It was only four days ago that a friend of ours mentioned that shoes hanging from a power line meant it was a "safe" area for dealing drugs, or that it had to do with gang territory. He couldn't remember exactly. We thought that was stupid. We've always thought it was simply the work of some shithead bully. Then we thought of the opening shot in the 1995 stoner-flick, Friday. There they were, a pair......

Finally, H&M, the Ikea of clothing stores, will make its glorious debut in Seattle. Our inside sources (H&M's myspace page) tell us that not one, not two, but three H&M stores are scheduled to open in Seattle this fall. Fans of affordable fashion will soon flock to new locations at 5250 520 Pike Street, University Village and Westfield Southcenter. We know, the lack of Eastside locations is shocking, but who knows? Perhaps they'll arrive......

It’s one of those Sunday mornings where the air is very still and heavy, and the dim light is giving you plenty of room to recover from Saturday night. For us, it’s the perfect time to visit the newest Victrola Coffee location on Pike Street. We enter the spanky-fresh store, a location mostly done up in the very popular, but tepid modern design. Like a Santa Barbara beach, all the tables are blonde-topped. The......

"As Is" by Arboreality Not only do the seedy shops look charming but the scene as a whole looks like something out of a warm, June evening. Thanks, Arboreality, for dropping this photo into the Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

Wednesday we decided to do a little recon of the new Wine & Beer shop on Pike Street. Encouraged by Geoff's post, we picked up Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel ($3) and Hefe-Weisse Hell ($3) to accompany our Thanksgiving meal, along with some Saison Dupont ($10), which is perhaps why one of the owners mentioned to us that today, from 5-7pm, they were having a beer tasting that would include Belgian beers and we should stop by.......

On our walk back up from the Pike Street Victrola the other day, we noticed a new store has arrived in the space that used to be a...what?...ethnic foods, was it? We always meant to go in and see. But we didn't. Not even during the "Going Out of Business" sale. God, it was awful. Some days the owner would come out and stand there, looking downhearted. Eventually we started looking for reasons to cut......

The sale of Capitol Hill's Odd Fellows Hall is to close in early January 2008. The 4-story building at 915 East Pine Street has been home to a number of Seattle arts groups, including Velocity Dance and Freehold, and the Century Ballroom. The memo from Redside Partners says:Our intent is to update the building systems while retaining and/or restoring much of the original charm the Odd Fellows intended almost 100 years ago. Significant changes in......

Victrola Coffee has their new roasteria location down at Pike and Terry, up from Six Arms, and they're holding public coffee cuppings on Wednesdays to let people in on a more behind-the-roaster view of their morning bean beverage. We've done this, and it's fun, but we warn you that we left thinking hummingbirds looked old and slow. While you're there, try out the new comfy chairs for us. We only had time to snap......

Could Randy Johnson don a Mariners uniform in 2007? Those speculating aren’t entirely convinced floundering GM Bill Bavasi could pull off a (worthwhile) deal to acquire the Yankees’ aging Unit, and although we’re not the most astute of M’s followers, we’re dubious, too. We think it’s more likely the Mariners will trade for another mound giant—the Dodgers’ Mark Hendrickson. Because we saw him downtown last night. We couldn’t help doing a double-take when we walked......

It's been forever since we've heard from local sketch comedy troupe Train of Thought. Alright, so it hasn't even been a month since they kicked off their participation in JibJab's Great Sketch Experiment (you can still vote on that for another week here), and they're already performing again at the Northwest Actor's Studio. While their new show is overall middling, it's peppered with moments of sheer brilliance. Perhaps part of the mixed-baggedness is due......

Okay, Okay, so we cribbed basically this entire entry from Historylink --but only because it is such a great site. However, so that we don't feel too plagiarific, Seattlest has run the original essay through the the value-adding machinery in the back of the office (right near the alley where we all go out to smoke). Needless to say, we cribbed all of the following photos from UW Special Collections Division's assortment of awesome......

Wednesday, October 25 >>>Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater, 7:30-10pm. Are you afraid of the dimmed lights in a theater? A Guide to Visitors presents their annual Ghost Story night. Spooky stories about haunted office buildings and ghost quests, told by people such as the woman who leads a ghost tour of Pike Place Market. The press release says the Jewel Box is haunted, so maybe the dead will chip in a tale or two themselvs.......

Last time Scion did something in town, it was their lackluster art showing at Roq La Rue. It was marketing that felt like marketing, so it just made you want to tune out from the whole experience. We won't hold that one against them too much though, since they've gone back to their roots a bit with this year's installment of the Free up Your Mix series (at least we're fairly certain it's a series),......

This week Seattlest was craving Thai. Something simple and something nearby--but since we live only five blocks from where we work, it's hard to avoid eating dinner at the places we frequent for lunch. We find our lunch haunts unseemly for dinner. Not that there's anything wrong with them, it's just that we eat at them practically every day and we associate them with daylight hours. So when we walked down to Ayutthaya for dinner,......

More baristas in Seattle! Get me out of here fast. Seattle is already lousy with baristas but the four-day U.S. Barista Championship began here on Thursday bringing more than 40 baristas from around the U.S. Competitors have had to prepare 12 coffee beverages—one espresso, one cappucino, and one specialty drink for four judges, all within 15 minutes. A specialty drink is a fancy Frankenstein of the coffee world—like the curry macchiato, a blend of tumeric,......

Lunching downtown can be a grim, wallet-emptying experience. Seattlest would like to save you from all that. It's difficult to express what a giant crush we have on Harried and Hungry. For months we've been searching for a decent salad downtown. New Yorkers may not realize what a magical thing they have with Pax Deli, the local chain of...well, how to explain. It's a salad bar, but not the usual icky sneeze-guard kind: all the......