The scent of Romanza (2206 NW Market Street) hit our nostrils as we stepped past its portals. We stopped to try to identify the smell, but the flurry of fruity, floral, and musky scents were too overwhelming to permit the identification of any one scent. No wonder: the store seemed to be half full of candles. The other half was soaps. more ›

• My Ballard lets all you Ballard-drivers know that a traffic camera has been installed at the busy corner of 15th and Market.
• The Rainier Valley Post reports that Ana Ortega, the principal at Ali Kurose Middle School has resigned in the midst of an SPD investigation into sexual abuse by a teacher's aide at the school.
• Phinneywood is mourning the loss of another Woodland Park Zoo animal. Last week it was a monkey from congestive heart failure; today, a gazelle that died after being attacked by another animal in the African Savannah exhibit. (The lions are pleading the 5th.)

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We really don't feel it's the day after an election until we overhear people talking about how they forgot to vote, didn't know there was an election, and how they'll definitely vote next time. more ›

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 sign way in the distance all punctuate the loneliness of the now-derelict sign. more ›

MUSIC: We'd never heard of any of these bands before, but we're pretty sure the bill of Crap Happy Hookers, Eight Hour Disease [mp3] and Wack Job [mp3] at the Central tonight will, at the very least, be loud. It's part of the Central's weekly "Punks and Pints" series. more ›

>>>UW Forum for Science and Ethics Policy, 5:30pm. Dr. Dennis Schatz, VP for Education at the Pacific Science Center, cheerleads for “Making Science as Pervasive as Sports in Society.” His ulterior motive? It can only be to pack the Sonics off to Oklahoma and build our very own Exploratorium right here in Seattle, to which we say “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive!” Free. UW Health Sciences Building, T-478. more ›

Given Martin Scorsese’s gritty, wise guy oeuvre and a mega-talented cast fronted by fellow AFI Lifetime Achievement Award winner Jack Nicholson, we just couldn’t miss Scorsese’s retelling of the 2002 Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs. (See the ad in the top right corner of the page? Don’t those faces, those colors and that “R” promise profanity, violence, and maybe even some sex? Hey!) So last Friday night—yeah, we’re a bit behind—we beat the devil to Ballard’s Majestic Bay half an hour early for the eight o’clock show … to find a hundred other people had beat us there. Good for Warner Bros. accountants, bad for our necks. more ›

Ding dong the car tax's dead. The wicked car tax is dead. Well, not officially dead like you'll get out of paying it if your car tabs come up this month, but the Monorail Project has started the process of ending the tax on June 30th, due to the fact that all those sexy properties the Project swept up to make way for the Green Line have been selling like hotcakes. Uh, hotcakes that you force private residents to sell you for a mass transit line you don't intend to build and then sell back to the public for more than what you paid for them. That kind of hotcakes. more ›

We like a good dive bar. In fact, any bar that serves all of its drinks out of plastic tumblers ranks high on our list. You might not be aware that one of the best dive bars in the city is located just north of Market Street in Ballard. The Golden City which shares name and menu but not entrance with the adjoining restaurant easily fills the bill as one of Seattle's dive-iest. more ›

Seattlest was invited by a friend to try a new Puerto Rican restaurant in Ballard called Sofrito Rico. Seattlest had recently been in Ballard and hadn't seen any new restaurants, so we couldn't quite picture where it was located. But when we walked in we realized that it was the old MiYi (Australian Pies) place, next door to Kitchen 'N Things on Market Street. more ›

The streets of Ballard turned into little Oslo this evening for the annual Norwegian Constitution Parade--celebrating 100 years of independence from Sweden. more ›