In the "State of the City" address on Tuesday, Mayor Greg Nickels introduced his new plan to make housing more affordable in Seattle. Definitely something Seattle needs to tackle with verve and determination, we just don't think anyone is going to take the "Affordable Seattle Strategy" (ASS) that seriously. Then again, partially thanks to Mayor Nickels a few Seattlites do ride the S.L.U.T., so maybe it's right on par. The State of the City address......

We love lists. Which is why we're a little sad that we didn't know about Amazon.com's UnSpun until we read The Paper Noose's post on Georgetown's place in the Top "Hip" Neighborhoods to Live in Seattle, WA. There's nothing we love better than completely arbitrary lists with no discernible criteria beyond kneejerk personal opinion -- except maybe passing them along. According to UnSpun users, the top 10 "hip" neighborhoods are: 1. Capitol Hill (surprise,......

In today's P-I, columnist Joel Connelly blithely goes along with the argument that if Prop. 1--the tax-heavy plan to breathe funding-life into the Regional Transportation Improvement District (RTID)--fails, the entire region will continue tottering along to complete and total transportation infrastructure collapse. Likening the quandary Prop. 1 voters face to a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Connelly writes: Cornered atop a cliff, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid face surrender to a......

... in a couple of years, anyway. "After two years, it's definitely moving," writes invaluable neighborhood blogger Captain Columbia City. He talked to the market's coordinator, Karen, on Wednesday, the last day the Columbia City Farmers Market will be open this year. Of course, Columbia City Plaza was sold to a development firm on the east coast recently, and so when the Plaza owners lease expires early next year, they'll sign a new one......

Outfit called Not For Tourists has just published a guide to Seattle. It's a handsome book, looks just like Moleskine journal, complete with oilcloth cover, fat elastic closure, gorgeous paper. The Seattle version is tenth in a series, cobbled together by a design staff in faraway Noo Yawk with input by a locally based "city editor" named Fred Beldin, who contributes occasional music reviews to The Stranger. NFT Seattle starts out with a grid of......

Sunday, we were the belle of the Ballard Farmers' Market. We’d like to attribute it to our warm countenance and general appeal, but really it was our Brussels Sprouts. For $3 paid to Sidhu Farms we became the proud mama of a majestic stalk of Brussels sprouts. Four feet tall with spirals of sprouts clinging to the hearty stalk and crowned with a plume of leathery leaves, it was a thing to behold. And beheld......

It's not Yeats's centre that cannot hold, it's the right wing. For some time now, to quote The Second Coming,The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. The Dems betray us with wimpishness while the radio rethugs rush to attack phony soldiers. Further signs of unraveling: GOP house organ WSJ discovers that business interests no longer trust the GOP. Smart, those corporate business guys. Like all bullies, they can......

Real estate search engine Rotten Neighbor promises to help you "find bad neighbors before you move." What evils have users uncovered behind the closed doors of the Emerald City? Near Carkeek Park: Grouchy Old Man w/ Loud Music The grouchy old man who lives here likes to play his radio very loudly in his backyard. Lately he has begun playing it in the middle of the night and the cops have been called several times.......

Seriously, a 14-minute commute by bus to downtown Seattle? That’s lucky, you must live in Seattle city limits, you are probably thinking. Well, we would like to inform you that thanks to Seattle’s improved underground roadway and the Eastgate Park & Ride, (which is a place we hold dear to our hearts) you can get from Bellevue to downtown Seattle in 14 minutes or less. We did it this morning and even had enough time......

Last night's Arcade Fire show was rife with problems. Not with the Arcade Fire, Lord knows they can do no wrong, but with the opening bands, and most of all, with the venue. Somehow, even though the scheduled time for the show was 7:30pm, the time published everywhere---on the Ticketmaster site, in ads for the show, in UW emails, on the goddamn tickets---doors actually opened at 6:30pm and the Gossip started playing right around......

Biodiesel drivers rejoice! There's a new place to fill your French-fry-smelling tanks thanks to Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks grand opening of a new, and may we say much more accessible, location, in the Ravenna neighborhood on Friday. When Seattlest dropped by the Espresso Express on N.E. 65th and 15th Ave. N.E. to check out the scene, we were too late for the speeches and celebrations, but did arrive in plenty of time for the yummy......

Once upon a time Seattlest considered North Aurora to be a shithole, to be avoided at all costs. But, eventually, we had to go to Home Depot and a used car lot, and that car rack store, and (doh) the unemployment office, and the movie theater, and IHOP and the European deli and Computer Stop and Chubby & Tubby (so far not Stupid Prices, though) and Kmart, Burgermaster, the cemetery and a hundred other tiny......

"Neighbors fear development" has become the Seattle equivalent of "dog bites man." Of course neighbors fear development. That's what they do. The latest brouhaha: Wedgwood is getting a four-story condo/retail complex in the middle of their one-story residential neighborhood. Hands are being wrung, meetings are being called, nimbyism is being denied, blogs are being written. We wouldn't have it any other way, really. It's Seattle. Neighbors fret. Since we left Wedgwood, we don't really have......

Municipal WiFi was once all the rage in city governments, but the networks currently in place are falling down where it matters most (poorer neighborhoods, of course) and those cities with time to back out are doing so. Chicago just called it quits. "We realized - after much consideration - that we needed to reevaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the city's broader digital inclusion......

