Results tagged “spaceneedle”

"Unnamed" by Jenny Vorwaller, from our Flickr pool

"Day 2: Erlenmeyer Bulb Experiment" by Kelsey ( monotony ), from our Flickr pool

...inspired by today's earlier Seattlest Pix, here is another splendid photograph that uses large pieces of infrastructure to beautifully frame the composition.

"Untitled" by Aaron Morris, from our Flickr pool

The History Channel debuts tonight a Seattle-centric edition of its highly entertaining Life After People. Each episode focuses on a few cities, showing what would happen if people just disappeared. CGI effects and dramatic narration abounds. We're promised a Space Needle collapse. Good times. The show's at 7 p.m. if you have DirecTV, 10 p.m. if you have Comcast.

the creatively named "IMG_8915" by Espressobuzz, from our Flickr pool

"The City," by Jeremy Center (The Good Reverend Ogalthorpe), from our Flickr pool

In case you missed it or were just confused, the racket from the helicopters circling around the Space Needle last night was caused by the the giant light beam celebrating the launch of Microsoft's new decision engine, Bing.

If you didn't catch it, bolts of lightning lit up the dreary Seattle skyline last night. The electrically charged bursts went straight for our Space Needle turned giant lightning rod. For once, the city had a good ol' down pourin' thunderstorm. Not this b.s. dribbling rain. (Still, no where near a rocking Midwest T-storm.) You could even smell it in the air, a real down and dirty thunder and lightning storm. With some hail throw in for good measure.

We knew that SkyCity—yes, the restaurant in the Space Needle—attracted tourists, but never did we imagine that it would be Seattle’s highest-grossing independent restaurant in 2008, earning $15,116,739. That is more than 275,000 meals served over the course of the year. Who said something about a recession? We are suckers for a good view of the Seattle skyline, but come on, we know the Emerald City has some serious culinary talent that rivals the Space Needle's food--and maybe even the view.

"Untitled" by zeebleoop

You can retrace Santa's entire Christmas Eve trek at the NORAD Santa site.

• Vintage Seattle continued their fabulous series on the building of The Space Needle. Ever since VS started posting this series, we've been looking at the Needle with new eyes and appreciation.
• Mark our words, Cooper the Cat is about to be Seattle's next big star, but you can already track this local feline celebrity on Flickr and various local blogs.
• Thieves really are getting ballsier by the day, it seems. West Seattle Blog reports a classic Airstream Trailer was stolen off its double-locked parking pad this weekend on the west side.

• West Seattle Blog has the "final, FINAL" numbers on usage of the Elliott Bay Water Taxi. Our West Seattle compatriots promise these aren't fake final numbers and that they are larger than the previous final/unofficial numbers.
• We've always wondered how they built the Space Needle and Vintage Seattle has given us the answer, posting some truly jaw-dropping photos of the construction of The Needle.
• We don't know whether to laugh loudly or shake our heads and cry about the latest local blog--Capitol Hillebrities. Like the egos of Capitol Hill hipsters aren't big enough on they're own. Still, it was only a matter of time before someone started taking party photos on The Hill....apparently that time has come.

In heaven, apparently, there's a place called Seattle. It takes a remarkable photographer to get a camera into heaven, so props to Capn Surly. More shots like this are floating around in the clouds above our Flickr pool—take a look for yourself.

We're curious about the ingredients. What does it take to turn ordinary ramen into Seattle Ramen? Geoduck? Dick's Deluxe? Pike Place Roast? If you've tried it, let us know if it captures the flavor of the city.

Skate King was the venue of choice for this Seattlest's elementary and middle school-sponsored events, as well as for countless cruel friends' birthday parties. Over all those years of practice, did we ever really catch the knack for rollerskating? No. Did the flat stench of the soda-sticky carpets, the feel of waxy pizza cheese on our tongues, and the tinny strains of Ace of Base's "I Saw The Sign" omnipresent at this place ever truly leave our heart and memory? Of course not!

