On Monday, I had the privilege of interviewing Stuart McLean, creator and host of popular CBC variety radio program the Vinyl Café. Since 1998, McLean has been taking the show on the road, visiting cities throughout Canada. Last year, the Vinyl Café visited the US for the first time, bringing the Christmas concert to a sold out Moore Theatre. The Vinyl Café returns to Seattle this year, with a show at the Paramount on Friday, October 10th. Tickets are still available, through the Paramount [LINK], Ticketmaster, or by pledging to KUOW [LINK]. You can listen to the Vinyl Café every Sunday at noon on KUOW.

In addition to his work in radio, McLean is a prolific and bestselling author; professor emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto and former director of the broadcast division of the School of Journalism; and three time winner of Canada’s Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour . His most recent books feature stories about the fictional couple Dave and Morley, and their family, friends, and neighbors; the Dave and Morley stories are a highlight of the radio program. You can listen to excerpts from the Vinyl Café by following the “HOW TO LISTEN” link at the website, http://www.cbc.ca/vinylcafe/home.php

[A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend: I'd intended to record this interview, but due to technical difficulties (i.e. operator ineptitude) I fell back on good old-fashioned note-taking. Any omissions, misstatements, or errors are entirely due to my horrific handwriting and obscure abbreviations, and should not reflect upon Mr. McLean, who was patient, thoughtful, and intelligent.]

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Seattle MetBlogs: First and foremost, do you consider yourself a radio personality, a humorist, a writer… a professional Canadian?

Stuart McLean: I very much consider myself a writer, though I’ve worked in radio for 30-odd years. It’s a precious gift for a writer to experience that connection to their audience, a writer is lucky to get that. [Touring,] I am able to stand on stage and be there at the moment of giving and receiving, and it becomes a collaboration. I work with the work. I’ve been a guy who works on the radio, but if you told me I could do only one thing, I would be a writer.
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Working in the wine world for many years I have been exposed to insufferable bores (and boors) whose lack of humor and love of exclusivity even make me content to put aside the Chateaneuf-du-Pape and crack open a tallboy of High Life. After meeting Josh and Doug, the near-decade long drinking buddies behind WINO magazine (which is free), I am convinced that wine and its consumption can be approachable, fun, and sometimes a little dumb. Just like beer.

So how did Josh and Doug come up with the name? Well they were having a smoke, half-drunk, and decided, “Let’s call it WINO.” They thought the name irreverent, tongue-in-cheek, and it certainly breaks the ice among the wine-phobic.

Probably my favorite feature of the magazine is a column called “Cheapskate” where a round table spares no feelings as they sample the Washington wines that have a stronghold on the bottom shelf at your local grocery store. The results range from the predictably awful to the shockingly gulpable.

Since these guys have visited so many wineries and tasted so many wines, here is their advice and recommendations:

On the intimidation factor when visiting tasting rooms:
Ask questions! People love to answer questions.

Up-and-coming wine regions:
Chelan. It will be one of the premier destinations for wine in the next five years, and the wines are produced with all estate (that is, on-site) fruit.

Cheapskate Wine Picks:
Columbia Crest H3 Cabernet
Hollywood Hill Rosé
Airfield Estate Rosé
Foot Stomp Rosé
(These guys like their dry rosé!)

Nonprofit They Would Like You to Know About
Make the Dash Count Foundation

Where You Can Get Wino
Click here for locations

Have you seen WINO? What do you think?

GoTime, a Seattle-based social networking Web site centered around entertainment and nightlife, has left public beta and is open for business. The site offers some nice features, including a handy venue filter, a customizable events calendar, and a list of active happy hours (I noticed nine happy hours open at 8:30 this morning — who  knew?).

I tested the early version of the site a few months ago, and I noticed some welcome improvements from that early beta, including improved user-friendliness and toning down the testosterone levels in the design.

The site definitely has potential, and if GoTime added mobile features I could see it really taking off. But the big question, as the Seattle P.I. asks, is whether GoTime can entice enough Seattlites away from the already established list of networking and event Web sites such as MySpace, Yelp, Last.fm, etc.

Have you already joined GoTime? What do you think?

Oh, how I love ranking lists which is why I was totally thrilled to discover the City Mayors site. City Mayors describes themselves as “an international network of professionals working together to promote strong and prosperous cities as well as good local government.” There’s a lot of interesting information there if you want to learn more about what it takes to make a strong, healthy, well-functioning city and all that, but what I really care about is the lists.

Specifically, I am intrigued with their listing of “the world’s top cities offering the best quality of life”. By this list, Seattle is ranked number 50 for 2008, sinking a full point from last year when we were 49. This year’s number 49 is New York City. This year’s number 48 is Portland, Oregon. This is where I start to wonder what just criteria are being applied in terms of determining the “best” “quality of life”. Glancing at the notes I see that the rankings are determined by measuring a variety of issues including political environment, socio-cultural environment, economic environment, public services and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing and natural environment.

