[Untitled] by Sea Kay. We say: wear a helmet! MyBallard clears up the confusion about when it is actually okay to drive in 15th's bus lane.PhinneyWood has photos to show what happens when a car gets t-boned by a metro bus, careens into a parked car, and sends the once-parked car crashing on to a Phinney Ridge porch.Ron Sims twitters about what good shape Dan Savage is in, the P-I's Big Blog reports it, and......

"King County Executive Along for the Ride" by Seattlest Flickr Photographer HonuPhoto White Center Now reports that King County Executive Ron Sims has proposed two staggered fare increases for Metro buses on his blog. In other news--Ron Sims writes a blog?!Yesterday's late afternoon thunder and lightning struck a little too close to home for a West Seattle Blog reader. A cedar tree in their neighbor's back yard was split in two by a lightning strike,......

Not only will you be voting for a new president in November (finally!), but a few new measures have been added to the local ballot. Initiative 1000—the "Death with Dignity" initiative—has made it on the state-wide ballot after amassing 224,880 valid petition signatures. Washington voters will have their say on the controversial topic of assisted suicide and whether or not to allow terminally ill people to obtain a fatal prescription to end their own lives.......

Even folks who don't drive are being affected by the rising cost of fuel. Plane and train tickets prices have been raised recently to cover the increased cost of gas and, as we noted last month, it was only a matter of time before we'd be adding Seattle Metro buses and Access vans to that list. King County Executive Ron Sims proposed the bus fare increase today. The other alternative is cutting Metro services,......

Seattlest is grateful for our bus pass and our Zipcar membership. Paying more than $4 a gallon just doesn't sound enticing for us, but we're not surprised when we hear about rate increases and other ancillary fees (like having to pay for our baggage when we fly) being passed onto us for using public transportation. Now, of course, Metro is chewing on the notion of increasing bus fares. Personally, we'd be okay with a......

Over the past year and a half or so of Hillary Clinton's hugely historic run for the presidency, we've been thoroughly impressed with the legacy she's left as the first of her kind. She's undoubtedly owned every single debate—except for that one where Edwards came alive for a minute and sounded like a real person who had more going for him than being the son of a mill worker. She made sure health care......

Wednesday morning, Route 301 from Shoreline to downtown Seattle. Waiting patiently, sweating profusely, standing on an over-crowded bus yet again. It's been in the news many times this year. Ridership is up. And with gas prices as they are, we expect the number of people riding will only climb higher. Back in 2006, King County Executive Ron Sims announced a plan to deliver "up to 21 million more annual bus rides within 10 years." Transit......

Unlike Kevin Henry, Congressman Brian Baird, of Washington's third district, has endorsed Barack Obama. He joins Congressman Adam Smith, Governor Gregoire, and Pearl Jam as state leaders on Obama's side. Hillary Clinton has the the support of Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, Congresman Jay Inslee, and King County Executive Ron Sims.......

As our friend who sent us the info announced this news, so shall we: "GAY GASP! Hillary's coming to town tonight!" Okay, so we were at an event on Saturday, when Maria Cantwell joined longtime local Hillstumpers Jay Inslee and Ron Sims for a chat about Mrs. Clinton's Clean Energy Plan. A young woman who claimed to be a UW student stood up and asked the three if they could do something to get......

This Seattlest will be heading to a private party tonight, where we will celebrate among our favorite people the fact that Super Tuesday is FINALLY here. But, if you're looking for somewhere more out-on-the-town to get your drink on and watch the returns trickle in, and pancakes aren't your bag, here's the guide for you. Most of these events start at 5pm, and they're all free. Go America! The Paragon is hosting an indie......

One week from today, Seattlest is looking forward to heading over to Mt. Zion Baptist Church in our "Just Vote for the Bitch" t-shirt to be the lone Capitol Hill caucuser for Hillary Clinton. More on that later. Today, there's a talk in South Seattle featuring some of The Hillinator's local politistar supporters. We told you the other day about how John Kerry was here to pump up support for Obama, so it's only fair......

We really don't feel it's the day after an election until we overhear people talking about how they forgot to vote, didn't know there was an election, and how they'll definitely vote next time. If they had been paying attention from August through this morning, they would have learned that Seattle voters will not let you drive 50mph down Market Street after a few drinks, but they will let you work for an anti-gay organization,......

For some reason no big deal is being made of the rails-to-trails thing going on right now on the Eastside. Preventing the addition of capacity to I-405 is a big deal to Seattle environmentalists, but the impending doom of a potential passenger rail corridor that runs north-south from Renton to Snohomish is of no interest. We don't get it... One guy who does get it is Chuck Mott who seems like an interesting guy.......

Remember SimCity? Seattlest had some incredible towns built in that game, with commercial and residential districts packed full of shiny, tall towers and trains and street traffic all flowing as effortlessly as rivers. Scroll way over to the left to the edge of the city grid; now that is a healthy industrial district, perfectly bisected by a pollution-eating green belt. The landmarks sprouted everywhere and the money and accolades poured in. Of course, it took......

It's rainy which means it's fall, which means there's an election coming, which means that Seattle is all bound up in a transportation quagmire, which means it's time to devote millions of words to the problem and then eventually do nothing. A couple ten thousand of those millions of words were published this weekend in response to the Roads and Transit transportation package that we'll vote on in November. Here is Walt Crowley in the......

