Times Discovers South Park

I read Ty Beason's weekend story in The Seattle Times' Pacific Northwest magazine with interest. Young creative types are moving south to affordable hoods like South Park? It almost seems like a trend, something familiar, something I've possibly written before?

Yup, one of the subjects photographed (but not quoted) in the Beason piece was also a source of mine for this 2002 story. When I visited, the young creative types were still fixing up their bargain homes. They had dogs. Now as Beason's visiting, they have kids. And thus the story advances from alt-weekly to metro daily. Can Dwell and Sunset magazines be far behind?

Topics: Media and Real Estate

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Afternoon Edition: Fallon, Squid and a Lost bag of Meth

Giant squid now terrorizing B.C. as well!

The great thing about working at Microsoft is that when your conscience finally catches up with you, you can switch to the non-profit sector and still stay in the family.

Is that your bag of Meth behind the slot machine?

Jimmy Fallon is the new Conan O'Brien

Local Groups Mobilizing to Help Chinese Earthquake Victims

Feds Combing Jails for Illegal Immigrants

Topics: Afternoon Edition

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Detained, Then Dead

Mexico-born Jose J. Cervantes-Corona was 42 when he died at the Northwest Detention Center 21 months ago. We never heard about it, but his death at the Tacoma tideflats facility is now suspected of having been preventable.

Cervantes-Corona is named in recently released and published documents showing how many "detainees" have died in U.S. immigration prisons: The New York Times last week reported that 66 names are listed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data from 2004 to 2007, while the Washington Post this week reported 83 have died between 2003 and 2008.

Both papers refer to Cervantes-Corona as Jesus, and his death as Nov. 18, 2006, but a Pierce County death index lists him as Jose J. and his death a day later. The Post, in the ongoing series, has not yet explained why his death may have been avoided, but the New York Times/ICE document shows Cervantes-Corona died from coronary artery disease at 42. In addition, the Post has a copy of an Immigration Health Service list showing how much money the government saved by refusing to give potenntial life-threatening treatment for a litany of ailments including chest pain.

Altogether, denying treatment in 329 cases over one year, the government saved $1.3 million. The government's data does not reveal how many of those denials led to deaths. But the Post lists Carvantes-Corona's death as one of 30 thought to have been preventable.

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Deal on Parking Refunds

The check is not yet in the mail, but will be by October for thousands of Seattle drivers wrongly ticketed for overtime parking on legal holidays. Attorneys for a Bellevue woman who won a lawsuit in 2007, today announced the city has agreed to refund from $22 to around $75 to those whose cars were ticketed or impounded.

The city could have to cough up as much as $500,000 by the time refund checks go out at the end of October. According to law firm Bendich Stobaugh & Strong:

The judgment ends a lawsuit filed in 2006 by Bellevue resident Colette Turner, who was ticketed for failing to pay a parking meter on Friday, December 31, 2004. At the time Turner was ticketed, the city’s traffic code specified that parking was free on legal holidays, which were defined to include the day before a Saturday holiday, the day after a Sunday holiday, and the day after Thanksgiving. However, the City issued thousands of parking tickets to people who failed to pay on those days.

Get your money and info here.

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Afternoon Edition: Crazed Hitters and Slutty Mermaids

Lock up your daughters! The original Sbux logo is back.

Clay Bennett can't win for losing.

The problem with Starbucks isn't that it bullied its way to coffee top dog with lattes that appeal to the lowest common denominator, it's the skanky mermaid logo.

And speaking of women that totally freak out religious crazies—what if Hillary started pandering to white trash a year ago?

Why did Boeing lose out on the refueling tanker contract? A 0.11 deficiency in Fleet Effectiveness Value. Obviously.

Talk about a tease: Billboard says Rage Against the Machine and Prince aren’t actually going to play Bumbershoot. Sorry!

Texas may take a page from the NY tax collectors book and go after Amazon.

Richie Sexson: Douchebag. Coming soon to MySpace profiles everywhere.

Topics: Afternoon Edition

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Enough Already With the Hillary Veep Talk

As New York magazine writes its its post-mortem on the flatlining Clinton campaign, let's shoot another really retarded notion in the head as well: that Clinton will occupy the bottom of the Dem's Prez-Veep ticket. Ain't gonna happen, for two reasons. One, it doesn't help Obama. While there are those who will argue (falsely, in my opinion) that Obama's the one that Republicans want as their target, an Obama-Clinton ticket would be like positioning a paralyzed Willie Horton in front of Dick Cheney's rifle. The Grand Old Party could run a transsexual iguana as its nominee (and to diehard conservatives, McCain ain't much better), and the money would still pour in, given the opposition.

