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......

The City Council finally got around to passing "adult cabaret" zoning laws that just might let Seattle develop a strip club scene worthy of a would-be world-class city. But there's a provision that kills one of our brilliant ideas: The new rules, which passed by a unanimous vote, require strip clubs to be at least 800 feet from elementary or secondary schools, child-care centers, community centers, public parks or open space where children tend to......

Strip club owners got their wish: The referendum to overturn Nanny Nickels' anti-ecdysiast laws will be on the ballot in November, not September. At least, so says the PI: The City Council settled the question Monday of when the proposal should go to voters -- not whether it should. That was decided for politicians some time ago when the strip-club industry collected sufficient petition signatures to challenge new rules banning lap dances and dim lighting......

Something needs to be said about Erica Barnett's article in La Strangeur concerning the possibility that the City Council will make the final decision on the Viaduct without the requisite and meaningless public referendum, and that something is: "Hell Yeah!" Do we have to vote on every damn decision that's made around here? The City Council exists to make decisions on transportation infrastructure. That's what they do. Seattlest's job is to spend a little time......

-The City Council got a look at some proposals for the new 520 this week and we're hoping to get to see them ourselves soon. Earlier this week the Montlake neighborhood's Alaska-esque plan to launch traffic into space was shot down by the state. -Joshua Spillane of B'ham went missing from the research vessel Laurence M. Gould near Antarctica earlier this week and the search has been called off. -The Seattle Times has an account......

Bombs Away: We've always been pretty impressed with the huge starling clouds that appear from time to time downtown, but apparently they piss some people off. Haters. Orcas Endangered Officially: Seattlest will comment on this more extensively, but the short of it is that the NOAA announced Puget Sound Orcas to be an endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act today. Dude, Buy My Gold Record: The Stranger's reporting that former Sub Popster Jed......

Property owners along the path of the proposed streetcar line in South Lake Union have always been expected to partially fund the line, and Seattlest always assumed that that meant that Paul Allen was paying for some portion of it and the city would be coughing up the rest. We also assume that property owners along the line not named Paul Allen also thought that. Surprise! South Lake Union commercial residents expected to pony up......

The Seattle Monorail, which has already endured more obloquy than Lindsay Lohan's dietician, is in trouble again. The Seattle P-I has been screaming bloody murder this week, proclaiming on their front page that the Monorail's proposed Green Line will cost "$11 billion." The City Council, which apparently has final say on the project (despite the fact that voters approved it four separate f***ing times), has turned into a Chicken Little brigade, led by longtime......