• When Seattle last saw Pretty Girls Make Graves, they were accompanied by a lip-synching drag queen and a troupe of double-dutch jump ropers who parted the Block Party crowd to enhance the energetic rock performance. Whether you can count on that sort of spectacle tonight is uncertain, but even unaccompanied the band rarely fails to entertain. There are, however, four opening bands, making the show something of an endurance challenge. [neumos]
• Project Runway. One of them will be the winner, one will be out. Grumble with fellow fans about the judges and whether they’re keeping talentless nutjobs for the sake of drama tonight at Faire, a francophile gallery & cafe that opened this spring [mb] on Olive & Melrose (the old Fillipi’s books). Among other creative events (UNO tournaments, open mic nights), they also host 10 pm viewings of the best reality competition on the air. [bravo]

digression/follow-up: Last week, I alerted you to the NWFF premiere of the new Werner Herzog film, the Wild Blue Yonder and only got around to seeing it last night. Where I expected soothing and dreamy video collage in service of a science fiction fantasy storyline, I instead found a sad grumpy alien narrating a weird [internal] logic-defying story of cross colonization and fuzzy physics. In its own way, the film provides an interesting experiment in suspension of disbelief and ability to dissociate everything you know about science, math, aeronautics history, space travel, and exploration from the onscreen images. Where another movie might have used a comforting soundtrack to expedite this disengagement process, Herzog instead employs music written and performed for non-Western ears. For me, this made it all the more difficult to ignore pesky thoughts about bone atrophy during long exposure to microgravity and whether exhaled oxygen would actually bubbles in a liquid helium atmosphere instead of just delighting in the surreal undersea footage. Your mileage may vary. It plays through Thursday at 7 and 9 pm. [nwff]

SustainLane, a website that bills itself as The Web’s best community resource for healthy and sustainable living has a list of what they consider the cities in the US offering the highest quality of life. Seattle ranks fourth, right after San Francisco, Portland, and Berkeley. (Amusingly enough for me, my favorite and frequent vacation spot–Santa Monica–is right behind Seattle in fifth place.)

Quoth the site:

The city excels in management innovation and in maintaining a state-of-the-art knowledgebase, working closely with Mayor Greg Nickels.

I’m not even sure what that means.

Rafael Soriano, Mariners superbrilliant setup guy, took a Vlad Guerrero line drive off his temple tonight. He lay on the infield grass for over 10 minutes while medics tried to stablize him for transport off the field.

The bad news is that he’s in Harborview overnight. The good news is that he’s at Harborview, the best trauma center in the Northwest and the one probably best equipped to handle baseball-to-head injuries. Also, the initial reports of “depressed skull fracture” appear to be false, which means he’s not looking at emergency surgery or a life-or-death situation at this moment.

Still, even if you hate pro sports, you got to hate to see something like this. Godspeed, Raffy.

Every year, as Labor Day rolls around, people always seem to talk about Bumbershoot and how much it now costs to spend the day at Seattle Center. Almost always, these discussions involve someone bringing up the good old days when the festival used to cost nothing to attend. Curious about just how long ago this utopian free era was, I did a little Nexis-ing to chart ticket prices over the 36-year Bumbershoot history and found that people have been paying since at least 1980:

The Seattle Times only has online archives dating back to 1990, but that year included a 20-year anniversary story [#] which mentioned a change in pricing structure coinciding with OneReel’s takeover of production duties in 1980. In that year, the festival moved from charghing $8-9 for select acts to a $2.50 full-festival daily admission. For the most part, it seems like tickets were all-access (one exception: a 1994 mainstage show by Sunny Day Real Estate and Sky Cries Mary commanded an additional $10 for entry). Since then, prices have steadily climbed to this year’s $30 per day charge, not including the cost of shortcake or elephant ears.

Any anecdotal evidence to fill in the pricing blanks between 1971 and 1980?

update: A little context from Bumbershoot’s communication department after the jump
(more…)

In case you haven’t noticed, we love the wacky monorail hijinks here at Metroblogging headquarters. (Actually, we just like the word hijinks. And by we I probably mean just me.) Today, the Seattle Times pointed out that the old, broken, best-used-as-a-paperweight Seattle Center monorail needs $4.5 million in repairs to make it work again [Times].

Somewhere in the article Tim Ceis mentions that buses break down all the time and no one cares, that they just get them fixed and everyone moves on. Only how often have you been stuck on a bus suspended way the heck up in the air? I love the monorail, truly. The thing is 14 years past its expected 30-year lifespan, however, and sometimes it’s time to pull the plug. So couldn’t we use all of that money towards building a new, better, not on fire monorail? Maybe one that people could actually commute on?

But that’s not going to happen, so instead they’re conducting all manner of tests, including loading the cars with 12 tons of steel plates, which equals a full load. There’s still no estimate as to when it’ll be up and running again, but even if it’s active by Bumbershoot I don’t think I’ll be hopping on. I’d rather not get stuck.

Seattleites who believed — or perhaps distrusted — the fawning reviews given to Special Topics in Calamity Physics had a chance to meet the author herself last night, in the flesh, at Elliot Bay Book Company. Marisha Pessl — with her mother in tow — gave a series of three readings from her debut novel, then fielded questions from an enthusiastic audience.

Several Metblogs authors who attended admitted that meeting a writer in person made us feel a little guilty about having read Gawker’s weirdly -obsessed-with-appearances coverage. But isn’t that what Gakwer is all about, anyway?

Yes, we’ve been rattling on and on about this whole “Revenge of the Bookeaters” pre-Bumbershoot event for quite a while now. And we’ll probably continue, because glowing reports from other tour stops keep rolling in over the wires. But for now, if you want to see the show and don’t want to buy a $30 ticket, rumor has it that there are a few free passes for the taking at Red Balloon (7th Street & Olive Way).

While you’re there, you can shop for a Bumbershoot t-shirt. You know, so that you can wear this year’s shirt to this year’s festival. (Just kidding. Please don’t do that.)

Carla Saulter, aka
BusChick, succinctly lists a few signs that maybe you’re not up on the latest bus regulations. I just want to know what the guy was using to carry the gasoline.

I Heart Seattle posts pictures of the demolished Safeway at Broadway and Mercer, and complains about Broadway getting more ugly. Hate to disagree with you, but anything that gets rid of that derelict, broken, ass-ugly building is an improvement. I’ll take the condos.

Trying to turn a profit in a real estate market that is starting to go a bit soft and squishy around the edges isn’t always easy. Sometimes, according to the Rain City Real Estate folks, you need a little help from Mom.

Say what you want about buying at the peak of the market, but the University of Washington has just paid $130,000,000.00 for the former SafeCo Tower at 4333 Brooklyn Ave NE.

Rumors were that the University had sought to forestall other buyers from bidding higher and then renting out floors to administration by threatening to never rent from any other owner — now they won’t have that problem.

a few hot links from seattle’s weblog buffet:

• Cactus quietly opens its Alki location today, wilding up the West Seattle scene. [westseattleblog]
• to tip or not to tip? the saga continues. [starbucksgossip]
• Fresh off roles as a prostitute who goes serial killer and Minnesota miner with something to prove [Ed: don't forget live action anime superhero --please, can't we just pretend that never happened?], Charlize Theron’s next project will be re-enacting the Battle in Seattle in her boyfriend’s upcoming WTO pic. Smashing the state has never looked so glamorous, unless, of course, protester prostheses will be involved? [seattle.lj]