While we don't know if Mayor Greg Nickels' latest proposal to ban concealed weapons on city lands will ever become law (we imagine a little thing called the Constitution and this little group called the NRA might have some problems with that one), hundreds of new laws will take effect in Washington this Thursday. At midnight this Thursday, 280 new laws will be on the books. Over a hundred of the new laws will......

Thanksgiving doesn't allow for us Seattlesters to partake in our usual rock and roll lifestyles. Instead it's friends and family and mellow times about the house. Our drinking's liable to be more restrained and coordinated with a heavy meal of rich food. (Seattlest Geoff offered some choice beer recommendations earlier this week for those who've got a pit-stop planned on the way to grandmother's house tomorrow.) And according to the weather report, it's going to......

From the PI this morning: "Three shot inside Capitol Hill club." Apparently, a fight broke out on Sugar's dance floor around 1:30am; three people were injured, and police aren't saying much more than that. Someone was firing a gun inside the club, so this isn't one of those ambiguous cases of violence within fifty feet of the club doors. The night's event was Sin Sunday, an 18/21+ weekly event featuring a DJ spinning hip-hop and......

Initially, we were a little surprised to hear that ACT--A Contemporary Theatre--was putting on Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Although having debuted in 1936 placed the play in the Modern canon, its view of women is about as un-p.c. as they come: in short, the play presents women as gossipy and back-stabbing, assumes marital infidelity is a function of the Y chromosome, and ends with a note suggesting that for the sake of a healthy......

"We know you're not assholes," said Carl Newman at the Showbox on Saturday night, "so don't do asshole things." Seattlest doesn't go to a lot of concerts -- we never did, and once parenthood embraced us we tend to invest in babysitters for stuff like movies and restaurants. There's less thrill in staying up until 1:30 when you know, no matter what, that 7:00 would be sleeping in. But the New Pornographers? Frankly, Seattlest......

According to a report in this morning's Seattle Times, Mayor Nickels has decided to play hardball in his attempt to get all Stasi on Seattle's nightlife. In what appears to be a blatant attempt to politicize Seattle's police force, according to the Times, "Seventeen bouncers, bartenders and other nightclub employees were arrested Saturday night for allegedly violating state liquor laws." Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske and City Attorney Tom Carr used the sting to push for......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

We're bringing it up because Seattle Times brought it up. Here's why we hate the idea of making clubs get licensed in order to be clubs: If we happen to have some huge influx of new citizens, you can bet the majority of them aren't coming here simply because they want to sit in a cubicle for nine hours and return home to their ever-tinier condo so they can watch TV. Where people work, they......

The City Council finally got around to passing "adult cabaret" zoning laws that just might let Seattle develop a strip club scene worthy of a would-be world-class city. But there's a provision that kills one of our brilliant ideas: The new rules, which passed by a unanimous vote, require strip clubs to be at least 800 feet from elementary or secondary schools, child-care centers, community centers, public parks or open space where children tend to......

Don’t you hate when you’re out by the lake sitting on a dock with your best buds, sipping on some mass produced brew, just laughing and having a caucasianly good time, when someone pulls out a guitar and starts strumming until a song breaks out—evening ruined. Well to make matters worse it would appear that not only is that douche an attention hog he (FACT: It’s always a dude) is also an environmental outlaw. Today......

What defines a terrorist or terrorism? You know, besides standing between a Republican and the camera he wants to install in your panty drawer? Is it your actions? Is it your nationality? Is it your race? Is it your intent? We better figure it out because there are suddenly a whole lot of laws on the books all over the place that say criminals get this sentence and terrorists get this other one. Down......

Our quest to make it from Renton to Ballard for happy hour was nearly dashed yesterday because some drunken idiot craving attention almost jumped off the Aurora Bridge. It was 4:45 and traffic on 99 North had been light, so things were looking good. As we drove onto the bridge in the right lane, we imagined the earthy, hop-heavy smell of Hale’s lobby. We’d be there by five—one full hour to drink cheap! On the......

SILENT MOVIES: It's Week II of the Paramount's Harold Lloyd retrospective. Silent Movie Mondays brings you Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ and ought to be on one of those things-to-do-before-you-die list because that's just the kind of experience it is. Of course, if you're into fast-paced comedies, it's just something-to-do-tonight and there's no reason to make a big fuss about it. Trader Joe's is the sponsor, by the way, and they're being......

If you've ever hit anything on any sort of party circuit, you'll find this video by Soulwax absolutely hilarious. Oh the fun of the old rave days. We're damn near straight-edge, so none of the drug references here apply to anything we've ever done, but that's not to say we haven't been around a lot of these characters. Soulwax are playing tonight at Chop Suey. They're playing first with their live band, then they're going......

Jonathan Lethem understands what being an unabashed fan feels like, and we are an unabashed, dorky fan of his many books and recent essays. When we heard that he is non-exclusively sharing some of his short stories for $1 to be reused in other works of art (films, songs, etc) and he is giving away the option to his new novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, and releasing the ancillary rights after five years, we......

Is Seattlest the only person left that hates seeing the last of the city's beer-only drinking venues launch themselves into the new cocktail era and start serving hard alcohol? The Comet--that was a blow. We loved the fact that you could only get beer and wine there up until a year or so ago. You could buy everyone who was bellied-up a "shot" for like $20. The shot was actually some weird glug or something......

