Bartender's Sampler by BrittneyBush

Now this looks like a great Friday night plan. Do you have other ideas for how to spend a Friday evening? Drop ‘em in our Flickr pool.

photo by Brittney Bush Bollay [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• The cycle of confectionery adoration and adulation and rejection is becoming ever more swift as evidenced by the latest volleys in the flourishing ice cream ecosystem of Capitol Hill. (editorial postscript: cupcakes were the new donuts, just like Portland was the new Ballard). [seattlest]
• Throw Me The Statue has a new song to give you a glimpse of their forthcoming summer record, Creaturesque. [mbvmusic]
• Questionland
• Parts of True Adolescents was filmed in the Comet, which is where most of the True Adolescents party will be this Saturday night. [nwmusicblog]
• The new great-sounding new album from the Quiet Ones was a D.I.Y. affair made by a band of transplanted brothers from Tennessee. [lineout]
• Questionland
• Buy a drink at MOE, get a ticket to see the Helio Sequence playing Neumo’s for the club’s FIFTH birthday. [captothehill]
• To date, Mike McGinn is the tweetiest mayoral candidate in the race. [publicola]

jens lekman, in 2007 at nectar.

In addition to Pioneer Square’s art walk and a raft of SIFF screenings, there are an unhealthy number of good shows tonight vying for your attentions. Throw a dart and you can’t go wrong:

• Metric , whose “Stadium Love” is a killer summer anthem whose first few verses program a whole series of the Discovery Channel’s Animal Face Off [wiki], is at the Showbox, likely with a small wind machine and a whole lot of growling feedbacky guitar goodness. [showbox]
• Andrew Kenny, from American Analog Set and occasional touring helper for Broken Social Scene, is in town after a big euro tour with Grand Arcives with his new band the Wooden Birds at Chop Suey.
• Mount Eerie is at Cafe Vita with pieces of Say Hi, Arthur & Yu, and others singing to soup eaters (from One Pot) to raise money for the Vera Project.
• Neko Case sings to the rafters with support from Jason Lytle of the dearly departed Granddaddy. [paramount]
• But I’m going with Jens Lekman at the Crocodile. So great is his incredible charm that one night is not enough to contain him (there’s a second show tomorrow). Sample-happy masterpieces from the albums are brought to swoonable life during live performances, featuring a dance-number happy band. Whether this tour swings toward solo crooning or big interactive dance numbers, you’re likely to stumble out with stars in your eyes. [crocodile]

Mountains to Sound Greenway

4 ways to participate!

Compete in the Mountains to Sound Relay – One Day, 100 miles
Registration open until June 18th

Take the Greenway Challenge – a summer-long scavenger hunt with great prizes

Go Geoteaming – use GPS to find hidden caches at Rattlesnake Lake, North Bend

Volunteer for Greenway Days

Events include:
Fenders on Front Street Car Show and Cruise, Issaquah
Fall City Days
Mercer Slough Environmental Education Center, Bellevue
Kayak Rides in Luther Burbank Park, Mercer Island
Tours of the Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility, Ellensburg
Kite Making and More for Kids at Meadowbrook Farm, Snoqualmie
Interpretive Hikes at Tiger Mountain with Greenway educators

For more information and a complete list of events, visit mtsgreenway.org
or contact Stephanie Dunlap at greenwaydays@mtsgreenway.org or 206.382.5565 x21

Graffiti needs spell-check

Giving back is “fun and easy” with Seattle Works! This Saturday, June 6th, 1500 20-30-something year olds are volunteering to clean up the city of Seattle. Together, they will contribute a whopping 5,000 hours of volunteer service with the focus on urban greenspaces. This will include removing those pesky invasive weeds that likely have contributed to your allergies.

Volunteers (in teams and individually) will work from noon to 3:30, so if you see them out and about, say hi and thank them for helping keep Seattle clean!

About Seattle Works

As the premier community organization for local 20- and 30-somethings, Seattle Works offers opportunities for people to serve as active volunteers, informed voters, savvy charitable donors and knowledgeable community leaders. From one-time service projects to board training to dialogues with elected officials, we’re here to get you connected. Our goal is to harness and enhance the energy, creativity and diversity of Seattle’s 20- and 30-somethings to build a thriving community. More information at www.seattleworks.org.

