This is from Sunday’s “Color Run” downtown, a 5K benefitting Ronald McDonald House. Runners were splashed with “color dust” at points along the route. (Note: This is not at all to be confused with the 2005 teen novel The Rainbow Party, or with the false rumor that that novel depicted a real-life fad.)

• Forbes calls Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer the “worst CEO” of a major U.S. company.
• Is the time right again for huge, dense residential mega-projects? The Seattle Housing Authority thinks so. It wants to rebuild Yesler Terrace (a WWII-era low-income apartment site) with a whopping 3,000 privately developed “market rate” units plus office space. That would help subsidize at least as many low-income units as are there now. It would also create a huge new upscale neighborhood just uphill from the International District, and would sop up perhaps 20 percent of new housing construction activity in the whole city.
• Item: A Seattle restaurant’s basement was one huge pot growing operation. Comment: Once again, life imitates the Young Fresh Fellows.
• Guess what? The hedge fund tycoon who wants to own a Seattle basketball team might use the team and the arena deal as hedge fund opportunities!
• Tragic news: Tacoma’s selling two closed library buildings in low income neighborhoods.
• Our ol’ acquaintance Trimpin has another mechanical music/art installation. And it’s even more haunting than his previous works.
• Lit-blogger Nicole Cushing has a beautiful interview with a Seattle treasure, horror author and punk/goth scene vet Willum Pugmire.
• Dept. of Forgotten American History: Author/activist/songwriter Julia Ward Howe created Mother’s Day as an antiwar statement.
• Here’s a concise explanation of just why “business people are terrible at governing.”
• From Cleveland to Pittsburgh and even Detroit, the young and hip (but not rich) are flocking to the Rust Belt cities!
• There’s a new iPad-only online satire magazine called “Punch!”. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the legendary UK satire magazine Punch (published from 1841 to 1992!). Instead, its makers are inspired by the 1980s-1990s U.S. snark mag Spy.
• Publishers of e-books have determined that the best way to keep their authors’ names in the public eye is to have new stuff by them two or more times a year. This means established “name” authors are busier than ever churnin’ out the product.
• Do you, like these e-book authors, desperately need writing inspiration? Take random gibberish letters. Run them through a spell checker. Boom! Random words and phrases to trigger your imagination.

meowonline.org

• Music/performance-art goddess and ex-Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer explains the secret to her astounding success at raising a recording budget thru Kickstarter. It’s all about the long work of gathering and nurturing as many online supporters as you can:

Every person I talk to at a signing, every exchange I have online (sometimes dozens a day), every random music video or art gallery link sent to me by a fan that I curiously follow, every strange bed I’ve crashed on… all of that real human connecting has led to this moment, where I came back around, asking for direct help with a record. Asking EVERYBODY.… And they help because they know I’m good for it. Because they KNOW me.

• After nearly a decade of study and planning, Seattle’s finally giving up on the idea of a city-owned broadband network. Pathetic.
• Time is running out for any hope of saving the historic streamlined ferry Kalakala. Estimated cost of a full restoration: $50 million.
• Ah, if only the Mariners still had some of the players they’d let slip away. If only….
• A Long Island, NY woman is accused of using her hot-dog truck as a cover for arranging “compensated dates” (to use a recent Japanese euphemism). No “sausage” or “buns” puns here, at least not today.
• A Utah woman claims to have found cocaine packed in a box of tampons. Just think of it as an extra measure of pain relief that also leaves you feeling fresh.
• Bill Maher says what everyone except Fox News viewers already knows—that many of the most fervent Obama haters are racist, with different degrees of denial.
• Meanwhile, a Washington Monthly writer believes the Presidential election will be decided by Hispanic voters (i.e., one of the groups the Rabid Right is most virulently bigoted against).
• There’s an anonymous novel out of Portland (originally self published by the author, who only calls himself “The Author”). It’s getting a lot of attention. It’s about a young man’s doomed relationship with “someone who considers Courtney Love to be her role model.” What makes it extra-special is it’s formatted like one of those old “Choose Your Own Adventure” kids’ books. Only every choice “you” make leads to the same miserable ending. I also like the title: Love Is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life.
• Not only are grad students getting buried in piles of student-loan debt, they might not even get into the careers for which they’re studying (cf. the rising number of Ph.Ds on food stamps).
• A marketing analyst calls 2012 “the year of inverse retro-futurism.” Whatever the heck that is.

