While we’re all pondering candidates over here at Metblogs, I would like to issue a hearty endorsement for Trolloween, Fremont’s Halloween celebration/birthday of the Troll. I haven’t had this much fun at a Halloween party since I was still young enough to trick-or-treat.

I mean, where else can you find robots dancing with princesses?

Or bands made up of skeletons?

It may just be that I’ve always wanted to be in a parade, but never had any reason to- but getting to march through the streets of Seattle with a bunch of other costumed revelers, well, like I said, I’ve never had so much fun on Halloween as an adult. So, if you’re ever in the neighborhood and looking for something to do on Halloween, I wholeheartedly recommend the Fremont Art Council’s Trolloween celebration.

map by fundrace x googlemaps

When I feel election anxiety and start seeing frantic e-mails from candidates making their final push, it’s fun to delve into Fundrace to see where the money is coming from, particularly close to home. Nationwide, of course, the Democrats are having a better time of it fundraising than the Republicans, but we are swimming in a sea of especially deep blue, with their database shows that $13,046,780 has been given by people who identified their city as “Seattle” — $1,594,184 from 1,430 people to Republicans and $11,452,596 from 11,290 people to Democrats.

Some of the seven-to-one democratic advantages are especially stark when you take a peek at how employees at some of Seattle’s biggest or most noteworthy employers are contributing.

These are all just off the top of my head and more careful searches would turn up more thorough results (for instance, the line for “Starbucks Coffee”, above, combines searches for “Starbucks” and “Starbucks Coffee”. I’m sure that there are many similar examples). update: the original post included “older results”; the current version omits these 2004 contributions.
Anyone finding other interesting search results?

Orca courtesy of Adactio [flickr]

A number of killer whales are missing, and presumed dead, from the Puget Sound orca pods, according to the Seattle P-I. (#) All three pods (J, K, and L) were affected, though the L pod lost four. The oldest orca that is missing/dead is Lummi, around 98 years old, who disappeared in spring, and was covered in an earlier Metblogs post. The youngest was new calf L-111, too young to have a name, who likely died within a week of birth.

The orca population is down to 83, with only a dozen or so reproductive females, according to the P-I (#). Two of the missing/dead whales were females in their prime, which concerns scientists. One older orca female, “Ankh”, showed signs of starvation- a lack of blubber behind her head, a phenomena referred to as ‘peanut head.’ Scientists at the Center for Whale Research believe the poor Chinook salmon population is partly to blame, but are doing research to determine if there are other factors.

The Whale Museum has a comprehensive list of ways to help the southern resident orcas, including things like supporting organic farming, buying no-phosphate cleaning products, or volunteering with a stream restoration program, or the San Juan Bottomfish Recovery Program.

photo by Michael Hanscom [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Leanne’s wave-sporting models walked the runway to “Cookie Breath”. [lineout]
• Halloween seems like it shouldn’t be happening for months. But already it is time to stake out your party situation (hint:Diplo). [subsonic]
• And start planning where to go (take your kids) trick or treating for maximal sugarhigh loot. [capitolhillseattle]
• Political guidance from pumpkins. [westseattleblog]
• …basically channelling Carles [HRO] 4 personal brand enhancing costume ideas. [captothehill]

Seattle Metblogs visits with Gary Zinter, owner of the Bus Stop.

Bus Stop on Closing Night Before the Wrecking Ball

Bus Stop was one of the few real bars left on Capitol Hill. It wasn’t trying to be a club or a restaurant. It was just a bar: a dark, simple, small space where you could have a conversation with a total stranger and not get the heeb vibe from typical scene anxiety or desperation. The joyful combination of the uber-smart, friendly clientele comprised of an unpredictable variety of misfits and a ridiculously strong pour made the Bus Stop a home away from home for a host of regulars.

Gary Zinter was forced to close his bar at the Pine Street location in November 2007 after a hostile takeover by the Empiric Overlords of Seattle real estate.

Bus Stop is back. This fall you’ll find the bar 3 blocks north of its original location at the intersection of East Olive and East Denny Way.

___________________________________________________________________________________
What became of you and your staff after shutting down the original location of Bus Stop?

I went back to work in tech so I could afford to reopen the bar. Most of the staff went to work elsewhere but will be back! My boyfriend, Rodney Shrader, the manager of the bar, has been out of work and is now managing the build-in. Needless to say, he was a little bored till we got the go-ahead to start building in.

So when can we expect to cozy up to your bar again?

We are starting the build-in this week, actually! It should be about two months. Cross your fingers! We’ll probably do an official opening but not with a lot of hoopla. Gratefully, people are always asking when we’re re-opening, so we’ll be excited to see everyone in the place again.

