Posted Fri, Apr 13, 8:30 a.m.

BigYaz is right: Costco has nothing to do with Groupon. My point, Snus, is that a "selective" Groupon purchase by a consumer is simply a matter of deciding which business you (the consumer) want to poison. Groupons are not "deals" at all; using a Groupon doesn't make you a smart ...

Posted Tue, Apr 10, 9:53 a.m.

A fine piece of research and reasoning. Remoteness is an asset that has little to do with natural beauty. Look at Trieste, for example: a trading center with access to the Mediterranean, to the Alps, to northern Europe, to eastern Europe. Nobody cares today that residents of Trieste can explore ...

Posted Fri, Mar 23, 1:36 p.m.

GaryP, I shared your prejudice. The shot of wheatgrass that Mr. Rudinstein offered smelled no grassier than a Washington sauvignon blanc, and tasted not a whit of lawn clippings or sod. At two bucks a shot, I'm not likely to become a convert, but Evolution Fresh is, no doubt about ...

Posted Fri, Mar 23, 1:33 p.m.

mbrenman's question about Made in China escalators raises a good point, that's also referenced in CBHall's article: what sort of premium would or should public entities pay for Made in USA products? How can the public sector hope to compete with private enterprise if they're required to pay twice as ...

Posted Mon, Feb 20, 9:22 a.m.

If the Amazon deal is oatmeal, the Sonics deal is Froot Loops.

Posted Fri, Feb 17, 4:26 p.m.

Corrections noted; many thanks for the clarification.

Posted Thu, Feb 2, 7:59 p.m.

Totally agree, wine in a box is not the least bit unusual. Nor is wine from a keg (a great way for moderately priced wine to find its way into the marketplace). Even the lightly effervescent prosecco comes in kegs these days.

Posted Sun, Jan 1, 10:58 a.m.

Here you are, Andy. And apologies to all; I should have posted the actual link. http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/news-events/news/files/olive%20oil%20final%20071410%20.pdf

Posted Thu, Dec 29, 11:15 a.m.

Gary P raises a good question. If the FDA doesn't test, how do we know? The answer is that UC Davis maintains a technical tasting panel, the one referred to at the very end of the article. Here's the link: http://caes.ucdavis.edu/NewsEvents/web-news/2011/01/uc-davis-group-approved-as-north-america2019s-only-certified-olive-oil-taste-panel From there, you can navigate to a multi-page PDF ...

Posted Mon, Dec 26, 8:35 p.m.

Mr. Baker's argument is the historic one: that corporations benefit from tourism, so corporations should pay for "advertising." This totally misses the point. Tourism is a business which benefits the entire community and should be vigorously promoted by all entities entrusted with the community's welfare: corporations, trade associations, unions, and ...

Posted Sun, Dec 11, 10:29 a.m.

Nameless "rage against the machine" is precisely the point of the Occupy movement. If Occupy were coherent in its message, well-educated on the finer points of global finance and well-organized on the finer points of media relations, Occupy would be dismissed as a progressive teach-in, well-meaning but misguided. Instead, they ...

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 1:04 p.m.

More gambling as an alternative to a sales tax? Boy, is that ever a "soak the poor" approach. Tourism promotion, on the other hand, is a "soak the better-off who don't live here" solution.

Posted Sat, Nov 26, 8:56 a.m.

European low-cost airlines are already charging by weight for checked bags. I flew Ryan Air from Bari to Rome last week. The ticket itself cost only 8 euros, but I was hit with another 15 euros to charge the ticket to my credit card. Then, at the airport, my carry-on ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 3:10 p.m.

Trader Joe is the trade name for a tightly controlled German company owned by two secretive, right-wing brothers. That laid-back Hawaiian theme is naught but a fig leaf.

Posted Thu, Oct 20, 1:03 p.m.

I read the same study when it came out a few weeks ago and reached the opposite conclusion. Yelp reviewers are narcissistic whiners. Yes, they take away business from chains,but they save their most savage (and ill-informed) "reviews" for independents. I phoned Yelp and asked a hypothetical question: if a ...

Posted Tue, Oct 4, 10:08 p.m.

Let's try one more time, B. The photographer, a woman, chose to title her piece "American Girl in Italy." The artist's decision, not mine. Case closed.

Posted Tue, Oct 4, 9:54 a.m.

Not to put too fine a point on it, "B," but the term "Girl" was the photographer's (a woman), not mine. If you look at the picture (via the link), you'll see that the males in the picture vary in age but are definitely "men."

Posted Fri, Sep 23, 8:01 a.m.