'water wood' by bette burgoyne; via roqlarue.com

• In deservedly glowing terms, Emily Pothast reviews Red Current (Sweet Fruit), the all-local (and all-female, though that part isn’t advertised) group show now on display at Belltown’s raucous Roq La Rue gallery. If you were there at the even-more-packed-than-usual opening night, go back and actually look at the art.
• Next step for the Seattle “Storefronts” program, in which art-related entrepreneurs take over vacant retail spaces: Auburn.
• Think Bellingham’s full of sports-hatin’ hippies? Think again, as we congratulate the WWU men’s basketball team for winning the NCAA Division II national title.
• There’s just one indignity after another in the sordid tale of a 62-year-old Spokane woman who was ordered to reapply (at less money) for her her food-service job after 19 years. With the new reduced offer too little for her to live on, she turned it down. Then she was denied unemployment benefits. Then her ex-employer contributed a Spokesman-Review guest opinion calling for harsh crackdowns against “bogus” unemployment claims. She eventually got her unemployment back, but she’s still out on her own with no health insurance and not enough retirement savings, at an age when it’s damn tough to get back into the workforce.
• Microsoft is now in the business of raiding botnet-spam operators.
• You might wish otherwise, but most holders of major public offices, and major candidates for those offices, just aren’t comfortable with supporting legalized pot. They don’t believe there’s enough mass support for it. They don’t think it’s an issue worth sticking their necks out.
• The Occupy Tacoma protest was held at a state DOT-owned park near downtown. The state’s not only closed and fenced off the park, they’ve now put it up for sale.
• A flashback to the ’00s: Some folks want to restart the plan for a Ballard to West Seattle monorail!

Learn how we and our immediate forebearers ate!

I’m participating in a History Cafe session about old Seattle restaurant menus. It’s 7 p.m. Thursday at Roy Street Coffee (the off-brand Starbucks) at Broadway and E. Roy on curvaceous Capitol Hill. It’s sponsored by KCTS, HistoryLink.org, MOHAI, and the Seattle Public Library.

Be there or be yesterday’s “fresh sheet.”

• The World Trade Organization (remember them?) sez Boeing gets unfair subsidies from the U.S. gov’t.
• Are an ad agency’s “homeless hotspots” at the SXSW music festival really more demeaning than the Seattle company that  still calls itself “Bumvertising“?
• No, Michael Medved. We’re not secretly jealous of Rush Limbaugh and his awesome power. We’re disgusted by his puerile stupidity, bullying, and bigotry (and yours too).
• The Oregonian won’t run the Doonesbury comics about the GOP’s war against women. A local cartoonist responds by depicting the paper’s readers choosing to “abort” their subscriptions.
• Is there really something particular about the training of soldiers at Lewis-McChord that’s led to these dreadful stories about abuses of power in the Afghan field? Or is it just a coincidence, based on the fact that the base has grown so big, with so many troops transferring in and out of it?
• One of the 1980 American hostages in Iran would rather not see history repeat itself thank you.
• Blogger/editor Maria Popova believes websites should formally adopt a “curator’s code” identifying direct and indirect links via special unicode symbols.