After over 45 years as Seattle's most visible man-made icon, the Space Needle is in dire need of a bath. Turns out the Needle has not had a serious cleaning since 1962, when it was introduced to the world as Seattle's symbol, during the World's Fair. The much-needed bath began yesterday, at the hands of a German company which promises a "green clean" of the icon. Karcher has also been tasked with cleaning some of the world's most recognizable monuments, including Mt. Rushmore and Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

"I heart Seattle" by Mike Anderson (Viking054)

Speculation abounded when Charles posted about a recent study showing what would happen to Seattle if a 9.0 quake hit us. The Space Needle was called out as an icon that wouldn't go down. Seattlest's dad is the resident earthquake-and-volcanoes disaster geologist in the family, so we asked for the truth. We were told to consult the disaster flick 10.5, a made for TV turd movie starring Kim Delany (you know, from CSI: Miami, or Law and Order, or, gasp, the OC!). It opens with an Extreme! urban mountain biker evading the quake (because you know, earthquakes chase people--but he was wearing a helmet, safety first!), and ultimately the Needle. Dad uses this clip as a joking intro to a University of Utah disaster course, where the students model disasters like a 9.0 quake hitting Seattle, or a sudden lahar wiping out Orting (where our in-laws live, har). Check it out for yourself:

The intrepid and dedicated bloggers over at My Ballard.com have been providing nearly minute-by-minute coverage of the Seattle Landmark Preservation Societies vote on the old Denny's building on 15th and Market. According to their pain-staking notes, around 6:30 the board's final vote of 6 to 3 in favor of landmark status, was met by gasps and cheers by supporters in the audience. The vote means that the building cannot be demolished and replaced by condos which were already planned for the space.

The American steakhouse--that dimly lit, mahogany-paneled, mafia-chic hideout for fat cats and their trophy molls--you'd think it would never fly in laid-back, egalitarian Seattle. You'd be wrong.

We just read Melanie McFarland's farewell column and we're a little choked up. It's good news for her -- she's off to become a TV editor at IMDB. But we're out a reviewer who likes all the right shows for all the right reasons.

So we may have found a new favorite website--last night, a friend pointed us to the seriously awesome image to the right, courtesy of Vintage Seattle, a high-resolution visual blog documenting Seattle history, a labor of love undertaken by one Jess Cliffe.

It turns out, it wasn't our booze-addled brains: The Seattle Center fireworks display on Monday night was messed up due to a computer program glitch (Y2K strikes 8 years late!). According to the :

The new Zagat is out, at least the one "devoted to Seattle" restaurants. And with "all due respect" to "local editor" Alicia Comstock Arter (who also contributes to Northwest Palate), it's "a freakin mess." The trouble, "brewing for years," is that the "capsule reviews" take isolated "nouns and adjectives" from "reader comments" and string them together to make "nonsensical" and "often inaccurate" profiles. It's a Fox News approach to dining, all pseudo-oracular, disjointed headlines with "little substance."

To see Seattle's culinary scene up close, just like the locals do, get thy butt over to the Gray Line tour desk! Aunt Minnie from Moline can spend a summer afternoon watching a real live chef!

Well, it's been a month, and that can only mean one thing: time for the next free edgy youth culture documentary, care of Scion. Last time around, the topic was blood diamonds in hip hop; this time it's all about nightclubbing in the late '80s NYC queer community.

This Sunday evening, the Seattle Phonographers Union will be holding a sonic performance at Magnuson Park. Phonographers?!? The hell you say? Rest, assured; we misspeelled neither photographers nor pornographers --although, for the record, we support many of those engaged these activities. We like the term phonography, first, because it sounds nicely antiquated and, given that we are currently embroiled in The Digital Future, somewhat analog what with its allusion to the phonograph. Now we're certain that many of our valiant phonographers likely use digital means to record sound; however, the term still has somewhat of steampunk charm and we are currently having a torrid tryst with the steampunk ethos.

How easy it is to poke mean-spirited fun at Silverman Festivals, aka Bite of Seattle. The family-owned commercial enterprise, enabled by the City of Seattle in the guise of a community festival, symbolizes so much of what's wrong with America today: greed, exploitation, overweening appetite and tons of just plain crappy food. A cheap and easy target for the smug and self-satisfied. (For one such potshot, see Cornichon's "Blah of Seattle" post a year ago.)