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  Best Occult/Pagan Shop: Edge of the Circle

  Well, it is cluttered. But Edge of the Circle is otherwise not at all like what you might imagine a magickal bookshop to be. Rather than gloomy, musty, cobwebby, and antique-filled, it's well lit and colorful, filled with curiosities, but not in the least sinister. Owner Robert Anderson wants his place, which anchors one end of a flourishing strip of… More >>
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  Best Local Indie Jeweler: Kimberly Baker

  I love fairy tales," says Kimberly Baker. "My fiancé has a 6-year-old, so we read a lot [of them]. I love Edward Gorey and spooky, dark stuff like that." Baker's eponymous Fremont shop, which resembles an enchanted forest, is the perfect setting for best sellers like the chunky Wolfette ring (an 18-karat gold vermeil wolf's head embossed with a flower… More >>
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  Best Boutique Named After a Pixies Song: Velouria

  In a city where people tend to dress more between the lines than outside the box, walking through the doors of Velouria in Ballard is like tempting a macrobiotic with a room filled with jelly doughnuts. It's a bright, delicious boutique of color, daring people to express themselves through fashion. There are lacy, hand-sewn tops decorated with pendants among screen-printed… More >>

• Best Escape From A&R Reps: Stuart Hallerman

  Music was my escape and my world to explore, following the adventures of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, and whoever else, through pop distortions of the universe," Avast recording studio owner and producer Stuart Hallerman says of the role music played during his formative years. It was also what would help him escape working for the Man later on. In 1990,… More >>

• Best Showcase for Unschooled Artists: Garde Rail Gallery

  - CLOSED

  "For me, this is culturally representative of where I grew up," says Garde Rail Gallery co-owner and Georgia native Karen Light-Piña. As a proprietor of the Northwest's only gallery for folk and outsider art, Light-Piña has spent the past 10 years bringing elements of her native region, the American South, to Seattle. In the Pioneer Square gallery she owns with… More >>

• Best Record-Store Tag Team: Sonic Boom Records

  "I always say it's KISS vs. Bob Dylan," Nabil Ayers says, encapsulating how he and Sonic Boom Records partner Jason Hughes differ when it comes to music. "It is! It's melody vs. lyrics," Hughes chimes in. "You grew up with KISS, and I grew up with classic rock." The two, who became friends while working at Easy Street Records in the mid-'90s,… More >>

• Best Cheap Brew 'N' View

  There used to be something called a second-run movie theater. Always cramped, with screens the size of microwave windows and locations as varied as office-building basements and (during off hours) porno theaters, these fleapits were a boon for buffs who wanted to see Pootie Tang but didn't $10-worth-want-to-see Pootie Tang. Alas, the rise of stadium cinema has dealt a mighty… More >>

• Best Place to Get $200 Denim for $25

  There's getting lucky in love, and there's getting lucky in shopping. Sometimes I can't decide which is better, as I might not get to try the man on again, but I can wear my perfect, "new" pencil skirt from Crossroads every day. Premium denim can make you feel like a million bucks, but if you only have $50 to spend,… More >>

• Best Way to Prove Your Worth in Verse

  Used to be that popularity contests were cut-and-dried: I'm talking Homecoming, Student Council, P.T.A. Parent-Quiche-Recipe-of-the-Month. But once you enter the age in which bragging about the number of your MySpace friends becomes unacceptable, quantifying your coolness becomes a bit tricky. But then there's the 2007 Poet Populist Program. Not only is its name a blatant attempt to cash in on… More >>

• Best Ridiculous Rumor Involving a Reunited Grunge Band

  Temple of the Dog playing a one-off reunion show at the Crocodile? Jesus. I don't know what was more ridiculous: the fact that this rumor—which circulated in June—existed, or the fact that people were actually excited about it. This was Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell's "tribute" project to the late Andrew Wood, singer of Mother Love Bone. It boasted former MLB… More >>