Numbers one, two, and three are Zurich, Vienna, and Geneva. The highest ranked US city is Honolulu at 28, immediately followed by San Francisco. Boston comes in at 37, and Washington, DC and Chicago share a three-way tie for 44 with Lisbon, Portugal.

If you clicked over to a P-I story while using the newest version of Firefox you might recognize the image above. According to the P-I itself:

Part of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web site was compromised by a computer virus that appears to have spread through online advertisements for NWAuto.

The ads have been removed and the website is safe. Unfortunately for the P-I its status as an “Attack Site!” has not been resolved yet.

I saw this Saturday afternoon on a Metro bus. The first reaction I had was one of disgust. The second reaction I had after dwelling on it for a while is one of annoyance. With the price of a wedding lingering around $30K, companies like E.E. Robbins have to compete with a multitude of other businesses. Since the economy started heading downhill, people are tightening their hold on their wallets and the guilt card is being played in a bid to maintain sales. “Sort of happy” indeed.

The Morning News offers up a list of New York jargon, but one of the items is suspiciously applicable to Seattle:

Patagroupie (noun): A city-dweller who wears mountaineering clothing for doing laundry or grocery shopping. [#]

Uh huh. So how about you, dear readers? Have any of your own Seattle jargon?

The New York Times published a short travel essay on Georgetown a couple days ago [nyt]. In it they describe the appeal of a neighborhood Fantagraphics curator Larry Reid calls the “last outpost of any blue-collar, bohemian arts culture in Seattle.” When put that way, the appeal is self-explanatory. For those reasons and more, I really enjoy Georgetown. There’s an authenticity (grittiness?) to it that is missing from many other Seattle neighborhoods. Lunch at Jules Mae’s Saloon is easily turned into a Seattle history lesson and a short walk along Airport Way always leaves me feeling fortunate that Georgetown exists (however precariously) and sentimental for a different Seattle.

And so, thanks to the TNT’s Grit City, the Tacoma comparison begins. Noting that among other things Tacoma (like Georgetown) has its own glass blowers, artists on scooters, and cheap rent, Grit City proudly declares that Tacoma is the new Seattle. Here I thought Portland was the new Seattle. Or Omaha. And if those cities are the new Seattle, what’s Seattle? Once again, an Internet poll comes to our rescue.

[poll=8]

Update: I just noticed that Grit City is not claiming Tacoma is the new Seattle. They’re claiming Seattle is the new Tacoma. All the sudden this meme became a lot more more sinister.

With all apologies to Dr. Kübler-Ross:

1. Denial: They’re asking for my money? Again?
2. Anger: I mean, didn’t they do this three months ago? Yes, I do care about the quality news/jazz/hipster rock/left-wing news you give me, but come ON already, I’m not made of money! You pay your DJs something above minimum wage! You never play Fresh Air/acid jazz/my favorite band that does not suck/Ward Churchill lectures anymore!
3. Blogging: Maybe if I blog about it, they’ll stop! That’ll show them! Just like it did last time! And the time before that! And the time before… oh, wait.
4. Depression: This thing never ends, but I can’t bear to listen to the T-Man make another self-serving sexist joke, and I haven’t ripped my LPs to MP3 yet so I have no Best of Prairie Home Companion/live Sun Ra/old K Records split sevens/Abbie Hoffman to listen to. I’m so miserable.
5. Acceptance: OK, here’s my $50, but this will be the last time I’m doing it, KUOW/KPLU/KEXP/KBCS. I mean it. You better not be doing any more pledge drives, or else I’ll have to write still another blog post!

Are there any lessons here with this repeating loop? Well, you can accept that NPR and CPB will never have the sort of funding that the BBC or Radio France enjoy, so they’re always going to be holding out the begging cup until we have a fully-funded state media system. You could just not listen to them and fire up last.fm or the portable music player of your choice. Or, you can do what I do — take Seattlest off Google Reader every time the pledge drives start up and put them back on when the drive is over.

The Brookings Institute has issued a country-wide carbon analysis of the major metropolitan areas. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue placed 6th in the nation for lowest-impact on the environment. The Seattle PI explains:

Honolulu was ranked first, with the smallest average carbon footprint of any of the areas surveyed, followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Calif. Portland, (combined with Vancouver, Wash., and Beaverton, Ore.,) came in third place, followed by New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island and then Boise-Nampa, Idaho.

The average Puget Sound area resident emitted 1.556 tons of carbon in 2005, compared with the national average of 2.24 tons. Most of this was owing to the residential energy score (second overall in the nation), thanks to hydroelectric power. Local carbon emissions from highway transportation decreased while the national average increased, but this region ranked just 27th in this category.

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