Because we haven't said enough about Starbucks this week, and because we haven't said enough about local coffee shops today, we figured we'd jump in on this story. Starbucks has to give their California baristas $87million (plus 7 percent interest). According to LA Times, some baristas could get $10,000. Apparently, the rule has been that all tips are pooled at the end of the day, and then shift supervisors get to take some of......

Not even merely Blog Hot. She's actually approaching TV Hot. Check her out in this (unfortunately un-embeddable) video clip from KOMO4. However, while KOMO has decided she's attractive enough for TV, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild has decided her employment at the P-I is egregious enough to warrant a lawsuit. They say she's a reporter and belongs in the guild's bargaining unit. The P-I maintains that she's some kind of new media person and not......

... and a $50 gift card. Back in July, a retired Methodist minister in California was accidentally scalded by a Starbucks barista. Early this month, his son Matt Smith reported on Starbucks' response in the SF Weekly: Before Dad picked up the coffee, the barista bumped it off the counter. It spilled on the front of Dad's pants, burning his crotch, then running down his legs and settling into his shoes. Instead of running to......

Well, so much for the ol' "jury of your peers" principle, because we're pretty sure if any skiers, snowboarders, or general outdoor sports people were on the jury at this trial, they would not have awarded Kenny Salvini $31 million because he crashed off a jump at Snoqualmie. That's the amount of the original award from the jury, yet somehow the judge decided that $17 million was the amount relevant to Salvini's role in the......

When Seattlest was a starving college student in Portland, we visited the Taste of Portland festival on the river during a particularly hot day. We got a cheeseburger from McCormick and Schmick's--the next day, we were so sick we went to the hospital, where we found out we had salmonella. We were sick for over a week, approaching two. It was the most miserable illness we've ever had, save for an ear infection 8 years......

A special report from national advertising correspondent Pauls Toutonghi Many of you were shocked, saddened, bemused, flummoxed, or at least mildly interested by the death of Anna Nicole Smith this afternoon. But an interesting sidebar to the story comes from the world of online advertising. In the world of online advertising, content providers (such as CNN) have paid many millions of dollars to set up intelligent advertising systems, systems that match the pages you're viewing......

Well, guess what? The tide has turned once again in the War On Christmas - The Port of Seattle has decided to replace the trees it removed from the main passageway of the airport over the weekend. Rabbi Bogomilsky withdrew his suit, but we're guessing the reversal had more to do with the national attention the Port got than any actions on the part of the rabbi. From a Port press release: Port of Seattle......

Last time we reported on a Starbucks lawsuit, public sympathy was tilted in the caffeine giant's favor. Even the frequently anticorporate commenters at Consumerist thought it was stupid to sue them for "betrayal" over a botched email coupon. But they're rooting for a Bellevue woman who sued Starbucks on Monday for "unlawful use and abuse of its monopoly power." And no, that's not putting three hotels on Boardwalk. Penny Stafford, owner of Belvi Coffee and......

That Old Nerd™ we told you about the other day who filed a lawsuit against the publisher of the world's greatest cartoonists, claiming defamation and violation of his right of publicity (apparently over some alleged stories of the man's past recounted in one Fanta book and a lack of the requisite "TM" next to his trademarked name on the cover of yet another), recently made the legally dubious decision to grab the breast of an......

Upon hearing that Alaskan Way viaduct tunnel or rebuild will cost billions more than originally thought, some on the city council are calling for...oh, you'll just never guess, so here's what the Times says: "Some council members are unhappy with the choices they've been given and plan to introduce a resolution today asking the state to study other options, such as tearing down the viaduct and distributing its traffic through the city with transit......

An Old Nerd (TM) who must remain absolutely nameless for fear he might sue the fuck out of us has just filed a lawsuit against local funnybook factory Fantagraphics for defamation and other things. Read the whole hilarious complaint in this 3MB PDF file right here. Note the plaintiff's florid use of the word "florid" and derisive deployment of quotation marks around "comics."......

Yes, Starbucks fucked up. Their "complimentary iced grande beverage" email coupon rapidly escalated beyond its intended audience, to no-one's surprise but Starbucks management's. They're embarrassed, and they should be -- it's a rookie Internet mistake, the kind of thing that we associate with the wild-'n'-woolly days of early '00 or so. But last Friday, the Goliath that is SBUX found its David -- a NY attorney with an overinflated sense of betrayal. From Starbucks......

-Episcopalians and Presbyterians don't belong to churches. "They should get another name because they’re just confusing people if they say they are a church." You heard it from Mark Driscoll's kid first. -Five new HD radio stations are set to launch in Seattle: Live rock, roots rock, world music, urban adult contemporary and comedy. Because comedy's funnier when it's CD quality. -A lawsuit was filed against the Seattle school district in an attempt to......

As of July 1, Amazon.com runs their own baby and toy sites, rather than partnering with Babies R Us and Toys R Us. Though the move was apparently not entirely voluntary -- a lawsuit and a court decision and a July 1 deadline were involved -- Amazon.com's spokespeople were upbeat: "We are very excited about it," said Patty Smith, Amazon spokeswoman. "We offer two times the selection of what our former partner was able......

-KUOW has an interview with Lt. Watada who's ready to be charged for refusing to deploy to Iraq with his unit. -The "Friends of Gasworks Park" won their lawsuit againt the city today, further jeopardizing the return of Summer Nights. -The Stranger tries to pin down McGavick on net neutrality while he attempts to remain netural not just on net neutrality, but on everything. -"Real [...] is the first publisher to support streaming video......

