image: Krispy Kreme
Go ahead and have one. As in all else,
moderation is the key.

Kiss that low-carb, no-carb, bullcrap fad diet goodbye. The sweetest day of the year [besides today and every other day] is tomorrow.

This Friday, June 3rd, Krispy Kreme will celebrate its National Doughnut Day by offering patrons a FREE doughnut of your choice at participating locations throughout the United States.

Yes, you read that right. A FREE doughnut of your pick! What does your heart and your stomach desire? An Original Glazed? Chocolate iced with custard filling? Traditional Cake? Caramel Kreme Crunch? Cinnamon Twist? Key Lime Pie? Glazed Lemon Filled? Maple Iced Glazed? Chocolate iced with sprinkles? Powder Blueberry Filled? Glazed Cruller? Name your favorite sweet roll, and go ahead and indulge in one gratis! [A warm freshly-made, melt-in-your-mouth Original Glazed with a strong cup of joe is my choice. But like a kid, I actually just like watching the process of the doughnut be cooked and glazed, and have each one go through the conveyor while it

Maybe you are not from around these North Western parts and wonder what all these places that get mentioned in these
posts actually look like. Luckily there are many options for those of you to absorb the imagery of Seattle without
having to actually be here, or for those who are, without having to venture into that oh so cruel and unforgiving environment known as “outdoors”.

Photos

• More personal versions of Seattle here at www.flickr.com. Lots of photos from neighborhoods and out of the way, locals only, unusual places
  that may even make a born-and-raised-er go “ooooooh cool”. Hmmm appears that some familiar names participate in this group which may be noticed by the observant.

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For the auditory learners in the crowd, there’s yet another venue for learning about the Broadway height restriction changes: Today’s edition of KUOW’s the Conversation [#] features the story in several tasty audio formats [mp3, RealAudio, or RSS] for your listening pleasure.

related: to learn more about “podcasting” (that mysterious RSS link), start with the Wikipedia entry [#] or go straight to ipodder.org‘s explanation [#].

[pioneersquare.org]
Above: The beautiful ivy-lined
vaulted brick arcade building
beside Occidental Park. The
Summer Funky Market takes
place every Saturday from
11 am-5 pm, beginning
June 4th through August 27th.
Its original concept, the Art
in the Park occurs during
the First Thursday Art Walk
from 3pm-dusk. Both creative
enterprise takes place at the
Occidental Park in the quaint
Pioneer Square neighborhood.

As a spin-off to the First Thursday Art in the Park, the Summer Funky Market launches this Saturday, June 4th at the posy and cobblestoned fanciful Occidental Park in the Pioneer Square neighborhood in downtown Seattle.

Every Saturday from 11 am to 5 pm, expect funky and unordinary handmade jewelries, beadwork, metalwork, woodwork, knitwork, colorful pottery and ceramics, homemade candle, soaps, and assorted aromatic potions, and other fantastic whimsical arts and crafts from local independent artists. In addition, the Saturday Funky Market will also offer resale items, clothing, antiques and other uncommon fab bargains. This is not your ordinary drab crafts fair.

The Art in the Park at Occidental Square originally started as an organic gathering of artists who sold their work during the First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square. Now, the tradition and all the artsy pleasure expand through the last Saturday of August for the Summer Funky Market in Occidental Square.

Not only will you get fabulous handmade one-of-a-kind finds at the Funky Market and the Art in the Park, you’ll also be supporting our local independent creative talents!

A whole lot of funk going on
at the market.

Interested in becoming a vendor at the Saturday Summer Funky Market or the First Thursday Art in the Park? Here’s how:

.. Items for sale or on display must be unique art objects, displayed and sold by the artists who created them. Artist must be present and selling their art.
.. The City of Seattle requires that participants intending to sell items at this event need their own current Seattle business license. It is the responsibility of artists to follow other laws for operating a business (such as collecting sales tax).
.. Qualifying artists may participate on a first-come, first-served, space-available basis.
.. $8 for an 8′ x 3′ space.
.. $17 for a 10′ x 10′ space.
.. Free 8′ x 3′ space for artists who will be showing their work but not conducting business. Show-only artists will not be allowed to set up along side fee-paying artists. A separate area will be designated for show-only.
.. Up to 4 artists may share a space. (Because work for sale at this event must be sold by the person who created it, each artist selling work must have their own business license.)

For more information on the Saturday Funky Market or the First Thursday Art in the Park, contact the Pioneer Square Community Association at (206) 667.0687 or visit www.pioneersquare.org.

Related posts: “For the Love of Art: First Thursdays & Other Art Walks in the City”; “Edibles*: Neighborhood Farmers Market– The Old Hot New Thing.”

Just a reminder, (since I saw all the sidewalk signs for this on my way into work this morning) The Fremont First Friday Art Walk is tomorrow evening, from 6 until 9 PM. Knowing Fremont, it is probably more like 9-ish.

The event gets it name from, well, it happens on the First Friday of the month. And that is tomorrow.