Seattlest just got done attending the press conference for the re-opening of the Downtown Bus Tunnel. After two years of work, it's set to reopen next Monday. That's exactly two years (as King County Exec. Ron Sims was fond of repeating over and over today) after it closed. We have to say, we're pretty impressed with what they've done. Needless to say, it's a pretty big achievement in a region not exactly known for making......

Ron Sims has found his choice for the county’s Elections Director, Sherril Huff. If that name seems familiar to you it should—she was the assistant director. Yeah, now you know her. Her selection comes after a nation wide search, which probably means that some in the department misplaced all the applications and this was the easiest way to deal with it. Even though she worked directly under Dean Logan, she received high marks from members......

This Saturday offers at least three ways to make a difference in Seattle, or at least look like you care whilst furthering your own selfish interests. Start things off at the Egyptian Theater for the SIFF volunteer meeting from 10am to noon. This is your best opportunity to learn about all the different jobs that you can do to pitch in for the festival. It's also a good way to get a few good......

--Gawker likes to point out hilarious writing every once in awhile and we're pretty sure they'd have something to say about "After the National Weather Service announced it was asking the public to name last month's windstorm, it got blown away by the number of entries." --Speaking of Gawker... --Speaking of naming things... --Speaking of the storm... --NASCAR is continuing to spread money around Kitsap County. It's coming. --If you think you've noticed traffic getting......

We know, we know. What could they have possibly done now that they haven't done before? We blame the P-I for following the epic saga in the first place -- for years we had no idea that anyone ran the Port and, you know, its constant blundering seemed par for the course. But the Port's latest psychotic break has caused a blood vessel to burst in our left eye, and so we want to......

In the Seattle Times this morning there's an article on how Ron Sims' early efforts to raise awareness around global warming, in 1988, made him the laughingstock of the Times editorial page, who accused him of "belching" hyperbolic rhetoric: "The point is," wrote the amused editorialist, "that the sky-is-falling, icecaps-are-melting, oceans-are-rising rhetoric must be tempered by common sense." With little support for the idea from the environmental community and none from council colleagues, the......

Seattlest got invited to the screening of the new Al Gore flick, An Inconvenient Truth, at Pacific Place last night. (It opens Friday, June 2 in Seattle.) For an Al Gore flick, Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims show up. (And they pretend to make nice, because columnist Brodeur scolded them about not playing well together.) Then after the film, Chris Gregoire comes out and introduces surprise guest Al Gore and......

Yesterday while most of the city was all a-twitter about President Hu’s visit to the city (today he will get a tour of the Fun Forest, and attend a live taping of Northwest Afternoon), Ron Sims proposed a plan to pay for more buses by raising the county sales tax one tenth of one percent. The buses would be used to increase the amount of rides on the Eastside, along the Pacific Highway South, and......

Today at 11:00am, KUOW 94.9 will air the gay marriage debate between King County Executive Ron Sims, and Eastside bigot, Rev. Ken Hutcherson. According to the P-I, the debate is centered less on whether or not gay marriage is morally right, and more on whether or not the gay-rights movement is an issue of civil rights. “Simply put, Sims, who is the state's highest elected black official, believes discriminating against a person based on sexual......

The Rev Sims vs Rev Hutcherson title fight went down last night and although we couldn't attend there's enough written material about it to keep us reading through the weekend and into next week. It would be cool if the Stranger guys could throw up a video or at least a transcript of it somewhere... Anyway, it sounds like Hutcherson brought a posse with him by bus so the crowd wasn't as one-sided as the......

Ok we all know that the Ricky Gervais podcast is the greatest thing to ever appear on the internet and everyone has a favorite random cast that they subscribe to, but what are the best Seattle-focused podcasts? We’ll give you a list of our favorites, but we’re willing to be turned on to any others. Most of the links provided here are xml and are intended to be opened with a program that correctly......

Well, it happened. In a 7-2 vote that was never extended to the public, the King County Council agreed to spending at least $500,000 to change our logo from a crown to the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr. And to add to the surreal ludicrousness of this move, Ron Sims is designing the new logo. The jesters are now running the castle, Seattle. The people of Seattle didn't approve of the idea when it......

Did you ever read the book The Chocolate War when you were a kid? Maybe you were an adult when you read it, but for Seattlest it was a long while back. There's a scene in there near the end of the book that portrays a boxing match between two students. The way the boxing match works is that both boxers take suggestions from the crowd for what kind of punch to throw. It's like......

Ron Sims graces the editorial pages of the Seattle Times today to dangle the carrot of a "re-imagined Seattle Center" in front of us. The Center sucks, he says, and it does. We can do better, he says, and we can. Some things like the Needle and the fountain should stay, but the Center House and the Fun Forest are crap he tells us in colorful metaphor: "Too much of Seattle Center remains like a......

King County Councilman Larry Gossett is re-submitting his proposal to the City Council this month to spend $600,000 on changing the county's logo from a crown to the likeness of Dr. Martin Luther King. In a recent email to our local neighborhood council (Jackson Place), Gossett indicated that this would "finally give respect and visibility to the fact that our County's namesake is Dr. King." This made Seattlest think "huhn", scratch our chin, and ponder......