A quick followup. I received the following comment from Johsel Namkung's granddaughter, Sara Ullman (an artist who makes beautiful rugs; see UllmanTextiles.com): "Greetings, "I really like your assessment of the Masters Behind the Lens show. I just wanted to comment that some of your biographical details are a little misleading. ...

Posted Sun, Sep 11, 12:30 p.m.

Harris, I've been hearing your complaint about the lack of dining & lodging facilities since I first visited the Yakima Valley 30 years ago. BC's Okanagan Valley is light-years ahead of eastern Washington in that regard.

Posted Fri, Sep 9, 8:26 a.m.

The problem isn't the concept of sick leave, it's the notion that the city has the right to mandate a benefit for workers (health insurance) without funding it. Universal health care is a good thing, and should be publicly funded, if necessary. But requiring a specific class of people (Seattle ...

Posted Fri, Jul 22, 8:11 a.m.

Ben, Back to a comment I made on this subject earlier in the debate. In most businesses, customers way outnumber the help. Sick or contagious customers can come into a restaurant (or a clothing store, or a nail salon), sneeze, infect the whole joint, and go back to their condos, ...

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 2:44 p.m.

Oyez, I have my own site, Cornichon.org for unmediated rants, thank you. This essay (vetted by Crosscut's crack team of professional editors) provides a personal perspective on an issue of public policy. What's wrong with any worker having paid sick days? Simply this: somebody has to pay them. In San ...

Posted Sun, Jul 3, 8:57 a.m.

I was sitting in the Uptown Espresso in Belltown one morning a couple of years ago when a passing Metro bus slowed and stopped, then BACKED UP, doing a perfect job of parallel parking. Out came the driver, wearing a baseball cap and carrying his own go-cup. "A decaf soy ...

Posted Sat, Jul 2, 3:27 p.m.

Back to @OyezOyezOyez for a second. In most businesses, customers outnumber employees. A customer can come into a business, spread germs everywhere, infect all who come after, and go home free as a bird. The factthat 20-some businesses (out of tens of thousands) support the notion of paid sick leave ...

Posted Wed, Jun 29, 11:25 a.m.

It's a crackpot idea from the get-go. The issue is NOT whether full-time workers have the right to sick leave. That's a "benefit" of having a "job," whether the pay is salaried or hourly. But the current proposal, as Jordan Royer points out, makes it less and less likely for ...

Posted Tue, Jun 28, 8:02 a.m.

And who is supposed to pay for your sick days? Your employer? Your employer's customers? Show me a way to make this work and I'll support it wholeheartedly. But please don't put the burden foryour safety net on the owners of small businesses.

Posted Mon, Jun 20, 4:19 p.m.

I appreciate the sentiments involved here: everyone should have the right to medical care. But Seattle already mandates the state minimum wage for restaurant workers (waiters also get substantial tips, which they share with other members of the staff). Adding paid sick leave would force restaurant owners to find other ...

Posted Tue, Jun 7, 9:05 p.m.

Sorry to be late to the party. Yes, the Cornichon.org site was down briefly because somebody (cough-cough) forgot to pay the hosting bill and renew the domain name. Yes, Trader Joe fills a market niche, but it isn't the informal Hawaiian shirt store you might think. And its low prices ...

Posted Sat, Jun 4, 4:32 p.m.

The Groupon IPO, at last report, was going to be for $750 million (a far cry from $25 million). Funny thing, the company has a net loss carry-forward of $540 million, according to published reports. Does not wound like a good investment to me. No significant barrier to entry and ...

Posted Sat, May 21, 11:03 a.m.

Why is "active trading" described as "investing"? It's got nothing to do with investing. It's gambling on stock prices, pure and simple. Gambling, not investing. BTW, see Joe Nocera's column in today's NY Times about the LinkedIn IPO scam? (Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/opinion/21nocera.html)

Posted Wed, May 11, 8:46 a.m.

Ancil Payne was a genius, no doubt about it, with a gift for finding talented people. He brought a young college grad from Wisconsin into the KGW newsroom one summer as an intern, Denis Hayes, who went on to join Gaylord Nelson's staff as coordinator of Earth Day, and is ...

Posted Tue, Apr 26, 12:26 p.m.

Bordeaux would be perfect, of course. As my recent post on Crosscut about waterfront redevelopment in Bordeaux pointed out, everything works better and faster (if not cheaper) when the mayor is also a member of the ruling party's national cabinet. If Kemper Freeman understood this, he wouldn't need to use ...

Posted Wed, Apr 20, 2:02 p.m.