kirkland reporter

• Hendrix fetish art objects are, by definition, creepy. Here’s one that’s even creepier than most. It’s a sculpture of the musician shaking hands with former local DJ (and current rehab-center spokesman) Pat O’Day. It’s being auctioned off, having been seized from O’Day’s son to help settle a lawsuit involving the son’s onetime Kirkland jewelry store. That store closed suddenly in ’03. Several customers then claimed they’d consigned jewelry to Jerry O’Day that was neither returned nor paid for.
• The Kalakala’s current would-be rescuer says the drive to restore the streamlined ferry has busted him and rendered him homeless.
• The Husky men’s basketball squad’s predestined appointment w/destiny was done in by the First Brother-in-Law.
• One pundit’s prediction for the ’12 Mariners? Not as dreadful as last year.
• Facebook: Bringing people together. Including one local man’s two (simultaneous, unknowing) wives.
• One fifth of the Port of Seattle’s container traffic is moving to Tacoma.
• George Monbiot describes Ayn Rand’s worldview (i.e., what the Ron Paulies and even many Tea Partiers aspire toward) as “the philosophy of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed.” Speaking of which….
• Yes, there really is a Republican war against birth control. And yes, there really is no floor of utter sleaze beneath which today’s Republicans will not descend. (They’d advocate the return of slavery and poll taxes if they thought it would “test well among the base.”)
• Could one of America’s worst housing markets really be roaring back to life?
• The battle over e-book pricing heads (potentially) to the courts, as the Feds prepare to sue Apple and five of the Big Six U.S. publishers. The allegation: by letting publishers set retail e-book prices, Apple and the publishers conspired to keep said prices up.
• A Facebook zillionaire named Chris Hughes has bought The New Republic. Result: the usual inaccurate media descriptions of the opinion magazine as a “liberal bastion” and “influential in progressive circles.” TNR ceased to be liberal before Hughes was born. In recent decades it has (heart)ed Joe Leiberman, the Iraq War, and just about everything Reagan and the Bushes ever did. Hughes, who’s worked on Obama’s ’08 campaign, just might bring TNR back to what people who’ve never read it think it still is.
• For Intl. Women’s Day, the Guardian profiled a new addition to Forbes‘ list of world billionaires—a woman who’d earned her fortune (she didn’t just inherit it). She’s the inventor of Spanx undies.
• Said billionaires’ list includes eight (male) Washingtonians. You already know about Gates, Allen, Ballmer, Schultz, Bezos, and McCaw. The other two are the founders of Oakley sunglasses (who moved to the San Juans from Calif.) and video-game maker Valve Corp. In total, Forbes counts 1,226 billionaires, up from 140 in ’87. The 1% just keep getting 1%-er.

fdin.org.uk

• Did you know Heinz had a soup factory in Kent? Emphasis on the “had.”
• Just when you thought you’d seen everything, something unexpected comes. Today’s edition: A poet who’s actually got people listening to him. Meet the Tacoma guy behind the viral video “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.”
• A Facebook ad said an Issaquah heavy-metal guitarist with the stage name Steve Thunderbolt was looking for bandmates, but insisted on “no blacks”. Not ’cause he was a racist or anything; it was just “a drug issue and a safety issue.”
• It’s not just Ron Paul. The national Republican Party as a whole seems to just luuuuuv them some white supremacists.
• The UW president, the state’s highest paid employee, claims finding answers to education funding in Wash. state is “above my pay grade.”
• Soul divas aren’t supposed to die this young.
• Let’s hear it for last week’s #1 selling musical star on Amazon’s CD and download charts: Leonard Cohen! (Really.)
• Let’s close, just for the heckuvit, with Mike Wallace in a shortening commercial.

uw tacoma

• There are certain streets in any region that fully express the full history and character of their places. Around here, there’s one street that particularly tells the tale of the Northwest, its industry, its development, its hopes and its despairs. I speak of South Tacoma Way. And of the UW-Tacoma students who’ve made a lovely brief history of this important road. It’s available as a free PDF from the link above.
• A couple of Republicans in the state Senate have bravely stood in favor of the gay-marriage bill currently under discussion. Of course, in today’s GOP no good deed goes unpunished.
• Non-scandal of the week: Casual readers might be shocked to learn the University United Methodist Temple holds a weekly “Sext Service.” But it’s really just an informal midweek worship, named after the Latin word for the “sixth hour.” (I was raised Methodist, and they are one of the more liberal mainline-Protestant sects, but they’re not that liberal.)
• No Comment Dept. #1: The Newspaper Association of America’s launched a PR campaign insisting that “Smart is the New Sexy,” and that newspaper reading (print or online) is the way to smartness.
• No Comment Dept. #2: The stolen Seattle men’s pro basketball team will star in a forthcoming Warner Bros. movie. (All right, one comment: Go ahead. Hiss the villains.)
• The intellectual property industry’s Internet censorship drive (via Congress) might be stalled for now, but the industry proceeds on other fronts. Case in point: the Supreme Court’s ruling, on the industry’s behalf, that public domain works can be re-copyrighted.
• David Letterman still has a woman problem.
• Cracked.com, that funny list-based-long-essay site that bought its name from a defunct MAD magazine rival, occasionally runs something that turns out to be deadly serious. Example: “7 Things You Don’t Realize About Addiction (Until You Quit).”

