Post-Post-Intelligencer - Fimoculous.com

So the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is going to become the first major metro daily to go online-only. The staff will be slashed to 20 employees. Although this sounds sad, can you imagine what you could do with good technology and a staff of 20 people to write about everything going on in town? Either way, it's worth looking at my old friend Mike Davidson's post on this whole thing. Mike started Newsvine with six employees in the P-I building, and it's amazing to think that it out-lasted (big time) the daily.

Microsoft laying off 5,000 of its 94,000 employees. Approximately two-thirds of MSFT's workforce is in Seattle -- I haven't seen anyone state if all the lay-offs will be there.

After exchanging blows for the last two years (2006 | 2007), Seattle and Minneapolis TIE this year for most literate city.

Dude uses Craigslist to crowd-source an armored-car robbery. And there's also an innertube and DNA evidence involved. [via]

Microsoft bought the flight price prediction site Farecast.

For my Microsofty friends: Microspotting, a blog about the eccentric characters on campus. Nothing yet about pony-tail comb-over guy, who was my personal fashion hero.

NYT: Seattle Taps Its Inner Silicon Valley. Not necessarily a sucky story, but strange that it mentions only one company, which I've never heard of.

I'm mildly annoyed that I'm now getting my Seattle news via the New York Times, but whatever.... Amazon.com has a new office planned in the South Lake Union area. It looks very ugly, which is sad because their old offices are pretty cool. (Also, I still own a condo in Belltown, so I'm denigrating this architecture merely to keep my old neighborhood as the "cool" one. Well, yuppie cool, anyway.)

FTW! Minneapolis won back its title from Seattle as the most literate city.

Whoa, the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle (which I lived a few blocks from, just a couple months ago) has suddenly closed. (The Croc was owned by Peter Buck's ex-wife.) More at, of course, The Stranger.

Seattlites: Donkey Kong screening on Sunday with the director. Also: there's a 10-day Kubrick retrospective coming up.

If you walk around Seattle, one of the unusual things you'll notice is the number of Teriyaki joints -- the red & yellow neon signs are seemingly everywhere, with greater concentration than anywhere else you'd expect it (San Fran, Vancouver.... Tokyo). The Seattle Weekly does a little investigation into where they all came from.

Amazon has launched a grocery delivery service in Seattle: Amazon Fresh. Since I practically live off Amazon right now anyway, this is pretty perfect. [via]

Oh great, Seattle is becoming NYC. 300-sq. foot condos in my hood? Seriously?

Seattlest has a pretty interesting interview with the guy behind The Name Inspector.

"Construction has begun on Microsoft's massive parking garage, said to be the second-largest underground garage in the western hemisphere."

New Seattle-based site: Avvo.com. It rates lawyers on a scale from 1 to 10 -- 3 being the highest. (Okay, the last part's a joke.) [via]

For a brief moment on Friday, Seattle was the future of media, as Crosscut published a story that said the Seattle P-I would go e-paper in the next couple years. Unfortunately, the P-I quickly denied it. Shucks.

My friend Cory has launched a new Seattle blog: Citizen Rain.

Slate (originally founded in Seattle but now based in DC/NYC) has a peculiar little slideshow on The Best and Worst Architecture of Seattle. [via]

Texting while you drive has just been made illegal in the state that I live in. (Mom, please keep some money in the bank to bail me out.)

Seattle Weekly has a decent (and thorough) profile of the CapHill-based music recommendation engine iLike (my profile), which so far I like more than Last.FM.

Bumbershoot has announced part of its lineup, including The Shins, Wu-Tang Clan, Panic At The Disco, Crowded House, Lupe Fiasco, Steve Earle, Devendra Banhart, and Gogol Bordello. It's just a few blocks from my house, so come visit me in September, yo.

Seattlites: Crosscut, "an online daily newspaper for the Pacific Northwest" from alt-weekly alum David Brewster, has launched. As I predicted, it seems stuffy so far, but maybe there's a demo out here for that.

