Unlike our beloved baseball All Star Game, we’ve tended to skip the NBA's version in recent years. However, with our hero Brandon Roy, in Sunday's game we can’t wait to watch our fellow ex-Bulldog cram some FANtastic™ action down the East’s face. However, we’ll be in Vancouver--sorry TNT. Local Connections: Brandon Roy--Played for Garfield High School and the University of Washington. Currently for the Portland Trailblazers. Steve Nash--Native of Victoria. Then U-Dub coach Lynn Nance......

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......

We may have the lowest crime rate in 40 years, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Depressing crime news item #1 The guy cops thought might have killed Shannon Harps did not kill Shannon Harps. At least, his DNA didn't match samples found at the scene. He'll likely be released today. Once again, cops are suspect-less in the murder which happened three weeks ago now, and the terrifying possibility that Harps was murdered at......

An artist who "used his own blood as ink" is now cops' main suspect in the murder of Shannon Harps. The 29-year-old man was picked up three days after the murder on a parole violation--being drunk on New Year's Eve, the night Harps was murdered. Cops haven't charged him with anything. They interviewed him the night he was arrested because, according to the P-I, a tipster said he "had made statements about the case in......

The British show Conversation With A Serial Killer was in town this weekend, taping a segment at Dante's, the four-decade-old college bar north of the UW campus on Roosevelt. Producers interviewed owner Zach Peterson and hired an actor to "portray" Bundy, that is, sit on bar stools and look menacing. Bundy, it's believed, picked up his first victim at the bar in 1974. At least, Dante's is the last place the victim was seen. The......

Well Governor Gregoire's on a bit of a rampage, isn't she! First she announces that, replacement or no, the Viaduct is coming down in 2012. Now, an announcement that you'll have to pay a toll to cross 520 as soon as next year. The Times reports that the toll would be around $6 at peak hours. Why tolls? The state needs $2 billion to pay its share of the new 520 bridge, scheduled to open......

You know how when you're at the bus stop and the Local shows up and it's packed and obviously only has room for you if you stand in the aisle and clutch at a post and you think, "I'm better than that. I'm waiting for the Express," the Express--which is scheduled to come only minutes later--never shows, late or ever? Then, thirty-five minutes later you're presented with the same dilemma, only this time the Local......

The other week we enthused about the new passenger-only ferry to Port Townsend, read the post about the beer in Port Townsend, and put two and two together. The ferry is temporary, until January 6 last we heard, though you can sign a petition to keep the Seattle-to-Port Townsend run around. Here are the departure times. If you're tempted to make a dash for it, here are a few tips. It turns out the Seattle......

The Seattle Times is reporting, way at the top in an unlikable breaking news sentence (read: cub reporter with a police scanner), that there has been an accident involving the Mercer Streetcar. According to the bolded sentence paragraph, an SUV ran an intersection and collided with an empty streetcar at the corner of Mercer and Terry. If this is true every anti-streetcar hippie just got their second morning wood of the…morning. Exclusive Seattlest Video of......

An HIV vaccine that helps you get HIV was not the idea behind the STEP Study, but that's what scientists are saying they got. 100 volunteers in the program were from Seattle, and the now-halted trial was co-sponsored by the Vaccine Trials Network, which works out of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The Seattle Times and the P-I are both reporting on the story, which if nothing else illustrates a case of Donald Rumsfeld's......

Jean Godden used to write a column where she would point out humorous license plates, as well as the little things that make living in Seattle the silliest. Now she is on the city council and running for re-election. Her main opponent is weightlifting coach Joe Szwaja, who spent some time on the Madison City Council. According to those in the know, "a [Madison] commuter light rail system has been proposed…but has remained on paper......

To mark Stevie Wonder’s first tour in a decade and his stop at the Chateau Ste Michelle Winery down the road in Woodland, our compadres over at The Seattle Times invited its readers take their "Stevie Wonder Quiz" in their Monday edition. Having fond memories of one Stevland Hardaway Judkins as this funky white blog’s first introduction to Motown, funk and the ever –ambiguous “R&B”, Seattlest curiously accepted The Times’ challenge to find out just......

Yesterday Seattlest said the following: Sally Clark has pulled her nightlife plan citing the fact that everyone from the mayor to the other city council members to the lowliest 1st ave drunk hates it. Which is only vaguely true. Clark pulled the licensing portion of her nightlife plan that would require clubs to receive a license from the city which could then be revoked at the city's discretion. Kind of like a liquor license,......

Greg Nickels' son Jacob has been charged with one count of conspiracy and four counts of theft stemming from a multi state casino cheating ring. The Times is reporting that the group allegedly stole millions of dollars from casinos, which lovers of pain-free knee caps will note is a bad idea. The group allegedly used a technique known as "false shuffle" to rig hands. We know nothing about casinos, cards, or fancy shuffling so......

Michael Chabon's new book The Yiddish Policeman's Union is THE SHIT. We finished it in a little over a weekend recently and regretted not that we'd once again failed to execute our long-held dream of eating every single item on the Taco Bell menu on Cinco de Mayo night. Hack publicity writers have called Yiddish "brilliantly imagined" and "a novel only Michael Chabon could write." Uh, yeah. Whatever. Here's the nut: this is not a......

