"Ghost Pedestrians" courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives If recently released rankings of big cities in America are to believed, yes. Seattle is the #1 Big City in the U.S. for Pedestrian Safety. And to that we say--remind us never to walk anywhere else in America, ever again. In the lifetime we've called Seattle home, Seattle has never seemed less friendly or safe for pedestrians. Every time we step into the street, be it in......

We're stumped by those weight-activated turn arrows at intersections. When you're on a bike, what do you do? If you're at the head of the line, you don't have a car in front to trigger it and you're there forever. (And sometimes drivers politely avoid crowding you, and don't trigger the plate behind you.) We're baffled. Sometimes we bike through the crosswalk instead. Sometimes we just turn a street early to avoid the light. Is......

There's a 36-year-old senior surgical resident with the University of Washington who's in the hospital as a patient this week. Police are still looking for his assailants. If you were wandering around Belltown at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and remember seeing a fight, or a group of meatheads running away from one, call the Seattle Police Department's Homicide and Assault unit at 206-684-5550. The way we read it, one group--the Korean victim, his girlfriend,......

The aptly titled, "Empty Viaduct?" by Seattlest Flickr Contributor slightlynorth The Alaskan Way Viaduct is closed for its semi-annual inspection this weekend. The viaduct will be closed from 6am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday. The Battery Street Tunnel will be closed all weekend to traffic. The semi-annual inspections check for that settling Dan was talking about earlier this week and the cracks we all pretend aren't there when we speed down the viaduct, fearing......

Are food safety and food tasty mutually exclusive goals? You have to ask after both Zesto's and Wild Ginger show up on the P-I's list of Seattle's dirtiest restaurants. Zesto's, the venerable burger joint of 15th N.W. and 65th, has the most "red critical" violations of any restaurant in Seattle this year: 15. Frankly, if it takes 15 red critical violations to get the yumminess into their burgers and shakes, we will assume the risk.......

Inspired by a random iPod event at Seattlest's Thanksgiving, a friend lamented the early death of John Denver and then launched into a diatribe about how he didn't pull a Kennedy; that is, Denver wasn't a dilettante pilot. He went on to explain that Denver was an experienced pilot who owned many planes and flew often. He died, our friend claimed, when one of the fuel tanks in the experimental plane he was flying......

The snow is here, and people are already missing on Crystal Mountain. They apparently hit the backcountry (seems way to early to be doing that, we think), and by all accounts were properly equipped, including avalanche beacons. But shit can go sideways in the backcountry, and "properly equipped" is most relevant if you really know how to use that stuff. We're hoping those lost folks do, and are found any second now. Should you be......

Adrian Tomine started making comics in his teens when he created Optic Nerve. In it, he tells stories about people who tend to be searching for answers to questions they seem to think everyone else already knows. After a few years putting out Optic Nerve on his own, it was picked up by publisher Drawn and Quarterly. Tomine is coming to Seattle to promote his first full-length graphic novel Shortcomings. Seattlest used it as......

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. Don't mistake the fact that copper theft is Seattlest's favorite crime with Seattlest being in favor of the crime. It's bad and dangerous and taxpayers lose. Why is it our......

This afternoon at two o'clock the city council will vote on proposed new nightclub regulations, bitterly opposed by Seattle's entertainment industry. Yet even as the council prepares for the vote, controversy continues to swirl over SPD's nightclub sting op from Saturday, Sept. 8. This morning, The Seattle Times reported on inaccuracies in its article from a week age today on elements of the sting operation, including the disputed claim that a gun made it......

Funny picture just turned up in the Seattlest Flickr Pool: In the neighborhood where I work (South Lake Union) there is a fairly unpopular project going on to create a trolley line that serves no real transportation purpose other than perhaps to give some office workers more places to eat lunch. In the meantime the construction of this project is wreaking havoc with all other attempts to get around, and the tracks are an enormous......

Jim Riches, Deputy Chief of the FDNY, is one of the producers of the Urban Legends video that questions the supposedly heroic actions of Mayor Giuliani on 9/11. Jen Carlson recently interviewed him for our sister site in New York. How long have you been in the FDNY? 30 years experience in some of the busiest firehouses in NYC. Which firehouse are you working at now? Assigned to Bureau of Operations as Deputy Chief FDNY.......

Monday the 10th, at 7pm, the Paramount Theatre presents Charlie Chaplin's 51st, 52nd, and 53rd films, all from 1916: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, and The Vagabond. They're all half-hour or so shorts from early on in his Mutual Films era, and feature Chaplin's genius for environmental comedy, with mishaps with escalators and fire poles. In his autobiography, Chaplin wrote that his notion of humor was based on "the subtle discrepancy we discern in what appears......

This summer, Seattlest thought we were smart. Oh so smart. We were engaged. Our financial missteps were behind us. We’d plotted to start saving dough—to get a less-expensive apartment, sock the monthly savings into a high-yield account and, in a couple of years, look for a condo or fixer-upper in West Seattle. Rent something cheaper now; buy something modest later. Damn, it felt good to be a forward-thinker. So we searched for that less-expensive......

Back in mid-July, the Seattle Times brought the sad story of Mark Cruz, Renton, to our attention. Cruz was busted for honking at the car in front of him, which was lingering at a green light. This morning (thanks, Kayvaan G!) we noticed the P-I headline "Hold that honk: car horns are for safety only." To our surprise, Mark Cruz was again in the news, but for the same exact story. The fine, by......

