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  Best Place to Achieve Bike Self-Sufficiency

  The Bikery

  On a Tuesday at 5 p.m., the Bikery, a one-room, not-for-profit bicycle workshop in the Central District, is already filled to capacity. Fletcher Christie, a blonde volunteer with a pixie cut and a bike tattoo on her shoulder, explains something in Spanish to a guy in a Mariners cap. Every inch of the small space—the areas that aren't already occupied… More >>
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  Best Hope for High-School Freaks

  Richard J. Dalton

  Richard J. Dalton hated high school. Growing up in New Jersey, he shunned the rock bands like Guns N' Roses and AC/DC that his peers were listening to in favor of dance music like Front 242 and Jane Child. He dyed his hair blue and dressed weird. Consequently, his classmates teased and tripped him as often as possible. "It was absolutely… More >>
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  Best Leap-of-Faith Inspiration

  Diane's Market Kitchen

  "Did you have your whey shot? You can't have the ricotta if you don't do the whey shot, did I not make that clear?" It was a Sunday afternoon in the Pike Place Market during the Seattle Cheese Festival, and while other chef demos had onlookers staring uninterestedly, waiting for the free-sample finale, the presentation by Diane LaVonne of Diane's Market… More >>
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  Best Anti-Isolationist

  Randy Engstrom

  A decade ago, the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association started working to preserve the Youngstown School, built in 1907 to educate the children of steelworkers at the nearby plant. Unlike Capitol Hill or Queen Anne, Delridge isn't exactly known as a place where people walk freely about. It's a sometimes-rugged lower-income stretch connecting West Seattle to Burien through White Center. The… More >>
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  Best Sweaty, Man-Hugging Electronica Impresario

  Ramiro Gutierrez

  As any nightlife reporter knows, encounters with club promoters are generally unpleasant. Whether you're attempting to interview or introduce yourself to the dude—and it's almost always a dude—he will butter you up with pre-fab compliments and lame professions of interest, only to flash a bright corporate smile and deliver a promise to "be right back." Poof. The promoter is gone… More >>
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  Best Sisterly Love in the CD

  Hidmo - CLOSED

  Rahwa and Asmeret Habte were told many times not to open a business in Seattle's Central District. The neighborhood has its issues with crime, both small-time and serious, so friends and family members were concerned when the two sisters wanted to take over an Eritrean restaurant on 20th Avenue South and South Jackson Street. But Rahwa, 31, and Asmeret, 33,… More >>
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  Best Oud-Strumming Auto Mechanic

  Dan Khali

  A good man is hard to find; a good auto mechanic is even harder to find. But how about a good guy who is also a fine auto mechanic and plays a Middle Eastern string instrument called the oud? Well, that's nearly impossible to find. Dan Khali of Community Automotive, 40, thrives on being exactly that kind of rarity. "I want to… More >>
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  Best Cute Actor Never in a Leading Role

  Mo Brady

  "I'm not one of those people who just sings in the shower," Mo Brady declares during a break from rehearsals. "I'm walking up and down Pike singing along to whatever's on my iPod. And doing it loudly. I sing all the time." Brady is like somebody out of a '50s family-oriented television sitcom. Wholesome good looks, endearing personality, and capable of… More >>
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  Best Right-Man-at-the-Right-Time

  Jamie Pedersen

  Surrounded by kids, many with gay and lesbian parents, Governor Christine Gregoire signed a bill on May 18 that extended to domestic partners all the rights granted by the state to married couples. The partner of a firefighter killed in the line of duty can now receive a death benefit, and partners can make medical decisions for each other. Applauding behind… More >>
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  Best Place for Kids to Meet the Producer

  Pike Market Child Care and Preschool

  One day at snack time, two preschoolers got into a discussion about where milk comes from. "Well, cow milk comes from cows, and rice milk comes from rice," the astute modern child noted. "But where does soy milk come from?" The second child didn't even hesitate: "Soy cows!" Their teacher overheard the exchange, but didn't get out a book or open a… More >>
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  Best Baker on the Rise

  Quill Teal-Sullivan

  Baking can be a complex, time-consuming science experiment, and most coffee shops are content to outsource the skilled labor involved. Not so in the case of Linda Derschang's most recently launched Capitol Hill hot spot, Oddfellows Café & Bar, where the entire lineup of baked goods is proudly made in-house, by bakers on a 5 a.m.–1 p.m. schedule. The mastermind… More >>
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  Best Glamazon

  SoulChilde BlueSun

  Watching SoulChilde BlueSun perform is like witnessing a one-man cabaret. Typically shirtless, with glitter sprinkled over his chiseled physique and a feather boa wrapped around his neck, his presence is so dominant that it often overpowers everyone else onstage. Even when he's singing backup. The 36-year-old divo spends much of his time accompanying other artists like Cristina Orbe, Big World Breaks,… More >>
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  Best Amplifier Maker and Formidable Shredder

