Lee Smith hated shop-hopping to get the clean, street-ready look he wanted. more ›

Casey McNerthney took a break from answering your questions about driving while texting and Four Loko today to add an interesting piece from the archives to the Seattle PI's Big Blog, regarding the University Village's history. Here's the long and short of it: more ›

We’re not trying to dissuade you from meeting Dan Aykroyd! We just suggest you focus on what’s truly and awesomely bizarre about him: his UFO obsession. more ›

OSCARS TRIVIA: In case you haven't had enough of the Academy Awards already, Atlas Foods is kicking off their new weekly trivia night with questions about all things Oscar. This trivia night is all ages (a rarity, it seems), but happy hour-priced drinks are available to those of legal age. Teams can have up to four people. more ›

Seattle fashionistas, get ready because your H&M prayers are being answered. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, in addition to its Southcenter location, ever-popular H&M will open two new stores in Seattle proper next month. A 19,000-square-foot, two-story location will open in University Village on Sept. 12 and a 16,000-square-foot location will open at 520 Pike St. in downtown Seattle one little week later, on Sept. 18. more ›

Somehow, someone managed to walk off with $1,500 worth of underwear from the University Village Victoria's Secret last week. Over 200 pairs of panties were stolen, the underwear thief managed to avoid the store's security cameras, and no one has been able to provide a decent description of the suspect. This past May, over 600 pairs of Victoria's Secret underwear were stolen from a Bellevue store, and there are also no suspects in that case. All this large-scale underwear stealing has us wondering if cheap cotton underoos are suddenly a valuable commodity on the black market. more ›

"Here" meaning "Southcenter," but we'll take what we can get. The first (and largest) of three stores planned to open in the Seattle area this year, the Southcenter H&M opens at 10 a.m. today. It's part of the mall's big expansion, which features a whole mess of new stores and restaurants, making the Tukwila shopping center the largest indoor mall in Washington and Oregon. Recession be damned. more ›

Real estate search engine Rotten Neighbor promises to help you "find bad neighbors before you move." What evils have users uncovered behind the closed doors of the Emerald City? more ›

And in news related to what will fill the iPhones purchased at the U Village Apple Store this week: UW has announced that not only will they not protect students from file-sharing lawsuits, they will hunt them down and club them to death to protect the violated rights-holders. Ok, a shoot-on-sight order isn't in effect yet--for the time being the University of Washington will only serve legal papers to students who use the school's network to download music. more ›

A couple of months ago, we noticed that the charger for our PowerBook was starting to wonk out. We'd plug it in and have to twiddle it just so before the orange "thanks for the juice" light came on. more ›

If you love Fran's salted caramels, well, you're in good company -- the salted kind make up 75% of Fran's caramel business. How good are they? So good that when the New York Times Magazine did an article on caramel + salt, Fran's is the first non-NYC purveyor they mention:

Leave it to the Americans to take such destruction one step further, by pairing it with chocolate. In 2001, Fran Bigelow, a chocolate maker in Seattle, was looking for a new garnish for her chocolate-covered caramels when she tried some of the gray salt she had been seeing in restaurants. She had to give out lots of free samples to get people to try it. But now, she said, her salted chocolate caramels make up 75 percent of the Fran’s Chocolates caramel franchise. “The salt pushes the flavors forward, giving it more depth,” she told me. Once people experience it, they rarely go back: “When you try plain — I mean chocolate-covered — it just doesn’t awaken your palate.” Other palate-awakening chocolates include the salted caramel-filled thimbles from Sahagun in Portland, Ore., and the salted caramel balls from L’Artisan du Chocolat in London — also their top seller and worth their weight in shipping costs.

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This year St. George's Day falls on a Sunday, so chances are you’ll be attending a party tonight or Saturday. The question then becomes how will you celebrate the actual holiday? Simple. Dine on an English meal. more ›

Seattle Weekly Editor-in-Chief Knute Berger white unflighted recently, moving from Kirkland back to Seattle. more ›

Baseball season is underway, and, unless they are Tampa Bay Devil Rays, major league hitters can once again enjoy the sharp pleasure of cleanly striking a pitched ball. more ›