What “Best Of” title do you bestow on Frank Colacurcio Sr.? Best “Nightlife Figure,” as the libel-wary dailies always called him? Best-Organized Criminal? Best Reason Not to Let Your Daughter Out of the House? (He was charged with carnal knowledge of a 16-year-old when he was 25, and this year, now 88, Colacurcio was convicted of groping one of his nightclub waitresses.) Frank also has his hands full (cough) with a new set of felony charges. You may have heard about it: a City Hall political money-laundering scandal called Strippergate?

Those charges were leveled just a few days after we snapped photos at Colacurcio’s Lake Forest Park home for the Best of Seattle issue. Colacurcio, his son Frankie, and two employees were charged with nine counts, including conspiracy to launder $39,000 in campaign funds to three City Council members in 2003. If true, it seems to have worked: After 15 years of asking, he finally got the parking-lot rezone he sought. Photographer Rick Dahms brought along a titty cake for a prop and told him we weren’t sure what Best Of category he’d won: Best Nightclub Operator, Best Nude Dance Impresario, something like that—we truly hadn’t decided. Colacurcio was game. He met Dahms at his Lake City Way offices and invited him home to sit poolside, where, Dahms reports, “We ate titty cake and drank wine from the Italian town that his mother grew up in.” All in all, “an excellent afternoon.”

Unfortunately, Colacurcio turned down our subsequent interview request, saying, dejectedly, that he wasn’t speaking to anyone about anything, what with his facing time in the slammer again—his seventh prison tour, if convicted. We wanted to at least know what his personal Best Of picks were and tried to slip in a few quickies: Best Restaurant? Best Attorney? Best Jail? But, Colacurcio said, “Until this thing is over,” yada yada. The picks we list for him below are probably wise guesses. Still, it’s a little unsettling, not being able to get the cultural lowdown from a man who may know some of Seattle’s best-kept secrets. Oh well, maybe next year—when perhaps Colacurcio again becomes Best Oldest Convict Who Misses His Titty Cake.