"Ugliest Building in Seattle?" by Grundlepuck Ugly building, gorgeous photo. We expect nothing less from Grundlepuck, or anyone else in our Flickr pool, really. Have you seen that place lately? Chock full o' visual goodness.......

"WSTC From 5 Blocks" by Ray Hutchinson This view of the Convention Center reminds us a little of Santiago Calatrava's "eye," the L’Hemisfèric Planetarium in Valencia. Thanks for sharing in our lovely Flickr pool!......

Paul Allen's development of South Lake Union, with at least a dozen new buildings devoted to high-tech enterprises and grandiose plans to become a highrise virtual downtown, extends uphill and eastward to encompass the residential neighborhood known as Cascade. REI built its headquarters here and surrounded it with a lovely garden; the grand old St. Spiridon orthodox church stands guard over a street of new construction. One facade of Alley 24 remains untouched; the......

"Reflections on Old Justice" by Jonathan Hanlon Each plane of the central library's glass skin reflects, absorbs, or becomes transparent to light in different ways—like a giant, irregular gemstone—depending on your distance from it, your point of view, the time of day, and the weather. Jonathan captures each one of these behaviors in this shot. Thanks for sharing this with the Seattlest Flickr pool! Reflected in one plane is the extremely hot, albeit prosaically named,......

Untitled by Aaron Morris Mr. Aaron Morris captures the delicious excess and melodrama of Catholicism in this long exposure. Thank you for sharing this gorgeous photo! Add your beautiful exposures to the Seattlest Flickr Pool right now.......

The intrepid and dedicated bloggers over at My Ballard.com have been providing nearly minute-by-minute coverage of the Seattle Landmark Preservation Societies vote on the old Denny's building on 15th and Market. According to their pain-staking notes, around 6:30 the board's final vote of 6 to 3 in favor of landmark status, was met by gasps and cheers by supporters in the audience. The vote means that the building cannot be demolished and replaced by......

photo courtesy of caseysail in the Seattlest Flickr pool. We hope this isn't a growing trend. From the Croc to the Sunset Bowl to all of Seattle's bars, it seems as though any place of which beer is an integral component is endangered with stifling regulation or closure or even the wrecking ball. The very latest, of course, is a portion of the old Georgetown brewery just a scant few days after the 104th......

"and it was" by pdgibson from the Seattlest Flickr Pool. Reminds us of Tom's fantastic post about this Ballard landmark's demise. Lucky for some, it appears that things may be looking up for this mid-20th century modern building.......

The historic Moore Theatre turns 100 this year. December 28th is their big centennial celebration. We got to thinking about this major milestone the last time we were there. It was last Monday night, the Iron and Wine show. We were sitting in our seats, waiting for razor-shy Sam Beam to take the stage and we got to looking around. As always we were impressed by the high ceiling, grand arches, intricate moldings... Then we......

After coming across yet another "we're trying to save the sign" campaign in the paper in regards to the big Leilani Lanes pin (the last we remember being the Wonderbread sign) Seattlest is struck that trying to make all of Seattle a big outdoor MOHAI doesn't really do much for actual preservation. The bowling alley is gone and we'll have to make do with Sunset (or the Garage, or any of the others that Contributor......

Seattlest has been making some semblance of a living writing about music for a few years now. During that time, we've tried to put into words performances by some truly great artists (Chris Thile comes to mind), and it never gets easier to verbalize music. Talking about music really is like dancing about architecture, although we have felt the inexplicable desire to dance inside extraordinary buildings before. Our point is that we headed off......

Mac released its new Leopard operating system on Friday, and low-tech Seattlest wonders what's up. So we asked Aron Beal, a Web applications developer and genuine Mac nerd, to tell us. 1) What's the deal with Leopard--is it a new thing, or just a normal upgrade, or what? Leopard is a full fledged operating system release, similar to the one you might have made when upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP (or to Vista).......

In December 1992, Kurt Cobain and rock journalist Michael Azerrad began a series of interviews that would eventually become the beating heart of Azerrad's band biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. For that project, Azerrad recorded over 25 hours of the rock star's musings and reflections, but until pairing with director AJ Schnack to make Kurt Cobain About a Son, had never released the tapes' contents to the public. This film, then,......

Seattle. Portland. Which one's better? You may say: "How can you choose? Each has their good points. It's like asking which religion is better." Guess what, asshole, that Negative Nellie attitude is the reason nobody ever asks for your fucking opinion. Jerk. Yesterday, Jeremy Barker advocated the pro-Seattle position. Now, it's Portland's turn. Why Portland is better than Seattle, by Katie "The Kalama Quickdraw" Tiehen Before we get into this, let's just lay out what......

This weekend Seattlest was standing outside of Jules Maes in Georgetown trying to explain to someone which part, exactly, of the Rainier Cold Storage compound across the street was about to be torn down. It's the Stock House which is north of here a bit--it's, uh...no. Ok, it's down there near the...no. Not thirty feet from us and directly across the street there's a sign that says "Stock House." Yep, that's it. Rainier Cold Storage......

