Politics & Smarts >>

• Best Aggregator: Mike Davidson
  Mike Davidson set up Newsvine's digs with a view of Elliott Bay, a private deck for keggers, and a sign so fancy the blogosphere had a fit. So, Web 2.0, with all the extremes and cocaine parties on the backs of hookers as during the dot-com boom, right? Not really. The "view" is too often... More >>
• Best Alternative-Transportation Promoter: Jamie Cheney
  "I read an article in Time magazine about Flexcar seven years ago," JAMIE CHENEY says. "I called them up, but they didn't have any open jobs. I asked if they were selling to businesses. 'Not yet, but we're thinking about it,' they told me. I told them I was the person to get that going."... More >>
• Best Uptight-Seattleite–Approved Toy Store: Top Ten Toys
  Greenwood's Top Ten Toys brings a politically correct agenda to a part of the consumer market that has remained notoriously resistant to enlightened-adult preferences. One of the largest independent toy stores in the country, it sticks to an aesthetic that the Uptight Seattleite would fully... More >>
• Best Money Man: Colby Underwood
  One of Seattle's most revered political fund-raisers, COLBY UNDERWOOD, says being on the youthful side has made for a few awkward moments over the years. "It's a good thing I have a deep voice," says the 29-year-old. "People talk to me on the telephone and think I'm 40. Then they see me... More >>
• Best Rock ’n’ Roll Realtor: Kristen Meyer Lapriore
  Kristen Meyer Lapriore's existential crisis is familiar to anyone who has pursued a career in the music biz in their 20s. Most hit a wall at 30, reassess their life goals, and try to imagine themselves hanging out in clubs past the age of 40. "I was like, 'Am I gonna be that old rock chick... More >>
• Best Tawdry Scandal
  We don't tend to get much in the way of scandal around here, and the scandals we do get tend to revolve around parking spaces. As in, "Gee, the city paid $20 million more than it was supposed to for a new downtown parking garage"; or, "Gee, why do all those City Council members suddenly want new... More >>
• Best Place to Get Drunk With City Pols
  This isn't just any watering hole. The bar at the Four Seas is one of those joints with its own moniker: the "Dynasty Room." And the Dynasty Room is dark. And dingy. And aptly named. This popular International District haunt has been cooking up Chinese food and serving as a neighborhood meeting... More >>
• Best Government Edifice You Paid For
  It may have cost more than $70 million, but Seattle's airy City Hall is almost worth it. And it's not just a place to nod off during council hearings, either—though the sleek second-floor council chambers are worth at least a walk-through. With its peek-a-boo views of Elliott Bay, sweeping... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Blog
  In reserved Seattle, it can be hard to pick up on neighborhood gossip without resorting to hypnosis, violent coercion, or, well, actually talking to people you don't know. Which is why I love CAPITOL HILL BLOG. "J" and "K"—whom the Capitol Hill Times outed in February 2007 as husband-wife... More >>
• Best Pint-Swilling Friend of the Poor
  The endearing little Irishman you see with a smile around the Pike Market Medical Clinic is Joe Martin, 56, a true-blue bleeding-heart liberal who is down in the trenches daily. On any given day, Martin is that "someone" you hope will come along to assist the soiled guy on the street corner or... More >>
• Best Presidential Hopeful to Visit Seattle, So Far
  Barack Obama was at full pitch for an energizing half-hour speech recently at Qwest Field, comparing his campaign to the '60s civil rights movement, and exhorting people to get involved again. "That is how we are not going to just win an election in 2008," he exclaimed, "[but] we are going to... More >>
• Best Tropical Bus Stop
  When that tiny slash of land where Denny, Stewart, and Yale meet was torn up and surrounded by chain-link fence a while back, one naturally assumed it was going to be the world's narrowest condo development. But instead they constructed the city's most flamboyant bus stop. The calming, marine... More >>
• Best Sneeze- and Dust-Free Cabinet of Curiosities
  Antiques are great—so long as you don't think about just how many people have touched that paperweight over the past hundred years. So now, because germ-o-phobes have rights, too, there's the UW's Pamphlet and Textual Ephemera Collection. It's a database of old documents, pamphlets,... More >>
• Best Person to Get You Off Your Ass
  Therapist John R. Mace, Ph.D. has a personal story that's well worth telling. Soon after being diagnosed with HIV, he was told he had three days left to live. That was 11 years ago. After learning to accept his imminent death, he then had to accept the fact that he wasn't going anywhere just... More >>
• Best Literary Collection of Dead and Near-Dead Columnists