This was originally reported by Ms. Aquino in this posting last month, I just wanted to remind y’all.
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danger zone [p-i]

Lest you think that the weeklies are the only ones in town interested in the question of whether the height restrictions on Broadway will be changed, the Post-Intelligencer has an interactive “sound off” feature on their website to allow you, the home reader, to participate in the discussion. From their colorful introduction to the comment solicitation, it’s possible to guess where they stand on the issue:

[Broadway's] now a shadow of its former self, like an aging punk rocker

From recent local news, one might get the impression that our city is plagued with freeloaders who really like to hang out for a long time in places without paying. Hoping to “encourage turnover” among visitors to the Ballard Locks, the city will start charging for parking on the 13th of June. Those who show up for a (three-hour maximum) day of picnicking, boat watching, and fish ladder spectation will now be required to shell out $4.50 for the ability to arrive by car. [seattletimes]

However, the Burke-Gillman trail was recently extended; so people who want to make a longer day of it can bike to the park and linger in the gardens, be soothed by the rising and fallling water as boaters make their way to and from the Sound, or watch the salmon carrying out their biological imperitive in the cool, dark ladder observation chamber to their hearts content. Once again, it’s hard to tell whether the increased fees are meant to increase profits or to keep Seattle on the list of healthiest cities.

related: Quicktime panoramas of the Chittenden Locks and Gardens [vrseattle]

[bodyfreedom.org]
Painted naked cyclists
at the Fremont Fair
Summer Solstice
Celebration.

Don’t want to push, pedal and spunkily bike naked at the festival, but [no pun intended] want to be a part of the Fremont Fair Summer Solstice Parade? Here’s a message I received:

FESTIVAL SEEKING:
Fremont Fair Summer Solstice needs physical theatre performers, movers and clowns for the Saturday, June 18th’s Summer Solstice Parade & Pageant. For more information, call (206) 618.6484.

Related post: “Get ready for the naked cyclists! Fremont Fair Summer Solstice Celebration is around the corner!”

As usual, here’s a rundown of what to expect as you’re flipping through
the pages of your favorite weekly. Also as usual, it doesn’t include
everything (since both papers have online tables of contents) and the
links will show up when they’re available on both sites (or whenever my
afternoon procrastination instincts set in).

the Stranger	Seattle Weekly
density watch
Still pro-density. This week’s villain: Nickles kowtowing to big business who aren’t hip to the re-zoning scene [#]!	Still skeptical. This week’s dramatic revelation: Knute Berger almost falls for the fancy models at the Vulcan Discovery Center [#]!
in other news
Amy “skateboard coverage MVP” Jenniges profiles [#] Seattle’s raddest mom — Kate Martin, who is not only lobbying for better locations for skateparks, but also transformed her front yard into a skate course for her kids — and covers efforts by local bikers to document the dangerous world of cycling [#].	Instead of a full feature, this week’s Weekly includes a condensed chapter of former Seattle police chief Norm “WTO” Stampler’s new biography. In a truly weird bit of pagination, the chapter is interspersed with a street corner (the infamous Sixth and Union) interview/profile [#].
interesting approaches to arts coverage
Easier to write (and read) than a complete book review: Sean Nelson dissects [#] a paragraph from Ian McEwan’s Saturday.	Steve Wiecking uses this week’s column as an occasion to interpret recent television appearances by Tom Cruise and to offer the movie star advice [#].
articles about coffee
Apparently a big week for coffee in the weeklies. In addition to the Victrola Wi-Fi situation [#], the Stranger includes an article by Sara Dickerman that scolds area cafes for selling crappy corporate muffins [#]. Although she requests reports of other pastry atrocities, I’d like to endorse the weekend scones at Local Cafe in the hope that wider recognition will make them a weekday phenomenon.	Meanwhile, Heather Logue takes the Seattle Weekly reader on a tour of cafes that happen to be open sort of late at night [#]. Although the article is called “24 Hour Coffee People”, none of the profiled shops are open all night. Maybe this is a commentary on the shortage of all night caffeine stops — she had to venture to Kirkland to include a place that closes at 11 pm.
overlapping picks?
We have a winner! Both the “Stranger Suggests” [#] and the “SW This Week” [#]  recommend Circus Contraption for your Friday night. It is also worth noting that in it’s “Brain City”[#] (my new favorite SW section) the Seattle Weekly highlights both a Comic Book Convention and a UFO/Sasquatch convention that will be occurring on Saturday. Insert your own joke here.
representative sentences
“She talks about conservatives the way people who hate their fathers talk about their fathers — her hatred doesn’t have any detachment or distance . . . ” [#] “The truth of the matter is, some of the best books in the last 10 years have been memoirs. Books by Eggers and Amis come immediately to mind.” [#]	” . . . if Homme’s playing with himself here, nobody ever said autoeroticism couldn’t be sensual” [#] “Art is less dangerous than drugs, which is why people get into it, but less successful when it comes to resolving the mind-body dialectic . . . ” [#] “OK, so the swing phenomenon fizzled as a hipster trend.” [#]

I feel odd to be alerting my out-of-town visitors that this is “the season” for naked bicyclists. The concept that there could be room for multiple clothing-optional biking events has fried my puny cognitive abilities.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for nudists on bikes. We must get some pretty interesting accident reports. My in-laws are plenty cool. They probably won’t freak out about it. But they are still my husband’s parents, and I am not ready to think about them and the naked bike riders of Seattle, together in the same space in my head. So, I don’t quite know where we’re going to be on June 11 (World Naked Bike Ride 2005) or June 18 (Fremont Fair’s naked-but-painted cyclists)… well, yes, I guess I know where we’re NOT going to be, but there will be maps involved and mutterings of “how can we get to X without passing the mumblemumble?”.

And the FAQ on the Naked Bike Ride site was not nearly clear enough about the whole bike seat thing, so I really have to ask. Is there a silent agreement that when you buy a used bike in Seattle, you change out the seat? No, seriously. I really want to know.