Man, if the EU court that stuck it to Microsoft this weekend and Mr. and Mrs. Slowsky were in a race it would probably go off the board for betters. It's. Taking. For. Ever. The crime is Microsoft shutting out competitors by bundling Windows Media Player with Windows, which, to us at least, seems like an ancient issue. What are they going to go after Microsoft for next? Attaching round wheels to an axle? We......

The Rainier Cold Storage Stock House--part of the beautiful and historic and absolutely irreplaceable Rainier Cold Storage campus in Georgetown--is being replaced. The building cannot be saved as Seattlest has previously discussed here and here, and a campaign to try to force property owners Sabey Corp. to preserve it as-is seems like it wouldn't hold up in the face of the condition of the building, despite the Seattle Historic Landmark status it currently enjoys. Brooke......

Last week Seattlest whined about the pending doom of the Rainier Cold Storage Stock House in Georgetown, a building that is a Seattle Historic Landmark. "'Historic Landmark' might as well be a death sentence in Seattle," we said, meaning that any building so labeled in Seattle would be quickly demolished (although later in the week the Seattle Weekly would have a different take on the phrase in an article about Peter Steinbrueck and his recent......

If we were a building older than sixty years or so in Seattle right now we'd really think about going on the lam, laying low for the next few years, maybe sending the wife and kids off to her sister's lake cabin, although they'll probably come for that, too, eventually. It's just not safe for an old landmark building in the current environment. Next up on the block is the Rainier Cold Storage Stock House......

Seattlest took a little jaunt up to downtown Pacific Rim Canada the other weekend. Vancouver is the Toronto of western Canada and, just like its gritty eastern counterpart, we just *big throbbing heart* the place. We love its density, its layout, and its landscape. We love the architecture, even its endless kilometers of glass and steel high rises. Moreover, it's a walkable city. If you're a reasonably able-bodied tourist, you should be able to stomp......

Well-known alterna-librarian Jessamyn West came to town recently, and finally had a chance to check out our flagship library. Her verdict? I saw a real disconnect beween the lovely outside and grand entry spaces to the library, plus a few other very design-y areas, and the rest of the building. Materials were hard to find. VERY hard to find. Signage was abysmal, often just laserprinted pieces of paper, sometimes laminated and sometimes not. Doors to......

Some signs went up at the future site of the Colman Center earlier this week. Where there is currently a parking lot surrounded by Western Ave, the alleyway entrance to the Owl and Thistle, the pedestrian walkway to the ferry terminal and an on ramp to the Viaduct there will soon (2009) stand a 12-story office tower that's making the case that there is a market for "green" office space in Seattle. What's particularly......

The cold wind of actual necessity is blowing up Seattle's skirt. Much like our childhood erector-set constructions, the Viaduct has a certain amount of "give" in it (though hopefully not due to the same reason: our dislike of tightening every single nut on things we were just going to take apart anyway), but the news last week that it has sunk 5 inches at its saggiest point has bells going off because 6 inches is......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Although all four lanes of the Fremont Bridge's approaches have been open to traffic for a few weeks now, crews have been busy tinkering this and that and putting those pesky last touches in order to complete the project. As tinkerers, we sympathize; the devil is always in those final details. As we've been documenting the work at various points during the process, we stepped outside the other day to take a closer look......

For years Wallingford residents have discussed what the old Safeway at Stone Way and 40th was going to become. We always suspected something as interesting as another grocery store, but when a hole was dug for a foundation recently, it became obvious that the site was being prepared for the Trump Tower of grocery stores. Condos on top of a QFC, it was determined, with maybe 30 stories of office space above that and underground......

You may have seen the urban density photos that came out earlier this weekend. Sightline linked to the site on Friday. You have to create a profile to log in and see all the pretty/ugly pictures, but since you can fill one of those out with either factual or completely made-up information in under a minute by now, it's worth the effort. If you browse around you'll find that they have pictures from all over......

Seattlest took a little trip to the Oregon coast recently. We experienced two opposing points of the coastal experience within several miles of each other. True to its name, the city of Seaside is the archetypal slutty seaside town replete with an arcade, candy stores, cheesy tourist shops, and snooty beach-fronting hotels that will be the first to go when the tsunami hits. One would think that this is the place one would find......

It seems every blogger in the Pacific Northwest is singing the praises of the Seattle Art Museum after their reopening. It'd be fun to be the contrary voice that slams the whole affair but really, we don't have it in us - we loved the SAM this weekend as well, so chalk this one up in the "yay" column. As soon as we heard about the fact that SAM was staying open 24 hours, we......

It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess. That's kind of what Lawrence Cheek says in the PI today, where he dares to say what a lot of Seattleites are thinking: our new central library building isn't all that. This library, incredibly, is an uncomfortable place to read. The third-level "Living Room," which has the feel of a vast indoor park, is not conducive to......