One more thing: for me, the iconic Seattle sculpture would be this one, Dudley Carter's "Celestial Adventure" at Shilshole. Crosscut story here: http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19674/An-artist-s-last-work-has-resting-place-at-Shilshole/.

Posted Wed, Apr 20, 2 p.m.

How many Seattlites know (or even care) that "our" Hammering Man isn't even original? The first HM, now 20 years old, is in Frankfurt, Germany, bravely stationed in front of the fairgrounds. The best idea was on Labor Day a few years back, when pranksters put HM in leg irons. ...

Posted Fri, Apr 15, 5:38 p.m.

Oh boy. Let's get back to the subject, shall we? Judy Lightfoot is not only a terrific writer herself but a sensitive editor of other people's writing. No wonder she was such a popular teacher!

Posted Sat, Apr 9, 1:11 p.m.

Happy to hear of the update, dman. Many others will be pleased as well, I'm sure.

Posted Fri, Apr 1, 8 a.m.

Love this, especially the "hillside hopes."

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 8:44 a.m.

And then there is Illy Caffè from Trieste, "the one that started it all." Had Gordon Bowker not become enamored of Italy's coffee culture, fueled by roasters such as Illy, there would have been no reason to start a coffee shop in the first place. Worth mentioning, as well, that ...

Posted Fri, Feb 11, 10:19 a.m.

Don't understand, ruffner. Belltown's always had paid parking. If you don't want to feed the meter, come after dark, when street parking is free; Black Bottle's kitchen is open till midnight.

Posted Thu, Jan 27, 10:53 a.m.

BigYaz, I don't disagree with your evaluation that Groupon is advertising, but the restaurants that offer Groupon don't, as a rule, understand the economics. They're often unsophisticated mom & pops who don't realize the HUGE cost of a Groupon promotion; they only see the short-term cashflow and bump in never-to-return ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 9:38 p.m.

And at the risk of flogging this horse once too often, the problem isn't so much disappointed diners but overwhelmed small businesses. There's a reason they're small: they don't know how to handle volume, they don't really want to handle volume, but--just as the customers are drawn by the siren ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 3:18 p.m.

I don't understand dman's antipathy. Of course, there's a party line in Seattle that deep discounts are an acceptable form of promotion. Perhaps Brian Couch's parable (http://www.briancrouch.com/2011/01/a-groupon-tale/, and republished by Biznik) will make it more apparent: consumers don't win when their deep-discount, Groupon patronage helps put the merchant out of ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 10:52 a.m.

Bobo, you've almost got it. Exposure to a larger market isn't the problem, though. Most small businesses don't have "marketing plans," they're more like dogs chasing squirrels. My advice would be: write a marketing plan and stick with it. Don't try to be something you're not (whether it's Canlis, Tavolata ...

Posted Mon, Jan 3, 12:05 a.m.

And it's worth pointing out that The wire wasn't "set" in Baltimore. The show grew out of a newspaper series about very real drug activity ("The Corner") at a specific intersection in downtown Baltimore.

Posted Sun, Jan 2, 10:59 p.m.

At the risk of committing the year's first, worst pun, we'll never again be able to say, "Some day my prints will come."

Posted Wed, Dec 1, 11:53 a.m.

Mr. Guadnola assumes that the I-1100 and I-1105 were defeated on their merits (or lack thereof). Were that the case, the WWBWA would not have had to spend $2 million on its mis-information campaign. Public safety, public-sector jobs and public revenues were smokescreens for preserving the current three-tier system, a ...

Posted Tue, Nov 23, 8:27 a.m.

Skip Ferderber's excellent list of suggestions deserves at least two more: print your boarding pass at home and avoid the line at the check-in counter. Second notion: pack light. Ultra-light. Don't check a bag at all. One small roll-aboard, with toiletries (in a baggie) and laptop in a shoulder-bag. And ...

Posted Thu, Nov 18, 8:12 a.m.

Just back from Paris, where one of the greatest charms of the city is that the grand old buildings are multi-use. Lots of small manufacturing at street level and in the interior courtyards; workshops and boutiques side-by-side; professional offices (doctors, lawyers, architects) upstairs, indicated by bronze plaques next to the ...

Posted Wed, Nov 17, 8:50 a.m.

If KING Broadcasting was such a "democratic" machine, Grousefinder, howzzit that two beacons of conservatism, John Stossel and Lou Dobbs, both surfaced at the network level with stints at KING-owned KGW TV News (Portland, Ore.) on their resumés?

Posted Wed, Nov 17, 8:42 a.m.

