They're setting up for Sandfest 2007 at Westlake Park, which is this Saturday, the 25th. "Community sponsors" will have sculptures built, and then for a $1 suggested donation you can vote for whichever strikes your fancy. (It benefits the Moyer Foundation.) Actually, there's a little Friday night music from 5-6:30pm in Westlake Plaza, the Latin jazz sound of Sonando. Saturday the music runs from 11am-4:30pm, which is when the results of the sculpture competition......

Oh Seattle, you make us feel so old. It was maybe a year ago and some, while we were wallowing in the mud at Sasquatch, clutching our $8 cans of Budweiser, when we finally said to ourselves, "You know what? Outdoor festivals suck." And then we recoiled in horror. Hating festivals is the very definition of getting old, isn't it? Really. There's an accepted narrative explanation of this phenomenon at pseudo-hipster bastions like The......

The Seattle International Film Festival starts May 24. All 405 films. Tickets are on sale to members right now; hoi polloi, this Sunday. New this year is that if you buy a multi-ticket package, you can then order tickets online to the specific films you want to see. That is thanks to POP, who do SIFF's website. We learned this at the SIFF press launch yesterday, in their new digs in McCaw Hall. We went......

This week the Washington State Senate is deciding whether to make Washington to the first state in the nation to ban the fire retardant deca-BDE [ESHB 1024]. (The House, where Jamie Pedersen was a sponsor, passed the bill this February.) [UPDATE: Rep. Ross Hunter writes to point out that he's the bill's primary sponsor -- there are over 50 "We're with ya, Ross" sponsors, including Pedersen and some guy named Upthegrove. In Ross's honor,......

"We're gonna send you to military school" will no longer be an idle threat only of rich parents, if Governor Gregoire gets her way. She's backing a "boot-camp-style" academy for our state's high school dropouts.The governor is seeking about $6 million to build and operate the academy, which would serve about 300 dropouts each year — two intensive five-month sessions of 150 youths, drawn from around the state. After scouring the state for possible sites,......

A hot tip just arrived in our inbox. It's about a bill that was proposed in the House in Olympia yesterday that would enforce some transparency into ticket prices. There's a bill introduced yesterday in the state House, HB 1978, that would require ticket vendors/promoters/etc. to disclose in their advertizing the full cost of a ticket. Remember when The End was advertising Endfest tickets for $10.77? And then once Ticketbastard levied its convenience charge and......

The premise of last night's technology event Ignite Seattle was simple. Get into groups and spend a half an hour building bridges out of popsicle sticks, stand on them until they break, and then listen to a bunch of super short presentations. It worked. We learned so much about happenings in and around the Seattle tech world we feel like we leveled up like twenty times. Really, we had high expectations --enough so that......

Mmm... Beeeerrrrrrr... Rich, voluptuous and dark (like Pam Grier!), Snowcap Ale and its seven-point status made for a delicious date Friday night. Okay, the wife was there too, but on this night our heart belonged to one of the best winter brews the Great Northwest has to offer. So, it was like a threesome really. A delicious threesome. Getting things moving was local man DJ Radam, spinning an amalgamation of old and new hits......

In the wild, salmon are carnivores; unlike, say, vegetarian cattle, they eat smaller fish on the road to our dinner plate. So here's the conundrum: should Seattlest buy a fish that's literally eating up the ocean's resources? What's the alternative? Farm-raised fish fed on an inexhaustible supply of soy pellets, a burger from a feedlot steer, an industrial chicken? These musings prompted by an op-ed in today's NYTimes by novelist Paul Greenberg. Yeah, fish......

Bank of America, McDonalds and Starbucks? Seattlest is reeling a little from the notion of an overtly corporate party to celebrate the start of the year of the dog at Union station on Saturday, February 4th. Are we suffering from some naive idea that Chinese New Year celebrations in Seattle would simply erupt in a grass-roots manner from the depths of the International District? Yes, Uwajimaya is one of the many sponsors of the Union......

We are officially in the holiday slump as far as shows go. That's hardly the worst thing in the world, since it's good to finally get a chance to rest after all of the madness of the Red Bull Music Academy. A month of consistently great music is enough wear down even the biggest of diehards. So it's time to take it a little bit easier, and to deal with all of the Christmahanukwanzadan festivities......

In another case of The Man doing something right, Red Bull has invaded Seattle, not to actively sell their overly-caffeinated wares, but to educate and showcase a crop of truly worldwide talent. Seattle is lucky enough to join such cities as Berlin, Dublin, Sao Paolo, and Cape Town as this year's host city for the Red Bull Music Academy, a five week program that brings a truly international mix of beat-enthusiasts together to learn about......

If you missed last week's naked spectacle you won't have long to wait for your next public nudity extravaganza. The Fremont Solstice Parade will wind its way through the streets this Saturday featuring the famously clothes-free bikers, but the group responsible for last year's man-sized inflatable penis will not be participating. People Undergoing Real Experiences was planning a pirate affair that promised to cast those SeaFair guys in a new light from now on, but......

What's better than comic books? Why, free comic books, of course! Tell your action figures to make way on that shelf, cause the Fourth Annual Free Comic Book Day takes place this Saturday, May 7. What does that mean? It means you and all your Seth Cohen -wannabe friends can choose from among 30 different special edition comic books, absolutely gratis. Go old school and nab a G.I. Joe or be light years ahead......