A different Uptown

We're in Minneapolis-St. Paul for the weekend to attend a wedding. They have an Uptown area too but it's much more of a 'brand' here a la Cap Hill in Seattle. See you next week :)

Useful: Uptown Radio Shack

Uptown Radio Shack
Originally uploaded by jseattle.

Sure I could have just figured it out online but I was happy to stumble across a Radio Shack in our midst on the way to Tup Tim Thai for some chow. If the idea of a RS in your neighborhood doesn't excite you that's probably because you've never found yourself without speaker cabling after you've had a few beers and can't really drive safely. I've been there, man -- RS can save the day!

-J

Seattle pictures

Pictures of the city seem to draw a lot of people to blogs like this. Sure, many come for the outstanding! writing, the invaluable! insights and the local scoopage on what's going down. But the rest of you just want to look at stuff.

Here is my flickr Random Seattle photo stream

I'll keep adding to it. You keep clicking.

Uptown Chow: Crow

Crow is a happening place. We assumed (wrongly) that we wouldn't need a reservation given that it was early for dinner, a Thursday night and everybody else would be watching the Sonics game. Killing time at Nabob, the stylish little bar next door, was just fine though I could have done with a little more compassion from the Crow hostess. Instead her reply to the 'how long do you think it will be?' query was neither encouraging nor discouraging. But before I could sip my gin and tonic to completion, we were saying goodbye to Nabob and had a spot at Crow's action-packed 'tasting bar.' Turns out, we didn't need her enthusiasm anyway (good thing!).

There are other places to sit in Crow, of course, but the tasting bar gives you a front row seat to the open kitchen. This allowed us to watch the crew perform -- which allowed K to say things like "You can tell she is in charge by the way she is standing" and me to ponder what percentage of entrees being prepared that night were the chicken (more than 25% so I ordered that :) ). It also allowed us to watch the chef pile a large BLOCK of butter on top of the slab of beef he was preparing. Secrets of tasty food revealed!

Our orders probably had some butter on top, too, because they were definitely tasty. K's pork, juicy and rich in flavor, was the champ of the evening though my chicken, as tender-in-the-middle and crispy-coated as it was, put up a good fight. The only missteps were the massive pile of green that is the house greens salad (probably enough greens here for 2 or 3 people - but you gotta give us something else to pick at in the salad besides leaves, please) and the chisel-requiring crust on the mocha chocolate pie. As K noted, the crust would have made a good shortbread cookie but it made a lousy crust.

The food was only a means to an end. Crow's experience is some sort of practical extravagance where the wine list is categorized into simple descriptions like 'creamy' or ‘powerful.' The tasting bar -- more than the food -- is Crow's 'thing' -- an open, busy rush of activity, with everything and everybody on display. "I wonder how much longer things like that will be 'in'," K asked as we examined the exposed ducts and timbers of the converted warehouse space. As long as they are, places like Crow will be 'in' too. Fine with me. I like to know how much butter is on my beef and, heck, I’m still a sucker of exposed duct work. It's all part of the show.

Crow Restaurant
823 Fifth Ave. N.
Date: Thursday May 12, 2005
Time: 6:30ish
Mood: Looking to splurge but 'keep it real'
Wine: a 'creamy' white
Starters: house greens salad, chilled potato soup
Entrees: pork loin, prosciutto-wrapped chicken
Dessert: mocha pie

Seattle's real alternative radio: an ode to KIXI

KIXI playlist from Tuesday morning
Originally uploaded by jseattle.

Seattle's radio dial is dominated by a few big stations. Just like radio dials across the US. Fortunately, we have a rather gentle, mostly good-mannered, usually interesting-enough giant in KEXP. While the playlist seems to be more and more condensed and less and less eclectic in the daytime hours, we are lucky to be able to share in John in the morning's strategized playlists and the various nighttime DJs' genre shows without being chained to a PC. We get to have John in the morning in our cars! Lucky folks.

But once John signs off for the day, I'm done with KEXP. How many times can one man listen to the eels for god's sake?

So I flip my dial over to the AM side of things and settle in with the strangest, most eclectic mix of commercial music on our airwaves: KIXI AM 880. Unlike KEXP and the other giants, KIXI will surprise you as the songs stream out of a past that never really existed but you wish did.

Its slogan is "Great Songs, Great Memories" but so many of the tunes are tiny little gems from great artists that are either dead and gone or slugging it out on the riverboat casino and county fair circuit. The fascination, I'm sure, is driven by this strange serendipity. I admit there is a kitsch factor -- so uncool it's cool. But kitsch is only part of the equation. Serendipity and timelessness make KIXI great. I don't know if the format is working from a revenue standpoint -- the commercials are dominated by advertising for the geriatric set (assisted living facility ads are such a downer!) -- and radio as an industry has a lot of change coming. But when it comes to the alchemy of forming brilliant playlists and entertaining human beings with sequences of songs, the giants could all learn something from sweet little KIXI.

KIXI on the Web (no online stream :( yet!)


-J

A new maritime-theme condo in Belltown?

Misc. May 05_2 011
Originally uploaded by jseattle.

Our temporary neighbors are back, bobbing through the night here and there around Elliot Bay. Though they block some views, it's cool to see the cruise ships back - and weird to see an apartment-sized structure moving "through" our streets. For some reason, it seems like all the cruisers who don't hop on the tour buses to go who-knows-where end up visiting the market and then wandering north if they brave the rest of the big city at all. Sad that all they find up that way is the empty lot waiting for the coming-soon SAM sculpture garden. I'm thinking of installing a sign that says "Welcome to Uptown - turn around and go back" Why do they turn north?

-J

Seattle 'rebuffs Bush'

Good to see Seattle leading the way on something like this. Nickels is becoming a more and more interesting character. Have to admit, I didn't know him when I voted for him. Still don't really -- but I'm starting to like him :)

-J
NYT: Rebuffing Bush, 132 Mayors Embrace Kyoto Rules

By ELI SANDERS

SEATTLE, May 13 - Unsettled by a series of dry winters in this normally wet city, Mayor Greg Nickels has begun a nationwide effort to do something the Bush administration will not: carry out the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Mr. Nickels, a Democrat, says 131 other likeminded mayors have joined a bipartisan coalition to fight global warming on the local level, in an implicit rejection of the administration's policy.

The mayors, from cities as liberal as Los Angeles and as conservative as Hurst, Tex., represent nearly 29 million citizens in 35 states, according to Mayor Nickels's office. They are pledging to have their cities meet what would have been a binding requirement for the nation had the Bush administration not rejected the Kyoto Protocol: a reduction in heat-trapping gas emissions to levels 7 percent below those of 1990, by 2012.

On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg brought New York City into the coalition, the latest Republican mayor to join.