When family’s in town, Seattlest usually troops to Pike Place Market so the out-of-towners can say they saw our city’s bustling bazaar. Though we’re not repeatedly thrilled by it, the Market is a sense-assaulting place to burn an afternoon with all-ages, crowd-tolerant kin. But it’s something else entirely beyond the northernmost booth or on the exit stairs facing the viaduct. It’s a trashy, scare-little-cousin-Susie jungle out there. Even now, with the Centennial Celebration in......

Last night Robert H. Frank, the author of 'The Economic Naturalist' and a professor of Economics from Cornell University, spoke at the University Bookstore about his new book 'The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. You may, if you are widely-blog-read, recognize his name from recent excerpts posted to the Freakonomics blog. The Economic Naturalist purports to examine the world's quandries using economic principles by analogy to field biology. The challenge is......

We hear Tegan & Sara's shows tonight and tomorrow night at the Triple Door are sold out. (Don't they do some kind of SRO thing there, too? Maybe check CL.) If you don't get in, the Canadian duo are playing at the Showbox on December 3. We're new to the Tegan & Sara experience ourselves -- we just thought they looked alike and were completely unaware they're youthful lesbian twin sisters from Canada. (Not that......

Here's a good one for the automobile haters: The completely impartial and fair people at Pemco Insurance have done a poll on speeders that attempts to get to the bottom of who these people speeding all over the place are; what they aspire to, what makes them bolt upright in the middle of the night, how much money they make, where they're going in such a damn hurry... Take it away Pemco: According to data......

The people who bring you Sidewalk Cinema take over pizza-and-beer-serving Central Cinema tonight with a '50s B-movie double-feature in glorious 16mm: Port of Hell and Sky Liner. In Port of Hell, a ship with an atom bomb on board (fucking Commies!) shows up in the L.A. harbor just when harbormaster Gibson Pardee is getting all sorts of blowback for his stringent safety concerns. It's a race against time, and the film only runs 80 minutes!......

There was a lot of talk on the blogs last week about newly-released census data that highlighted the 23% of Washington residents that get to work by means other than riding in a car alone. Seattle is in the top ten US cities in walking to work, taking the bus to work and biking to work (although not in carpooling) all of which are impressive and encouraging. There is an element of spin to all......

Sometimes we feel like we grew up on the road. Our parents would hit the road for a weekend or plan a road-trip vacation at the drop of a road atlas. We've spent a lot of time on a lot of great North American roads. We've logged thousands of family miles, thousands of solo miles, and thousands of companion miles. We've driven and/or owned hatchbacks, wagons, SUVs, and pick-ups -- stick and automatic. We're......

Majestic America is a Seattle-based company and the Empress of the North sailed out of Seattle before hitting a rock and drifting near Juneau--We just can't be satisfied with "it hit something during a turn." Last week while Seattlest was bitching about the lack of information on the grounding of the Empress a commenter suggested we check the gCaptain blog. According to gCaptain the grounding took place during a Third Mate's watch, Third Mate being......

Seattlest took a little trip to the Oregon coast recently. We experienced two opposing points of the coastal experience within several miles of each other. True to its name, the city of Seaside is the archetypal slutty seaside town replete with an arcade, candy stores, cheesy tourist shops, and snooty beach-fronting hotels that will be the first to go when the tsunami hits. One would think that this is the place one would find......

The Blue Angels, who totally fucking rule, first performed at Seafair in 1952. And despite a crash last month that killed a Blue Angels pilot, they will perform at Seafair again this year. Strap on your safety helmets and stock up on adult-sized diapers, Stranger staffers.......

FACT: On August 24, 1919, film star Harold Lloyd -- while posing for publicity shots in which he was lighting a cigarette from a lit bomb -- blew the thumb and forefinger off his right hand. "Somehow," accounts explain, "a real bomb had gotten mixed in with the props." In 1923, as if to underscore learning nothing from the experience, he released one of the most famous films of all time, Safety Last! (Which......

The overnight blogs are abuzz: Tenet (slamdunking Iraq) and Goldy (recycling poisoned pet food). Both merit close attention, but Goldy (David Goldstein) is right here in Seattle, and he's making international news. Let's not forget that his blog, HorsesAss.org, was the first to reveal Michael Brown's bogus credentials to run FEMA. This time, it's another fuckup, but with truly ominous potential: China's melamine-laced pet food was recycled as feed for domestic pork, and our......

Monday SHERMAN FREAKING ALEXIE: The best-selling author returns with his first novel in ten years. Flight tells the story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a violent search for his true identity. Real Change-published poets (that would actually include Alexie, too) read as part of the program. 7:30pm // Town Hall // $5 LOCAL AUTHOR: Maya Sonenberg, the Creative Writing Program Director at the UW, presents a......

As Sightline's Daily Score blog reports, Washington is going to become one of the toughest places in the world to inhale PBDEs, the fire retardant currently being given off by your consumer electronics and accumulating in your fatty tissue. Sez Clark Williams-Derry, The "penta" and "octa" formulations of PBDEs haven't been manufactured in North America for a while, but "deca" is still fairly common -- so this is genuinely big news. I doubt that......

Seattlest got our first chance to stick our fingers in the Viaduct's wounds this weekend courtesy of a WSDOT walking tour. Unless you're the type to sign up for a St Patrick's Day 15,000 K fun run or something like that opportunities to walk around on the Viaduct's road bed are few and far between, so this tour was greatly appreciated. On Saturday morning we met at the 1st and Columbia onramp to collect......