We got an Amtrak phone survey call over the weekend and they wanted to know if having a snack bar in business class would make us more/less likely to travel by rail. How much would that be worth? In-station hotspots? Now how much would we pay? Private lounge with butler? On the other hand, what if they put leather seats in coach and added more legroom? How did we feel about that? Bit of a......

Over the weekend, we made three trips to the new Stumptown Coffee on 12th Ave (next to Cafe Presse). We're not actually coffee geeks, it just worked out that way. (These people are coffee geeks.) We're more of a cafe geek. If you aren't familiar, Stumptown Coffee is based in Portland, and this is their big move into the Seattle market. (Edmonds' ZuKafe claims to have been their first Puget Sound wholesale account.) Here's Seattle......

Municipal WiFi was once all the rage in city governments, but the networks currently in place are falling down where it matters most (poorer neighborhoods, of course) and those cities with time to back out are doing so. Chicago just called it quits. "We realized - after much consideration - that we needed to reevaluate our approach to provide universal and affordable access to high speed Internet as part of the city's broader digital inclusion......

We knew Bremerton residents were the step-chilins of the Washington State Ferry System, but now that wireless access for the 55-minute run has been delayed again we're starting to suspect a conspiracy. Bainbridge has been happily browsing away on their 30-minute jog since like the mid-nineties or something, but can Bremerton catch any of that wifi gold? Hell no. At least not until July at the earliest. Of course, the Rich Passage is the......

It's like we were just saying about Starbucks the other day, only if we were the Washington Post instead of a city blog:For most Seattleites, what Schultz called "the watering down of the Starbucks experience" is stale news -- akin to reports that the Seattle SuperSonics (which Schultz sold last year) are a losing National Basketball Association team or that Seattle winters are wet. "Like, duh, I have felt that way about Starbucks for......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an......

--The P-I gazes into the crystal PDF and fortells the future of downtown's condo development. Words here. --Portland vandals don't like Starbucks. --Vancouver cops don't like WiFi. --A new Modest Mouse track has escaped into the wild. --A local blogger takes on Digg. We want nothing to do with this. In fact we never heard of Michael Hanscom. Wrong number! --Tomorrow morning is going to be the warmest Saturday morning you will ever experience......

Seattlest rode the southbound Sounder last week. We broke out the sexy laptop to work on a lame, new post that we had rolling around in our heads and that just wouldn't go away (lucky you!). Naturally, the promiscuous little minx that is our sleek MacBook asked if we wanted to join some wireless network; its name was “Sounder_302”. We evaluated the name and, figuring that it wasn't one of the millions of mysterious,......

This was not a very happy week for the -ist network as one of our own, Phillyist co-editor Star C. Foster, passed away early in the week. Her wit, intelligence, and good nature shone through the site, making Phillyist an immensely fun read. She was loved by many and will be missed by all. Phillyist paid tribute to her this week with a heartfelt letter to her and an obituary. And now, the awkward......

Washington State Ferries is cancelling free WiFi and attempting to convince us that they never actually offered free WiFi - That was a beta program..that lasted for a year. Starting next month, WSF will be charging for access to the internet. WiFi Networking News has more: They'll charge airport-like rates of $3 for 15 minutes (25 cents thereafter), $7 per 24 hour period, and $30 per month. The WSF email that announces these charges, also......

Seattlest likes a) chocolate b) cafes and c) endorphins. Not necessarily in that order and certainly not exclusively, but those are some things we like, so we find it very difficult to walk past those chocolate cafes. Dilettantes on Broadway - We lick the glass. Something a bit closer to home would be nice, though, and that prayer was answered recently by Chocolati on 45th. No surprises on the menu here: chocolate drinks which......

-The UW Daily went to Tubs and concluded, "Given the convenience of Tubs and the legitimacy of the establishment, I decided students should be more willing to try out the hot tub rooms." -You know, 45th actually does suck. Seattlest can't even cross it on foot without stumbling on the wavy pavement so we understand why it's made the mayor's "Dirty Dozen." -Themed car decorations rule and "Primates of the World" from Ballard is......

If you thought Southcenter was a massive blight of consumption run wild (chill out, commie) at 1,326,218 square feet you ain't seen nothing yet. From Abercrombie and Fitch (regular and kids) to Zales Jewelry, there are 193 flavors all told so if it's mass produced and it's for sale, you'll find it there. Heeemongus sometimes isn't big enough, though. Southcenter (actually Westfield Southcenter, now) is adding $200 million worth of new stores and restaurants.......

Hate the library's new one-week checkout period for DVDs? Love the new self-checkout capability? Tired of trying to figure out how to escape from the shiny Seattle Central Library when your meter's going to expire in five minutes and you're somewhere called the "mixing room"? Think the new Douglass-Truth branch's extension "promises to be the second addition to Seattle’s library system from a mind that has an understanding of what constitutes and what doesn’t constitute......

Torontoist throws down the gauntlet and challenges all comers: pillow fight, bitch. They also stand up for a fellow blogger taking heat from the TTC and welcome city-wide WiFi. SFist can finally admit it: It's possible that Bary Bonds juiced. Is Bay Area artist (tempted to put quotes around that) Thomas Kinkaid "kinda crappy" or "explosively crappy" or does he just like marking territory? SFist wonders. Technology comes in the form of new Mac goodness......

