ELTON JOHN COMES TO SEATTLE: The Weekly saw some pretty big ramifications from Honkey Cat’s four-day visit here in 1977 to work with a local recording studio called Kaye-Smith. “It would be difficult to overstate the significance . . . not only to the pop music world at large, but to this city and, indeed, the entire region,” the paper gushed. As the Weekly saw it, “The Northwest will very soon be emerging in the national spotlight as the newest, trendiest workshop and melting pot for the jet-setting international recording industry.” The paper quoted Elton’s local producer on just how long it would take: a year.

FASHION CAPITAL: We can all look back ruefully on the 1981 cover story “Jeanstown, U.S.A.: Brittania Sportswear puts Seattle on the fashion map.” Sure, back in the early days of designer jeans, it seemed Seattle might become a center for international style, but that kind of blew over. Brittania filed for bankruptcy protection two years after the story, and the fashion hordes didn’t return for another decade, when they came to ransack our secondhand stores for flannel shirts.

THE GOODWILL GAMES: Planning for, and bickering over, our crack at hosting this high-concept derivative of the Olympics preoccupied us for not months but years before promoter Ted Turner and Jane Fonda sailed into town for its 1990 opening. The games were supposed to do a lot of things: offer “solidarity with the profound yearnings of a tragic land” (as the Weekly described its mission for U.S.-Soviet understanding), stimulate our economy, and turn us into an international city. Problem was, nobody wanted to buy tickets, or not enough people anyway. The event lost a ton of money, and the city’s reputation was hardly boosted by an event that, while still going on today, became marginalized by glasnost.