photo via akron/family [myspace]

Friday

• I don’t know how Akron/Family should be classified: experimental folk? campfire rock? I do know that some of the songs on their self-titled album like “Running, Returning”, which sinks its teeth in early, wildly changes course, doesn’t let go, and leaves me wanting to tear my eyes out in pure joy. I’m definitely looking forward to hearing their new material live and in person. [neumos]
• Want a break from reading holiday stories to your kids? No kids, but still like hearing tales of magical trains or wannabe raindeer? Actors from ReAct theatre will be holding court at Elliott Bay tonight (and Sunday afternoon), presenting some modern classics for the kids. Just the title Olive, the other reindeer cracks me up every time I read it. [react]

Saturday

• A definite high point of this summer’s Captiol Hill Block Party was when the crowd parted to allow double-dutch jump ropers to work their magic while a very tall transvestite sang on stage. Whether this feat will be repeated is questionable; but it’s the sort of awesome that can be expected from Pretty Girls Make Graves. [chopsuey]
• If you have yet to see an Ellen Forney reading, do yourself a huge favor and make time to visit the new Fantagraphics shop. More a performance than a reading, she brings an animated and soundtracked video installation to accompany her hilarious stories — unintentionally erotic landmarks of Seattle, being hit on by Camille Paglia, and perfect songs for accidental death. Want more, greedypants? Peter Bagge will be screening rarely seen animated shorts from his archives. [fantagraphics]
• Know someone with naked walls who loves movies? Landmark will be holding their annual poster sale at the Seven Gables. Hundreds of movie posters, cookies, and drawings for hot prizes! one day only.[landmark]

Sunday

• With the shopping days until the Chrismukkah Solstice waning, it might be a good day to hit up the Crocodile for brunch. Fifty of Seattle’s favorite indie designers and urban crafters will be there for a special mid-month I heart rummage to replenish their bank accounts and help you give good gift. [crocodile]
• Er, what’s this — the anti-church? “Pabst, punk, & porn” at Bad Juju? [neumos]

what else is going on? other than cleaning up storm damage?

Oh, what a mess. Trees down everywhere. Lots of people still without power. Water in basements. Branches in places no branch should be. My more venerable neighbors say that they haven’t seen damage like this since a storm in 1986.

Last night my wife and I spent most of the evening with a neighbor’s Shop-Vac getting about twenty gallons of mud, water and debris out of our basement. As it was, we were lucky. One of our neighbors had nearly a foot of water in theirs.

Our power went out at about midnight last night and stayed out until about 8:30 this morning. It was a long, cold night, listening to the wind howl outside and wondering if we were going to wake up to another flood this morning. (We didn’t.)

My neighbors and I spent most of the morning loading wheelbarrows full of debris and mud that had washed into the street and our yards. Quite a bit of what used to be my neighbor’s driveway is now sitting in my back yard.

And I live near downtown. We’re not supposed to get hammered by the heavy weather.

Any good storm stories out there?

ALSO: We’re soliciting suggestions for a name for this storm. Somebody on LJ suggested Blowjob 2006, but since this is the Society Matron blog, let’s think a bit more genteel here. Besides, blowjobs are supposed to be fun, and this, well, wasn’t.

If you’d been at our Meet Up last night, you could’ve joined in on the conversation about drunk food. Legendary local burger chain Dick’s got a positive mention from a few of us. I don’t go to Dick’s often, maybe once every couple of months or so (less often when I’m going through one of my vegetarian phases) but every now and then I get a craving for that sort of greasy goodness one can only get at a place like Dick’s.

This morning I read in the Tacoma News-Tribune [story] that King County is considering following in the steps of New York City by banning the use of trans-fats in local restaurants. [metblog].

Trans-fats are used to create shelf-stable products like baked goods, cake mixes, crackers, and salad dressings. Restaurants that serve a lot of fried food–burger joints, particularly–often cook food in trans-fat laden oils. Many restaurants are voluntarily phasing out trans-fats on their own, but others protest the cost of switching or worry about demand for non-trans fat oils outstripping supply.

King County Health staff members were scheduled to present a briefing to the Board of Health today. The state Board of Health is also considering the issue; in either case, there will be months of discussion before actions, if any, are taken.

I’ll bet you assumed that your morning newspaper was blown away by the howling winds and lodged permanently in the upper reaches of your neighbor’s tree. Alas, it seems that last night’s storm knocked out both the Seattle Times and P-I‘s ability to publish a print edition. If you have electricity and are desperate for your newspaper fix, go to the internet, print the online version on the dirtiest paper you can find, and page through it at your leisure. [lostremote]

ED: Does anyone actually still take the print edition, anyway?

I’m kinda shocked. I still have power. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the rest of the team doesn’t, as do most of you — City Light is currently reporting 160,000 customers without power, roughly half the city. Puget Sound Energy reports 700,000.

The 520 bridge remains closed (meaning its drawspan is open, so it’s closed because it’s open). It’s going to be a mess coming in to work this morning. If you work downtown, sorry, the city center never lost juice. UW, of course, never closes. Oh, and expect a lot of four way stops in intersections. Stop lights are out all over the place. Metro routes are scrambled as well due to down trees and the 520 bridge. If you need an excuse to stay home, well, Seattle Schools are closed due to the widespread outages. Right now, WSDOT is reporting no traffic… because the almost the entire traffic reporting grid is down.

And this is on top of that weird rush hour flooding last night. Mudslides all over. Low lying areas and basements have water in them. The scariest story was the woman who drowned in her own basement.

