When have you gotten your money back on a ferry purchase? After 20 years? 40? 60? How about 80? Washington State Ferries still had plans to fix at least three 80-year-old ferries before the magnitude of their decay was uncovered. Now, because WSF never imagined the day would come when the ferries would have to be replaced, it'll be a year or more before new ferries can be built and car-ferry service returned. Our favorite......

In November, Mike Hamilton adds this racist joke political commentary to his notorious Uncle Sam billboard: In December, massive floods dunk that section of I-5 into suspiciously biblical amounts of water. Co-inkydink? Or is someone "up there" even more displeased with Hamilton's latest message than everyone else who's seen the billboard?......

As an alumnus of Centralia Community College (out of boredom, we took a Latin class there one fall) and former southwest Washington resident, we've been following the flooding thataway with interest. A friend of ours just passed along two emails from K. in Centralia, and they can't be beat for a you-are-there feel that balances some of the apocalyptic news coverage -- let's face it, if nothing terrible happened to you, you aren't news. On......

When you're seen as the number-two city and number-two university in the state you can either embrace it or try and avoid the notion. Washington State University and Spokane had a chance to host next year's Vice-Presidential debate, and passed, deciding to hold out for one of the Presidential Debates, a gamble that didn't pay off. We're not sure if their loss is such a big deal. There's little mention of the location of a......

You may not like getting pulled over by the state patrol, but at least you have a sartorially pleasing view leaning in your window. Our state's troopers are the best-dressed state law enforcement officers in the country, according to the National Association of Uniform Manufacturers and Distributors. Washington State troopers, in case you're lucky enough to have stayed fashion runway distance from them, wear campaign hats and black bow ties, and have done so since......

Ten Sheriff's deputies were found by rescuers Sunday after a spending a night in the woods of southwest Washington. The officers were reportedly "removing" marijuana plants from an operation they'd busted when they suddenly became "disoriented." "We were doing a great job, you know, removing the pot," one deputy said, "but then it was like, whoa! Where are we?" Said another deputy: "Yeah and it was so beautiful out there right? There was this chipmunk,......

Let’s recap what's legal and illegal according to Washington State law: Illegal: A friendly honk to let someone, who may not be paying attention, that the light has turned green. Legal: Unfurling your junk at a public beach.......

Greg Nickels' son Jacob has been charged with one count of conspiracy and four counts of theft stemming from a multi state casino cheating ring. The Times is reporting that the group allegedly stole millions of dollars from casinos, which lovers of pain-free knee caps will note is a bad idea. The group allegedly used a technique known as "false shuffle" to rig hands. We know nothing about casinos, cards, or fancy shuffling so......

Don’t you hate when you’re out by the lake sitting on a dock with your best buds, sipping on some mass produced brew, just laughing and having a caucasianly good time, when someone pulls out a guitar and starts strumming until a song breaks out—evening ruined. Well to make matters worse it would appear that not only is that douche an attention hog he (FACT: It’s always a dude) is also an environmental outlaw. Today......

This happened between Tacoma and Olympia. Nobody got hurt, but if you were planning to take the train between Portland and Seattle, you'll be taking the bus instead, says Amtrak. There's also a road blocked and some people lost electricity. The AP has the details. Image from KOMO/4, via Seattle P-I......

Kids have been getting shafted by disputes between their parents since the first caveman hired an attorney to protect his rock collection after breaking it off with the cavewoman. Or at least since the 70s--same difference. But there's a kid down in Oly who's about to suffer above and beyond what most casualties of divorce go through. His father has converted to Judaism (we're picturing Goodman in The Big Lebowski) and wants his son to......

C'mon, Seattle Times. You get a press release related to the McMenamins affair in Kenmore from some mysterious source claiming that the whole deal is off and you turn around and announce it to the world without so much as a phone call to McMenamins? When Seattlest gets a release in the mail detailing the city's plan to dye the sky green we immediately start ranting about how blue skies were good enough for us......

Back on March 15, police in Tacoma found a ginormous safe in the middle of Fourth Street. Origins? Unknown. Police took the safe to Bill's Towing & Garage, where workers have created wild tales of its contents. "Some have said there's $1 million in there; others say the owner of the safe is inside," a garage employee said. "We've all been making up stories." Was that your safe? If so, call Tacoma police at 253-591-5943.......

As Sightline's Daily Score blog reports, Washington is going to become one of the toughest places in the world to inhale PBDEs, the fire retardant currently being given off by your consumer electronics and accumulating in your fatty tissue. Sez Clark Williams-Derry, The "penta" and "octa" formulations of PBDEs haven't been manufactured in North America for a while, but "deca" is still fairly common -- so this is genuinely big news. I doubt that......

Seattlest's AP US History teacher, George Henry, was something of a rabble-rouser at our Salt Lake City high school. At the time, we only barely appreciated that we were getting a hands-on miniature lesson in civil disobedience from the only African-American teacher at the school. What we knew at the time was that when the school board started debating talking about condoms and sex ed, George Henry started one of his lectures by replacing every......

"We're gonna send you to military school" will no longer be an idle threat only of rich parents, if Governor Gregoire gets her way. She's backing a "boot-camp-style" academy for our state's high school dropouts.The governor is seeking about $6 million to build and operate the academy, which would serve about 300 dropouts each year — two intensive five-month sessions of 150 youths, drawn from around the state. After scouring the state for possible sites,......