When you travel, you can always tell who's French (well dressed), who's Italian (impeccably dressed, expensive shoes & sunglasses, wool scarf) and who's American (dressed as if going to feed farm animals...or to invade Poland).

Posted Wed, Nov 17, 8:23 a.m.

Both Sierra_Girl and common1sense seem to have posted on the wrong site. The place for SAP (Self-Absorbed, Petulant) commenters is Yelp.

Posted Wed, Nov 3, 3:11 p.m.

I love their cheese. I love raw milk cheese in general, from peccorino in Tuscany to chevre in France. I admire the Estrellas for their hard work and the diversity of their family. But well-intentioned folks, even more than others, should understand that sanitation on a cheese-producing farm is no ...

Posted Wed, Oct 27, 12:51 p.m.

My understanding is that the markup is not revenue, it's overhead. It's what it costs the State to run the system. A private business that sells products in addition to spirits would have less overhead assigned to a single catgegory. Washington wouldn't "lose" the money, it would, in fact, save ...

Posted Tue, Oct 26, 2:47 p.m.

Here's an observation that didn't make it into the piece: One of the big points on both sides of the debate involve the Liquor Board's role in "enforcement."The figure that the Board is most proud of: is its so-called "compliance" rate. The Board sends 18 to 20-year-old "investigative aides" into ...

Posted Sat, Sep 18, 10:58 a.m.

Thanks to those who saw this post for what it was: an informal review of three threats facing our food supply. dman, there was no claim to original research, just summarizing existing articles. But since you bring it up, Hanford is close enough to the orchards, fields and vineyards that ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 4:24 p.m.

Not to put too fine a point on this: the purpose of the piece was not to review or praise Nespresso, which in fact I do find overpriced, but to point to the idiocy of spending $300 on a machine that then costs hundreds of dollars a year in supplies. ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 12:33 p.m.

Excellent observations, GaryP. But the fact is, someone is buying those $300 espresso machines, and Starbucks & colleagues are still in business as well. One of the most astonishing things about the global economy is the wide range of goods and services available...and the wide range of people who choose ...

Posted Sat, Aug 28, 8:12 a.m.

Credit where it's due (all others pay cash): Michele Matassa Flores writes my headlines.

Posted Tue, Aug 24, 4:43 p.m.

Two other churches in Belltown: Mars Hill, which is expanding to the U District (as Crosscut has reported) and City Church (thecity.org), with a campus in the old IBEW hall at First & Clay. Neither one old-line "mainstream" like First Church, but clearly serving a community need.

Posted Sat, Aug 21, 6:29 p.m.

Cross-posted at DailyKos here with several dozen comments in the first couple of hours.

Posted Fri, Aug 20, 1:57 p.m.

My apologies that the link to Boston.com above got all curdled. I like the "Joy of Cooking" in the headline, should have watched the sauce more carefully, sorry! http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/20/the_joy_and_freedom_of_cooking

Posted Fri, Aug 20, 11:57 a.m.

I'm sure you're right, animalal, that there's a bias against culinary school degrees in certain quarters. The story's not about that, though; it's about predatory loans to people who want to work as cooks in restaurants. Interesting story on Boston.com today about another exciting way to earn culinary credentials: prison. ...

Posted Tue, Aug 17, 6:48 p.m.

Sorry to hear that therapists and lawyers in the Grand Central Building lost billable hours so that Obama could listen to people affected by the financial crisis. Like Joe Fugere, who, despite being denied a bank loan, expanded from one store and five employees to four stores and a payroll ...

Posted Fri, Jul 16, 12:15 p.m.

Some deep, boring thoughts. The 56-foot-wide deep bore tunnel would be roughly the diameter of a transit tunnel station. To be dug, an inch at a time, by a single giant machine. So let's get on with it. The existing viaduct serves 100,000 vehicles a day, or 36 million vehicles ...

Posted Wed, Jul 14, 5:23 p.m.

If you "stagger" the closing hours, some places could be required to close earlier than others. Who decides? Who's going to stagger first? (Show me a restaurant owner who wants to be closed when his competitor remains open.) And even if you work that out, what happens when a newcomer ...

Posted Fri, Jul 2, 10:08 p.m.

Not its first in-store promotion, I'm afraid. The impetus was the great success a couple of months ago(measured in number of bottles sold) of a vodka promotion featuring Dan Ackroyd.

Posted Thu, Jul 1, 4:23 p.m.

Many thanks to Julie Whitehorn, president of the community-based Queen Anne market, for the additional insights. Not to put too fine a point on things, but I was not, personally, a vendor. I was doing a favor for my friend Enza Sorrentino, whose Sicilian restaurant sold has sold fresh pasta ...

