Slow! by smohundro, another fun image found in our wonderful Seattlest Flickr Pool.......

This Seattlest's liver already hurts just thinking about all the beers we're going to try this weekend. Granted, the Hard Liver Festival at Brouwer's Cafe in Fremont officially runs all week. But, some of the good stuff will be gone before the afternoon is out on the opening day this Saturday (Doors at 11am). But, if you don't like crowds, don't come on Saturday....it will most likely be packed by noon. The sixth annual......

Seattlest first heard about the Raveonettes from a troubled, neurotic friend. He recommended their '03 release Chain Gang of Love, which struck us as analogous to that friendship: addictive and harping on the same two or three themes. The dark, early '60s-nostalgic Danish pop group played at Neumos this weekend, and the show too was like that odd, long-ended relationship. The first three songs gave us goosebumps, and the rest of the set (with......

This Seattlest had some family visiting this weekend and felt it was his duty to show them some of his favorite beer spots in town, even if they could probably care less. There were quite a few beers of note that were on tap and should still be around. We also found a few bottles of Lost Abbey Judgement Day at Esquin Wine this weekend. We didn't realize the Seattle market was getting this......

Coming home from work on the bus last night, we got to thinking about how even getting to vote on a light-rail package this year is going to be an uphill fight. The dire prospects for light rail anytime soon pushed us to extrapolate the costs to our psyche of waiting during the ride home. First we had to run a few blocks in the rain to catch the 8. While admittedly, we should have......

Yeah, we've got the same lame resolution as everyone else for 2008: Eat healthier and get to the gym more often. But, as we sit here drinking our first beer of 2008, a 6 month old homebrewed stout, we realized that we need a few beer goals for 2008. Following are a few things we plan to accomplish in the following year. 1) Finally make that trip to Walking Man Brewing in Stevenson, WA. Some......

Last night Seattlest made our way down to take a look at the big art installation at the Belmont. We didn't bother to get a ticket, but figured we'd be able to charm our way in regardless (we were). Walking up to the building, it was hard to not get excited. Sure, there was art to be seen, but this wasn't just art, this was an event. The crowds outside, the crowds inside, and......

Walking down 15th the other afternoon, we were a little Hitchcocked out by the sight of a crowd of crows (or ravens, the comments section is of two minds about which) assembled on a neighbor's house and lawn. Naturally, we immediately suspected said neighbors of being witches. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Live and let magick, we say.) A woman got out of her car while we were taking the picture and,......

Dive bars are not supposed to have good beer, right? Well, this is not exactly a dive - but it is definitely a little unpolished compared to most good beer bars in the city. That is just fine with Seattlest. Duck Island is located just up Aurora on the north side of Greenlake, right next to Beth's Cafe and in the same 2 block strip as Kangaroo & Kiwi and Uber Tavern. The Beer:......

First things first: the Tegan and Sara show at the Triple Door tonight is sold out, but we did see a lot of SRO happening last night, so you might take your chances. Or simply show up at the Queen Anne Easy Street Records at 4pm today for their in-store appearance. Either way, they come highly recommended by us, and you might as well make plans to see them at the Showbox on December 3.......

Pearl Jam’s singer and most frequent songwriter will be releasing a solo album bunch of songs later this year. Without the four guys who, surrounding him, comprise the one band that survived the grunge explosion/implosion and still rocks today. It seems he and Sean Penn think so much alike (politically? Madonna-ly?) that Vedder recorded a near-recordful of songs for Penn’s latest directorial effort, Into the Wild. (Eddie contributed to previous Penn projects I Am Sam......

Seattlest decided to check out the new Tap House Grill yesterday evening. They opened earlier this week in the old Planet Hollywood location right next to Fox Sports Grill, on 6th Ave. between Pike and Pine. No matter what you think about the place, they do have an impressive amount of beer. The wall behind the bar is lined with 160 taps. They offer a solid selection of local beers mixed with offerings from......

Outside Key Arena last night, there were a few religious protesters with big signs urging passersby to repent of their evil ways, but inside the venue was a packed house eager to see The Police for their first tour in twenty years. The crowd definitely skewed older (and drunker), kinda like your parents at Oktoberfest, and the stage was sparsely set for the band's three solitary figures. As always, Sting was in one of......