They (at the They Center For Comparing Things) say this is the worst storm since the Inauguration Day 1993 storm.
All you who were going on about how dumb we were about driving in snow, welcome to what a real Seattle storm looks and feels like. Kinda feels… dark and powerless, doesn’t it?

Stay safe, everyone. Really.

UPDATE: Jeff Renner on KING5 reported that Sea-Tac recorded an unofficial 69mph gust last night. If this is true, it’s the highest ever recorded at the airport, ahead of either the Inauguration Day storm or the infamous Columbus Day Storm in 1962. Of course, being ahead of the Columbus Day Storm is a little dubious, considering that Sea-Tac recorded only an 58mph gust while a location in Renton recorded a 100mph gust that night nearly 50 years ago. Still, this was an epic-making storm last night, made even odder by not actually being on a holiday as most Seattle epic-making events are (c.f. Columbus Day Storm, Ash Wednesday Earthquake).

Since everyone is reporting on their own microclimate during windpocalypse 2006: I managed to walk from downtown to Capitol Hill without getting wet. Dry, but windblown. With that out of the way, here’s tonight’s IOB:

• Not sure what the “Uptight Seattleite” would think, but the Weekly has the headline of the week: Boner Patrol Won’t Soften Up [dailyweekly]
• Don’t blame the Jews, it’s Christians who are waging the war on Christmas [horsesass]
• saving the world, one quarter of the country at a time. gas consumption is flatlining in the northwest [dailyscore]
• Seth responds to my challenge [mb] to respond to Westneat’s ridiculous question. He’ll have to claim the prize at the next meet-up. [seattlest]
• I thought that if anything could take down the 800 pound gorilla that is the Slog in Capitol Hill Seattle’s tourney of their corner of Capitol Hill, it would be the infinite inventory of the Everything Store. Apparently their bizarre collection of useful crap isn’t enough. [chs]

Dear guy on the bus with the rabbit on his shoulder,

You know, it’s been a week full of just about everyone, myself included, behaving strangely. But you, sir, with the soft looking brown bunny rabbit perched on your shoulder, are easily the best thing about this week.

You seemed oblivious to the packed bus full of cranky, windblown people. Paying us no mind, you sat quietly by the window, chatting softly to your bunny and occasionally pointing to something for it to look at. Most of the other passengers on the bus didn’t seem to notice you, focused as they were on how late the route was running and if they would have power when they got home.

But I noticed you, sir, and I appreciated your quiet lunacy. We could have been friends for at least the duration of the bus ride if I had been standing closer to you.

Sincerely,

Samantha

OK, people. We can’t deal with snow, yeah. But now comes the signature weather event of Seattle: Wind. And it looks nasty tonight.

Tonight: Rain turning to showers overnight. Becoming very windy. Lows in the upper 30s and 40s. Southerly wind rising to 40 mph with gusts to 65 mph around midnight.

So, if you have anything that could go airborne in a storm like this (chairs, garden gnomes, pets), tie ‘em down.

And if you’re planning on waiting until after the Seahawks game to do any cross-lake driving, well…

If the high winds hit as expected, crews will close the SR 520 Evergreen Point Bridge late tonight. High winds also are likely to close the SR 104 Hood Canal Bridge to motor vehicle traffic and possibly disrupt ferry schedules.

WSDOT’s goal is to get all of the Seattle Seahawks traffic across the SR 520 bridge by 11 p.m. and then begin the closure. The bridge would remain closed to traffic until the storm passes Friday morning.

The high wind warning is currently scheduled to expire at 10am. That means the bridges may not open for rush hour tomorrow morning. Traffic tomorrow? Nightmare.

Oh, and just expect the power to be out. Hope you have your flashlight.

OK? Now get out there and enjoy Jim Foreman’s toupee blowing off in the gale-force winds! At least until the power goes out.

images via wikipedia [#,#]

In today’s Seattle Times Danny Westneat asks [#] :

Is Bellevue a “new Brooklyn?”

I admit that I’ve visited Brooklyn (population 2.5 million, founded 1646¹) more times than I’ve set foot in Bellevue (0.1 million, incorporated 1953), but I soldiered on past the ridiculous headline to get find the argument linking the borough to the suburb edge city. Wait for it, B is a new B because there are immigrants and lots of non-White people there! Why, Westneat found someone complaining about pizza in “New Yorkese”.

Please bring your favorite refutation or defense of this hypothesis to the comments section or tonight’s meet-up at the Green Room. Awards, in the form of cheap beer, will be presented for the best entries.
(more…)

• Panda & Angel [myspace] remind Samantha of of old Cat Power only with more distortion and less lunacy; S [myspace] was Jenn Ghetto’s solo project. Now the band includes Crighton Barrett and Josh Wackerly. The songs are every bit as intimate, fragile, and exposed as ever, now they’re just accompanied by drums and distorted electronics. [crocodile (hosting account expired! what?)]
• Zee says “The lovely and talented Kim Virant plays the Triple Door along with the also lovely and also talented Carrie Akre and Jared Clifton who is not lovely but is, in fact, talented.” [tripledoor]
• Going to any of these? Drop in to the Green Room for happy hour and say hello, demand hot new features, ask etiquette questions, admire delightfully laminated signs, or just drink heavily. Lured by the promise of cheap drinks, discount appetizers, and the people watching as Ataris free-show [pluginmusic] showgoers arrive, we’re having our monthly Metroblogging meeting there and would love to see you. [showbox]