Our favorite column in the PI may just be "Getting There," the weekly column in which Kery Murakami answers readers' traffic and transport-related questions. Today's revelation: six-digit license plates are on the endangered species list: State Licensing Department spokesman Brad Benfield says Washington is about two years away from running out of all configurations of letters and numbers in the current system. Washington plates now have three numbers followed by three letters. The licensing department......

It ain't easy being a mid-sized professional theatre: not that long after Seattle's Empty Space declared empty pockets, the 30-year-old Tacoma Actors Guild has closed down. In January of 2005 TAG faced a coronary-inducing $400,000 debt, and though it had made some progress retiring it, their Board president Jim Handmacher said in the Tacoma News Tribune that key foundations were standoffish: “We were optimistic with (new director Charlotte Tiencken) that TAG would get back......

Yes, we think you will be able to spare some change, should you get panhandled by a newly-homeless Napavine family. The family, which Lewis County sheriffs are evicting from their home, owns four Bengal tigers. Now that they are homeless, they're sending two of their tigers to a rescue organization. But, the AP adds with a frustrating lack of detail, "The family is keeping two tigers with them." They're doing what now? We suppose Bengal......

The state DOT today said that one of the two choices on the March special "what to do with the viaduct" election isn't safe, effectively rendering the election pointless.Seattle's proposal for a reduced, four-lane Alaskan Way tunnel should be dropped from further consideration, because of "serious operational and safety problems found during our technical review," the State Department of Transportation said in a letter released this morning. Here's the letter [pdf]. The DOT's issue is......

Realizing that trying to protect our way of life with humans gets people killed, the Navy has decided to do the job with sea lions and dolphins. "Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent to patrol a Puget Sound military base, the Navy said Monday." The dolphins would use their sonar to detect an enemy intruder, and then the sea lion would attach a special cuff......

Once, Washington stretched all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. From the Canadian border to the 46th Parallel. Lake Coeur D'Alene, Lolo Pass, it all belonged to us. Until a gangly thief, born 198 years ago today, emancipated it away. Imagine how magical it could be to get your car tabs in Missoula, or buy liquor at state-established markups in Kalispell, or pay 8.8% sales tax in Twin Falls. Sadly, because......

The 90,000-square-foot seminary building at St. Edwards State Park is "one of Washington's unique treasures." But it hasn't been kept up since the 80s, and it's falling apart. Luckily, reports the P-I: McMenamins, a Portland-based chain of hotels, restaurants and brew pubs, submitted a 2005 letter of intent to lease the seminary building and turn it into a hotel with a restaurant and a conference center. Brian McMenamin, co-owner of the company that made the......

Last March we were trying to keep a stiff upper lip as we informed you that the bill banning PBDEs, a wily fire-retardant chemical, had been stifled for another year. PBDEs are tricky because while they should just sit there and avoid catching fire, it turns out they display a proclivity for striking out on their own, and have been busy making their homes in people, even in breast milk. This is a red......

Seattlest's windchimes chimed last night. That's usually an indication that winds are stronger than average. Usually our chimes just sit there limp and dead. The windstorm that was promised for last night turned out to be tamer than anticipated, though, or at least our threshold for windstorms is set so high that anything below sustained 45mph winds now seems pretty weak. We're under the impression that if someone in Woodinville sneezes a forest of undecided......

Governor Gregoire stood in front of the sculpture park yesterday and threw packets of hundred dollar bills into the Sound until $220 million disappeared into the sludge, or, she may as well have. Actually, she talked about the myriad environmental concerns that threaten Puget Sound and she pledged $220,000,000 towards the $9 billion the Puget Sound Partnership says it will take over the next 14 years to adequately protect and repair the Sound. The money......

A double amputee robbed a Spokane bank branch Monday, one week after a single amputee did the same, according to the AP. The question that springs to mind is, who the hell is in charge of bank security in Spokane? But police are asking: is this coincidence, or something more sinister? Detectives found nothing to explain the similar methods of operation, but were investigating whether the men knew each other, Peterson said. The men in......

When we heard about the Lewis County central services director who oversaw the installation of mobile computers with instant message clients in police cruisers and then used the system to make sexy time with a dozen different cops we thought the resulting IM logs would make for fascinating reading. Wrong. Not only is it hideously embarrassing, it's boring as hell and the backwards reading PDFs are awkward to read. There are a bunch of affairs......

In case local breweries need more cheap advertising, Olympia’s got them covered. Lawmakers recently created a "state-sanctioned commission to better market [Washington-brewed] ales to consumers." Naturally, brewers are loving it. And so should fans of Washington beer. Because not only is the commission going to promote this alcoholic nectar, specific sections of the Revised Code of Washington require that: The commission shall … develop and submit to the director for approval any plans, programs,......

We wandered the campus of Walla Walla's Whitman College campus, our alma mater, this weekend. We visited old professors, found our old dorm room, and then applied some blackface and attended a campus party, where other guests treated us like an outcast. It turns out that following recent events, that sort of behavior is now frowned upon. The entire student of body didn't go to class last Thursday, instead all students and faculty without access......