1917 seattle metropolitans; from seattlehockey.net

Could Seattle actually get a National Hockey League team before it gets another NBA basketball team?

That’s what CBC Hockey Night in Canada commentator Elliotte Friedman seems to believe.

Friedman notes that the NHL wants to stop collectively owning the fiscally imperiled Phoenix Coyotes.

Friedman also says one of the top Coyote contenders is a Chicago minor-league hockey owner, who’s helping assemble land for a new arena in Seattle’s Sodo area, just south of Safeco Field.

Seattle’s hopes are supported by a move in the Legislature to somehow finagle state support for a new arena during this upcoming session.

What Seattle’s got in its favor:

• A large regional TV market. (Seattle would have the only U.S. NHL franchise west of Denver and north of San Jose. It’s already the second biggest U.S. metro area without an NHL team, after Houston.)
• Several rich potential investors.
• A natural rivalry situation with the Vancouver Canucks.
• A populace that’s supported minor league hockey for several decades (including current junior teams in Kent and Everett), and which includes many CBC hockey viewers.

What Seattle’s not got in its favor:

• No past NHL heritage; especially when compared to Quebec City, Friedman’s other pick for a likely new Coyotes’ home. The Seattle Metropolitans of the old Pacific Coast Hockey Association did win the Stanley Cup back in 1917. But compared to the former Quebec Nordiques’ fan memories, the Metropolitans are a mere trivia answer.
• No suitable place to play in town. Ex-Sonics owner Barry Ackerley made sure KeyArena would be only barely hockey-capable; its awkward hockey configuration requires temporarily removing the entire southern lower seating area. Quebec City already has the ex-Nordiques rink and is building a new bigger one, even without a team to play in it.

Despite these reservations, Friedman suggests it might be in the league’s financial best interest to place the Coyotes in Seattle, ready or not, and then award an expansion team to Quebec.

So, where would any Seattle Ex-Coyotes play, until a new specially built arena is ready (at least two seasons)?

• There’s KeyArena, such as it is.
• There’s the Tacoma Dome, which hosted minor league hockey from 1991-95. It seats a good 17,000 in its hockey configuration, though sightlines can be darn poor in places.
• There are the junior-hockey rinks in Kent and Everett. The latter seats 10,000 people, about as many as KeyArena’s ice configuration.
• And, of course, there’s Paul Allen’s Rose Garden in Portland.

My own favored option would be to simply expand KeyArena to the south; even though that would displace its current main tenants (the WNBA Seattle Storm and Seattle U. men’s basketball) for one season apiece.

But if an all new building is deemed really necessary, it should be (1) in Seattle proper (like the current Sodo arena scheme is) and (2) built with as little state or municipal subsidy as possible.

As a postscript, here’s a circa mid-2000s essay from the fan site SeattleHockey.net, detailing past attempts to bring the NHL here.

jiyoung-s.blogspot.com/

• The Bruce Lee family is talking about establishing a museum in Seattle honoring the late martial arts star, who lived here for much of his youth. A shame this wasn’t in the works while half the town was trying to put something at the old Fun Forest site that wouldn’t be a friggin’ glass art gallery.
• What happens when a big Wall St. bank CEO (specifically, the CEO of the big bank that devoured our own once-beloved Wash. Mutual) comes to town to give a speech during the height of the Occupy ____ protests? Citizen blockades and pepper spray, that’s what.
• Forget about caffeinated meat. That was yesterday’s novelty product. Today’s big news in pick-me-ups is caffeinated inhalers!
• The Tacoma City Council passed what was essentially an anti-Walmart zoning law. But, faced with potential unaffordable lawsuits, the council’s backed down and allowed Walmart’s application to proceed through the bureaucracy.
• Darcy Burner, one of our favorite folks, is running for Congress again. This time it will be in the redrawn version of Jay Inslee’s old district.
• R.I.P. Thomas Patrick Haley, who bought two neighborhood-newspaper groups and combined them into Pacific Publishing Co. Haley took a ragtag batch of properties (including a job printing operation) and put them on a firm footing (well, as firm a footing as could be attained in that subset of publishing). The Belltown Messenger had a co-publishing agreement with Pacific for the five years I was involved with it. I appear once a month in Pacific’s Capitol Hill Times.

