A lot people knew that there was an all ages venue on Capitol Hill in a vintage store’s warehouse that wasn’t especially public. But apparently the people responsible for licensing and code enforcement either weren’t aware of its existence or were willing to quietly look the other way while while the details were ironed out. That is, until it went from the realm of myspace pages, blogs [mb], and posters to a feature article in the Stranger turned the “sort of secret” into a “not a secret at all”:

… Fuller is extremely cautious, even paranoid, about media attention for the shows at Atlas. But they haven’t exactly been a secret: The place has been advertising shows on MySpace, on posters, and (the latest) on a sandwich board in front of the retail shop. We’ve even previewed a few in The Stranger’s Up & Coming section. But the operation is still somewhat underground, unlicensed, possibly not up to fire code, and Fuller is worried that any press will prematurely expose and destroy the labor he’s been pouring himself into for months … [stranger, 27 June 2007]

I read the article last night and wondered why the Stranger decided to expose them and then tonight I get a (yet unconfirmed) SMS tip saying that the venue was just shut down. Maybe it might have been safer to wait until the article’s deck could be “A Once Sort of Secret All-Ages Venue Has Gone Legit” instead of “A Sort of Secret All-Ages Venue Is Trying to Go Legit”.

update: Ari Spool writes that it was the Fire Department that visited and they won’t be allowed to host future shows. [slog ]

Danish bands PLÖK and Spy in the Mes are out on tour spreading Noridc pop and rock to the masses on their Viking Invasion tour; tonight they play a free show in Seattle at the King Street Bar at 10 pm.

Saturday make your way to the Seattle Center Pavillion for the Iranian Festival from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., featuring Rumi poetry, music, dance, cultural lectures, activities for the kids, and, oh yeah, some really good food.

The young, scrappy Monica Guzman over at the P-I, derided by some, adored by others, dropped this little bombshell on the world on the way out of town:

After today, Net Native is history.

I’m taking a three-week break to see my family on the East Coast. And when I come back, I’ll be running a new online project for the P-I, something we’ve come to call — respectfully and with an endearing smirk — the Big Blog.

Inspired by the city beats of Seattlest, Metroblogging Seattle, and, most famously, the Slog, the Big Blog will take a more conversational, informal and fun look at the news and culture that makes this city what it is.

Now, we like Monica. And by “we” I mean “me and the other authors who won’t speak up.” But this one is kind of head-scratching. Our competition is already pretty well ensconced. You have the Slog, written by the sorts that are still bitter about being high school outcasts and rejects. You have Seattlest, cowards who have still never picked up the thrown gauntlet because they are without honor and cower in fear at us destroying them in pub quiz. You have Crosscut, aka “Hey! The old Weekly writers got themselves computers with connections to the internets finally!” And then there’s Citizen Rain, KING’s entry into this market that I can’t say much about, other than it’s just like Seattlest and Slog (minus the bile and bite) and this fair blog. Oh, and I shouldn’t leave out seattle.livejournal.com, since that’s where we steal a lot of our content from.

So… where does the P-I’s “Big Blog” fit in this niche? Are they going to be more inside baseball than Slog? Far less cowardly than Seattlest? (That wouldn’t be hard.) Write original content like Crosscut? Or just post a bunch of 20-word blurbs and links like Citizen Rain?

I’m certainly not scared of them poaching our audience. We serve a completely different reader base. The P-I will pull in their readers and people with an interest in the Northwest, while we will continue to serve our core readership of our parents, crazy Ron Paul voting uncles, spiteful ex-lovers, Slog commenters spoiling for a fight, and people who stumble on us accidentally looking for that Enumclaw horse sex video.

But where would this new P-I blog fit in to the blog ecosystem? Do you think there’s room for them?

(Aside to Monica: Just because you don’t use Amazon doesn’t mean you should say it out loud in Seattle. It’s like saying how much nicer Airbus planes are while you’re taking the Boeing tour.)

With the decrease in cigarette tax revenue that Washington state has experienced since the smoking ban [pi], I am surprised that the legislature didn’t vote in favor of continuing the booze tax. However, that does not mean that I am unhappy about it. Talk about a measure that directly effects me…or does it?

According to the Puget Sound Biz Journal:

But don’t look for a drop in all liquor prices after Sunday, officials at the Washington Liquor Control Board (LCB) said. As part of an analysis, the liquor board said that consumers will see a savings in only 26 percent of liquor sold; 74 percent will cost the same or increase in the coming months.

“Many spirit manufacturers have decided to make price changes on July 1 for various reasons including the increased costs of doing business such as fuel and transportation,” according to an LCB statement. [psbj]

Dang it. And I was all excited. Oh well, I guess 42 cents per liter wasn’t THAT much anyhow.

In any case, I still think this news is worthy of a Bloody Mary at brunch this Sunday. Did you know that the Blackbird Bistro [bb] out on California Avenue infuses its own pepper vodka for their infinitely delicious and spicy Blackbird Bloodys? Now you do! Go have Toni make you one, you won’t be sorry.

I’m having a slight heart attack. Breath. In. And. Out. Count. To. Ten.

As part of my weekly skim-The-Stranger ritual, I realized that my favorite column, I Anonymous is mysteriously missing from the left side of the local rag’s Web site. AND I can’t find it anywhere in the Columns postings or anywhere else, for that matter. Granted, I don’t have a hard copy of the newspaper in front of me right now, but you better believe it’ll be the first stop on my way home to make sure they didn’t do away with pretty much the only thing I consistently read in The Stranger.

I LOVE the crass, weekly rants about bull sh!t stuff people do…one time, I laughed so hard about a guy who saw someone masturbating on the freeway that I cut it out and hung it on my fridge. Nothing like reading that with your Cheerios in the morning to get your day off to the right start.

