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On this Valentine's Day, we also take the time to honor the kind of love that exists between two straight dudes -- the primarily heterosexual feelings that a man has for his BFF. Exhibit A: Stan and Kyle. Exhibit B: Jay and Silent Bob. Exhibit C: Matt and Ben, the celebrity spoof of the relationship between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, focusing on the period right before they became famous (i.e., the making of Good Will Hunting). Except in this case, the duo didn't so much write the Oscar-winning screenplay that catapulted them to celebrity status as it literally fell out of sky, fully composed, into Ben's apartment while the two aspiring stars were working on a whole other project: their film adaptation of Catcher in the Rye. more ›

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Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels either loves condos or he hates renters. The Mayor's Office has indefinitely frozen a $350,000 fund created to compensate Seattle area renters who'd been forced out of housing due to condo-conversions. Mayor Nickels wants to wait and see if the legislature passes a statewide bail-out funded by developers this winter. Because it makes perfect sense to rely on the people who are profiting most off of Seattle renter's misery. more ›

Two, our city council is old -- like, they were excited about seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show old. What is the average age, retirement? Sally Clark is alert and at full speed, but one person can't do it alone. McIver's up there "resting his eyes" throughout. These are the people in charge of guiding Seattle's future? Seriously, there has to be some generational groupthink at work. Given the UW population, representative local government ought to include someone in their 20s. It's not like the council is allowed to do anything -- everything important is handled by the Mayor's Office -- so what's the harm? more ›

We may have the lowest crime rate in 40 years, but it sure doesn't feel like it. more ›

Generally after the warm, fuzzy glow of our New Year's hangover wears off, Seattlest is left staring into the abyss of January without much to cling to, except our quickly fading memories of the resolutions we made and the knowledge that tax season is fast approaching. more ›

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. more ›

Last night while having dinner at Friend A's house, the wife got a call from Friend B with whom she and A had gone snowshoeing on Friday. Friend B was calling because she had read the newspaper and discovered a story about an avalanche that happened on the trail they took.

A group of youths aged 12 to 16 and an adult were hiking near Lake 22, a popular trail off the Mountain Loop Highway east of Granite Falls, when the avalanche hit Friday afternoon, said spokeswoman Rebecca Hover with the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office.

From the PI this morning: "Three shot inside Capitol Hill club." Apparently, a fight broke out on Sugar's dance floor around 1:30am; three people were injured, and police aren't saying much more than that. Someone was firing a gun the club, so this isn't one of those ambiguous cases of violence within fifty feet of the club doors. The night's event was Sin Sunday, an 18/21+ weekly event featuring a DJ spinning hip-hop and R&B mash-ups. more ›

Tonight, the nation's hardcore gamblers' eyes will be on Seattle as our fair burgh hosts Monday Night Football. more ›

It's not that development in itself sucks; it's that our county and city government doesn't believe in development for art's sake, despite all those studies about the half billion the arts return to the community. When we look around, we don't see a lot of public investment in the single most expensive thing that artists and smaller arts organizations have to face: a place to work, rehearse, show, perform. more ›

The new Office Nomads offices are located in the old Heath Printers building on Boylston, the block west of the SCCC parking garage on Pine -- they have the 5,000+ square feet upstairs to work with. The idea is for rootless freelancers, contract workers, and small biz owners to have a happy office environment with all the accoutrements: desk, T1 network, printer/faxer/copier, a Bunn coffeemaker, and the company of others. (It's bring-your-own-laptop.) There's going to be a full kitchen, and there's also a shower for sweaty bicyclists or gym-goers. "Anybody who's not invited to apply?" we asked. "Well, it's an open space, so counselors and massage therapists wouldn't find it too useful," said Jacob. more ›

Seattlest's favorite crime (just edging Identity Theft) strikes again, this time in one of Seattlest's favorite places. A copper theft at Snoqualmie Pass temporarily disabled highway signs and safety lighting, which had to suck for people navigating the pass in the middle of the night. more ›

Tonight Earlimart, The Quiet Ones, and OFFICE play the Croc. We already said plenty of good things about Earlimart when they were in town last month, so this time we'll plug OFFICE. In their first ever video, the Chicago boy-girl glam-pop five-piece decided to insert themselves (huh huh) into clips from cheesy 80s porn. Despite the presence of Peter North, it's totally SFW. more ›