Posted Fri, Jun 25, 10:58 a.m.

DrDude is right, your feckless correspondent wrong. Ignore that entire sentence (except as a paean to the superb wine of Cheval Blanc). Cheers!

Posted Wed, Jun 23, 7:57 a.m.

Hear, hear! Cars--and their incessant whining for a place to park--have almost strangled cities. Everything we build is built for cars, private passenger cars that spend 95 percent of their time standing still. (Think of all those idle boats in marinas around Seattle.) What we need are more Zipcars and ...

Posted Tue, Jun 22, 8:03 a.m.

Indeed, Steve Clifford gets it right. We are, as we get older, more religious, more likely to believe in an eternal afterlife. Disagree? How often have we gone into a room and asking ourselves, "What did I come in Hereafter?"

Posted Wed, Jun 9, 8:31 a.m.

JC Decaux isn't a toilet company so much as a communications agency that found a terrific medium for its clients' messages. Typically, Europe's APTs include a two-sided sign; one side is purely commercial, the other public (e.g., neighborhood maps). In the first few years of operation, the toilets were pay-per-use; ...

Posted Wed, Jun 2, 8:18 a.m.

re Jorgebob28's comment: Artisanal is the name of the restaurant, not a buzzword. Would you think any more or less of it were it called Brennan's? The point of the name, when it was first bestowed upon the original in NYC, was to denote the availability of artisanal (as opposed ...

Posted Wed, May 26, 2:12 p.m.

Great piece, Mossback! Those navel-gazing, bruschetta-grazing Cap-Hill hipsters look down their noses at Ivar's because it's popular with, you know, tourists, but they should try the new menu. I wrote a piece for Cornichon some 18 months ago titled "Stock Market Tanks, Ivar Keeps Clam" that might be worth rereading.

Posted Thu, Apr 1, 3:28 p.m.

Just like to update this with the news that Carolin Messsier is closing Txori in Belltown. (It will live on as Pintxo, operated by two longtime customers.)

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 10:14 a.m.

With the exception of Scandinavian, Asian and East African communities, Seattle's immigrants were far more assimilated by the time they reached Puget Sound than the Jews, Italians, and Eastern Europeans. That said, not even Katz's Deli on New York's Lower East Side is immune from their aging and increaisngly assimilated ...

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 5:25 p.m.

Indeed, David! High quality local journalism is paid journalism!

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 5:22 p.m.

Thanks for your comments, Peter. Granted, using superpremium bourbon to make drinks seems a less-than-ideal use of high-quality ingredients, but that doesn't mean people don't order them. As for the blue crab: Kevin tells me he'll use Maryland Blue Crabmeat in the cakes he'll be making at Blueacre. (Nothing from ...

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 8:41 a.m.

Nicely done review. My sense of the play is that it's not so much about the evils of "Capitalism" (the economic system) as human fear & greed versus human decency. While it's certainly "capitalism" (and its unseen champions, Mitch and Murray) that create the situation, it's the all-too-human schmucks who ...

Posted Thu, Jan 14, 9:34 p.m.

The precise nature of the work matters little; there is dignity in service. All service. In fact, the humble dishwasher is probably doing more honest and dignified work than the restaurant owner (or his accountant). As a society, we probably overvalue income and undervalue decent labor.

Posted Wed, Dec 9, 9:35 a.m.

Those 25 years have gone by quickly indeed. My sense of the Concorde itself: like sitting in a Greyhound bus, only with smaller windows. Still, a great piece of promotion by Mick McHugh.

Posted Thu, Sep 11, 3:29 p.m.

Story was modified: Chuck Taylor emailed me to say they'd clarified the "transfer" thing, that it referred to neighborhoods, not downtown. But Taylor maintained that this transfer required another payment. It doesn't. Buy a two=zone ticket when you board (outside the Ride Free Zone) and that's it. Or show your ...

Posted Thu, Sep 11, 9:03 a.m.

Crosscut Doesn't Ride the Bus: Please, if you're going to have a reporter like Peter Lewis write about getting to the airport by public transit, maybe he should do a little research. Like actually riding the 194 from downtown to SeaTac. He'll find it takes 30 minutes (using the freeway's ...

Posted Thu, May 8, 6:39 p.m.

It's not François Kissel's fault: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Don't blame the Evian served at Kissel's Brasserie Pittsbourg (the only French restaurant in Pioneer Square in the early 1970s, by the way). The effete snobs of 35 years ago didn't beget today's frenzied, self-defeating environmentalists, did we?