

A couple years back, before we'd been thoroughly disabused of the notion that a future existed in pecking out stories for a living, we were in talks with a local fashion boutique that was seeking freelancers. They needed local writers to churn out a couple stories on hip clothes and NW lifestyle (or something to that effect -- honestly, we don't remember) for an ad supplement they planned to publish in Seattle's "underground newspaper," the......

When entertainment giant AEG Live announced plans to create a new and innovative music venue inside Quest Field Events Center, we imagine a big to do with all the local press in a large room packed with music lovers on one side and bankers on the other. Wonder which side was clapping more wildly... We haven't been to WaMu Theater yet, but with the kind of high-profile shows the place has been booking (Deftones, Daft......

Neither making the NFL Hall of Fame as a fourth-round pick or crushing Mike Harden could've prepared Seahawks legend Steve Largent for the opponent he faces now: Google. Largent, who's now president of a cell phone industry association, CTIA, has some strong words for the Bay Area know-it-alls who make it impossible for us to get a second date. In a letter to the FCC protesting Google's $4.6 billion offer to buy the 700 mhz......

Recently Seattlest developed what we’d thought was a disturbing habit: We started scanning six-pack packaging and pub menus for their brews’ alcohol content. And we usually chose the more potent stuff. We’d kept this habit a secret, but it turns out Pyramid Breweries knew it all along. And they approve. At their Seattle Alehouse Thursday, Pyramid introduced a small batch of industry insiders and media folks to two new beers, both with an ABV around......

There's been a lot of hype about this disc--Clarkson fired her management and pissed off Clive Davis in the process of making it--and you can bet pretty much every reviewer will mention that somewhere in their assessment. We're sheep, so we thought we'd open with that and get it out of the way. We'll be honest. Nobody's going to be giving Kelly Clarkson an award for being a great lyricist, so just get it out......