denny hall, the uw campus's oldest building

• We’ve always known the Univ. of Washington has one of America’s most beautiful campuses. Now it’s finally getting national recognition in that regard.
• Meanwhile, the UW is participating in a research study into drunk Facebook photos.
• Mayor McGinn says he admires the spirit behind the Occupy Seattle folks, but still orders them to remove their tents from Westlake Plaza or risk getting arrested. Protesters say they’ll take the risk.
• The American Planning Association calls Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park one of America’s “great public spaces.” As the old bumper sticker says, “Admit It, Tacoma. You’re Beautiful.”
• NYTimes.com’s automated ad placement bots placed an ad for Starbucks’ Italian Roast above an article about you-know-who.
• Starbucks boss Howard Schultz’s next idea to save the economy: donation boxes in the stores, where customers can contribute to community development groups. They’d use the cash to help small businesses create jobs. Of course, if Schultz really wanted to help jump-start the economy at the personal level, he could pay his own baristas a living wage….
• The message from the Gates Foundation, the City of Seattle, and others: Don’t be no fool, stay in school.
• The Zune, Microsoft’s would-be iPod killer, is dead.
• Layoffs hit another supposedly recession-proof industry, nuclear-waste cleanup.
• A cause of death I, for one, hadn’t heard of—”detergent suicide.”
• Lee Fang believes the Occupy Wall Street protests “embody the values of the real Boston Tea Party.”
• Paul Krugman analyzes big bankers’ testimony in a Congressional hearing about the financial crisis. He sees the bankers claiming to be clueless, as an alternative to admitting to be evil.
• Obama’s finally speaking out against GOP state legislatures’ spate of anti-voting laws.
• The Fox broadcast network is threatening to cancel The Simpsons unless its voice actors accept a 45 percent pay cut.
• And now for fun, here are some fun Mexican movie-theater lobby cards.

nordstrom photo, via shine.yahoo.com

• Those $85 Starbucks designer tees? All net proceeds go to Starbucks. One more reason Howard Schultz is in the Forbes 400 richest-people list.
• A Starbucks employee in Calif. posted a satirical song about his job onto YouTube. The song became popular; he became fired.
• After 18 years, the homey and low-key Rosebud restaurant/bar on East Pike is calling it quits. The management (which just bought the place from its previous longtime owners) homes to reopen nearby.
• Facebook’s got this big new feature that looks a lot like something already devised by a Seattle startup site.
• The Real Networks spinoff Rhapsody, a subscription online music service, has some sort of free trial thing going on via Facebook.
• Washington state: Now with even more poverty.
• You want across-the-board cuts in all state spending? Fine. Welcome some new early-release inmates, who won’t get the supervision past parolees got.
• Swedish Medical Center to lay off 150 staffers. So much for the aging-boomer-era medical boom.
• The on-again, off-again scheme to drastically redevelop the parking lot north of Qwest CenturyLink Field is on again. For now.
• An unfinished Kent parking garage will be razed and replaced by homes and stores.
• Tacoma teachers’ strike: over.
• Obama’s coming to town. You won’t get to see him.
• The always-lucid Feliks Banel sees the retirement of J.P. Patches in the context of the institutional decline of local TV (particularly local non-news TV).
• The “Occupy Wall Street” folk have finally proclaimed “our one demand”—11 of them, all big-big-picture stuff, essentially adding up to the complete re-orientation of the nation’s government, economy, and society.
• ‘Tis a sad, sad day for all who care about tradition, long-form storytelling, and frequently-remarried drama queens. The final network episode of All My Children airs today.
• On a much happier note, you can become part of a new tradition tomorrow, the tradition of the ped-powered urbanites.

