We're by no means theatre majors, but we do loves to get out for some culture from time to time. Which is why this Thursday we're getting dolled up for the 5th Avenue Theatre's "MAME". A short summary: An eccentric socialite in the Roaring '20s finds her madcap Manhattan lifestyle turned upside down when she is appointed guardian of her orphaned nephew. Auntie Mame takes him on one whirlwind adventure after another, proving that "life......

Er, not quite. There is an actual, physical monster in Cloverfield, and unlike the no-see-em trailer, the film eventually shows it in all its gruesome glory (and no, it ain't Stay Puft). Opening Friday, J.J. Abrams' camcorder monster movie (which some describe as "Godzilla meets the Blair Witch") covers a terrible day for all of Manhattan and, in particular, for a group of New Yorkers throwing a bon voyage party for one of their......

How about opening your big yap in person for a change? Join the panel discussion about how to keep a healthy arts community on Capitol Hill. Meet up at CHAC next Wednesday, the 16th, at 5:30pm and plot next moves over a martini. As hosts the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce put it:In 2007, the Urban Land Institute named Seattle the #2 real estate market in the nation (after Manhattan), and Americans for the Arts......

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......

Initially, we were a little surprised to hear that ACT--A Contemporary Theatre--was putting on Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Although having debuted in 1936 placed the play in the Modern canon, its view of women is about as un-p.c. as they come: in short, the play presents women as gossipy and back-stabbing, assumes marital infidelity is a function of the Y chromosome, and ends with a note suggesting that for the sake of a healthy......

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......

Few foods are more fun – or more perfect – than xiao long bao. Originating in Shanghai, xiao long bao translates to “little basket bun,” but they are more commonly known as soup dumplings. Steamed in bamboo baskets which hold six to eight dumplings, the doughy wrappers serve as pouches for a fantastic filling of meat and meaty broth. Eat them hot, but not too hot, dipped in black vinegar with thin slivers of ginger.......

So, yeah, there's been this Russian-Turkish style "urban spa" called Banya5 on Ninth for, like, three years now. It's kind of a giant community sauna, with a central oven providing both wet and dry heat, surrounded by a bunch of fresh- and salt-water pools. The guy who built it, Seattle-born real estate developer John Goodfellow, isn't even Russian; he got hooked on the concept in New Yawk City. You have to know where it is,......

We got our first link to WalkScore in the email a week ago and the idea of a mapping site that scored the walkability of neighborhoods sounded interesting, but when we tried to visit the site we found that it didn't work in Firefox. Just now a press release from Sightline came in announcing the site and we checked back to see if they got the browser issues worked out. They have. HOWEVER, WalkScore gave......

For those of you just tuning in, yesterday we wrote a little piece about the steam pipe that burst in New York. Apparently it pissed a bunch of people off, and we have to concur that actual true (non-sensationalist) details have been slow to trickle in over here. Everything we've read the last couple of days focuses on a "geyser of steam and debris," which seemed like an overblown fearmongering catchphrase at first, but......

Seattlest got the news from a coworker yesterday: an explosion in midtown Manhattan had resulted in a collapsed building (MSNBC); then that no, in fact, it was a transformer that exploded, leaving a nearby building "shaky" (CNN). What in fact happened was that a steam pipe burst, sending what the media is--we think amusingly--calling a "geyser of steam and debris" (and, we should add, asbestos) into the air. What's more terrifying than a burst steam......

Down on phony farms, up for the real thing. Disturbing news in the New York Times: a middle-class family raising chickens in Manhattan. Disturbing news in the Wall Street Journal: developing suburban housing tracts as pseudo-farms. Whatever happened to real farms? Well, close to home, one of Washington's foremost producers of goat cheese, Quillisascut Farms is offering farm-stays to beginning chefs. What a great way for to start out: seeing the food grow, getting close......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an......

Read all about it! Celebrity chefs and pretentious wannabes run amok in La Grosse Pomme, get skewered by usually-quite-stodgy New York Times resto critic Frank Bruni. Not since Gael Greene published parallel views of Le Cirque (contrasting the exquisite food and fawning service when she showed up as her glamorous self with what she received disguised as an out-of-town shlub) have Manhattan's insular kitchens felt this much heat. Mind you, you may have to register......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Urbanspoon has a couple of cool maps up that show the location of every restaurant in New York, Chicago and Seattle. We're interested in Seattle, of course. You can see the contour of the land is not as well-defined as the New York version because our restaurant density...well, it isn't exactly what Manhattan's is. Still a cool map, though. That's Capitol Hill all lit up there. We've written about Urbanspoon in the past.......

