If parking lots designed parks they would all look like the new Counterbalance pit at the base of Queen Anne. Generally the park functions as an outdoor place for recreational activities or offers an aesthetically pleasing open space to relax or stroll. Counterbalance Park does neither. That isn’t to say it breaks the conventional mold of how we define the modern park because it doesn’t do anything at all. Deemed an “Urban Oasis” by......

"yellow dragon on pole" by Seattlest Flickr Pool Contributor Seattle rainscreen. Thanks! It's not every day that the local news headlines look so....well....international. This morning, we've got Seattle money going to China to help out after the horrific earthquake; more information about the death of a museum director in town from Thailand who was in federal custody; Seattle-based federal prosecutors in Baghdad conducting a criminal investigation on a Seattlite paratrooper; and an incinerated tavern......

Seattlest grew up in Central Florida and, even though we haven't lived there for many, many years, we still crave the sunshine. Maybe it's because our body expects more vitamin D? We certainly don't want to add to the choruses of imported souls who bitch and moan about Seattle winters. Nonetheless, we wind up doing so, anyway, every year around mid-January. But, we've come to delight in February, which always gives us a week......

Walking down 15th the other afternoon, we were a little Hitchcocked out by the sight of a crowd of crows (or ravens, the comments section is of two minds about which) assembled on a neighbor's house and lawn. Naturally, we immediately suspected said neighbors of being witches. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Live and let magick, we say.) A woman got out of her car while we were taking the picture and,......

The glorious fall sunsets have disappeared along with the mouldering husks of Halloween pumpkins, and according the weather report, we can all expect a long, cold, wet weekend. But this being the Northwest, that's never stopped us from getting out and about; here's the weekend plans of your intrepid Seattlest contributors: By the time this hits the digital newsstands, Jeremy is going to be on his way to Fadó for post-work cocktails; after that......

It's not that development in itself sucks; it's that our county and city government doesn't believe in development for art's sake, despite all those studies about the half billion the arts return to the community. When we look around, we don't see a lot of public investment in the single most expensive thing that artists and smaller arts organizations have to face: a place to work, rehearse, show, perform. We did see this notice that......

A recent foggy Seattle day captured beautifully from Kerry Park. "Cloud City" graces the Seattlest Flickr Pool courtesy of Cap'n Surly--if you've been freezing your ass off in parks like he has to get shots like this, you should join the pool, too. We can't wait to see what you've got.......

If you’re gonna make an album with orchestral arrangements care of living legend composer Van Dyke Parks, you’re gonna have to go all out to perform it right. That’s why the first half of super English major/elven queen Joanna Newsom’s grandiose show last night at Benaroya Hall featured the accompaniment of local 29-piece chamber orchestra the Northwest Sinfonia to cover her last full-length, the epic five-song masterpiece Ys ("ees"). It’s not hard to recreate......

Seattlest likes parks. Especially the big ones with plenty of room for family picnics, Frisbee, flag football and lots and lots of gay sex. Seriously, Mr. Need-It-Now, can you not find another, less child-scarring place for business time? Seattle is home to a number of wonderful hotels. And what about camping? That's romantic, right? Okay, maybe it's not romance you're after. Maybe it's just fucking. That's cool. But why a public park? The outdoor thing?......

(This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook. On Sunday morning, following a trip to a local farmer’s market/major supermarket chain, we will be preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent. Then at halftime we will throw our badly burned hands in the air and make hot dogs.) Sunday's NFC West showdown in San Francisco leads to many culinary possibilities. The best burritos......

Gas Works Park may not recover its former place as our #1 greatest park ever after its little tar leak last week. We took a walk over there yesterday and wandered around what was basically an empty space on a gray and prematurely cold day, pressing our nose up against the chain link here and there and dwelling on what exactly this park sits on top of: benzene, mercury, lead, etc. It's gross. Current......

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......

Seattlest spent this weekend visiting friends in Spokane. We know, we know. "Why, in God's name would you go to Spokane?" Trust us, we've heard it before. But Spokane isn't all bad. It has a few great restaurants, a small but fascinating music scene made up alternately of young, unable-yet-to-escape kids in punk rock bands and older, happy-to-be-settled-down really good musicians all playing in a small town which is full of outdoor opportunities in urban......

Feel like doing a little Oktoberfest drinking this weekend, Washington style? The Washington Beer Commission is holding their 1st annual Oktoberfest at St. Edwards State Park on Lake Washington in Kenmore. There are going to be some great local brewers there, but don't expect to find any of the big German brewers. There will of course be the requisite oompah music and German food from local vendors (doesn't get much more German than that!).......

Late summer is berry season, which means it is also bear season. A 51 year-old man mountain biking in Banner Forest (near Port Orchard on the Kitsap Peninsula) was attacked by a male black bear last week. His dogs were running ahead of him, and he heard them barking. He turned a corner, and was face-to-face with the bear, which then attacked him. Attacks by black bears are remarkably rare, which makes the situation all......