• At Friday’s Park(ing) Day display at the Seattle Art Museum, a videographer from a Chinese-language cable access show tapes an interview using a Flip-like digital video cam, a mini spotlight, and a small Steadicam-like camera stabilizer.
• Former P-I book critic John Marshall is still unemployed, and writes for the Atlantic about receiving his final unemployment check.
• The Jo-Ann Fabric store in Olympia has a Halloween crafts section. It recently had a bat in it. A real bat. With rabies.
• A survey co-sponsored by Microsoft’s MSN.com named Seattle North America’s sixth worst-dressed city. Vancouver was #3; the top spot went to Orlando.
• Seahawks fans this Sunday will not only face a formidable opponent on the field (the dreaded Steelers) but also extreme frisking.
• Another gay/lesbian event, another would-be censorious program printer.
• Pierce County: Now with 35 percent less transit.
• Netflix: Now with higher prices and 1 million fewer customers.
• The corruption investigation against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his inner circle turns out to have begun with comments to blog posts.
• Why didn’t anyone tell me there’s a Barbie Video Girl doll with “a video camera embedded in her chest”? You could use it to reenact the cult film Double Agent 73!

(Remember, my big book shindig is one week from today (Sept. 24). See the top of this page for all pertinent details.)

seattle times announces the new team's name (1975), from historylink.org

• The always-alert local sports historian David Eskenazi looks back to the first regular-season Seahawks game, held 35 years ago this week.
• There’s more sports-related nonsense from Oklahoma. Both of that state’s big college sports programs are thinking of dumping the Big 12 practice and hooking up with the Pac 12. Comment one: Only if they return a certain non-college basketball team to its rightful home. Comment two: How “Pacific” would that be? Not much. Isn’t the whole idea of college conferences supposed to be regional rivalries?
• If we do get our rightfully deserved men’s pro basketball team back, they could always play in the Tacoma Dome.
• Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 was put on display at a developers’ conference in L.A. It sure looks different.
• State Republicans are drawing up Congressional-district redistricting maps that would create a “majority minority” district, and incidentally decrease Seattle’s voting power.
• U.S. News & World Report doesn’t exist as a print periodical anymore, but it’s still putting out its annual college rankings. The UW ranked #10 among public universities, #42 overall. At least before the next round of state budget cuts.
• Mark your calendars: There’s a “Rally for Good Jobs Now,” 11:30 a.m. Thursday (Sept. 15) in front of the Seattle Westin Hotel. It’s organized by the union-affiliated group Working Washington, protesting the Port of Seattle’s current practices, and coinciding with a convention of port administrators.
• We recently ran a link to an essay on the rise of recession literature. Now, Jaime O’Neill at the L.A. Times wants similar realism and advocacy in the visual arts by asking, “Where’s Today’s Dorothea Lange?” Apparently O’Neill doesn’t know the work of local photog Rex Hohlbein and his ongoing “Homeless in Seattle” series.
• Beware the killer cantaloupes.
• Has the online daily coupon craze passed its peak?
• Poverty in the U.S.: highest since 1933, says the Census Bureau.
• Apparently, the corporate-libertarian attitude toward health insurance extends even to their own staffs. At least that appears to be the case with a Ron Paul campaign aide, who died from pneumonia, was uninsured, and left his family with $400,000 in bills.
• As the rich get richer, so do their “toys,” such as 220- to 500-foot long “gigayachts.”
• Dave Niose at Psychology Today believes some people are simply hardwired to be disbelievers.
• Michael C. Jones debunks the anti-SpongeBob story, in which the cartoon supposedly harmed young kids’ mental development. Jones notes the researchers covered only 60 upscale, white, four-year-old tots:

The effect of the Nickelodeon series “SpongeBob SquarePants” on little kids’ attention spans was tested on, well, almost nobody.

• Let’s close with some stunning Kodachrome images of NYC in 1941-42.

