"King County Executive Along for the Ride" by Seattlest Flickr Photographer HonuPhoto White Center Now reports that King County Executive Ron Sims has proposed two staggered fare increases for Metro buses on his blog. In other news--Ron Sims writes a blog?!Yesterday's late afternoon thunder and lightning struck a little too close to home for a West Seattle Blog reader. A cedar tree in their neighbor's back yard was split in two by a lightning strike,......

"J. P. Patches Statue Unveiling" courtesy of Seattlest Flickr Pooler / ryan Apparently, not everyone in town shares our deep-seated fear of clowns, thanks to J.P. Patches. According to My Ballard, hundreds and hundreds of you, many donning clown make-up yourselves, came out on Sunday to watch the unveiling of the new J.P. Patches statue. As for us, just writing those sentences and the Flickr photos we saw were enough to prompt a cold sweat......

Photo courtesy of Adam Lyon Lightning, thunder, and heavy rains are beautiful and exciting, particularly to us in the Pacific Northwest who get to witness them so infrequently. When a storm comes in we always hope we're near a window (or camping, so said people on the bus this morning) so that we can catch random glimpses of nature's fireworks. Other people react differently, though. When a storm whips up Dad, back in Illinois, mans......

The Go! Team - "Grip Like a Vice" The Go! Team (surely you remember them from all of their Pitchfork love and their incessant adoration in the blogosphere - including us - for 2004's Thunder, Lightning, Strike) play Neumos tonight in support of their new album, Proof of Youth (the video above is for the first single). The new album's been criticized as being a bit of a rehash of ideas from the group's debut,......

Stand at the corner of First and Pike, and you almost hear the thunder of Seattle's hotel wars, the howitzers of the future as they battle for attention in the trades, the travel mags, the lifestyle glossies. First into battle: a new Four Seasons, across the street from the downtown Art Museum: 21 stories, 149 hotel rooms, 36 residential condos, opening 2008. If your memory goes back more than two years, you'll recall that Four......

"No more moons-over-my-hammy", documented by mary and filed in the Seattlest Flickr pool. We don't mean to steal Mary's thunder; however, her photograph moved us to write down some of the thoughts we've been having about the Ballard Denny's closure. We knew it was coming; however, just like the presence of vampires in Sunnydale, we didn't actually want to think about it. The light, the clouds, the darkness of the trees, and the Shell......

If there's anything we learned studying literature in college, it's that everything either comes from Shakespeare, Greek mythology or the Bible. Seattlest used to entertain herself by playing "From Whence Did That Allusion Come?" Yeah, we only had two friends in college. The result of our education is an absolute delight for anything that successfully adapts some brilliant Shakespearean masterpiece into a slightly more ribald, contemporary spectacle. And so it is that we perked up......

On a weekend when Blue Angels were literally drenching Seattle skies with violent peals of thunder, Seattle Opera's new production of Flying Dutchman saturated McCaw Hall with vibrant voices and reverberant horns. Dutchman is Wagner's first major work, with roots squarely in the tradition of German romanticism (Beethoven musically, Heine philosophically). He was still years away from composing his interminable, mystical Ring (which, like Seafair, has become a touchstone of Seattle's civic religion). In......

There are going to be some angry PR people in sports media land. The Storm have one big off-season story, who they will draft. That draft is today. But the Huskies completely stole their thunder by announcing picking their new women's coach. Weird...anyway, here's the scoop, courtesy of the Times. Story 1: The Huskies' new coach is Tia Jackson (at right), formerly an assistant at Duke.Jackson, a 1995 graduate of Iowa where she played for......

Sports: The Sonics are 6-9, on a two game losing streak, and everybody's fighting. The Orlando Magic are 11-4, have won their last four, feature Dwight Howard, and come from some place very warm! What's not to love? Tip-off is right when the next snowstorm is supposed to hit. Worth risking your life for? Yes! 7:00pm // Key Arena // tickets Books, or something similar: Elliott Bay Books has their monthly open mic night......

You'd think you could enjoy a quiet evening in your apartment without a crane falling over and killing you, right? Well, not in downtown Bellevue. A crane collapsed onto an apartment building at about 7:30 last night at 108th and 4th, a sound described by various witnesses as "this rumbling like thunder," "a tire blowing out times 1,000" and "like someone had taken several carts full of metal and had thrown them off a......

We only got into mangos this year. We're not big tropical fruit fans, so when we got one in one of our first SPUD boxes, we pureed it for our daughter. And that was the first time we confronted the nightmare that is dissecting a mango. We also discovered that, unlike pineapples and coconut, mangos are really tasty. At first, we assumed our clumsy dissection efforts were a product of our ignorance. Surely someone out......

Seattle likes to earn its accolades. We're one of the smartest, fittest, best barista having-est cities in the country, and yet our mid-sized city attitude constantly has us noting any mention we get that has us topping the Big Boys (not unlike a civic "Short Man's Complex"). Usually it's at least something truly noteworthy, but well, not always. Seattle is now home to the world's largest bass drum. RUMBLE was created through a partnership between......

It’s not everyday we get a rock warrior passing through town, much less Thor, the self-proclaimed “Legendary Rock Warrior.” But tonight we will. The leather-clad rock ‘n’ roll singer, champion bodybuilder, horror-film actor and sci-fi/fantasy comic-book star will put the hammer down at the Sunset. His official site describes him best: “Thor has explored the tongue-in-cheek Sweet/Mott the Hoople/Bowie stylings [of the ‘70s], hard-hitting metal moves of the ‘80s, and flirting (sic) briefly with Nu-Rock/Metal......

Here at Seattlest, we love the New Pornographers, but one big reason we love them is our obsession with Neko Case, the female voice of the band. Her alt-country (whatever that is) solo work makes our teeth just vibrate with excitement. We listened respectfully to opening band, Laura Veirs and the Tortured Souls. With her Patty Griffin-esque voice, she is an acquired taste, kinda like a female Bob Dylan. Soon, Neko and her three-piece backing......

Seattlest faves and old skool raves, the Go! Team, are headed back our way (10/25, to be exact). Yes, yes- you missed them the first time around. So did a lot of people. "It's too hot," you said. "I don't want to come home smelling like an ashtray," you said. "The album is too treble-y. Where's the bass?" you said. Well, Go! Team mastermind, Ian Parton , agreed with you on that last one. Does......

Seattlest knows that the U-District has its drawbacks- parking, obnoxious students, bioterror laboratories- uh, scratch that last one... but a pleasant Saturday can easily be found there. Check out the Big Book Sale at the U-Bookstore. Witness the crowds at the Farmer’s Market, now that everything is in season. And if you’re seeking shelter from all that hideous sunlight, the Grand Illusion is screening Rolling Thunder, a William Devane starring revenge flick scripted by Paul......

With their blend of schoolyard chants, '70s TV themes, and old school hip-hop, the Go! Team creates music made for summer. And since summer finally seems to be upon us, last night was the perfect time for the band, recently signed to Columbia, to play a sold-out show at Neumo's. Seattlest is happy to report that the U.K. multi-culti girl-boy indie collective lived up to our lofty expectations, as well as their own exclamation......