Someone wrote in via our tip widget today: What's going on with electric vehicles in WA? I just watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?", about California's journey to almost make the electric car a part of our every-day lives. They go into how recent (as of 2002) technology allows electric cars to easily go freeway speeds and can easily compete with other cars in terms of acceleration. Then I read this. Washington is creating a......

You're at an intersection staring down traffic, trying to get someone to stop so you can get across. Suburu Honda, Honda, Suburu, that new Mustang, Prius, then someone with those damn studs on their tires that scrape the asphalt so loudly you can hear the road repair coin getting sucked out of DOT's wallet: Krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr. Of course this is the guy that stops. Mountain man, down at sea level to pick up a few tanks......

Earlier today, one of you told us this: "Seattlest, you have a bit of the grumpy old man in you." Is it true, we wondered? So we asked Seattlest contributors if they've ever pulled that ultimate old man move: calling the cops. Turns out we are grumpy old men. And how! Matt: I called the cops not once but twice on teenagers in my parking lot at my old apartment building. Once because they double......

Wednesday, February 14 >>> Sparklehorse at Showbox. Sparklehorse is touring in support of their first effort in five years, with more of the same delicate, pretty songs that made them indie darlings. Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter open. * sample: Song Streams available on MySpace 8:00 pm // $17 // 21+. >>> Miss Mamie Lavona the Exotic Mulatta at Conor Byrne. The last time we saw Miss Mamie she charmed us in entirely......

We returned to the homeland over the holidays. Lugged skis and snowboards to the land of 3.2 beer, special garments, and the "Greatest Snow on Earth" only to find they had half the snow base compared to what we have here. Everything seemed backwards. We picked up the local weekly, which feels smarmily like Seattle's version as so many do (albeit, sadly, the SLC web version makes the Weakly look divine). And what do people......

We don't know if you caught this weekend's Seattle Times article on the downfall of an Eastside mortgage company, which suffered a mini-Enron implosion this spring. We note that the local business media never saw it coming, due to the proximity of their lips with the company's ass. To the Puget Sound Business Journal, Merit's founder Scott Greenlaw was "an up-and-coming businessman," the Times points out. In 2004 Washington CEO magazine proclaimed Merit one......

We read the Stranger's article on the death of Pike/Pine yesterday. Hm. Yes, it does suck that the Cha Cha et all are going to be replaced by what we're promised will be a gross condo building soon. To say that the character of the neighborhood is going to change is like saying that Three Gorges changed the character of the Yangtze. Then we read the Weekly's jeering "now choke on it" post on their......

M.I.T. professor/design guru John Maeda arrived at Elliot Bay theoretically to talk about his latest book, The Laws of Simplicity. Instead of doing a traditional reading however, Maeda danced around the book, giving a peek into his head in a casual monologue, inviting those in attendance to see the world through his eyes before finally closing with a few of the ideas that he's put on the printed page. The engaging delivery brought an......

City results County results State results National results Democrats assume majority in House, need two more seats to take Senate and lead in bo th. Mike obliterated by Cantwell. 200,000 vote loss means he's stripped of exclamation point. Reichert leads Burner (who Nancy Pelosi called "Burnerman" on CNN last evening, securing the anti-Semitic vote for Reichert). Voters say no to tax breaks for the greedy, and property "rights" for the confused, but yes to......

Everyone's going to get all lovey-dovey today and say, "Oh, I don't care who you vote for, just get to the polls and make your voice heard for the sake of democracy, blah, blah." Even President Bush, the most partisan president in a century, said as much this morning. Fuck that. Most voting choices on this year's ballot are ok (Honestly, is McGavick really that much more of a corporate tool than Cantwell?). But if......

-Microsoft was denied by Pitchfork when the company tried to buy their way into some cool for the Zune. -Did Blatherwatch really want to kick something off with Stefan Sharkansky's significant other? -Seattle's daily papers might seem a bit slow to us, but there's always someone out there to criticize you for being too liberal. -Suspicions are being raised that the City of Seattle is trying to build a light rail network on the......

Microsoft sent out invitations to its video community website beta Soapbox on Monday and last night we got around to checking it out. The interface is awesome, the video quality is awesome and the price they paid in development is probably somewhere under what Google paid for YouTube. The content and the user base... Well, there is no content or user base. Did Microsoft ever seriously consider buying YouTube's content and user base? Check out......

Wednesday, October 4 >>>Central Library, 6:30-8:00pm. If you've been meaning to get a better handle on stem cell research, then... Wait, let's try that again. We'll just let this event speak for its sexy self: "Regeneration Gaps: Promises, Problems and Policies in Stem Cell Research" by Charles E. (Chuck) Murry, M.D., Ph.D. His research focuses on repair of the injured heart. See? You get out of the way, the poetry comes. Free, but you're......

Wednesday, September 27 >>>Town Hall, 7:30pm. Science and medical writer Thomas Hager tells you all about the drug that you won't hear about on House, M.D.: "The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered disease, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics." But does it make you feel like hugging strangers? $5 at the door. >>>Bella Cosa Foods, 4:00-6:00pm: Federico Bibi lets you taste two organic olive......