JAZZ: Dr. John kicks off a 6-night run at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, giving audiences the benefit of a life studded with "troubles at home." Singing about New Orleans before, during, and after it was cool, he created a musical love letter to the city of New Orleans in 2004, "N’awlinz Dis Dat or D’udda," and won an award from the Académie Charles Cros at their 57th awards ceremony. He may be most famous as......

We spend a lot of time at the Seattlest newsroom talking about the problems bicycle riders in this city have and how the city should make it easier for us since we reduce congestion and emissions at the same time. Now we realize we’ve been ignoring the good our our two-wheeled motorized brethren (and sistern) on scooters. According to the PI, Vince Rowley and Eric Pravitz are regular scooter riders who want the City Council......

Last Friday we got a chance to poke our noses into the Northwest African American Museum before it opened, as part of a test lunch group for the St Clouds Museum Cafe. The Museum is in the historic Colman School, at 23rd and Massachusetts. It's historic now, that is -- back when we lived across the street, on 25th, it was condemned, boarded up, and left a home for pigeons, until a group of black......

Photograph of investigation at Times Square recruiting center by kerfuffle & zeitgeist on Flickr Gothamist found that an explosive set off outside the Times Square army recruiting center may be similar to five past bombings in New York City.Seattlest worried when severed right feet and bottles of rat poison started washing up on local beaches.Shanghaiist was surprised by Bjork's rooting for Tibetan independence at her concert (see video), and the political fallout has only......

Sometimes, there is a local headline that brings us so much strange delight, that we must share it with you. Today's example comes from King 5.com: Owners of Rogue Monkey in Spokane Could Face Jail Time We are quite certain that we will never read such a headline again in a Pacific Northwest newspaper or website, so we're enjoying it tremendously. This is the monkey we told you about earlier this week, who went......

We here at Seattlest like to provide our readers with valuable advice when we think it’s necessary. Two blog posts we’ve seen today make us think it’s important to advise that you stay the hell away from Denver. First, according to the New York Times blog The Lede, in November, the city’s voters passed a law similar to Seattle’s that makes pot the city’s "lowest law-enforcement priority." Well, it seems that the cops in Denver......

Maybe it's the recession like it was in the early 90s, but as a city, we're recycling more than ever before. Mayor Greg Nickels announced today that Seattle set a new city record for recycling rates in 2006, with 47.5 percent of the city's residential, commercial and self-haul waste heading to recycling bins instead of the landfills. That’s a good thing. Did you know that every single day, we send a mile-long train filled with......

What's so great about the Stumbling Monk? The Monk isn't fancy. It's not stocked with 400 different bottles of beer. In fact, they don't have much more than 10 taps of beer. They don't have food. We're not sure we've ever heard music in there. Yet, it manages to be one of our favorite places to grab a pint in the city. Located near the Starbucks on Olive Way in Capitol Hill, the Monk......

"Bellevue from the North" by Alan Cordova, a Seattlest Flickr Contributor Our neighbors across the lake, have come up with a unique way to deal with tree root systems buckling sidewalks and city streets. Starting Thursday, The City of Bellevue will begin installing rubber sidewalks in areas where tree roots have destroyed traditional concrete walkways. The first rubber sidewalks will be installed along a half block stretch of Bellevue's NE 10th St., just north......

Neumos was sold out Saturday night, and over-sold. By the time the Mountain Goats appeared for a sweaty, high-humidity singalong ("St. Joseph's baby aspirin," "Way out in Seattle"), there was not an unpeopled space on the main floor. Security policed a thin strip around the edges of the room, ordered people off chairs, cleared the knot of people on the back stairs hoping for a better view. Upstairs, where the sound is not as good,......

Real Change is setting up camp at City Hall, to protest the city's handling of homelessness and new policies regarding homeless encampments. The planned protest is scheduled for March 13th, with Real Change encouraging supporters to "bring a tent and a friend" down to City Hall. The protest has been spawned by a proposed city protocol, which would force people living in "illegal encampments" to vacate and find somewhere else to live within 48......

Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

Seattle's City Markets hand-drawn advertisements have made national blogs and newspapers. Using the celebrity of the moment or the latest scandal, they entice you to come on in and get a great deal. Previous targets have included Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lynn Spears, Trent Lott, and Ben Affleck. Today The City Market decided to take a political turn with their advertisements, by featuring the democratic front-runners for President, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Happily, a Seattlest......

Downtown's Southern-esque restaurant Sazerac had the misfortune to open in 1997, which meant its decor ten years on -- velvet drapes and cushy banquettes -- looked as dated as a Google-cached snapshot of your homepage. In its review, the Stranger sharpened its claws on the surroundings: "There is some evidence in the tea-dark interior that the decorator was going for a New Orleans-inspired elegance, but somewhere along the way he or she got waylaid at......

The February performance of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues is commonplace in cities across America. In Seattle, "V-Day" will be celebrated with a performance on February 24th at The Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). Sponsoring the event is the Seattle Office of The National Council of Jewish Women. To advertise the performance, The Council produced the colorful print you see to the right. The advertisement is running in The Seattle Weekly and JT News,......

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels either loves condos or he hates renters. The Mayor's Office has indefinitely frozen a $350,000 fund created to compensate Seattle area renters who'd been forced out of housing due to condo-conversions. Mayor Nickels wants to wait and see if the legislature passes a statewide bail-out funded by developers this winter. Because it makes perfect sense to rely on the people who are profiting most off of Seattle renter's misery. If......