“The sun never sets at Sunset Bowl.” So says the ad in the Stranger, though if the present trend of alley closures continues, we fear the Ballard alley could also go the way of Leilani Lanes (and, uh, the British Empire). The questionable slogan refers to the 24/7 hours at Sunset, which is always hopping whenever we’re there, though we don’t bowl at 4 a.m., either. Still, it’s probably Seattle’s best known, most beloved,......

Last year, while Seattlest was enjoying the "free" part of "freelancing," we packed up our PowerBook and set off to visit our local library -- the Seattle Public Library's North East Branch. We figured we'd relax among the stacks and search the Web. We discovered to our chagrin that the library did not offer Wi-Fi. No SPL branch offered Wi-Fi, in fact, except for the bauble-tastic Central Library. So we trundled off to nearby Grateful......

When some websites have a real life get-together they do it at someone's home, a bar, or at Ralphs Grocery in Belltown. Not Engadget. The gadgetry blog has a readership to match its prodigious posting pace and when they have an event the ability to drag three table together and free WiFi are not enough to secure a location. Tomorrow's Engadget meet-up, for example, is at Neumos. Maybe next year they'll be rounding up their......

Tonight’s nationally televised bird-on-bird action gives us much to ponder: Shaun Alexander’s kickass season, Terrell Owens’s jackass behavior, and that dumbass who dumped his dead mother’s ashes on the Eagles’ home turf. Most of all, however, we’re preoccupied with Seattle’s finest cheesesteakery, Philadelphia Fevre. The Fevre’s signature offering involves thin strips of beef and onions, grilled to perfection and served on a French roll, and enhanced with such options as peppers, mushrooms, and Cheez......

Not too long ago, we brought to your attention the fact that select metro buses had started purportedly offering wireless connections. We were fairly pleased to discover that the first leg of our commute, Route 48, was supposedly already online, with the piece-de-resistance of our daily slog, Route 545, slated for next in line. ( We'd still be torn between reading our book, a time-honored bus activity that we actually look forward to, and getting......

Seattlest's bus ride to work lasts about twelve minutes. That's just long enough for us to find a seat, sit in it, open our bag, take out our laptop and boot it up, Start, Shutdown, Yes we would like the computer to shut down, put it away and get off the bus. Ah, another productive commute! You didn't notice it, but during the minute our computer was on it attempted and failed to find any......

A professional journalist was dispatched to last week's Seattle bloggers meet-up. Write ups have been online since five minutes after the event, but the Post Intelligencer's appears in today's paper as well as online, and we'd like to offer a very special congratulations to the paper today for finally doing the links right. From the P-I: For the members of the Seattle Weblogger Meetup Group, the intersection of man (and woman) and machine is a......

Victrola is a cool coffee house on Capitol Hill where tech-savy baristas serve up beautiful espresso. They offer free wi-fi, but in an effort to reclaim their atmosphere, they have turned off the wireless router on weekends. The result? "The place was noisy and jumpin' - people actually conversed," according to a Victrola barista. Local tech guru Glenn's report at Wi-Fi Networking News has generated an impromptu philosophical debate about the cultural implications of free......

Seattle is a great progenitor of technology, but only now, in the year 2005, is municipal Wi-Fi finally coming to town. To put this in context, Spokane has had a wireless downtown corridor for over a year. Is Seattle behind the times? Mayor Nickels launched the service on May 18th by logging on via laptop in Columbia City. His office's press release cites the Seattle Wi-Fi Project's goal to... ...attract more customers to local business......

No, sorry, we won't be broadcasting messages to Mars with the Space Needle. Earthbound denizens of Queen Anne, Downtown and Vulcanville (South Lake Union, of course) will be able to take advantage of a new wireless service from Speakeasy, though, with one of the planned antennas sitting on top of the Space Needle. This is not your father's WiFi, of course. Speakeasy's planning a WIMAX-like service that's faster than the T-1 connection you likely use......

Whether you are from New York and moved to Seattle, or live in Seattle and have dispelled thoughts of moving to New York, we at Seattlest want to assure you: you made the Right Decision. As evidence, here is another installment of: Great Things You Can Get in Seattle but Not in New York vs. Great Things in New York You Can Also Get in Seattle. Seattle, but not New York: An Authentic Philly......

Passionate technology enthusiast, reporter, consultant, personality and entrepreneur Chris Pirillo recently moved himself and his Gnomedex conference to Seattle. Seattlest checked in on him to make sure he's settling in, altough we haven't had a chance to stop by with a box of cookies yet. Name, web browser, news aggregator? Chris Pirillo, Maxthon, NewsGator. Maxthon is a free overlay to Internet Explorer and kicks the stuffing out of other browsers out there today. NewsGator integrates......

Seattlest wishes you a Happy Easter Sunday and in the spirit of the holiday we'd like to pass along two Easter food links from opposite ends of the, uh, civilization scale. ">See Seattest Kate on her home turf investigating the high pleasures of chocolate. ">Then indulge in the low brow culinary stylings of Jake at Gothamist. We know you've seen all of this stuff before (because you read Seattlest every day, right?), but some......

Where do you go to find yummy links? Seattlest goes all over the place, but some of the yummiest links are found at del.icio.us. Huh? What's that? Read on: del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others. The fading......

Sounder commuter rail service from Tacoma is getting a technological boost from its own passengers. SeattleWireless member Casey Halverson is giving a not-so-subtle hint to Sound Transit by offering WiFi in the cars he rides in to and from Seattle every day. The open wireless node can be found in the first car of the last morning train and in Car 403 on the 5:10pm return trip. Use SSID "FreeInternetAccess" or "seattlewireless" to connect -......