OMG, you guys. The Crocodile is reopening THIS WEEK. Their first night will be Thursday. They’ll be warming up the freshly-renovated and much-beloved club with a series of two free shows powered by local bands:

Thursday, March 19: SOUNDCHECK with Hypatia Lake, the Kindness Kind, the Quiet Ones, 8:30 pm, 21+

Friday, March 20: SOUNDCHECK with Akimbo, Brothers of the Sonic Cloth, Patrol. 8:00 pm, 21+

There are no advance tickets for either show; so it’s first-come, first-served. Get there early, since the new hand built pizza oven at Via Tribulani will be fired up and ready to feed you. See you there after our meetup at Oddfellows, OK?

(press release after the jump)

illustration by the pew research center

Some interesting interactive charts and maps from December turned up today via Kottke.org [#] about patterns of regional migration in the US. Aside from the general “out of the northeast” movement, they report also characterized states as being “sticky” or “magnetic”. Washington ends up high on both of these measures, with 54.3 percent of the population born in another state and 64.3 percent of those born in the state staying around. [pewsocialtrends]

m.seattlepi.com, the p-i’s mobile website

Once you’ve completed your hunt to scavenge a copy or three of today’s final print edition of the Seattle P-I for your archives or eBay, you might take a moment to add the paper’s new (to me, at least) mobile website to your iPhone’s (or other portable web-compatible personal communication device’s) bookmarks.
SeattlePI.com is a bustling bazaar of links; so when you’re on the go add an “m.” to the front of that URL and find yourself facing a clean list of news stories to read. They’re not breaking any new ground with the interface, but it seems nice, usable, and ripe for being turned into an App that could maybe take advantages of some of the revenue-enhancing bells and whistles announced today for the iPhone 3.0′s new operating system. [engadget]

american beer at oddfellows

From the looks of all of the conference tournaments on better bar televisions over the last weekend, it appears to be almost March Madness time (for further evidence, a Capitol Hill tournament pool [chs]). Which also means that it is also almost time to fire up the good old “Tournament of Blogs” here to help you choose your most favoritest local weblog of all of Seattle. The selection committee is working overtime at Seattle Metblogs HQ to narrow the field, refine the rules (possibly relevating previous champions the the Hall of Fame), and seed the contenders, but we would of course love input from you. Nominate your favorite local bloggist (yourself included) by sending an endorsement to seattle.metblogs @ gmail.com.

We’ll be finalizing the lineup on Thursday night at our almost-monthly Third Thursday happy hour, once again at the lovely and lively Oddfellows Cafe. Drop by after 6:30 for the final bracketing, drinks, and the warm glow of the company of Team Metblogs in the wild.

photo by david choe / invisible hour [flickr]; more in his knee high photoset [#].

The Knee High, a speakeasy-themed bar opened quietly over the weekend. They’ve taken over the small space left by Il Forno, the quiet pizza parlor on the street level of triangular apartment building occupying the intersection of Olive and Bellevue [#] that closed last fall.

When I dropped in early Saturday the evening, proprietor Jack Valko was stationed in the velvet curtained vestibule greeting curious visitors. Inside, the cherub mirror mural survived the remodel [#], which brought mottled blue walls, glitzy chandeliers, several cozily arranged tables, and a bar that fills the back of the room. The menu features a couple pages of clever Prohibition-inspired cocktails and a small menu. Around our table good things were said about most of the drinks (priced in the $7ish range), a chicken pot pie seemed well received, and I was especially thrilled to find among the food selections a pretzel with rarebit. This, alone, would have enough to win me over. Paired with the more sour than sweet drinks, though, the place enters cat’s pajamas territory.

The place was comfortably full when I left and rumor has it that crowds arrived throughout the evening; so it sounds like they’re off to a good start. I hope to return early and often to make my way through the cocktail list.

// the knee high; 1356 Olive Way.

