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RICK DAHMS

For giving this smug city a swift kick in the ass, for giving Seattle more front-page, prime-time, global news coverage and making our name synonymous not with free trade or flavored coffee but with human rights, economic justice, and passionate resistance against corporate globalism—we pick WTO.

Best quotes to remember WTO by

1) "They say be careful of what you ask for—you might get it."—Port Commissioner Pat Davis. 2) "If anybody's mad out there . . . You can vote me out of office next time around."—Mayor Paul Schell. 3) "I hear Bob Hope has gone to Seattle to entertain the troops."—Jay Leno.

Best post-WTO bumper sticker

We saw this one hand-scrawled on the back of a car parked on Dexter the week after WTO protesters were pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, arrested for carrying signs in downtown streets, and thrown into jail for days on charges that were ultimately laughed out of court: "Got rights?"

Best indication that Seattle police don't necessarily hate a good time

Underneath that golden badge beats a heart like your own, after all, and it's not their fault if they're forced to hustle along the occasional vagrant or tell the occasional Pioneer Square partier to dump the beer on the sidewalk. They've shown a considerable amount of tolerance and compromise regarding the proposed rewrites to the Teen Dance Ordinance, and though their record has not always been so spotless, they've actually taken a positive role in Seattle's after-hours scene. Whereas just a year or two ago, their appearance at a rave at 3am meant the party was definitely over, take a stroll down to Pioneer Square after 2 on a Saturday night to see a heartwarming sight: cops monitoring the doors at clubs with after-hours. It's true! There they stand, shoulder-to-shoulder with burly doormen, checking IDs, asking about your well-being, and even smiling and chatting with the occasional partygoer who evidences some interest in a good-looking fella in uniform. Better than the police officer on the beat is the police officer with an appreciation for the beat, if you ask us.

Best place to watch the hangings come the Revolution

For some of us, the WTO only slaked our thirst for violent social change temporarily. We longed for the billy clubs, tear gas, and broken windows to erupt into full-scale class warfare. Well, my brothers and sisters, clearly the time is not quite ripe, though we certainly gave those downtown merchants something to think about, didn't we? Don't worry, our time will come. The lists will be drawn up, the gibbets raised, and the remarkably clean streets of Seattle will run red with the blood of the capitalist pigs. And when that time comes, make sure to reserve yourself a seat at the W Hotel (1112 Fourth, 264-6000), which is the coolest, hippest place for young free-marketers to hang out. With its subdued lighting (reminiscent of the cult '80s vampire movie The Hunger), aircraft-carrier-sized bar, glass drinks tables, and sparse d飯r, it's the ideal headquarters for a 21st-century Robespierre to set up shop. The vast lobby has lovely high ceilings as well, and if you include the bar, that's a lot of space to set up pulleys so the Hotel's top-flight clientele can serve as a grisly example to their fellow entrepreneurs.

Best place to view EMP

We glimpsed its ribs on the Monorail, sweated and strained up impossibly long hills on Queen Anne and Capitol Hill only to be blinded by its gleaming pate, whiplashed our necks staring at its long, palm-printed flank from the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, but we didn't grok (or Gehry) it at all—it just looked like a phosphorescent pile of mashed potatoes. Until we rode the Windstorm. From the top of this Seattle Center roller coaster, Experience Music Project, while still looking very much like a pile of mashed potatoes, begins to reveal its inner essence. As you scream around the track, you recall your very first "rock" concert, when Shaun Cassidy (it's OK, you were 8) left you hoarse from Da-Doo-Ron-Ronning. Crawling slowly toward the coaster's pinnacle, you're back in fumbling make-out sessions, soundtrack courtesy of Loverboy, whose sodden strains are replaced by the downward spiral of a certain Cure show, before which you thought it would be fun to ingest numerous flaming Sambuca shots. We won't go into your psychedelic phase, except to say that EMP does bear a scary resemblance to certain, er, "things" you saw at the '92 Dead show in Eugene.

Best new slang name for EMP

Love it, hate it, it certainly looks like Experience Music Project is here to stay. (Though some of us have fantasies of returning to Seattle in 10 years to find its decaying interior housing a Greek restaurant.) Depending on what angle you happen to view it from, EMP looks like a blob stealthily readying itself for an attack on the Space Needle, or an everlasting gobstopper left out on a dashboard. So what sort of name can encompass all that, plus a $20 ticket price? The Technicolor Yawn? The Jimi Hendrix Memorial Mess, rock star's name withdrawn due to legal proceedings? Okay, we're being unkind. Let's pick something a bit more neutral. How about the Project? Now, there's a name that truly reflects the experimental nature of the venture: Paul Allen's Skinner Box that tests the various responses of its patrons to confrontation with state-of-the-art interactive technology, memorabilia, gourmet fast food, and a huge gift shop.

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