Two, given Hillary's relative age and megalomania, it doesn't make sense career-wise. While smart money's on Obama to topple McCain in the November general (it's the turnout, stupid), it's hardly a foregone conclusion — and Clinton would do herself no favors being on the losing end of that debacle. Conversely, if McCain eeks out a victory over Obama and whoever (Biden or Richardson are my best guesses), Clinton is the surefire nominee in '12 — really the last year she can run without being fitted for adult diapers. Then again, she was supposed to be the surefire nominee in '08, so we'll see what happens.

Topics: Campaign 2008

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An Office Complex Grows in Seatac

When was the last time you actually drove through Seatac? Looking for a way home from the airport avoiding the highways? Me too. But that was also when I saw signs that maybe this town was looking to be more than the sum of its runways. There's a community center, with a gym and meeting rooms, that's more akin to a small, but fancy, resort conference center than a city-sponsored equivalent to the YMCA. And indeed, the town that was named for nothing more impressive than being the hub of cross-country travel for two much bigger cities, is trying to reinvent itself as a destination in its own right.

Today Seatac unveiled it's new slogan: Everywhere's Possible. It's an obvious reference to the rapidly rising light-rail and talk of a third runway. Local carriers continue to add new flights, and now you can go straight to China for the smog-choked Olympics in Beijing. Hadley Green Creates was hired to handle the marketing.

The slogan sounds more like the beginning of a symbolic logic problem (for all you dorky philosophy majors out there) but if the community center is any indication, a less than stellar motto might not matter for this increasingly connected little 'burb.

Topics: Suburbs

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Judges' Uncivil Actions

Chow

The state Commission on Judicial Conduct has had better years. Out of 548 complaints handled in 2007, the agency that polices our judges sustained charges against just four jurists last year, compared to 13 complaints sustained in 2006. The quick breakdown from the CJC's new annual report shows that, while about 150 complaints remain open, more than 385 were dismissed, mostly because they couldn't be substantiated or the CJC lacked jurisdiction.

Of the four judges who were disciplined, the most memorable may be King County District Judge Mark Chow, who, after a career criminal told the judge in court to suck his dick, shot back: "I would, if you pulled it out — but you can't find it." He also asked a Japanese defendant in mental health court "What flavor are you...No Chinese? See, I'm Chinese." Chow said the comment was meant as a form of "therapeutic jurisprudence."

Notably, the CJC also censured Clark County Superior Court Judge John Wulle for insulting or mocking gays, blacks,and Jews. He told one person to fuck off and gave another the finger. He was suspected of drinking at the time but said it was just cough syrup. This all unfolded at a five-day conference called "Planning Your Juvenile Drug Court."

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Where's the Plan?

It’s a bit baffling to understand what the public is supposed to discuss when Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson makes three presentations about her “strategic plan,”� beginning with a meeting on May 14th at Roosevelt High School. The documents she released yesterday to the press (see them here), and plans on presenting to the public, are so vague as to be beyond debate — or meaningful discussion. “Ensure excellence in every classroom,”� is one bullet point. Hey, I’m for that. The only thing approaching specifics is a chart outlining the progress the district hopes to make in measures like test scores and the graduation rate. The district, for instance, wants to jump from 53 percent of 7th graders passing the math WASL to 80 percent. When Goodloe-Johnson was asked how she planned to do that, she talked in her rapid-fire way about “interventions”� and “aligning curriculum”� but failed, with one exception, to identify new initiatives in the works. That exception is a planned new high school curriculum, perhaps a good idea but not one that will help middle schoolers, who already got a new math curriculum a couple years back.

She and her staff say a more detailed, 30-page report will be presented to the school board on May 21st. (In the mean time, you can see more details in a draft presented to the board at a retreat in March.)

Board members said little last night as Goodloe-Johnson presented the materials for the public at a work session following the press event. In prior work sessions and one-on-one meetings, however, the thorny issue of capacity has come up. District demographics have recently shifted. It used to be that the number of students was growing in the South End and shrinking in the North. The reverse is now true, and North End schools don’t have enough space for all the new students. Meanwhile, some South End schools — particularly high schools — have extra space. Witness Rainier Beach. New enrollment figures project another drop in students next year, down to a painfully small total of 300. This despite the superintendent’s “Southeast Education Initiative,”� which targets Rainier Beach and two other schools. So one issue to watch is whether the Superintendent will address the new demographics in her more detailed plan.

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Afternoon Edition: Scary-Ass Squid-Photo Warning

Giant, predatory squid (possibly resembling the one seen above) invading Puget Sound!

Crazy guy on bike clogs I-5 traffic, fails to look for sharrow.

In unrelated bike news: Gig Harbor man with no legs and one arm to ride his bike across the United States. Will follow sharrows wherever possible.

This guy's the man when it comes to finding wicked awesome travel deals.

Larsen hitches his wagon to Obama.

Dire warnings of world-wide apocalyptic famine are good news for one Issaquah-based retailer.

Topics: Afternoon Edition

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