  Wander through the foyer and adjoining hallways of F.X. McRory's spacious steak and oyster house in Pioneer Square, and you'll see paneled walls littered with reviews and clips from the likes of Walt Evans, Emmett Watson, and other dead Seattle scriveners—along with some who just seem... More >>
• Best Wireless Hangouts
  This category could just as easily be subtitled "Anywhere but Starbucks," where Wi-Fi costs $10 if you want to buy in just for the day. Conversely, always free and almost always reliable is the Wi-Fi at the many Tully's coffee joints. You can bring your own coffee, park your car on the street... More >>
• Best Place to Find a Literate Bus Driver
  "Interacting with people, observing the city, seeing different neighborhoods—that's a great gathering activity for a writer. So much of what a writer does is just observing the world." Poet Dana Elkun speaks, of course, of bus drivers. And what better way to channel that experience than... More >>
• Best Block for Poker Players Who Like Pho
  Everett's Tulalip Casino is the self-proclaimed "No. 1 place for fun," but it's also almost an hour away. And good luck trying to get on a $5 blackjack table on the weekend—there's only one of them on the entire floor. If you're looking for lots of gaming action, head 15 minutes south to... More >>
• Best Place to Show—and Pledge—Allegiance
  Armbands have too many subversive undertones—and they tend to cover up your Slayer tattoo as well. Hats give you hat head and are frequently worn by douche bags. T-shirt sayings are as ubiquitous and blasé as billboards. Showing that you really care about a cause takes a greater... More >>
• Best À-la-Hepburn Therapy
  "If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name," says Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And yet nothing in the window at Tiffany's is nearly as satisfying as a gaggle of pugs wiggling their little butts and... More >>
• Best (and Worst) Block for Design Geeks
  Anyone who subscribes to both Dwell and I.D., or who owns Rem Koolhaas' S,M,L,XL even though they've never touched a CAD program in their life, finds the 1900 Block of First Avenue the Bermuda Triangle of time-sucks. Either detour to Second Avenue or lose half your day. You'll be leaving drool... More >>
• Best Place to Indulge Your Inner Francophile
  Playing Frenchy while on a budget usually means you're limited to picking up a cheap baguette from a bakery and maybe throwing it in your bike basket for a little extra je ne sais quois. But there are starving artists in France, too, and like you, they aren't eating foie gras. They'd most likely... More >>
• Best Place to Find the Newest Euro Board Games
  The satisfactions of plotting a strong attack, bluffing your way through a poor hand, and routing your opponent are not for kids alone. With games that range from the better known—such as German game designer Reiner Knizia's Tigris & Euphrates—to more obscure finds, Blue Highway... More >>
• Best Bookshop for Book Nerds
  A glass case protects D.C. Wilde's Love Poems to a Vampire, a $900 compilation of wooden tablets that fit into a squirrel-sized casket. By the cash register is a box of ephemera from the collection of Denise Levertov, filled with entreaties by now-famous poets asking the University of Washington... More >>
• Best Way to Pay Off Your Student Loans
  If the house always wins, why not join the house? That's what Mylan and Romi Miyamoto did, paying their way through college by dealing at area casinos. Three years ago, the husband and wife opened their own vocational school, the Seattle Gaming Academy, to train others in casino dealing. "You... More >>
• Best Place to Watch the County Pols Get Drunk
  When the insiders and their people on the County Council are looking to kick back and have a couple of cold ones, no one has to ask where, because those in the know know they're headed to Collins Pub. This slightly upscale, but still decidedly neighborhoody joint is a short jaunt down the hill... More >>
• Best Company Known for Deducing Which Weight of Italian Coated Paper Will Make the Best Book About Prince but Achieve the Lowest Shipping Cost to the Port of le Havre
  There are lots of little ways to get your name into Amazon, and plenty of companies to package your own idea. But what if you want to make an inexpensive pop-up book about Audrey Hepburn and sell it to Random House? That's where Becker & Mayer comes in. "We create book projects," says Cindy... More >>
• Best Place to Let Some Bike-Messenger Cool Rub Off on You
  In an oversaturated coffee market, how do you choose? I suggest checking out the regular clientele. Chances are if you've ever walked up Pike Street, you've noticed the gaggle (flock? herd? mustering?) of bike messengers filling up at Monorail Espresso between Fifth and Sixth avenues. If you... More >>
• Best Way to Get Your Voice Heard on the Radio
  Bummed about the current state of radio? Think you've got a better record bag of tricks, or something more interesting to say? A bill authorizing hundreds of new low-power FM stations is moving through the Senate, and if you're a nonprofit or school in one of the (fairly rural) regions where a... More >>