We can’t believe it either, but apparently one of the fall drinks Starbucks is launching is Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate. This is a custom variant of its new Signature Hot Chocolate — kind of like a suggested customization of the drink. “Sprinkled atop the whipped cream is French sea salt, blended with Hawaiian Turbinado sugar. The salt is smoked over burning chardonnay barrels in Woodinville” notes the P-I, while StarbucksGossip tracks the reaction from customers.

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

• Be aware that there exists a brewing multi-front war about ownership of the various slices of Capitol Hill between the hipsters, yuppies, and gays (ed: categories neither mututally-exclusive nor exhaustive). And they all have blogs; so things could get really texty. This thing is a like a powderkeg and everyone is giving off sparks. Just wait until the indie-yupsters weigh in. [chs, slog, captothehill]
• For the first time in its long existence oatmeal is a hero. Wilford Brimley would be so proud. [starbucksgossip]
• oh, and, more breakfast sandwiches in more places. [starbucksgossip]
• Another day, another blogging conference. This one at UW, 11 October. [bigfoot via monicaguzman]
• After much anticipation on the Olive Way is So Hot Right Now Watch, the Buck is now “softly” open. [voracious]

the merce cunningham duo, last year.

We’ve already told you what to see [sat :: sun ::mon ]; so now it’s time to haul out the advice that we post every year . We like to think of it as a classic, just revised with slightly-new content and under the assumption that surely we must have picked up a few new readers and Bumbershoot must have enticed a few first-time visitors since last time. But not a lot changes about Bumbershoot from year to year; so why not re-recycle? It’s good for the environment and for preserving our fingers for typing fresh stuff later. So, in the spirit of eco-friendliness and with thanks to everyone who ever contributed, here’s the revised and updated guide for 2008.

After the jump, our hints. Any of your own to add?

Read more

Remember when people were up in arms about Ladro moving in on “neighborhood creating” Victrola way back around the turn of the century [stranger]? Well, I think we all know how that turned out: it’s 2008 and both appear to be thriving. Until today I would have continued that sentence with “… in seeming harmony with a Starbucks just a block away.”

Now, however, we learn that the 15th Avenue Starbucks, one of the city’s oldest, is among the seven Seattle stores on the chopping block [#]. Let the vigils begin. [capitolhillseatle]

source photo by zoomar [flickr] via our group pool [#].

• One day without Steinbacher, Dan Savage is out of town, and the writers at the Stranger are in a near-melee squabbling over A Streetcar. [slog]
• Keep track of closing Starbuckses, so far none around these parts. [starbucksgossip]
• Girl Trouble didn’t get a spot on the SP20 lineup, but they played Marymoor anyway. [soundonthesound]
• A good reason to think carefully before making fun of a guy on a Segway at a bar. [chs]
• All the TIGoodness from SP20. [threeimaginarygirls]
• In need of a $90 thousand dollar toilet from space? More than slightly used, I’m afraid. [citizenrain]
• I haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy since Meredith went off the dock and the recaps on this site had more than a near-death experience. Apparently Katherine Heigl also wants off that ship. NY Mag speculates on how they should kill her off. [vulture]

It’s official. The city of Seattle, having completely blown their legal case, settles up with the Sonics owners for $45M and the SuperSonics name.

I’d love to say that this is horrible, but hasn’t anyone watched the last 11 or so years of Sonics basketball? Shawn Kemp’s kids? The inexplicable signing of Jim McIlvane? Draft picks that were either rough and unready teenagers or European players that barely knew how to play — when they actually signed with the team? Howard Schultz running off Nate McMillan and ultimately handing the team to a bunch of Oklahoma City businessmen and scurrying back to Starbucks where he’s done nothing but continue SBUX’s run into the ground?

It’s sad to say this, but good riddance. I’ll always remember ‘96, but the Sonics have turned into that girlfriend you’ve had that just let herself go, sits on the couch all day, gets stoned, and ultimately tells you she’ll dump you for that guy down the street unless you start giving her more and more expensive toys. Ultimately, the only thing you can do is point at the door and maybe call and tell the guy to swing by Tiffany on the way back.

And about this guy, er, city. Oklahoma City.

Truck stop to the world,
Call center, Flamer of Lips,
Player with Freeways and the Nation’s Cherry Limeade maker;
Sucky, soulless, boring,
City of the Big Slouchers:

Having grown up in Tulsa, well, of course I hate Oklahoma City. It’s a suburb in search of a city, a vast array of strip malls, tract housing, and interstates that were being continually rebuilt my entire childhood. Urban renewal usually meant a tornado plowing through town. Home to the Oklahoman, or Jokelahoman as we used to call it, which the Columbia Journalism Review once dubbed the Worst Newspaper In America. OKC was always the city in search of a soul and a purpose. Tulsa had the ballet, the opera, the art museums. Oklahoma City had the Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In some ways OKC is the mirrorverse Seattle. Republican, sprawling, flatter than flat, a bus system that doesn’t really go anywhere. And yet… you see one similarity with Seattle — they want to be something else. Seattle was founded on the idea of “New York by and by,” but that has in the end meant striving so hard to be big that it never really figured out how to do it sanely. Oklahoma City was founded in a day during the Land Rush, and since then it’s been trying to be a big city, but never has quite figured out what it meant. Both Seattle and Oklahoma City have done their best to knock down anything pretty in the name of progress. Both live in the shadow of larger, more global cities (Vancouver/Dallas) and smaller, artsier, happier with their lot towns (Portland/Tulsa).