• Best Program for Sequential Art Studies

  Learning about comics is a lot like playing chess: It guarantees that you won't get laid. Right? Wait. No—didn't Art Spiegelman's Maus win a Pulitzer Prize? Yes. And wasn't Alison Bechdel's Fun Home overwhelmingly named one of the best books of 2006? Indeed. And weren't the first cave drawings sort of like Paleolithic graphic novels, etched in woolly mammoth blood… More >>

• Best Band You've Never Heard of or Seen

  The soundtrack to Amélie easily ranks as one of the greatest cinematic soundscapes in the past 10 years, thanks to award-winning French composer Yann Tiersen. (How can you listen to that and not want to move to Paris? You can't.) Visiting Tiersen's "Top Friends" on his MySpace page drums up the names of music heavyweights like Devendra Banhart and Rachael… More >>

• Best Place to Take Your Squirrelly Kids for a Haircut

  Every time my nephew passes Seattle Kids, a children's hair salon in Columbia City, the vehicle-obsessed 2-year-old zeroes in on the motorcycle chair he spies through the window. When my sister finally indulged him, she walked out thrilled with Max's haircut. The brightly colored salon, which is the second location for the popular West Seattle Kids, shares space with RetroActive… More >>

• Best Place to Get Pricked on the Cheap

  Go to hairdressing school for a cheap cut, try a culinary school for slightly irregular tarts, and take your pants to an apprentice tailor next time you're in Italy. But when it comes to having people realign your Qi, you should probably just go ahead and get that second mortgage on your house. Or not. Though the idea of discount… More >>

• Best One-Stop Shop for Accessorizing Your Cubicle

  In Neil Gaiman's wonderful fantasy novel Neverwhere, our protagonist-turned-hero begins as a disenchanted office worker with a troll curse. After he received one of those tiny toys with the fuzzy neon afros as a gift, co-workers besieged him with the little buggers until he had a veritable army on his computer monitor. Don't let this happen to you. Claim and… More >>

• Best Drool-Worthy Window Displays

  Too often, the stores with the stunning window displays only deflate your fashion daydreams once you walk inside, where you find five overpriced white T-shirts and two pairs of $700 jeans. But Polite Society isn't one of those stores. Owner Eric Akines travels almost exclusively to Copenhagen, Paris, and Milan to bring up-and-coming, yet still wearable, designers from around the… More >>

• Best Furniture Store That Makes You Want to Redecorate 100 percent Zen

  Nothing says chic like a huge basement warehouse in South Lake Union, and Glenn Richards may be the best furnished one in Seattle. This Asian furnishings store has been around since 1998. (Its stuffier predecessor, Honeychurch Antiques, has been here 20 years longer.) Owners John and Laurie Fairman carry only antiques, but their warehouse feels more like a showroom than… More >>

• Best KEXP Fill-in Host for John Richards

  Lots of folks fill in for John Richards when he's away. Rachel Ratner, Kevin Cole, Cheryl Waters, etc. But man, Richards was on vacation for something or other this past year, and I tuned in on my morning commute only to hear the crunching blues rock of Iggy and the Stooges' "No Fun." Naturally, I perked right up. Turns out… More >>

• Best Art Seen From I-5

  If you want to walk all the way down to the waterfront to check out public art at the Olympic Sculpture Park, that's fine. But if you prefer the drive-by method of art appreciation, just hop on I-5 (a bus is better for window viewing), and look to the right as you head north (or to the left as you… More >>

• Best Radio Station to Listen to in the Shower

  Things you'll hear on Movin 92.5: "Music from today, and music from back in your school days!" Damn, is O.P.P. really 16 years old?? "We just downloaded 40 more songs for you!" Shameless automatons! "Hey, at least we're Movin'!" Good one, make fun of your captive, gridlocked audience. "It's Saturday, we're broadcasting down here from Cowgirls Inc.!" Oh, no. "Call… More >>