Photograph of Michael Strahan, coach Tom Coughin (holding the Vince Lombardi trophy) and quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning by Tien Mao Gothamist was amazed after the Giants won the Super Bowl, the city went wild, and it witnessed a ticker-tape parade.Barack Obama drew 20,000+ ahead of Seattle’s Saturday caucus.Londonist had Super Tuesday too.Elusive guerrilla street artist Banksy revisits Los Angeles.After the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and came this close to making......

The UK's Guardian Unlimited spoke to Seattle's Fleet Foxes (thanks, CHS) ("a group whose unique sound is hymnal and baroque, with mandolins and banjos and extraordinary vocal harmonies") and got the scoop on Seattle's development opportunity. Lead singer Pecknold says something like, "Go Sodo, young bands," saying that Georgetown "is probably a bit like SoHo in New York in the 1970s, with a lot of industrial space." But what got our attention is this nugget,......

According to an article today's PI, it looks as if the city will be spending some money to study the possibility of adding more streetcars to the city's streets. The Transportation Committee passed a bill approving a feasibility study for six lines yesterday. The study, as approved by the committee, would estimate construction costs per mile and yearly operation and maintenance costs for the six lines. Among other issues, it would identify detailed street corridors,......

We were impressed by this morning's Times article about the need to increase bicycle safety on the city's streets. Writer Mike Lindblom stays away from polarizing histrionics. Instead he makes bicyclists seem like sane, good people who just want to make it to work alive:At each end of the Fremont Bridge, road signs tell car drivers to yield to bikes -- southbound motorists turning right toward Seattle Pacific University will wait for the bicyclists pedaling......

One of the oldest jokes in the book is at the expense of the Sixth Amendment: how can twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty be counted as your peers? Juries, after all, are populated by the unemployed and retirees--people who don't have to actually work for a living. But alas, should you find yourself accused of knocking over a liquor store, defrauding a bank, or killing your significant other, retirees and the......

Photo by Cynthia ParkSeattlest's cousin is among the 75 people trapped in Diablo, a City-Light owned town in the North Cascades. There's no danger--they are in contact with the outside world and if they need supplies, City Light will helicopter some it. But they'll probably first finish what they've got. My cousin reports via the irrepressible Tubes:It is snowing heavily right now. Three more feet are anticipated over the next 3 days. DOT says the......

Seattle’s first new strip club in nearly 20 years is set to open sometime this summer in the basement of Fantasy Unlimited, ironically right on the S.L.U.T. line. With a nod to freedom of speech, the newest addition to the Déjà Vu family marks the end of the city’s 17 year moratorium on such establishments and is considered a huge victory for First Amendment activists and dirty old men alike. And to think, people......

For those who don't know, the city of Shoreline lies just beyond the northern city limits of Seattle. Incorporated in 1995, Shoreline has an approximate population of 54,000 -- just shy of Cheyenne, Wyoming's 55,000. Shoreline's chief import is twenty-something first-time home owners while the chief export is the snow which flies off of our Subaru Outbacks and Foresters as we cruise down I-5 toward downtown Seattle. Here are some shots of the winter wonderland......

Photo by lachance Yet another greasy Seattle landmark has fallen victim to the mass character exodus currently enveloping this city of heartless opportunists. Andy’s Diner, otherwise known as the “train car café" on Fourth Avenue South is closing. Mozzarella sticks will be a rare commodity in Ballard with the closing of Sunset Lanes and Denny’s, and now SODO will be deprived of the Prime Steak and booze that Andy’s so graciously offered this city for......

Following the announcement that Seattle's crime rate is the lowest it's been in 40 years, Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur has an article about how it doesn't feel that way, given the the shooting at the party downtown, the shooting of DéChé Morrison, the stabbing of Shannon Harps, the schoolteacher who got beat into the pavement on East Pine, and the woman hit in the head with a hammer. I was glad to hear about......

Around the Seattlest newsroom, this contributor's distrust of Real Change News is well known; we've long been dubious of how their editorial side balances activism and reporting. (Since the paper has paid, non-indigent writers, supported by charitable donation and the sale of copies, which is itself more or less an act of charity, we've always wondered why they aren't more consistent and aggressive going after the city for its manifold failures. Could it be they......

There's a nice little piece over at Crosscut this morning about Georgetown's Rainier Cold Storage Stock House (and the demise of), but just like the neighborhood opposition to the building's demolition, it's too little too late. To be fair, the building's owners broke their way through many walls (a much beloved building that defines a neighborhood, an official Seattle Landmark) with the wrecking ball of public safety: it's going to collapse onto Airport Way,......

The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner points out a head-exploding irony in the Sonics' legal case to escape their Key Arena lease. For a lifetime, we've heard professional sports owners trot out the argument that we ought to pay for their arenas because they provide an economic benefit to the community. Think of the waiters, the parking attendants, the ushers and all the people that make money when the team plays. Or don't--they'd be getting their......

"Shipping cranes" by Murray plays guitar We never tire of looking at pictures of the cranes. Here, Murray was able to sneak up on them as they pause by the waterside to enjoying a refreshing drink. We can almost hear the classical music in the background as they raise and lower their necks in time to the melody. Fortunately, our shipping cranes don't migrate south for the winter, and neither does most of our......