Is working for beer really work at all? The Seattle International Beerfest (SIB) will take place again this year at Seattle Center from June 29 to July 1. You will have to act soon though if you would like to work as a volunteer and earn yourself some beer. You can earn up to 43 beer tickets by working shifts pouring beer to the masses. SIB has the best selection of Seattle's beer festivals.......

If you love stouts, like we do, you are going to want to hop in your car/get on the bus/ride your bike up to Uber Tavern in Greenlake for a taste of the 2003 Silver City Imperial Stout. First off, Uber Tavern is just an amazing beer bar. It has been around less than a year, but has a very strong following among locals and beer nerds. Get there early if you go on......

When we got to the Crocodile last night, the Norwegian invasion was in full swing, with singer/songwriter Thomas Dybdahl [deebdoll] holding the audience in the palm of his hand. He's low-key and instantly likable, and a crooner of bittersweet verses about girls who have baggage ("Adelaide" and "Cecilia") and middle-aged men who need to break out of their routine ("Henry"). He closed with "From Grace," which he claims he wrote in his basement and......

Yesterday, we caught a snippet of the news about a search and rescue effort near Snoqualmie Pass that left us shaking our heads. A woman who was snowshoeing with two friends went missing, and the account we heard on KOMO (which is the same one on their site) was that she got tired and turned around early to head back to the car while her friends continued on for a while. When they got to......

We were going to write about style after one of our valued commenters (and one of our three readers) took Seattlest Dan to task for carrying an umbrella. We envisioned inking one of those grandiloquent "A Moral Defense of..." columns that one sees written in defense of some generally unpopular concept; however, dumb things like work and its attendant personal-time-sucking qualities derailed us. Fortunately, the excellent feature story in last week's birdcage liner has......

Local novelist Pauls Toutonghi wrote in with his thoughts about the death of Nobel Prize winning author Naghib Mahfouz. With the strange intimacy and speed of our new, wired world, I found out this morning that Naghib Mahfouz -- the 94-year old Egyptian novelist -- had died. I knew he was dead forty minutes after it happened. An email appeared in my inbox from CNN -- announcing that the world had lost another Nobel Laureate.......

The final full week of SIFF is upon us. It's time to get some last few films before the sun sets on this year's fest. This week's got a couple great music events as well: Friday night, Portastatic will be on hand to perform a specially-commissioned live score accompanying circus freakshow-themed silent film The Unknown (more about that in a few days). Meanwhile, Thursday night's the Face the Music Rock Party at Neumo's, featuring......

After bringing in the new year with an exercise of excess (well, unless you're Seattlest), you likely created a new resolution to take it a bit easier on yourself. Well, it's been the better part of a week and the weekend is approaching, so it's time to realize that you made that resolution in haste, and you should be more realistic and adjust accordingly. Excess is fine, so long as it's in the right groups......

No comments, just schedules. (Because we're lazy, that's why.) At Center on Contemporary Art, 410 Dexter Ave. N.: Wednesday 11/9: Charles Burns promotes Black Hole at 7 p.m. (More details below.) At Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 South Main Street: Tuesday 11/8: Joshua Wolf Shenk promotes Lincoln's Melancholy at 7:30 p.m. Thursday 11/10: Dan Savage promotes The Commitment at 7:30 p.m. Friday 11/11: Doug Peacock promotes Walking It Off at 6 p.m. Friday 11/11: Daniel......

Werner Herzog and David Cronenberg---the names alone are enough to make a crowd of film fanatics gasp. That's exactly why local den of cinema-geekery Seattle International Film Festival Group is spotlighting each filmmaker's work with screenings next week at the Seattle Art Museum; first Herzog and then Cronenberg. The Herzog series features four of his films: The Wild Blue Yonder and Lessons of Darkness on Tuesday the 8th and Wheel of Time and The White......

The summer’s dearth of classical music is finally over. In fact, there’s so much happening around town we may have trouble fitting it all in without overwhelming you. Bellevue Opera opens its season this weekend with La Bohème by Puccini. If you’ve never seen an opera before, this would be a good one to start with. First of all, the music is already part of the general consciousness; you’ll recognize a great deal of it......