So, yeah. The Sonics are gone. Off to the giant truck stop in the middle of the plains, where they will be begging Tulsans and Lawtonites and McAlesterans and Woodwardians to make the drive into the City, pay $150 a seat, buy a $10 small popcorn, and watch the NBA paste their asses 41 games a year. And us? Well, if we want to, I guess we can rebuild the Key, steal ourselves another NBA team, and make some other town unhappy.

In the end, though, we’re keeping Seattle, our ugly, lovely town amid the hills and lakes and trees. The Sonics, meanwhile, get Oklahoma City, out of which only four good things have come: The Flaming Lips, I-35, I-40, and I-44.

I think that’s a pretty fair trade.

PS to Mr. Tramel: Sorry, the guilt goes with the team. And also, all the crappiness we’ve seen the last 11 years. Enjoy.

One of the complaints from coffee connoisseurs about Wal-Mart McDonald’s Halliburton Starbucks is their use of automatic espresso machines. Last year, when an internal Howard Schultz memo was leaked, we learned that even he didn’t like the machines [starbucks gossip]. He said, in effect, that it took some of the magic away from the Starbucks experience. The machines are tall. You can hardly see the barista make your drink (although the new ones are 7 inches shorter). Further, pushing buttons for your espresso shots is a lot less romantic (at the very least) than watching a good barista grind the coffee, pull the lever manically to allow the espresso to fill the portafilter, and then tamp it down while wiping excess espresso grounds from its edges. Pulling a good shot is a craft – both art and science – and the automatic espresso machines, even if you have to adjust for the grind, turn that craft into an ATM transaction.

So, why the announcement today that Starbucks is adding more automatic espresso machines even after Schultz said they were a mistake? [p-i] There’s a big hint in my description in the paragraph above. Go to Vivace, Fuel, or Victrola and watch one of the baristas pull a shot. There’s quite a bit of espresso that ends up on the counter and floor. I find it irrationally comforting to think that the barista is willing to waste half a portafilter’s worth of espresso to pull me the perfect shot. But for a corporation like Starbucks, waste is its worst enemy. Automatic espresso machines eliminate waste (and reduce training time and cost). This is the difficulty of being Starbucks. At once you have to act like the cutthroat mega-corporation that you are and market yourself as the quaint, local cafe that you haven’t been for 15 years. It’s an impossible position. This, put simply, is the root of a lot of the animosity Starbucks generates in Seattle (this animosity seems localized – Midwesterners love Starbucks and can’t imagine how anyone couldn’t). Most of us who lived in this area in the early 90’s remember the old Starbucks when it was more like Victrola. Ok, maybe Café Ladro. Regardless, we remember when it had authentic charm rather than the synthetic Las Vegas-like charm we’re accustomed to now.

To put it another way, Starbucks is like the ex-girlfriend who outgrew me and went on to become a huge success. She developed a certainty of purpose (really, she just lost her charm) and we became incompatible. I understand and don’t begrudge her success but that doesn’t mean I have to like her.

Other news from today’s shareholders meeting:

• Not content to sell coffee, tea, pastries, CD’s, DVD’s, books, espresso machines, coffee makers, mugs, and a myriad of other stuff, Starbucks launched its own social networking site. (I feel like I’m writing an article for The Onion.) [mystarbucksidea]
• Starbucks bought a Ballard-based company that makes something called the Clover which, I’m told, is similar to a French Press.
• There is a new rewards program for people who use the reloadable gift cards. If you use one, in April you should start accruing credit for free shots of syrup and drinks.

this bit of sunny day ominousness shared by seattle rainscreen [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Shultz thinks the smell cooking food overwhelms the aroma of coffee; so Starbucks is evicting warm breakfast sandwiches from the menu at an average cost of $35,000 per store. (ed: (1) is this averaged over all stores? if so, this must mean a lot of money for the minority of stores that actually sell heated foods. (2) it’s too bad that in Seattle I think that Starbucks is more competitive, taste-wise, in the breakfast foods market than in the espresso market.) [starbucksgossip]
• Among the announcements regarding the quarterly changes in Metro schedules—yay! more #8s thanks to SLU largesse—is this somewhat surprising public service announcement: “Never Attempt to Board a Moving Bus”. (ed: is this analogous to the MTA’s warning about not riding on the outside of subway cars?) [metrokc ]
• Alert Sunday Styles: tight jeans and mustaches spotted on Capitol Hill. [threadcount]
• On the dilemma posed by Park & Rides. [seatrans]
• A bird’s eye view of the impending tree-trimming facing West Seattle. [wsb]

slippery joaquin [flickr] who shared this, and several other haunting infrared photographs via our group pool [#]

• Seattle’s Best coffee to come from a kiosk? [citizenrain]
• Weekly staffer tries, fails, to outrun the SLU streetcar. [dailyweekly]
• tonight’s installation of Blue Scholars five-day Northwest hip hop showcase spectacular, the Program, is sold-out. Watch it online. [stranger]
• See the Lawrimore’s installation in Miami. [arttogo]
• Mystery Method spotted in Seattle. [singledout]

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

• Lost in the shuffle of all of today’s other Miranda July linkage was this nice interview that she did with Radar — study up before tonight’s event to maximize the insightfulness of your question or danceparty mingling chatter. [radaronline]
• Forecast for West Seattle summer looks bright [wsb]
• The Blakes sign-on with Light in the Attic [reverb]
• “I’m homeless. It’s warm in here. I am Starbucks.” and other more honest suggestions for the “I am Starbucks” ad campaign [guardedlyoptimistic via starbucks-gossip]
• Funny intro video aside [youtube], expressions of disappointment with Hillary Clinton’s slate of nominees [#] for official campaign song. [tig]