As evidenced by last summer's Qwest Field sellout for Real Madrid, Seattle is full of soccer fans. As further evidenced by the total lack of recognition given to Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer when he pled for fan support at halftime of that game, Seattle is not full of Sounders fans. Which is perhaps why last week's Sounders opener didn't make our radar. Or maybe it's because the home opener isn't until May 5th. But they've......

Permit us to bloviate some on the death of David Halberstam today in a car crash, which is utter bullshit considering that the guy reported from fricking Vietnam and he dies in a traffic accident in San Mateo (the car that hit him driven by, in a terrible irony, a Berkeley journalism student) (actually, I'm an idiot, his driver was a Berkeley student, so there's no irony, just terribleness). Halberstam's Summer of '49, about the......

Seattle will continue to have two daily newspapers, at least for the immediate future. It sounds like both papers were unwilling to leave things entirely in the hands of the arbitrator who was set to deliver a binding verdict on the dispute: They settled with each other and the terms include the Times buying the P-I out of JOA stipulation that the smaller paper would continue to receive revenue in the event that that paper......

Even the best managers, for instance, Earl Weaver, admit that--at best--they can win an extra two or three games a year for their team. Mike Hargrove didn't win a game today, but he saved a loss. Background: A major league baseball game must go five innings to be considered official. If the home team is ahead, all they have to do is get the visiting team out in the top of the fifth. So--in Cleveland......

Republicans in Olympia are tired of the Spend-o-crat majority rendering their very existence moot, and they've decided to do something about it—make funny noises. Representative Dan Roach, who is proving that douchebaggery is hereditary, was complaining that Democrats were railroading a bill through the House to benefit trial lawyers when he went a little off the rails himself--launching an attack on House majority leader Lynn Kessler's trial lawyer husband Keith. The Times' David Postman takes......

We were jazzed, and, it appears, overly optimistic, when we heard Seattle U might go D1 in basketball again. Having two Seattle colleges in Division 1 b-ball looks less likely, or at least less likely to happen soon, now that the West Coast Conference has decided not to expand. The WCC--the one Gonzaga and U of P are in--seemed like a perfect fit for Seattle U: Most of the schools are Catholic ones, like Seattle......

About two inches here near Greenlake. Some downtown streets are closed. KOMO just reported that even full buses with chains have bad traction. They also report about 15 accidents in the last 30 minutes. But, Aurora and I-5 look pretty good, at least in Seattle, if you can get there. Seattle schools are closed. The snow has stopped now, and the temperatures may go up--but--we may get more snow tonight, and it will refreeze......

The 2007 Washington Legislative session begins today, and Governor Gregoire wants to spend big. Her argument, we have a $1.9 billion surplus, and we should spend that money on education, health care, and other gross poor people things. Of the four billion dollars in increased spending she is looking to add to the state’s two year operating budget, she wants half to be spent on education. None, however, will be spent to track down Sasquatch.......

King County Journal has the rundown of which areas are still without power, and when they're likely to get it. But more outages could be on the way. A relatively mild storm is expected Wednesday , and the Times gets this dire prediction from a City Light spokesperson:"If we get even moderate winds, we may find quite a few of those trees that were just on the edge may tip over, and we may have......

The Times reports today that it was a sort of flash flood that drowned Kate Fleming, an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer, in her basement Thursday night, as she tried to move her expensive audio equipment upstairs. As she gathered it all up, a huge surge of water slammed into the house and began filling a windowless room in the basement with a force so strong that Fleming couldn't open the door. By the time......

The Times has already called on the School Board to resign. Seattlest is calling for the school board to repeat 9th grade English. They just released their evaluation of Superintendent Raj Manhas, and it's polluted with flaccid language, poorly-defined words, and nonsensical clichés. Any writing teacher would exhaust her red pen with frowny faces trying to edit it. Here's just one example, from the mysterious "Leadership, Advocacy and Communications" section (the only one critical of......

You'd think you could enjoy a quiet evening in your apartment without a crane falling over and killing you, right? Well, not in downtown Bellevue. A crane collapsed onto an apartment building at about 7:30 last night at 108th and 4th, a sound described by various witnesses as "this rumbling like thunder," "a tire blowing out times 1,000" and "like someone had taken several carts full of metal and had thrown them off a......

--Another Seattle Weekly staffer bites the dust. Phillip Dawdy is out. --Head's up Seattle daters: Where's the best place to find, "young, single, heterosexual women who put out?" --Mars Hill's Mark Driscoll has decided that all pastors should travel with a eunuch battalion since their frumpy and unavailable wives do nothing to protect them from the temptations of the road. --Does Simon Cowell do his "insert-city-name-here singers are miserable" act everywhere he visits, or......

The Times' endorsement of Mike McGav!ck has generated the predictable outrage from HorsesAss and The Stranger, but they make good points. Feit shows that the Times' previous editorials put them at odds with pretty much everything McGav!ck stands for. This begs the question, does Joni Balter get to write all the editorials though mid-October and then Frank Blethen pushes her aside to write the big ones? I mean we understand the Times editorial board is......

Those sad, wet, cold people holding signs and waving to you this morning means that it is Election Day. Well not a real one, but a primary. Primaries are designed to get rid of the poor, self-righteous candidates, and settle on two candidates financed by special interests and who are seeking elected offices for purely selfish reasons. In the Democratic Senate race, Maria Cantwell defeated Hong Tran the day Tran didn't become a cable television......