• Best Way to Expand Your Jazz Horizons

  A jazz lover myself, I've never understood people's sense of obligation to learn about jazz, like it's some kind of homework assignment they really should do. If you don't care for it, don't bother with it. Nobody's thinking they really should check out more indie rock. However, if you're one of those people who's really interested; for whom the music's… More >>

• Best New Classical Evangelist

  The nearest thing the Seattle Symphony has ever had to a rock star (though timpanist Michael Crusoe does usually get some "Yeah!"s and "Whoo!"s whenever he takes a bow) is its first-chair cellist, Joshua Roman, who's about to start his second season with the orchestra. Not only is he a brilliant player who participates eagerly in Seattle's music scene outside… More >>

• Best Sign of Theater's Continued Relevance

  Most theater is about as immediately relevant as the magazines in a dentist's waiting room. When companies decide to "get political," it's usually the smaller fringe groups, who don't have to worry about how patrons and corporate sponsors might react (since they don't have any patrons and corporate sponsors). But this past year, even several of the MAINSTAGE THEATERS STEPPED… More >>

• Best Uncomfortable Evening in a Theater

  "Provocative" art rarely provokes much of anything with Seattle audiences. Your typical transgendered performance artist slathering their body in foodstuffs gets little more than some polite applause when they visit. That's why THOM PAINE: BASED ON NOTHING, Will Eno's blisteringly funny and dark monologue, was such a surprise, particularly for being staged at the traditionally conservative Seattle Rep. The solo… More >>

• Best Theater Offer You Can't Refuse

  For the second year running, a whole collection of Seattle companies are offering a FREE NIGHT OF THEATER. You can get free pairs of tickets for performances beginning Oct. 18 through Nov. 1—two per customer, first-come, first-served. Last year's event was a smash, with 40 participating companies offering 67 different productions, as well as backstage tours of several of the… More >>

• Best DIY Radio Station Run Out of a Basement

  Why Hollow Earth Radio is Seattle's only DIY radio station is beyond me. All it takes is a computer with iTunes, extra hard drives, and $100 paid each month to an Internet broadcasting service. In this vein, Garrett Kelly and Amber Kai Morgan have been streaming online since Jan. 1. They broadcast seven days a week, from noon until at… More >>

• Best (Illegal) Seat at the Moore

  It's one of the best venues in town. Intimate like a club—even better sound than some (cough, Chop Suey)—and big enough for your marquee shows (Kings of Leon and Brian Wilson come to mind). When the theater opened 100 years ago, there were several opera boxes on each side of the stage. The stairs and entrances still exist, but are… More >>

• Best Place to Buy a Top-40 Record Without Blushing

  We've all been there. Palms sweating, eyes downcast, pulse racing. No, not the SATs. Not a first date, either. The nerve-racking, cheek-flushing experience in question is that of heading toward the counter with a record in hand that threatens to speak volumes about your entire character. A record that will immediately out you as "uncool" to the Supreme Court judge… More >>

• Best Place to Cover Up a Permanent Mistake

  Allowing someone to drill into your skin with a piercing, painful, pointy electronic gun goes way past first, second, and home. It's kind of like a visit to the gyno. And just as some women won't let a male get near them in the silver stirrups, it's equally important to be comfortable with who's administering the torture in the chair.… More >>

• Best Record Shop Listening Station

  Ballard's Bop Street Records not only has the most enormous collection of vinyl in town—more than 600,000 LPs at last count—but also the most old-school way to preview music. Unlike the vertical CD players of Everyday Music or the phone-booth-like consoles of Easy Street, Bop Street's jazz section has two turntables flanked by an old leather love seat. You could… More >>

• Best Retirement Party

  In a field where 10 years is considered a substantial professional career, PATRICIA BARKER's 20-plus years onstage have been an astonishing achievement. The fact that all those years have been spent at Pacific Northwest Ballet has been a special blessing for those of us lucky enough to watch a young woman transform into a ballerina. And the works she chose… More >>