Volunteers are welcome to sign up for one of Seattle Works “better late than never teams!” – people can sign up for Better Late than Never – Clarke Park (Mercer Island), Better Late than Never – Discovery Park (Family Friendly) or Better Late than Never – Magnuson Park.

Event List

In an effort to avoid layoffs but still make up for a about $1 million dollars cut from the budget, the Seattle Public Library has decided to close all of its branches for the first week of September. This move will save about $655,000 and eliminate the need for any staff layoffs, although there will probably still be some administrative and management layoffs to make up the rest of the difference [Examiner].

“During the closure, the following services will not be available:  book drop, mobile book services, library website and catalog, holds, mail, library computers, programs, or book donations.

On a positive note, library fines will not be accumulated during the week closure and items will not be due.  The last day to check out items before the closure will be Sunday, August 30th.”

The first week of September is usually a pretty slow time for the library system, and it’s more cost effective to shut everything down at once rather than staggering closures at different times around the city. You’ll just need to stock up on library materials beforehand, and find a new place to look at porn for the week.

The NW New Works Festival begins this Friday, June 5 and runs through all of this weekend and the next. Tne NW New Works Festival is an annual festival of world premiere works by Northwest-based artists and ensembles.

Performances vary so much that there’s some thing to appeal to just about any taste. Works this year include an operatic solo performance that relates the story of a restaurant delivery man stuck in an elevator, a dance performance in which the two dancers demonstrate the vulnerability of sharing a home, and a video and audio presentation explores the intersections of sexuality, conflict, and attraction.

As an added bonus, showcases are reasonably priced, offering you a better and better value the more of them you attend. It’s still worth it to attend only one, too. For details and tickets, visit the On the Boards website.

My husband, dog, and I attempted to hike to Snow Lake on Memorial Day. (Trailhead is located about an hour from Seattle). The entire trail was covered in 2-5′ of snow. About 2 hours in, we finally gave up and turned around after eating lunch on a sun-dried rock, but it was still fun. The turnoff to Snow Lake is actually hard to find, so there is no real destination at this time. I managed to fall through two snow bridges and land in the melted snow runoff (brr). This trail is normally covered with snow well into July, but is extremely popular despite this. Currently I would rank this hike in the more moderate skillset, at least until the snow melts.

This is the view we had while eating our lunch.

If you’re not up to hiking in full snow, I recommend heading north to Heather Lake. (Trailhead is located about 90 minutes from Seattle). The entire thing will take you about 4 hours round trip, but it’s worth it if you want to play in the snow in June. The trail itself is dry for about 3/4 of the way up, then you’ll run into snow. Previous hikers have made the trail fairly visible to the lake, but it can be slick so be careful. This hike is currently on the easier end of moderate, but should be alright for everyone when the snow melts in another month or so.

Falls below Heather Lake

Part of Heather Lake…surrounded with snow.

Snow, snow, and more snow.

And finally, my badly stitched photo showing Heather Lake below Mount Pilchuck.

So if you want to get out of the heat, this Saturday there will be no $5 parking fee at the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (where the Snow Lake trail is, and many other trailheads). This is the perfect opportunity to go hiking if you haven’t been this year. Coming up…Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, Lewis & Clark National Historical Park, Fort Vancouver National Historical Site and Whitman Mission National Historic Site all will waive entrance fees the weekends of June 20-21, July 18-19 and August 15-16. (Full list here).

Just FYI, an annual parking pass is only $30 and is good at all trail heads in Washington and Oregon.

And as a public service announcement: I do not recommend hiking in sandals in the snow. It’s cold. I wore these on both hikes, which I admit was a pretty stupid thing to do. Luckily, nothing bad happened.

Confused by the intense beacon of blue light rising from Seattle Center into the sky last night, I turned to Google and found out that it as related to something called Bing from Microsoft. [google/news]

Horror fans take note: this weekend marks three days of thrills and chills as Crypticon Seattle invades the Northwest Rooms at the Seattle Center this weekend, from June 5 through June 7.

Boasting a broad selection of vendors and exhibitors, panels, film and trailer screenings, parties, costume contests, music, dancing, and readings, Crypticon has plenty to please fans of the macabre. Scheduled guests include such horror luminaries as actor Adrienne Barbeau, producer Brooke Lewis, writer Carlton Mellick III, screenwriter and director Don Coscarelli and more.

Tickets for Crypticon are available online at their website or as available at the door.