We want to know where's the scariest place to live or hang out within Seattle city limits. (Sorry, Skyway and White Center. Check again after annexation.) Recent news stories have pushed several neighborhoods into contention: Rainier Beach: The Safeway parking lot is "plagued by thugs", disgruntled patrons firebomb a video store, and gangs patronize the library. Broadway: From Slog today: "Broadway has turned into a 1st Class GHETTO. Why is nothing being done about it?......

Pike Place Market’s very public Centennial Celebration wraps up this Friday, the 100th anniversary of its onion-borne existence. As with any freshly-minted centenarian, the Market will dawdle obliviously amid the avid attention of family, friends, and Willard Scott the press. To commemorate the milestone, there will be stage performances, special presentations and, as we noted earlier this week, other activities taking place from 9am on. But the candles won’t truly be lit until around......

If the sampling includes exactly Seattlest's commitment-phobic friend who just bought his first condo and the participants in a recent office conversation, then absolutely everyone is moving to West Seattle. Per that conversation there are only two things West Seattle doesn't have: wedding dresses and a Trader Joes. Oh, and jobs. And pull with the city government. Four things! Yes, if it weren't for weddings, two-buck chuck and work there would be no reason to......

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......

Yesterday Seattlest said the following: Sally Clark has pulled her nightlife plan citing the fact that everyone from the mayor to the other city council members to the lowliest 1st ave drunk hates it. Which is only vaguely true. Clark pulled the licensing portion of her nightlife plan that would require clubs to receive a license from the city which could then be revoked at the city's discretion. Kind of like a liquor license,......

When Fremont News closed last November, our hearts wept a little. We prepared to write another snarky post entitled something like "Fremont Ave. Prepares for Much-needed New Over-priced Boutique". We hate over-priced boutiques because, for example, they make us buy high-quality, cute shoes at appropriately expensive prices. The last thing we needed was yet another over-priced boutique to tempt our paltry pocketbooks; the last thing Fremont needed was yet another over-priced shop to cater......

News from a day where we spent hours looking for a two-cent stamp. --Lily Allen was in town, having a self-image crisis. --Will Ken Griffey Jr. hand out jock straps to Mariner fans when he returns in June? --60 Minutes does Redfin. Redfin is thrilled. --Amazon.com snaps up Dpreview.com. --Are there bad neighborhoods where the doggy taxi won't go? Like the Magnuson dog park maybe? --Courtesy of the increasingly kick-ass West Seattle Blog, we present:......

Neighborhood-centric blog aggregator Outside.in released its list of "America's Top 10 Bloggiest Neighborhoods". Seattle, tech-centric 2.0tropolis that it is, must've cracked the top 10 with at least one neighborhood (cough Capitol Hill cough cough), right? Nope. There's nary a Capitol Hill, West Seattle, Belltown, or Rainier Beach to be seen. What neighborhoods beat us? Clinton Hill, Brooklyn; Shaw, DC; Downtown LA; Newton, Mass.; Rogers Park/North Howard, Chicago; Pearl District, Portland; Watertown, Mass.; Harlem, NY;......

Shortly before our car exploded, we were looking for a new place to rent. After our car exploded, our apartment search took a back seat to car shopping. But in the last few weeks, once our new car was settled, we returned to scanning Craigslist and strolling through neighborhoods. After spending all of our time in Seattle living above the cut (Wallingford, Wedgwood), we were hoping to move to the Rainier Valley (better work commute)......

For some reason we can conjure up a lot more empathy for longtime Seattle residents getting priced out of their neighborhoods by an incoming tide of people with longer lines of credit than we can for the Boise couple who complained to the P-I not so long ago about not being able to afford their dream cottage in Seattle. On the other hand, we're not quite ready to erect a barricade on the Hill, bring......

We got an email last week pointing us to a West Seattle blog post and a thread on Seattle LJ about Pagliacci and their delivery areas. The speculation was that since the pizza place wouldn't deliver to some shady neighborhoods that seemed more physically proximate to its store than other, more upscale, neighborhoods that it would deliver to, there must be a great Pagliacci conspiracy going on in West Seattle. The email suggested that it......

We're thinking about moving. Note to our landlord, if you're reading this: Thinking about.. We aren't declaring our intent yet. So if you'd like to consider that recent rent increase ... well, we're still in Wedgwood, so that might not actually change anything. We're at least a year away from being ready to buy a house, so we're focusing on apartments. Here's what we want: to be within walking distance of anything interesting. Ideal trifecta:......

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......

It's been business as usual since the day after the storm in some Seattle neighborhoods. We eat, we drink, we Christmas shop, we gather all the shingles from the street and life goes on. Meanwhile, the Eastside continues to live red in tooth and claw. It's still mostly dark over there and crowds await Mel Gibson's next gasoline delivery at each service station. Hopefully it'll drive home how much energy it takes to power a......

Halloween is Tuesday, which means this weekend is really the time for all of the –ists to celebrate. And whether they’re designing super-spooky costumes or talking about the super-spooky upcoming elections, we’d say that they’re doing a fine job of it. Austinist knows that few things in life are scarier than zombies, people with way too much money, and politicians who try too hard to be funny. Slightly less scary, depending on whom you......

For three hours last night the City Council sat and smiled at members of the public who had turned out for the forum on the best way to replace 520. The council probably nodded their heads and listened attentively while doodling notes to each other on legal pads as the neighborhood groups held forth on their grandfather's Seattle. ("2 lanes? What does this guy drive? A rickshaw? Pass it down.") ("Maybe we can dig......