Tell us about the new space? Is it near a bus stop?

We’re at 1552 E. Olive Way at Denny next door to where the Coffee Messiah used to be. Olive is turning into this new neighboorhood-y strip. Lots going on over there and not a lot of new building. The space is a great old store front, which I love. The actual bus stop is around the corner. I wanted to call it “Parking Lot” in honor of the situation with the old space. Hahaha. It was a nail salon. Some people want us to call it “Nails”.

Why was Bus Stop so successful so quickly?

We got folks coming in who weren’t part of the scenes in the other bars in the neighborhood. I think people were comfortable there!

What’s gonna be different with the new location?

Not a lot. Space is almost the same. A few design changes, but we weren’t too heavily designed last time. I hope it feels very much like the old place.

Gary Zinter, Owner

How long have you been in Seattle?

9 and a half years. Jeez!

What have you been doing all these years? Who IS Gary Zinter?

I keep reinventing myself. Like Madonna. Except with better taste later in my career. I do theater. Was an actor, then a producer, and now I’m directing more than anything else. Wish I had more time and money so I could spend more time doing it. The Bus Stop is sort of my retirement plan. Go to work at the bar and get out of the regular 9 to 5, you know?

What’s the best thing about making this bar your own business?

It really turned into a community for the regulars and the folks who helped build it. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to reopen, but the closing was heartwarming, actually, and I really missed it when it was gone. I want it to be there for many, many years.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Photos by: Doug McLaughlin

~ Jean Cocteau

* Monster, genius, maniac? On Monday, September 08th, film buffs might want to wander down to the U-District at around 7:00 PM. Author Christopher Sandford will be at the UW Bookstore to discuss Polanski: A Biography with Seattle’s own Warren Etheredge [www.thewarrenreport.com]. Since Polanski is still in France (”a fugitive from justice”), this is probably as close as most fans will ever come to the man himself.

* Not free, but if you can can beg, borrow, or steal $5 (and refrain from spending it on PBR), get thee to Town Hall Seattle (1119 8th Ave.) for Slovenian author, film-maker, critic, philosopher, and all-around brilliant guy, Slavoj Zizek. Zizek is in town to read from and discuss Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, one of the first volumes in Picador’s “BIG IDEAS / small books” series. Event begins at 7:30 PM. Tickets are available at the door, starting at 6:30 PM.

* Sandra Tsing Loh returns to Elliott Bay Book Co. to share her latest, Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting!, with those of us who are sick unto death of heartwarming anecdotes and uplifting life lessons. Monday, September 08th at 7:30 PM.

* Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas has written over a dozen books about art. On Tuesday, September 9th, Kangas will present his latest, Relocations: Selected Art Essays and Interviews, spanning 40 years of Northwest artists. U-District, UW Bookstore, 7:00 PM.

* Stuart Cohen’s novel The Army of the Republic is being touted as a dystopian vision of the near-future, brilliant, prescient, etc. Based partly in Seattle, the novel is about ecotopian guerillas working to save a US government that has become little more than the puppet of corporate oligarchies. I’m paranoid enough as it is, thank you very much, but if you haven’t already made your tin hat (I’ve got extras, if you need one) and covered all your windows with aluminum foil, you might want to visit Elliott Bay Books at 7:30 PM on Tuesday.

Willie Bloomquist attempts to throw out a runner at 2nd base. photo by kevin.devin

If you’re a casual fan, you’ve probably forgotten all about the Mariners. You may even think that by now, after several years of miserable personnel decisions and a mostly lopsided win-loss record, they may be headed for a rebound. Please allow me to disabuse you of that notion vis-à-vis commentary regarding the Mariners’ recent choice not to part ways with starting pitcher Jarrod Washburn and his absurd contract:

U.S.S. Mariner:

In case you weren’t sure, today was a great reminder that we’re all rooting for the worst run organization in baseball. There’s not another franchise with worse leadership or more incompetence in positions of power. From the CEO on down, these people don’t know baseball. They don’t know how to run a baseball team, build a roster, or win baseball games.

This organization is a massive collection of failures. They pile ridiculous decisions on top of each other, only outdoing their stupidity with an arrogance that refuses to learn from their mistakes. They are the Pets.com of MLB, only they refuse to go out of business.

I’m far too attached to the childhood memories I have to ever root for another team, but if the M’s screw up this offseason and don’t completely overhaul the baseball operations department, hiring somebody who actually understands baseball, I’ll spend the next few years rooting for these people to fail miserably and be embarrassed publicly.

These people don’t deserve success. They deserve to be looking for new jobs.

Fire them all.