After 14 years as executive chef at Ray's Boathouse, Charles Ramseyer is leaving town. Bailing out. He's been recruited by celebrity restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow (TV's The Restaurant) to open a new joint in Noo Yawk City called Wild Salmon. Opening day scheduled for April 6th. Charles says he's wants to bring the Pacific Northwest to Manhattan; meanwhile, he offers this advice to those he leaves behind:......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

As a part of its advertising campaign for the company's new Office Accounting Express application, Microsoft is hosting a technology startup company competition reminiscent of TV's Apprentice and World's Best Inventor (or whatever that show was called). Once a winning startup is selected and their market has been proven, Microsoft will release something very similar but uglier, cheaper and with DRM and drive the startup out of business. We kid, Microsoft! It comes from a......

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who've decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made......

Another copious serving of live tunes (not to mention opportunities to leave your smelly apartment), courtesy of Seattlest. You can thank us later. Tuesday 26th >>> The Presets at Chop Suey. Between The Presets electro-rock and opening acts The Girls and No-Fi Soul Rebellion, this show can't help but to leave you in a sweaty heap by the end of the night. 9pm doors; $8 adv. 21+ >>> DJ Krush at Neumo's. Japan's DJ......

Life is funny. One night you go to a play about some guy who has 5 days to figure out a screenplay for Gone With The Wind, another night the play's about some guy who has 9 days to figure out why he has 9 days left to live. In the first case, you end up with a collection of deleted scenes from The Producers. In the second case, you start with a refresher......

Mr. Cranky has nothing on local freelance film critic N.P. Thompson, famous for casting a critical eye on the cinema on his website Movies into Film and also for slamming local alt-weekly film critics: An editor, an editor of a newspaper, one might suppose, has certain obligations to his readers. One of those obligations isn’t to suppress the voice of a writer whom the editor himself apparently cannot get enough of. In the case......

We'll just come right out and say it: World Trade Center is not as bad as we expected. But then again, we thought it'd be baaaaad. Oliver Stone + Nicolas Cage + a weighty topic = a recipe for disaster. Seattlest went to a screening primarily to see just how bad it could be, but unexpectedly, we smirked a lot less in this film than in United 93. And that's even taking into account......

The final full week of SIFF is upon us. It's time to get some last few films before the sun sets on this year's fest. This week's got a couple great music events as well: Friday night, Portastatic will be on hand to perform a specially-commissioned live score accompanying circus freakshow-themed silent film The Unknown (more about that in a few days). Meanwhile, Thursday night's the Face the Music Rock Party at Neumo's, featuring......

We had been meaning to check out Liberty for a while now. After all, the sushi restaurant-cum-bar has been open for about a month already, and as it combines two of our favorite things (raw fish and girly drinks), we knew we'd end up there sooner or later. Seattlest stopped by last night, and it turns out that the bar has totally decent sushi and tasty, consistently well-mixed cocktails. Too bad then that you have......

You've heard of Gawker Stalker, right? When someone spots a celeb walking around Manhattan they notify the Gawker website of the identity and location of said star and a bunch of weirdos can track them on a map. Celebrities hate it and stalkers and people who think it's funny to piss of celebrities love it. Well today and tomorrow Seattlest is adapting the stalker game for use here, except in our version there's only one......

It's not easy to get to the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. At least it wasn't for us. We had directions to a marina where we would get a guided tour and we still had problems. With a guide! Last Saturday we drove around Harbor Island a little, saw some sights, met lots of friendly Chinese and finally arrived at the Harbor Marina just in time for a Duwamish river tour and the opening......

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to......

This Seattle advice columnist is something and something and not afraid to something something something. No, not Savage - The other one. Dategirl. Dategirl, aka Judy McGuire, did an interview with our parent site Gothamist yesterday which is weird only until you realize that she lives in New York. And then the fact that she lives in New York seems weird. Ok Seattlest reads Dategirl in the Seattle Weekly from time to time, but apparently......