Ceis was irritated by Licata's criticism. "I don't poke around and ask questions about Nick's personnel and the council's personnel. I don't think it's any of their business about how we deal with personnel issues in the mayor's office."That's Seattle Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, not sounding as nearly agreeable as Michael J. Fox, as quoted in the Seattle Times story on the kerfluffle over new communications director Robert Mak's salary. At the risk of stirring......

Capitol Hill's hardest working man in show business, CHAC's Matthew Kwatinetz, has been devoting long hours to the survival of Odd Fellows Hall as an arts space, ever since he found out about the planned sale. A pragmatist, Kwatinetz isn't tying all his hopes to keeping the Hall for arts use; he's more interested in it as evidence of the arts being forced out of Capitol Hill, an area they once defined. After hosting an......

One of the oldest jokes in the book is at the expense of the Sixth Amendment: how can twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty be counted as your peers? Juries, after all, are populated by the unemployed and retirees--people who don't have to actually work for a living. But alas, should you find yourself accused of knocking over a liquor store, defrauding a bank, or killing your significant other, retirees and the......

Photo by Seattle Daily PhotoFollowing up on yesterday’s front page P-I article lamenting the perilous relationships between pedestrians and automobiles, Seattlest would like to nominate the 5-way intersection and Monorail crossing at Fifth and Denny as a candidate for next year’s list of dangerous Seattle crossings. Seattlest has witnessed--and dodged--more than a few accidents at the non-blinking, unlighted crosswalk across Fifth Avenue, which also contains a mid-road Monorail pillar. Pedestrians must rely on their agility......

End of May, we posted about how the city sold the Alaska Building to a developer, with the understanding that it would be turned into affordable "workforce" housing. The city took a loss of somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million because of that stipulation, Mayor Nickels was able to gesture grandly at his affordable housing gesture, and then Kauri Investments Ltd. and Ariel Development got to thinking and they were all, "Hey, you know what......

City Council President Nick Licata will be fulfilling his wettest dream on Thursday when he testifies before Congress on the negative economic impact of publicly-funded sports arenas (something we wrote our senior thesis on, thank you very much). He'll also be talking about his role in stopping the Sonics from getting taxpayers to pay for what Howard Schultz and the other 52 former Sonic owners could have easily done. What makes this even more exciting......

It’s been over a week since the Viaduct vote, and we’ll admit it, we have no idea what the new plan is. There was some sort of announcement right after the vote that the state will spend some $950 million to spruce it up over the next few years. So, is that it? After years and years of debate, plans, and drawings of ethnically diverse group of people enjoying a better waterfront, was the solution......

Tomorrow is fake Viaduct Vote Day, and your meaningless ballots must be postmarked by then. The election is all mail, so you will not have the option to vote at the polls. If you want to skip the middle man and have your ballot lost directly you can drop it off at the following locations: King County Administration Building-- 500 4th Ave., Room 553, Seattle 98104 High Point Community Center-- 6920 34th Ave SW, Seattle......

Monday AUTHOR, AUTHOR: In Bich Minh Nguyen's memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a young family escapes from Vietnam shortly before the fall of Saigon and relocates to Grand Rapids, Michigan. "In her recreation of a world populated by family ties, Ritz crackers, and Judy Blume books, she has captured the 1980s with perfection," says Kirkus Reviews. 7:30pm // Elliott Bay // FREE Tuesday ANNE LAMOTT RECOMMENDS: Elizabeth Gilbert talks about her book Eat, Pray, Love:......

The Seattle Public Library hosted 'A Salute to Tim Egan' last night at the inconvenient hour of 5:30 PM. Tim Egan is a Seattle native who won the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 2001. He's most well known for writing about the Pacific Northwest. A couple of weeks ago he was awarded the National Book Award for The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Stories of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Seattle is......

Wednesday, December 13 >>>Hugo House, 7:30pm. Screenwriters Salon: Geoff Miller and Mark Handley invite you to bring your questions about format, technique, structure, dialogue, writing characters, and how to use your catering gig to hand your script to celebs. $5 general/$2 students. Free to members. >>>Seattle Public Central Library, 5:30-7:00pm. Mayor Greg Nickels and City Council President Nick Licata rochambeau to see who gets to salute Seattle author Tim Egan. His book, The Worst......

Poor Mayor Nickels. The news isn't good for him these days. His plan to replace the crumbling Viaduct with a Big Dig-style tunnel is going the same way as the Seattle Monorail Project he helped kill. The Washington State Department of Transportation released estimates that showed Nickels' $2.8 billion price tag climbing to $4.6 billion. And now, according to articles in The Seattle Times and The Seattle P-I, Nickels is taking the choice out of......

We walked down to Occidental Square for our Monday lunch field trip and unfortnunately didn't see much. Supposedly the cutting has begun in Pioneer Square and trees are being felled, but the area lacked any chainsaw buzz or shouted "tim-berrrrrrr"s around noon. We didn't stick around to gawk, though, so maybe they were between trees. A nice little pile of fresh firewood was sitting around. The P-I is reporting that there were a dozen......

Lost in the excitement over the Seattle City Council's big week was the Seahawks first trip to the Super Bowl. However, it's not like you can blame Seattleites for ignoring this triumph of footballity, not only have the candidates for Jim Compton's vacated seat been whittled down from twelve to six, but the race for council president took a surprising turn yesterday when Richard Conlin withdrew his name and Nick Licata was declared the winner.......

Say what you like about our rain, or how we all drink too much coffee; hell, hurl expletives at one of our many giant megalomaniacal corporations. But please New York, please please don't start calling us "Allentown." Boasting an image of Paul Allen that is creepily Nixon-ish, the New York Times fluffs out an article (site registration required) starting with the Seahawks rise to Super Bowl contention, and proceeding from there to rattle off a......

In the days leading up to the election, we will amalgamate what the four newspapers had to say about the races into one combined blurb for each candidate or initiative because we do not purport to follow city politics closely enough to advise anyone, even ourselves, how to vote. That's why God invented local politics writers. Mayor of Seattle (non-partisan) Greg Nickels: The incumbent was “a doer in his first term” who “focused on basics”......

Do you live in West Seattle? Do you like old people asking questions about the monorail? Do you like watching C-Span, but wish that you could walk up and touch the speakers? Then tonight you are in luck. The 34th Legislative District Democrats are holding their candidate forum tonight. Those running for mayor, city council, the port, and school board will be getting their position statements on all over the Hall at Fauntleroy. Watch......

The most important thing when running for political office is raising money. Campaign signs are pretty, shaking hands builds muscle, and everyone loves rides on your campaign pony. However if you can’t raise money to get your message across you’ll find yourself a loser on election night with a basement full of campaign stickers. Veteran incumbents know this, take Jan Drago for example. She doesn’t have anyone running against her and yet the Stranger reported,......

Maybe we’re taking our democracy for granted. I mean after all we live in a country where we can vote for whoever we want to, be it a Yale-educated male millionaire or a taller Yale-educated male millionaire. However, looking at this fall’s civic elections there are still three races where, as of now, we will have no choice in the matter. City Council Members Jan Drago, Nick Licata, and City Attorney Tom Carr are all......