Architectural renderings of the Space Needle and other attractions at the 1962 World's Fair. (I live a few blocks from the Space Needle and have a half-written essay about it. Except I think it may always stay "half-written," because there's something about Seattle's visions of the future that are always half-way complete.) [via]

Seattlites: the movie 8 Bit opens here next week, but unfortunately I'll be at SXSW.

The line-up for Sasquatch (May 26-27) has been announced, including Bjork, The Arcade Fire, M.I.A., The Hold Steady, Grizzly Bear, Beastie Boys, Interpol, Bad Brains, Dandy Warhols, and Tokyo Police Club. So who's coming to visit me in Seattle this summer?

The former editor of the Seattle Weekly is starting a regional online paper called Crosscut. I've talked a lot over the years about alt-media's missteps in moving online, so I'll be watching this one closely, already concerned this will be stodgy lecturing rather than interactive journalism.

Apparently the Seattle Times got a lot of negative feedback from the hot barista story that was posted here last week.

Seattle Times: a local coffee shop is adding "bodacious baristas, flirty service and ever more-revealing outfits to the menu." (Update from the comments: photos. Hot coffee!)

My photos from the Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Garden opening.

In The Stranger, Steve Malkmus compares Seattle and Portland.

Living a few blocks from The Walker's enviable sculpture garden in Minneapolis had spoiled me on the elision of public space and art projects (not to mention providing an impressive place to take girls on first dates). Much is being made about a similar project, The Olympic Sculpture Park, opening in Seattle this week, which happens to be less than two blocks from my current condo -- you can actually almost see into my window in the photo atop the Sunday NYT review. The Seattle Times provides beaucoup multimedia and an overview of the major sculptures in the park (the usuals: Kelly, Serra, Nevelson, Calder, Oldenburg, Smith, Bourgeois) while Seattle's best art critic, Jen Graves, notes in The Stranger that January is not the best time to open a sculpture garden. For out-of-towners: Bill Gate's step-mother, Mimi Gates runs the Seattle art scene as director of both the Seatle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum. The official opening is next weekend, after which I'll post some more thoughts.

Update your urban myths: someone actually stole a kidney from the "Bodies" exhibit in Seattle.

For the second straight year, Seattle just barely edged out Minneapolis as the most literate city. Suck it, homies.

Hey Seattlites, throw away your plans for that locally dominant culture/shopping blog (oops, that's just me), cuz a local version of Daily Candy just launched.

Hey Seattlites, I can't go so you should: Heidi Julavits is reading tonight at the Big Picture (and dammit, I live across the street).

I'm a little surprised the alt press in town hasn't covered this, so I'll mention it here: Roq la Rue Gallery has a pretty cool exhibit opening tomorrow, which features works from Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing. It's three blocks from my house, so I'll be there.

Lost Remote reminds me that two major (and controversial) online real estate disrupters -- Redfin and Zillow -- are Seattle-based. Momentarily ignoring the bias of recently moving here, it does seems Seattle is in a good position to ask questions about space distribution (real estate) and disruptive tools (technology).

Seattlest: a horrible-yet-maybe-brilliant film called Paul Alien, on Seattle's favorite arts philanthropist.

Charlize Theron's boyfriend is directing a movie about a dozen characters swept up in the 1999 WTO protests: The Battle in Seattle.

In their New Rules of Real Estate cover story, Business 2.0 says that Seattle is a "bubble-proof" real estate market. Yeah! [via]

Oh my god, it's at least a five minute walk to the nearest Starbucks -- better open 40,000 of them.

NYT Arts wonders if Starbucks can create a serious dent in the culture industry.

Big controversy in the Seattle music scene, in which it is discovered that someone in The Stranger's advertising department was writing reviews for the paper under a pseudonym. Dan Savage canned her and the editor, Dave Segal.

Some dude is trying to visit every one of the 12,000 Starbucks in the world. Interview.

Bodies: The Exhibition opens this weekend in Seattle. The Stranger has a preview.

Tom Douglas' new pizza joint, Serious Pie, has opened.

Seattlest has been all over the Starbucks "ghetto latte."