• Radical activists associated with Adbusters magazine want to organize a long-term “occupation” of Wall Street, with the aim to force an end to the “politics of greed.” Paul B. Farrell isn’t so sure it’ll work.
• Bad news of the day: Espresso Vivace general manager Brian Fairbrother was badly injured in a cycling accident. (Yes, he wore a helmet.) On Wednesday, loved ones decided, in accordance with his previously stated wishes, to remove life support.
• Good news of the day: The INSCAPE arts center in the former immigration building got a $10 million grant for needed structural upgrades and interior refits.
• Eh? news of the day: Wash. state’s slashing of higher-ed support was only tied for worst in the nation, with three other states.
• Update #1: The Belltown substance-abuse center boss accused of trying to rape a boy? He wasn’t the psychologist he’d claimed to be.
• Update #2: That Snohomish County stink mentioned here yesterday? It’s chicken byproduct.
• The long-delayed development at Ballard’s former Sunset Bowl site is finally underway.
• Turns out that creepy plastic faced “king” mascot wasn’t the only scary thing about Burger King.
• Tacoma: The city that knows when to say no.
• The City’s got this “Only in Seattle” program, promoting local businesses in various neighborhoods. The program’s Belltown edition was unveiled Wednesday. The four honored outfits were two upscale restaurant-bars, one upscale furniture emporium, and Federal Army & Navy Surplus.
• Coming to a 7-Eleven near you (depending on where you are): A locker where you can pick up your Amazon purchases. 7-Eleven in Japan has had this for years. It’s great for people who work during the day and live alone (or with other people who also work during the day).
• The Wall St. Journal discovers grunge nostalgia.
• The Seattle Weekly/Village Voice Media/Backpage.com sex ad mess just gets messier, as politicians of more stripes use it for cheap grandstanding.
• Cartoonist Ruben Bolling seems to wish George Lucas could digitally alter the past 10 years.
• The St. Petersburg Times fact checked Wednesday’s GOP Presidential debate and came up with at least two statements deserving the ultimate “Pants On Fire” rating.
• Our ol’ pal Tim Harris appeared with C.R. Douglas in a great segment on KCPQ on the topic of “Homeless in Seattle.” If you’re wondering how something this insightful got on a program entitled Q13 Fox News, let me repeat (for what seems like the umpteenth time): KCPQ has no connection to the Fox News Channel (except for airing the latter’s Fox News Sunday “spinterview” show). KCPQ is an affiliate of the Fox Broadcast network. KCPQ is really owned by the (Chicago) Tribune Co. I wish the station itself would make this clearer.

from vintageadbrowser.com

• The Kleenex factory in my ol’ stompin’ grounds of Everett, one of that Mill Town’s last working mills, will likely close in December. I’ve not much time to get my picture taken in front of its big CLARK (as in “Kimberly-”) sign.
• However, Everett is getting something new as well. It’s getting a qualifying meet for international Olympic gymnasts.
• Tacoma’s famed Goddess of Commerce statue is back!
• Bank of America caved in to massive public outcry, and will modify Vera Johnson’s loan. This lets Johnson keep her beloved Village Green nursery in West Seattle, which had been threatened with foreclosure. Ray Davies was wrong: you are the Village Green Preservation Society.
• Video mashup of the day: The CGI animation of the Alaskan Way Viaduct detour route, combined with the video game Mario Kart.
• A Republican county committee in Arizona (in Gabrielle Giffords’ county) wanted to raffle off a gun. The same kind of gun Gabrielle Giffords was shot with. It took other Arizona GOP vets to tell ‘em this wasn’t such a cool idea.
• Sex Inc. #1: Tampa’s world famous strip clubs are expanding and modernizing their facilities, in anticipation of extra business from next year’s Republican convention.
• Sex Inc. #2: The “.xxx” domain-name suffix is about to go online. Two groups are concerned about this: 1) Porn companies that don’t necessarily want to give up their current .com URLs, and 2) companies and celebrities in every other line of business, worried that smart-assed pranksters could buy up the names “mcdonalds.xxx,” “spongebob.xxx,” or even “rickperry.xxx”.
• And just for awesomeness, here are some amazing old Soviet movie posters.