7:00 PM – Asara Lovejoy: The One Command
East West Bookshop Seattle, $5
“The One Command through Changing Times: Discover a way to create wealth with the power of your own mind as you learn six simple steps to theta, the brainwave that taps into your unlimited potential.”
[LINK]

7:00 PM – Kathleen Kemly: Shannon and the World’s Tallest Leprechaun
Secret Garden Bookshop
The illustrator presents her new book, appropriate to the holiday. Irish step dancers, green refreshments, and a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow are also rumored.
[LINK]

7:00 PM – The Paranormal Bender Tour: Five Authors, Seven Days, One Hell of a Road Trip
UW Bookstore, U-District
“Four modern practioners of the urban fantasy are setting out on a west coast tour to promote their brand spanking new or recent books. See Mario Acevedo (Jailbait Zombie), Mark Henry (Road Trip of the Living Dead), Caitlin Kittredge (Second Skin), Cherie Priest (Fathom), and Mark Teppo (Lightbreaker, Book 1: Codex of Souls) live and in person.” Just go.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Blake Bailey: Cheever: A Life
Elliott Bay Book Co.
I read once that biographers inevitably fall in love with their subjects, especially those long dead. Cheever hasn’t been dead all that long, but Bailey’s heartfelt biography leads me to believe that he might have fallen a tiny bit in love. Nothing wrong with that.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Stanley Greenberg: Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders
Town Hall Seattle, Downstairs, $5
Green has worked as a pollster and political consultant since 1992, beginning with Bill Clinton’s campaign. Since then, he’s worked with Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, and Ehud Barak.
[LINK]

7:30 PM – Zach Savich: Full Catastrophe Living
Open Books
This is a collection of poetry, not Kabat-Zinn’s book about mindfulness-based wellness. Got it?
[LINK]

Normally I’d write some 500-word piece about how Big Head Todd and the Monsters reminds me of my days at the University of Colorado and how I always thought they were the better of all the early 1990s jam bands, but I’m at a tech conference and really busy.

So, instead, I’ll offer you an opportunity to write that piece for me. We have free tickets for two to see Big Head Todd on Friday, March 20, at the Showbox at the Market. ($30, 9pm [stg]) Just be the first person to e-mail seattle.metblogs@gmail.com asking for them (include your name and mailing address).

photo by espressobuzz [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• The NYT assesses the soon-to-be-electronic future of the Post-Intelligencer. [nyt]
• Eli Sanders has been talking to P-I people about what’s been lost as the paper switches to not being on paper anymore. [thestranger]
• Liz Jones investigates the future of the city’s most beloved neon globe. [kuow]
• Michelle Nicolosi tells you a bit about the electromagic new, de-nwsource-ified SeattlePI.com [p-i]
• the P-I staff trade trinkets to commemorate the end of putting their paper on newsprint every day. [bigblog]
• Jack Shafer, who must know more than a little about running an online magazine, says hello and goodbye to the P-I, with some sound advice and a harrowing closer (SPOILER: “If the P-I delivers on her vision, it’s doomed.”) [slate]
• After the P-I ceases printing newspapers, its subscribers will find copies of the Times on their doorsteps. [publicola]

• The headline could have been improved if it were something like “Sleepless, Seattleites Didn’t Love Lucy”. [nyt]
• Now that Kerlikowske is off to DC, Seattle has a new acting police chief. [wsb]
• Seth returns to Seattlest to chide the legislature for stepping up and passing a crazy law to encourage the UW basketball team to win the NCAA tournament. [seattlest (who are happy houring at Zig Zag about now -- go! drink! et c.)]

announced today on the slog

Does a stunt candidacy by the editor of a weekly newspaper require any sort of journalistic recusal on the grounds of conflict of interest, or is that sort of the point of alt-weeklies? At least this should be marginally more entertaining and less consequential than Geoffrey Fieger’s disastrous run for governor of Michigan.

Finally, today, an official announcement: tomorrow’s paper will be the last Seattle PI printed, and the paper will continue as an online-only newspaper [P-I]. Over the weekend the website decoupled itself from nwsource.com and will now be functioning as seattlepi.com.