• The Rainier Valley Post lets Beacon Hill residents know that the water advisory has been lifted and you no longer need to boil your tap water.
• MyBallard thinks they may have found the most expensive piece of property in Ballard. A 325 square foot shack "condo alternative" selling for $199,999.
• The B-Town Blog is closely following Burien's annexation request.

• My Ballard and Phinney Wood shared a post on the annual Dead Baby Bike Race. With the recent fear-mongering regarding bicyclists in the local media--the bike race could likely have not come at a worse time. We're sure already freaked out Subaru drivers, aren't thrilled to think of the idea of a crudely named (see: hilarious) bike race that celebrates "Mutant Bike Culture."
• Rejoice Francophiles and hipsters not allergic to the sun! Capitol Hill Seattle reports that Cafe Presse has opened a deck to accommodate outside seating. Few things are more French than enjoying a delicious and refined meal at a neighborhood sidewalk cafe, so we're thrilled to have a chance to mimic the experience at our neighborhood pseudo-Parisian cafe.
• The Central District News breathed a sigh of relief and celebrated that this year's Umoja parade was bigger and better than ever.

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 ›

MUSIC: Tim O'Brien, Jerry Douglas, Chris Thile & How to Grow a Band, Darrel Scott Band, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Uncle Earl, and many more at Wintergrass. Wintergrass is one of the biggest bluegrass festivals in the country, and this is one of the best line-ups they've had in some time. It's worth it to go see all the bands, or just to hang out in the lobby and jam out all weekend for free. more ›

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. more ›

The Post Intelligencer has an article today on the pesky old buildings that dot Seattle and the heroes who have been swooping in to convert them to condos. No need to tear down a perfectly good old building, necessarily, although that sometimes works too, but you can only wring so much out of renters before you shuffle them off to Kent or something where they belong and get some buyers in there. more ›

--USS Mariner convinces us that Richie Sexson must go. more ›

A friend and Seattlest discovered the UW surplus warehouse while walking home from Agua Verde one day a couple of years ago. We just walked in and started wandering through the shelves of cast-off computers, unidentifiable but important looking measuring equipment and bad office furniture. To us, techies both, it was like two sixteen-year-olds accidentally wandering into a porn shop for the first time. This is before we'd come across Re-PC. Everything had a little yellow price tag on it. Computers were marked $10. Strange machinery with big bubble displays cost $50. Half of the stuff in there looked like it could have been ripped from the set of Flash Gordon or Frankenstein's laboratory - We were suckers for that kind of thing. Luckily, we realized that nothing was for sale to the public before we gathered a complete haul. We were the public, unaffiliated with the University in any way shape or form. When questioned about our department at the checkout we tried to make something up, "Uh...English?" which, of course, didn't work at all. more ›

Property owners along the path of the proposed streetcar line in South Lake Union have always been expected to partially fund the line, and Seattlest always assumed that that meant that Paul Allen was paying for some portion of it and the city would be coughing up the rest. We also assume that property owners along the line not named Paul Allen also thought that. Surprise! South Lake Union commercial residents expected to pony up are getting some estimates and they are not quite in line with what they expected. more ›

It would be nice if you could take an elevated highway that runs through a downtown area, pick it up, scratch aside a little dirt and bury the thing. Wouldn't a tunnel be so much nicer than a noise polluting, view blocking, earthquake vulnerable eyesore? At the end of the day we could shake the dirt from our hands and look out over our newly created real estate empire and smile with visions of mixed use mini towers in our heads. more ›

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