We're living in the town that Microsoft Office built, and all in all it's not too shabby. Every once in a while we're struck by something and think, "wow, someone paid upwards of $300 for a graphical representation of a talking paper clip and we used the money to build this..." But generally it's been a pretty good deal for Seattle. Time marches on, though, and what was once the raison d'etre for personal computers becomes just another bloated piece of virus-propagation ware choking up the system drive and gathering dust. The web browser is now the first thing we open in the morning and the last program to close at night, with fewer and fewer between. Google Apps represent the future where browser is the computer. Good thing there's no such beast as Google Apps Enterprise Edition... Doh! more ›

Last week Seattlest whined about the pending doom of the Rainier Cold Storage Stock House in Georgetown, a building that is a Seattle Historic Landmark. "'Historic Landmark' might as well be a death sentence in Seattle," we said, meaning that any building so labeled in Seattle would be quickly demolished (although later in the week the Seattle Weekly would have a different take on the phrase in an article about Peter Steinbrueck and his recent Landmark-a-thon Downtown). more ›

The great thing about Switzerland -- we'll tie Seattle in shortly, hang on -- is that there's no convenience too small for the Swiss to consider. Everywhere you go, some Swiss person has already been there and added a neat little touch. Not that we don't show that consideration here in Seattle -- last night at the Hopvine we noticed they have little coat hooks just beneath the bar so you don't have to throw them over your barstool. Thoughtful, see. Could still use a foot rail, but one thing at a time. more ›

We spotted Jim from The Office--real name: John Krasinski--having drinks at the Crocodile Friday night with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie (who Seattlest Jack chatted with last week). more ›

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 would be better than affordable housing is a 250-unit Marriott hotel! People who work stay in hotels a lot, so it's not even a big difference when you look at it." more ›

Notes from a day when even Iranians are probably paying more attention to Blake Lewis than to Dick Cheney. more ›

Microsoft is attempting to yank the developing world into the age of Personal Computing and to that end they just announced $3 software bundles for developing nations. Windows XP Starter Edition and Office Home for $3, which is about $3 more than what we think developing nations currently pay for their software. more ›

Seattlest is all about complaining about transportation in Seattle. We invented complaining about transportation in Seattle. We were complaining about transportation in Seattle via pony express when the Duwamish were still arguing over whether to build canoes or kayaks. But this thing in the paper today about the UW light rail station being disconnected from other transit seems a little premature. The charge is that the fictional 520 exchange of the future doesn't connect with it and, furthermore, there's no parking in the vicinity either. more ›

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... more ›

SEATTLEST BOOK CLUB PICK: For March, we're reading Jonathan Raban's Surveillance, set in a not-so-distant future, when everyone's actions are highly monitored. Get a head start on the conversation by hearing from Raban himself. (We'll know if you went or not.) more ›

Wire service stories are the postcards that we never would have sent. Instead of picking out something mundane or kitschy, the AP and UPI sent our college roommate in Wisconsin, aunt in Boston, and childhood friend in Georgia an inane little note in their local papers yesterday. It says that the place we live in--and keep asking them to visit--is full of uptight people with too much time on their hands: Dog Store Sign Angers Seattle Residents. more ›

Last night we cracked a beer at home and flipped back and forth between Spiderman 2 and some Roethke biography on KCTS. That wasn't what we were supposed to be doing. We were supposed to be seeing Sexual Practices of the Japanese at On the Boards, but we couldn't find the theater, despite a hand drawn map. No, we've never been to On the Boards before. Neither has anyone in Queen Anne, apparently, nor have they ever heard of it. Is it a bar? No, it's a theater. The theaters are over there. We know where the fucking theaters are, we don't know where On the Boards is. Can't help you. And we doubt we ever will make it to On the Boards, because while we're sure it's a fine theater with lots of fantastic productions it remains in Queen Anne, and Queen Anne fucking sucks. We used to think there was very little that made a trip there worthwhile, but we're ready to concede that absolutely nothing is worth the effort there. Hey, you don't have to blame the neighborhood for our inability to work a map, though, so you might want to check out Sexual Practices of the Japanese. A portion of it involves Ichiro and it plays through Saturday. more ›

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. more ›

On Greenlake Way between 50th St. and the putt-putt golf course, in that parking lot bordering the Lower Woodland Park fields, lives a King County Sheriff's car. more ›

In which The Showbox gives the live music-going people of Seattle a belated lump of coal: more ›