Join the dozens who have already voted in this year's primary and have your voice politely nodded at. Besides port, city, and county races there are two park levies. We like parks, we like giving money to parks, so we're voting yes. Find your polling place here, if you have an absentee ballot put it in the mail by the end of the day, and if you're a King County Elections employee then please focus.......

When family’s in town, Seattlest usually troops to Pike Place Market so the out-of-towners can say they saw our city’s bustling bazaar. Though we’re not repeatedly thrilled by it, the Market is a sense-assaulting place to burn an afternoon with all-ages, crowd-tolerant kin. But it’s something else entirely beyond the northernmost booth or on the exit stairs facing the viaduct. It’s a trashy, scare-little-cousin-Susie jungle out there. Even now, with the Centennial Celebration in......

You may see incumbent councilwoman Sally Clark at a local candidate forum, but you won't see one of her opponents, Bob Brown. Brown doesn't need the hoi polloi telling him what to think, because he formed some pretty strong opinions back in the early 60s and he's sticking to them. He doesn't like all the new fruity town houses, skate parks, and is the only man brave enough to speak out about the city's conspiracy......

Jason Holstrom may be known as a founding member of two local bands, Wonderful and United State of Electronica, as well as a producer for such acts as Dolour and Aqueduct, but now he's got a new group up his sleeve: The Thieves of Kailua, a one-man island-pop project. Through its sunny surf sounds, layered loungey vocals, and a mixture of production techniques both old and new, the self-titled album evokes a Hawaiian vacation--starting......

Yesterday, when a reader informed Seattlest of an enclosure going up at Gas Works park for a private event, we posted some smart assey thing about the park's recent unfriendliness towards private events. We were aghast that public property could be employed as someone's personal party space, but, you know, not really. We pictured a dog run-like chain link fence enclosure near the back of the park, maybe in that newish area that no one......

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......

Seattlest grew up in a tiny town you've never heard of in Central Florida, where a real sandy ocean beach (on which you could drive) was 20 minutes in one direction, and a crystalline gulf beach was an hour and a half in the other. Now that we live in the Land of the Rain, we wait all year for weeks like these, when the sun is high and hot, the breeze is soft and......

Last weekend, after twenty years in Seattle, we visited the Japanese Garden in the Arboretum. We're not sure why it took so long -- maybe because there's so much free outdoors stuff and there's a $5 admission. Maybe because we don't visit the Arboretum [maps!] that often, either. But we bought a bike again recently and now we're a huge cyclist, sometimes going on rides that last more than fifteen minutes each way! Plus, we......

So, the Seattle P-I restaurant critic writes that "Safeco's got some of the worst food in the major leagues." That statement struck a nerve with this Seattlest, as we tend to think that Safeco has some of the best food in MLB parks. The variety and quality of food you can get at Safeco just cannot be matched by very many stadiums around the country. Just a sample of what you can get:Dixie's BBQ -......

Since Monday, Seattle's Parks Department has hired buskers such as Hickman to play from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays through September at Pioneer Square and four other parks downtown: Freeway Park, Waterfront Park by the Seattle Aquarium, Westlake Park and Hing Hay Park. Each busker gets paid $30 to play at a park during those hours. The buskers are an expansion of the city's effort during the past two summers to change the......

Since its development in 1982, Victor Steinbrueck Park (formerly "Market Park") has been a melting pot of downtown green-space seeking citizenry and tourists. Just about every class of human being can be seen here on a warm, sunny day. We, being fortunate enough to work near the market, spend many a lunch here. We always bring a book to read, but on a day like today, little reading gets done because of all the people......

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......

You don't need us to tell you what it's like out there right now. But you could tell Seattlest what you've been doing now that we're all San Diego temperatures and whatnot--drop it in the comments if you're the sharing type. In the meantime, we hit the streets with our camera cruised Flickr photos tagged "Seattle" that weren't in our already glorious Seattlest pool, to see what people have been provoked to do by that......

The other day we spotted our first campaign sign for the upcoming civic elections, and our dork meter perked up a bit. The election season has begun, and all over the city campaign managers are starting to hate their lives. John Manning will be taking on Bruce Harrell and Venus Velazquez for Peter Steinbrueck’s vacated seat. However, we’re not sure about the slogan: we get that it’s a pun but why the ellipse? The......

C'mon, Seattle Times. You get a press release related to the McMenamins affair in Kenmore from some mysterious source claiming that the whole deal is off and you turn around and announce it to the world without so much as a phone call to McMenamins? When Seattlest gets a release in the mail detailing the city's plan to dye the sky green we immediately start ranting about how blue skies were good enough for us......