No, Seattlest is not just a fan of alliteration and 80's slang, as the headline might suggest. Burying the beef, is the current plan of the Seattle Public School District to rid itself of 230 cases of possibly contaminated beef. The beef, provided to school districts through a USDA lunch program, came from a California slaughterhouse in the center of the largest beef recall in USDA history. Nearly two-thirds of the school districts in......

We all know what happens to kids who attend private school. Their folks buy them 16 years of education, they get a job at Daddy's firm, and eventually they sit in board rooms and devise ways to increase profits--usually by laying off kids who went to public school. The forward-thinking youth at private Kennedy High don't want the hopeless, powerless lives of their public school lessers to come as a shock, so they are preparing......

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......

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......

Rainier Beach (public school): Black fans. O'Dea (private school): White fans. That's the stereotype. So, tonight, as we bounded across Henderson Street toward our car after Rainier Beach's Metro league semifinals 52-46 win, and a black teenage girl asked "Do you know who won the game?," we smiled. We were about to deliver good news to this Beach partisan, we thought. "Rainier Beach won," we reported. "Awwww, DAMN!" she said, scrunching her face up in......

Seattlest remembers that back when Gary Payton was about to be a free agent, we saw some ESPN story about how players like to play in Florida because there isn't (or wasn't) state income tax there. The interviewer asked Payton about this, and he said something along the lines of "Yeah, that sounds pretty sweet." At which point we jumped up from our couch and screamed at our TV, "But Gary, Washington doesn't have income......

By now we don’t have to tell you that both Seattle Public School (what-what) levies are passing, it’s what everyone is talking about. The levies will continue an existing property tax that will pay for new buildings and renovations on existing schools, as well as basic educational programs. We did our part last night, and may have been the only ones. Our polling place happens to be a school, and we always feel that these......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

There are very few public meetings which Seattlest regrets not attending. Very few. In fact, last night's Seattle Public School Board meeting might represent the very first time Seattlest has ever been convinced by the morning RSS that we made a mistake in skipping a meeting. Here are some of the highlights from print accounts of the meeting: -"Hours of public comments from angry parents and community members over the latest closure proposal" - Superintendant......

-Starbucks just put the hammer down on the Hard Drive Music Players that supply the music you hear in their cafes. They are no longer barista serviceable, let's say. -How badly would I-933 suck? Let local bloggers count the ways. -They're educators, man. You can't expect the Seattle public school district to complete a complicated transaction with real estate developers and not get screwed. -People still hitch rides on freight trains. We did not......

We completely bought that whole line about the Seattle Public School District closing schools to bring the budget into some semblence of balance. We've had our coffee this morning, though, and the fog has been lifted. School closures have nothing to do with the budget - It's all about condos. Ok, that's complete bullshit that we're putting down to too many cups of coffee this morning. School conversions to condos probably aren't the reason for......

By this point it's pretty obvious that the Seattle Public School Board's strategy is to continue this shell game of school closures until students, parents and the public at large is so completely confused as to put up little or no struggle. And as if by magic, the budget will be balanced. If we were the sadistic type, your computer would currently be downloading a MIDI version of some clown music to further illustrate our......

We heard a rumor and since rumors are one of our favorite things to propagate (second only to "the species") we're getting off to a good Friday. Unfortunately, while there are potentially lots of good rumors surrounding the Seattle public school district (no school closures, across the board school closures, Gates Foundation bought the district) AND lots of good rumors surrounding Apple (new wireless iPod will get you chicks, Apple recalling those crusty and yellowing......

-Fifteen moms held a nurse-in at a South Beach Starbucks to protest one mother being ejected from the store previously for breast feeding her child. Latte, anyone? -Lycra palace Gregg's in Greenlake is building a new store in Bellevue. -This post (via PoP) compares Cantwell's website to McGavick's unfavorably. Mike!'s got a blog and a podcast and a bunch of other fancy tech gadgets. -Scoble's leaving Microsoft, as you've no doubt heard. -Bamboo, the......

-David Goldstein is first on the scene of the heartwarming story of Sacajawea escaping the Seattle Public School advisory committee's carving knife. Which hasn't happened as of this writing. (and didn't, it turns out, happen at all) -Starbucks is throwing $2.5 Million the NAACP's way for, well, the NAACP site doesn't say what programs will be funded with the money. -The Campaigner-in-Chief is expected to come to Seattle in June to prop up the......

-Bombs Over Bahgdad Jim McDermott will be guest hosting on KIRO radio while Dave Ross is on vacation. -The man who built The End is resigning after 10 years on the job. "Effective immediately." Wow, with authority. -Whining parents are barred from the remainder of the public school closure panel's meetings as are the media. Man, you'd think their presence wasn't contructive somehow. -There! She voted with her party, alright. Would we just shut......

Pauls Toutonghi, a product of the Seattle Public School system who now lives in Brooklyn, is in town to publicize his first novel, Red Weather. Random House is the publisher--and, as our friend Jason McDonald says, don't be fooled by the name--they don't publish just anything. Red Weather is the story of teenage boy, the son of immigrants, who's navigating his first romance, his father's drunkenness, and a house crammed with visitors from the home......

If you want to avoid the media's glare, you probably don't want to beat an opponent by 84 points. But the Chief Sealth girls' basketball team did just that. And the Seattle Times fixed them in their sights. Today's paper screamed this damning front page headline: Coaches violated rules to build state's top team. And reporters Christine Willmsen and Michael Ko don't pull any punches in the lead, either: The Chief Sealth High School girls......

Somehow, when we weren't looking, Seattle fell behind Cape Canaveral, Florida and Houston, Texas as a destination for those who wish to boldly go where no man has gone before. But, now that the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. is open for business, that's all gonna change. Seattlest attended a pre-public opening recently, and in between downing cups of vodka & Tang, tested out some of the GSTSC-approved products. These include "beverage containment devices" (cups),......

A Seattle middle-schooler was recently found dead after an apparent round of "the choking game" in which she tied a karate belt around her neck. In response to that incident and others the Seattle Public School District is going on an information campaign to raise awareness of this age-old method of getting high. The standard "talk to your kids about the dangers of __insert idiot behavior here___" seems to be the path they're taking on......

The Seattle Public School District has proposed a new budget to the board and Seattlest is guessing that it doesn't include any school closings. Instead, a variety of one-time financial sources will help bring a little balance to the budget, at least for the time being. Let's postpone those closings one more year, shall we? According to the PI the money will come from the following sources: An extra $2.6 million in levy dollars the......

Last week we guessed that this was going to be a big week for papal comment in the weeklies, and we're glad to see we weren't wrong. We were hoping for some fresh perspectives, or maybe some Seattle angle to the commentary, but maybe that was expecting a lot. Knute Berger in "Mossback" was the first to weigh in on the Catholic boss and the whole "the Vatican isn't a Democracy so why don't we......

March Madness isn't just the NCAA men's tournament, though Seattlest knows they've trademarked the name. At the risk of a lawsuit, we apply it to the hundreds of loser-out basketball tournaments taking place all over the country, from the South Dakota state "A" championship to the public school championships in New York City. Local teams began tournament life last weekend with the Pac-10 Women's basketball tournament and the State 3A Boys and Girls Tournaments.......

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels delivered his State of the City speech Monday in the midst of a political climate that sees him more or less untouchable in the next election. Nickels has so far been the chief political benefactor of a city repairing itself after the tumultuous reign of Paul Schell and appears set to ride his position far into the future, for better or for worse. The speech, which can be watched here, was......