Lookout Landing:

For some reason the Twins generously granted the Mariners a glorious opportunity to at least partially undo one of their greatest recent mistakes, and they passed it up. In so doing, they only confirmed that, while Bavasi may be gone, his legacy remains, and that this is an organization that doesn’t understand the first, most fundamental thing about building a baseball team. This was a gimme. This was some higher power saying “hey you guys have been through enough, here, let me give you a break.” And the Mariners didn’t care. They just didn’t care. Were this a college exam, the exam consisted of one question, and the question was “Spell the word ‘blue’,” and the multiple choice answers were (A) blue, (B) green, (C) yellow, (D) black, and the Mariners wrote “6″ on their Scantron. This was the easiest test you could imagine, and the Mariners failed.

They failed.

Just sayin’.

• OMG OMG OMG: Microsoft Makes $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo [bbc, nytimes, o'reilly radar]
• Firefox share up over 20% in Europe, mostly at expense of IE [ars technica]
• Sprint, Clearwire in new talks on WiMAX partnership [ars technica]
• Panoramic VR Photography of Seattle Artists In Their Studios [laughing squid]
• Microsoft Ruling: Split Decision, Two More Years of Oversight [ny times, ars technica]
• Amazon’s Profit More Than Doubles [nytimes]
• Amazon CEO: We can’t keep up with demand for Kindle [ars technica]
• Amazon buys Audible, promises to kill DRM if we complain [boing boing, nytimes]
• “Cookie-cutterish” wedding registry won’t do for Edmonds couple [seattle times]
• Amazon’s Hot New Item: Its Data Center [nytimes]
• Amazon’s anti-DRM tee [boing boing]
• Web Trend Map 2008 [boing boing]
• Yahoo switches music service to Rhapsody [p-i]
• Amazon MP3 store to go global [boing boing]
• Bill Gates and his iPod [boing boing]

photo by James Callan [flickr] via our group pool [#]

• Seattle schools see where their beef is coming from, decide to take it off the menu. (ed: It’s just like the wonderful episode where Lisa Simpson becomes a vegetarian, except that Paul & (then) Linda McCartney aren’t singing on the roof of the 7-11 on Denny.) [bigblog]
• What ever happened to ORCA? (ed: where are my flying cars and jetpacks, while you’re at it.) [seatrans]
• One coyote spared, another sighted. (ed: don’t you love how Seattle feels like a small town sometimes, with wild animal sightings at the top of the news cycle?) [west seattle blog]
• A song about how much some dudes in Kirkland love Obama. (can someone please make this stop? as if obama girl wasn’t enough.) [seattlest]
• Crosscut joins every other online news operation in the universe by starting a group photo pool. [crosscut]
• Amazon buys Audible. [dailyweekly]

photo of sign for now defunct waterfront streetcar by Metblogs’ own Shawn/slightlynorth [flickr]

I thought I was done complaining about the streetcar but I’m not. So, here goes.

According to Citizen Rain [c-r], workers at the Hutch and other businesses on South Lake Union have given the streetcar another nickname. They’re calling it the “70 on Rails.” If you know anything about Metro route 70 you know that it’s infamous for its unreliability.

Further, in the linked KOMO article there’s a stunning quote from streetcar Project Manager Ethan Melone. When asked about complaints by drivers that the streetcar is turning the Mercer Mess even uglier, he said, “Well, that is exactly one of the reasons to provide another option. The mess is (because) everybody (is) in their cars.”

This is the part where I bang my head on my desk repeatedly. Thank you, Ethan. You’re exactly right. If more people would use the South Lake Union Streetcar to commute to work then there wouldn’t be a problem stopping traffic entirely — both the cars exiting I-5 and the cars on Mercer — so the streetcar can amble, slowly, toward its destination.

Actually, Ethan handled the question the best he could. Was he going to be honest and risk his future as a Nickels lackey? Of course not. The honest answer would’ve been, “Yeah, we know it’s bad right now. We know it’s causing even more problems for commuters trying to both exit and enter I-5 on Mercer. We know that it’s always been a problem there and, frankly, I’m not sure why we decided to insert a slow moving rain canopy into the mess. It was a mystery to me when they proposed it but I do what Paul Allen tells Mayor Nickels to do. I’m sure you understand.”

The real problem with Ethan’s response is that in two sentences he demonizes drivers and pits them against this pale imitation of a rail line. This is a bad sign. If the people responsible for this project are not going to honestly address criticisms of it, I have an even worse feeling about the future of a meaningful rail system in Seattle.

Finally, a message for the steetcar apologists who are cropping up: Have you even been on the damned thing? Do you have to drive or bike near it? If not, you might take into account that even those who work on South Lake Union — who the train was ostensibly built for — think it’s a waste.