Oh dear, I Anonymous. Has The Stranger done away with you?

Stuff to do. Yes, stuff:

Friday 7 p.m. – Cinema On The Lawn: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” @ South Lake Union – “Bring your picnics, blankets and low back chairs! No outside alcoholic beverages.” Which means you’ll have to give them your money to get all likkered up while you watch. ‘Cause nothing screams “drunken revelry” like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. And drinking cold beer while getting rained on, that’ll be good for your constitution.

Friday – Au Yong & Blasdel: BreathPlay @ Chapel Performance Space – “An improvised music/sound art concert exploring sounds from around the Pacific Rim using shakuhachi (Japanese end-blown bamboo flute), Chinese percussion, piano, water, and voice.” Water as a musical instrument, it’s gotta be tough to hold on to. Ha.

Friday – Dudley Manlove Prom 2007 @ Showbox – Dress up in your baby-blue rented tux, or make sure your prom dress shows off your assets. Special guest stars like Chris Ballew and Sean Nelson and Tennis Pro help with the festivities.

Friday/Saturday midnight – The “Buffy” Musical Sing-A-Long @ Egyptian Theater – The let’s-make-this-episode-a-musical idea, as implemented by Joss Wheden’s “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”. Come in costume, see it on the big screen, and sing yer guts out.
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For your viewing pleasure:

• At the Grand Illusion on Friday 6/29 and Saturday 6/30 at 11 is the Seattle premiere of Takeshi Furusawa’s Ghost Train, part of their “All Monsters Attack!” series. Ghost Train tells the story of Nana who is forced to battle a dark spirit in the deep underground tunnel near Mizunahsi Station.

  Also opening at the Grand Illusion Friday and running for a week is Thing from Another World a 1951 sci-fi flick paired with its eventual remake, John Carpenter’s 1982 creepfest, The Thing. Daily at 7 & 9/Sat & Sun at 3 & 5.

• June 29 through July 1 is Night of the Iguana at Central Cinema. (7 & 10 pm). This classic film stars Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr in an intense story taken from an original Tennessee Williams play.
• SIFF’s Cinema on the Lawn Series kicks off with one of my most favorite movies ever, Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring a pre-A-Team George Peppard and the lovely, talented and brilliant Audrey Hepburn as two people of dubious morals who manage to find true love. I wish they’d cut the Jerry Lewis scene from the print, though.
• As Josh alerted you last week, [mb], this weekend’s Midnight at the Egyptian flick is the sing-along musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  Also at the Egyptian: La Vie En Rose continues.

• Ratatouille opens at the Metro. I mention this as an excuse to ask: is there anyone who plans to see this? Every person I’ve talked to about this film so far has said the previews look boring and they have no intention of going. I have no intention of going. If you do go see this movie, please tell me what it’s like because, really, I think it looks dumb but I have been wrong before
• Over at the Neptune, Friday marks the bow of Sicko, the new documentary by Michael Moore. Even though I often find myself in agreement with what Mr. Moore has to say, the only film of his that I’ve seen that I’ve actually enjoyed was his first one but from everything that I’ve read about it, Sicko looks to be an interesting, provocative flick.
• The magnifique Charlotte Gainsbourg and Vincenzo Amato star in The Golden Door, a story of love and longing for a new home in the new world as a Scilian widower and a mysterious English woman meet on a ship to Ellis Island. At Seven Gables.
• Northwest Film Forum presents a Swashbucklers Marathon. See The Sea Hawk, Fri Jun 29 through Sunday July 1 at 2 pm. a four-time Academy Awards nominee, The Sea Hawk stars the dashiing Errol Flynn as a debonair pirate on the prowl for more than one kind of booty as he fights for Spanish gold and the hand of a lovely lady. At 4:30 pm each day, it’s Burt Lancaster who sails the seven seas as the Crimson Pirate; at 7 pm Stewart Granger plays Alan Quartermain in an exciting version of King Solomon’s Mines that also stars Deborah Kerr and the beaitiful landscape of Africa.

  Also at NWFF:Walking to Werner, a documentary about NW filmmaker Linas Phillips walk from Seattle to Los Angeles to honor legendary director Werner Herzog, who once walked 500 miles to meet his own mentor.

Estrella Family Creamery’s booth at the local markets is always swamped. They have an amazing setup with a counter and glass enclosure to protect the cheese and let customers see exactly what they’re buying. Because they are so popular, finding time to interview them has been difficult. I was lucky to carve out a few minutes on the phone with Kelli Estrella the other day to bring you this interview.
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Several local sites [#], [#], and [#], are reporting that a badly decomposing body was found in the house formerly rented by Mike Webb. Webb was a former KIRO radio host and has been missing since mid-April. The body was found around 3 pm on Thursday. There has been no confirmation whether the body is Webb’s or where exactly the body was found.

“little white doe”, Mandy Greer (Seattle, WA), courtesy McLeod Residence

… still calibrating our recommend-o-trons, but here’s another item for your thursday evening:

Before McLeod Residence welcomes the biomimetic butterflies, laser speckley closet, and Running Plaid video installations to further their mission of making the nerd hangout even nerdier with artistic programming projects, they’re bidding their Seattle–Brooklyn Disconnects [#] a fond farewell. Say goodbye to Mandy Greer’s spectacular technicolor parlor transformation [#] and the rest of the exhibits at tonight’s closing party. While you’re there, check out the Barbarian Group’s amazing interactive video mirrors (the photo below hardly does it justice) for a tiny preview of things to come. 6 pm [mcleodresidence]

“McLeod Mirror”, Barbarian Group, courtesy McLeod Residence