As our trivia host made the rounds last night, handing out empty answer sheets and pens from his little tupperware container, he informed us that we might be at the last Liquid Lounge trivia experience. It seems that the Liquid Lounge–and possibly more?–will be closing for remodeling.

The internet isn’t providing a whole lot of information to back this up, although I did notice that the EMP’s calendar has a lot of TBAs in place of weekend music announcements for the next few weeks. According to our host, the inimitable Fred, there will be a meeting on Monday to determine just when everything is going to be shutting down. He seemed to think that everything is going to jump into action either next week or the week after, so be on the lookout for that.

Image courtesy SoundPRT

The monorail is dead, light rail is still years off, and gas prices are likely to go through the roof again this summer. What’s a public transit fan to do?

Here’s a thing to dream about: the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. It involves a large fleet of small, taxi-like cabs that run on an elevated network of “low profile monorail beams.”

The guys pushing this proposal have been trying to sell it to Microsoft for awhile. Their demo movie is pretty sweet.

Hey, if New York can have a gondola, why can’t Seattle have our fun too?

Say what you like about the followers of Lyndon Larouche … call them crazy cultists, or the standard-bearers of American democracy, or aggravating unshakeable pests, or the epitome of foolhardy optimism, or shameless disseminators of tons of immediately-thrown-away pamphlets … but boy oh boy, can they be entertaining!

Spotted yesterday on UW campus: a barbershop trio singing a song that turned out to be about Dick Cheney; one of the lines I caught was “My. Cheney, why are you hunting me?” As I walked by, they had moved on to ad-libbing about a new reality show where contestants set loose on Cheney’s ranch try to evade his bullets. Could you survive?!? Good bit.

The Grand Opening of the new Ballard Commons Park takes place rain or shine Saturday, March 4, beginning at 1 p.m. Fun stuff at the even includes a ribbon-cutting ceremony, free coffee from Starbuck’s, free ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s, an ice cream eating contest sponsored by the Ballard Ben & Jerry’s, information booths, and much, much more.

Click the image to see the full-sized flyer.

The cast of Bones.

As Josh noted in one of his ever-popular Grey’s Anatomy recaps, singer-songwriter Mike Doughty is well-liked by whomever picks the music for their show.

…or so we thought.

This afternoon, I opted to relax and watch a few episodes of the new television show Bones. I started watching the show in the fall, but then ended up spending my Tuesday nights grading papers with colleagues, so no David Borea-ahem, I mean, no excellent new television show for me. So I’ve been hoarding episodes to watch for that point in time when I, er, had time. It came this afternoon. I pop in episode 4, “The Man in the Bear” and kick back. The show opens in fictional Aurora, Washington, and I’m already grinning – yay! Washington state gets a plug. And hey, even better – Bones and her partner, Booth, are being sent to Aurora to investigate the arm pulled from the stomach of the bear.

After the cut, we’re back and have moved from Washington, D.C. to Washington state – you can tell because of the trees. Booth is driving the apparently F.B.I.-required SUV, and the music is oh-so-familiar. …waitaminute, it’s Mike Doughty! In fact, it was “Looking at the World from the Bottom of the Well”, which is one of the two songs also features on Grey’s Anatomy (and if I remember right, on the season one soundtrack).

Maybe people just associate Doughty with the Pacific Northwest. I had a chance to ask him a while back what was up with the Grey’s Anatomy “appearances”, and he said he had nothing to do with it (and wasn’t aware his music had been featured until I mentioned it), so I suspect he was probably out of the loop about the Bones “appearance” as well. But maybe someone should tell him; perhaps he’d take it as a hint to follow-through on the idea of moving to the PNW.

image via: lifeprint

So I have griped about not having a walkable market on Alki before [mb]. Sadly, this is not a post wherein I will dance a virtual jig to celebrate the opening of one near my apartment. Nope. Instead, this will be more moaning and groaning about how the developers/market owners of my fair side of the city seem to enjoy drowning my hopes in a sea of (what I believe to be) unwise business decisions. Here are two of the most recent.

The first? Well, it has been announced that a Whole Foods Market [wsh] will be built at the corner of Fauntleroy and Alaska creating the new Fauntleroy Place. Okay, I have a couple of problems with this decision: 1) there are, well, crap, just look at this map, there are four other big chain markets near this location. And yet, do you see the big empty space to the west of California Ave.? Gee, let’s put in a Whole Foods .2 (yes, POINT TWO) miles from a Safeway instead of one in a place that could use it. Grr. And 2) they BEST not be edging the West Seattle Bowl (currently located just to the north of this planned development) out of the picture. Seriously. I will so get my rant on.

And second? I heard from the gossips on the bus today (and other sources) that the empty market space is being looked at (again) for a new restaurant/bar. What? Huh? Why?! Come on, MBA types. This place is begging for a store, can’t someone provide it? I’m looking at you Trader Joe’s.

I like my bars dark and a little dirty, the sort of bar where I can hang out by myself on a Tuesday night and have a quiet beer. Fortunately for me, I live right down the street from the Eastlake Zoo Tavern (on Eastlake and East Lynn), which completely fits the bill. It doesn’t serve any hard liquor or food, doesn’t have WiFi, doesn’t have a trivia night. It’s just a plain old neighborhood bar.

Except that it’s really more than that. It’s the only co-op bar in the city, for one [P-I], so most of the bartenders have been there somewhere between 15 and 30 years. It’s got pool tables, dartboards, and an ancient shuffleboard table. Weekday nights the bar is scarcely populated with scruffy locals, although the young professional crowd tends to pack the place on the weekends. The beer is cheap and the tables are wobbly.

My neighborhood bar isn’t glamorous or particularly clean or a very good place to pick up dates. It is, however, a good place to drink beer and get to know like-minded neighbors. If you’re in the market for a cold beer and a friendly game of pool, I’ll meet you at the Zoo.

(This is part of what might someday be a series. Part one involves the Montlake Ale House.)

Photo by Sharon Kovisto, via: San Juan Islander

My wife and I are selling our house and buying a new one. It says here that moving is only 15 out of a possible 100 on the scale of potential stressors. I can only assume the guys who wrote that scale live in apartments.

However, it could be a lot worse. Consider, for example, the owners of the 114-year-old Churchill House in San Juan Island’s Friday Harbor. They gave up on moving themselves and decided to move the whole damn house. (via SJI)

Roy Lichtenstein, The Reverie, 1965 (detail).

Opening this Friday at the Henry Art Museum: an exhibition of prints by über pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). The opening gala sounds like a good party …
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[Yet again life intervenes--this time the actual trip to Amsterdam to visit Josh [#], catch up schoolwork, and more Olympics–really, I had to fight my roommate last night to watch the Grey’s Anatomy tape instead of the Olympics. A very quick summary of what occured below.]

More sex with Izzy and Alex, George gets some balls gumption, Meredith sees her father for the first time in twenty years [in an oddly anticlimactic scene], a ghost from Addison and Derek’s past, and Burke says his piece to Christina . . . after the jump in “Yesterday” (season 2, episode 18)
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