May 21, 2006

Neighborhood Black Bear

Living about half a mile from Interstate 5 in the middle of suburban Seattle, I don't really expect to see much wildlife. Sure we get crows, pigeons and squirrels, but there aren't even rabbits in the yards here like we had in Iowa. Turns out there was a black bear in Ravenna this morning, less than a mile from my house. If it really came south from Shoreline like the speculation suggests, it might have even strolled down my street. I don't remember hearing about bears in the city last year, so I'm not sure how common this is. Apparently that's bear number 33 or 34 cited in Western Washington so far this spring. KOMO has the video.

Posted by Jake at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

Rat City Rollergirls

Robin and I went to a Rat City Rollergirls bout for the first time last night, thanks to some help from Throttle Rockets captain Darth Skater. I know Darth's alter ego in the tech world and she's been trying to talk me into checking out a match for at least a year. If you live in Seattle, or if you have a roller derby league in your city, check it out at least once; roller derby is like crossing a punk rock show with a hockey match. Lots of fun and lots of safe violence. The women skate around a track with two lead skaters called the pivots, a set of blockers and a jammer for each of the competing teams. The jammers try to break through the pack and then skate past as many of their opponents as possible before the current "jam" is called off. Along the way, the two combating teams try to knock each other down with both legal and not so legal maneuvers. It looked like there were about 1000 people in attendance at the recent match, which says to me with a little word-of-mouth this is something on the verge of being HUGE!

Posted by Jake at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2006

Elbow Live From Seattle's Triple Door

I only recognized one of the songs played by Elbow at Seattle's Triple Door when they played a KEXP event on Tuesday. They sound a little like a cross between Coldplay and early U2, although they've definitely got their own distinctive sound. You can see the photo collection on Flickr:

You can get an Elbow track as part of Volume 12 of the Music That Matters Podcast from KEXP.

Posted by Jake at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2006

Seattle Filter Magazine Party

On Monday night I attended the Filter Magazine Party with Bre Pettis of I Make Things fame. I've been to a few swanky parties in my day and this wasn't one of them. Walking in the door we were instantly hit with an overwhelming sense of corporate schlock. Get your picture taken in an economy sized Honda? Are you serious? The shrinky-dinks were a nice touch, but not exactly something a 21+ crowd typically looks for. 500 microbrews in the naked city and the best Filter could do was free Miller Lite? No one appeared to be having fun. Where was the decadance that should go along with a rock party tied to what's supposed to be a trendy magazine. For their part, the bands sounded awesome, with Aqueduct providing the backdrop for one of Bre's Meta-photo shots and Pretty Girls Make Graves headlining the evening.

Posted by Jake at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Seattle Needs a GarbageScout

There are a ton of great culture mashups riding on top of the Google Maps API. Lifehacker recently featured GarbageScout, a site that ties interesting junk to the location it was found in New York. While New York certainly has an advantage in population density, this could be a cool way to map virtually any city. Connect it to Craigslist and there's a new economy in trading old junk (not that eBay isn't already doing quite well).

Posted by Jake at 06:38 AM | Comments (0)