First they closed Leilani and you didn't speak out, because you didn't bowl. Then they closed Southgate Skate Center and you didn't speak out, because you didn't roller skate. Blah blah blah you know at the end there's no one left to speak out for you. Well, that and you can speak out all you want but ain't nothing but $1.8 million going to save the White Center roller skate place. Efforts are there, though.......

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban. Bostonist has its first birthday party and investigates how to attach more gambling dollars to the Red Sox. Benjamin Franklin is celebrated and Johnny Damon is not. Image by Ethan Bagley......

There's a document in Seattle today that the Seattle Times makes out to be some kind of Dead Sea Scrolls of illegal wiretapping. This is a document so secure that Portland, where the trial that's making use of it is occuring, has no facility staunch enough to house it. A special secure facility could be constructed, but that could cost millions of dollars and take months to achieve, so the document's headed to Seattle where......

Costco has a lawsuit in progress that revolves around the artificially high prices of wine in the state of Washington. There are a bunch of laws in the books that severely restrict how beer and wine sales happen in the state and Costco is attempting to undo those, and they've had some success. The end result may be cheaper wines from, unfortunately, fewer wineries. Seattlest buys a few bottles of wine a week, but we......

Payola: In the music industry, the illegal practice of record companies paying money for the broadcast of records on music radio is called payola, if the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast. Rumors of payola in the radio industry have been brewing for a while and have gotten more attention since NY's Attorney General began an investigation of the recording industry. Finally today the New York state Attorney General......

We walked down to Occidental Square for our Monday lunch field trip and unfortnunately didn't see much. Supposedly the cutting has begun in Pioneer Square and trees are being felled, but the area lacked any chainsaw buzz or shouted "tim-berrrrrrr"s around noon. We didn't stick around to gawk, though, so maybe they were between trees. A nice little pile of fresh firewood was sitting around. The P-I is reporting that there were a dozen......

And now for a whistle-stop tour of some suburban bowling houses... With 50 lanes under one arched roof, Kenmore Lanes is the area’s biggest bowling center (if not the state’s). Besides its mounted giraffe and elephant heads, it also has a cardroom, which could be its undoing. The Kenmore city council’s recent cardroom ban was met with a lawsuit by the alley, claiming it can’t survive on bowling alone. The venue’s fate is now in......

According to news stories via The Globe and Mail and The LA Times (registration required), an accused lawyer by the name of Jules Zalon representing Robert Crumb filed a lawsuit in a Seattle court December 21 against Amazon.com seeking compensation for an older case of copyright infringement whereby the online shopping behemoth allegedly made an unauthorized use of Crumb's keep on truckin' character on its website in 2003. Seattlest finds lawsuits like these kind of......

How dissappointing. Chris Cornell of Soundgarden is from Seattle. His ex-wife Susan Silver is, we believe, from Seattle as well. We thought she lived here and owned some cafes or restaurants or something (heads Atmosphere Artist Management). Who knows where Mr. Audioslave lives. Anyway, you'd think the least he could do for the city would be to sue his ex in a Seattle court. He isn't, though. He's suing her in an LA court. If......

Last week while driving down Stone Way, hand poised over horn, we were surprised and somewhat dismayed to see that Vern Fonk Insurance had closed shop. However, a quick check at the Fonk site indicated that the office had only moved to a newlocation. As a result, because of Fonk's horn-blowing slogan, we imagine their old neighbors are relieved to have them gone, just as their new neighbors are probably preparing a lawsuit. In any......

In the days leading up to the election, we will amalgamate what the four newspapers had to say about the races into one combined blurb for each candidate or initiative because we do not purport to follow city politics closely enough to advise anyone, even ourselves, how to vote. That's why God invented local politics writers. Direct democracy, olive oil, and man-on-man action. The ancient Greeks had all three (probably simultaneously) and so do we.......

We would have written about this earlier, but we were so enchanted with ABC New's ad for the Brad Pitt interview on 'Prime Time Live' that we couldn't look away. His eyes and roguish smile are just so mesmerizing. Last week, local music fan and we are sure all-around nice guy Richard Monroe alleged that he was assaulted during Snoop Dogg concert at the White River Amphitheater. "They just beat me, stomping me, and beat......

As the governor’s race grinds into its sixtieth straight month, things are now in the hands of the courts, lawyers, party donors, and--of course--statistical work done by political science professors. The state Republicans are citing a recent report by two college professors which shows that Dino Rossi would have won the election by 100 votes if all those pesky ineligible voters were thrown out. The proportional data, complied by Anthony Gill of the University......

Previously on Showdog Moms and Dads: Brandon and Ryan went all Cops on us and involved the Issaquah police in their dog-related domestic dispute. We open back in the parking lot of Riverdog in Issaquah, where Brandon is telling the cops that Ryan is holding his dog "for ransom," which we think has to be the most dramatic reimagining of the situation possible, and which, we have decided, is driving us further into Ryan's......

Don’t you hate it when you lose your keys and waste an entire morning looking for them, only to find 93 uncounted ballots instead? Well, that’s the feeling down at King County Elections as ballots continue to show up in the darndest places. The revelation of these found ballots has King County Elections Director Dean Logan under fire. Republican Council Members Reagan Dunn and Steve Hammond both sent him letters asking for his resignation.......