  Ben Verellen

  Opening a boutique-style guitar amplifier business is a risky proposition in any economy, but 29-year old Ben Verellen is defying the odds. In the last year, he's moved out of his bedroom workshop and into a commercial warehouse space on Aurora Avenue, steadily building an impressive client list of people who share his appreciation for design inspired by the warmth… More >>

• Best Candidate for King County Executive Who Should Be Running for Mayor

  Dow Constantine

  Seattle loves you, Dow Constantine. Its rock legends come out in force for your fundraisers at the Croc, as you're a genuine music aficionado—the sort of dude who shows up at a Flipper show at the Funhouse without any fanfare. You're unwed, just like many of us, and like your beer, just like most of us. You're Jon Stewart sharp,… More >>

• Best Democrat to Run Against Dave Reichert in 2010

  Ross Hunter

  Medina Democrat Ross Hunter is currently part of a crowded county executive field, but don't let that fool you. When, not if, he is eliminated in the August 18 primary, the centrist ex-Microsoft exec and statehouse finance chair will have greatly enhanced both his name recognition and his war chest for a 2010 run against incumbent Eastside Congressman Dave Reichert,… More >>

• Best New Mariner

  David Aardsma

  Before this season, David Aardsma was regarded as a first-round washout journeyman, posting astronomical earned run averages while employed in mop-up duty for the likes of San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston, never sticking with a big-league team for more than one season. This might explain why the Red Sox were willing to part with him for such a low-level minor-league… More >>

• Best Advice From a Goth

  Jillian Venters

  Good manners and funereal attire aren't incompatible at all. Nor are the extreme use of eyeliner and working at Starbucks. But Goths can be misunderstood by friends and family and in the workplace. That's where blogger and advice maven Jillian Venters steps in. Her wry, funny Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them (Harper,… More >>

• Best Seattle-Centric iPhone App

  iSIFF

  The big screen meets the little screen with iSIFF, the breakout download launched during this year's Seattle International Film Festival. Among the pallid tribe of local film geeks, parsing the month-long SIFF lineup has traditionally been an intense ritual involving multicolored pens, bus schedules, and every newspaper published in Seattle. Determining each day's or week's optimal screening strategy was like… More >>

• Best Tweeting Mortgage Broker

  @mortgageporter

  Transcending self-promotion, @mortgageporter takes questions, drops knowledge, and provides bits of clarity in the meltdown, 140 notes a throw.—Chris Kornelis … More >>

• Best Ice Cream Man in Seward Park

  Alex Isadore

  OK, he's the only ice cream man in Seward Park. But that's the point. Seward Park is like a Parisian boulevard (with an old-growth forest). Almost every day of the week, everybody and their extended family comes out for a stroll, a bike ride, a picnic, or a hike to the tallest tree in the city limits. Refreshments are needed,… More >>

• Best Radio Talk Show

  Too Beautiful to Live

  KIRO FM's Too Beautiful to Live is the most self-indulgent three hours (7–10 p.m.) to infiltrate local airwaves on weeknights. It revolves around the whims of three quirky and charismatic personalities: host Luke Burbank, producer Jen Andrews, and engineer Sean DeTore. They rarely break news or talk current events, instead opting to mull over issues like Chuck E. Cheese reacquiring… More >>

• Best Puppy Porn

  Seattle Animal Shelter Doggy Cam

  You're bored at work. Yes, there's an important meeting you should be preparing for. Yet your fingers compel you to enter that forbidden url. Your close the office door or—if in a cubicle—turn your monitor away from the hallway. You could lose your job for this. Think of the shame if your co-workers knew. What was once a late-night Web… More >>

• Best Local-Foods Blog

  Fat of the Land

  "In another lifetime I might have been a treasure seeker," Langdon Cook recently wrote on his blog, Fat of the Land, in a post about pineapple weeds—scraggly little flowers that he picked from a patch of gravel and with which he concocted a chamomile-like iced tea. In a region habitated by mushroom hunters, public-park fruit scavengers, and clam diggers, Cook… More >>

• Best Way to Improve the West Seattle Commute

  Serve mini-beers

  Though it's become the favorite whipping-boy of candidates for King County Executive, the King County Water Taxi gets more popular every year. The only thing missing on the pleasant little cruise: booze. "Crossing is so short—12 minutes—that there's a very limited window in which they could serve something," notes Chris Arkills, chief of staff for King County Councilmember Dow Constantine,… More >>

• Best Bedside Manner

  Dr. Stephen Dudley

  "I have really bad migraines," I explained to my last doctor desperately. "Try taking vitamins," she "prescribed" before breezing out the door. Um, are you kidding me? I would have given up on doctors altogether if it weren't for that pesky birth-control factor, so going off a tip from a friend and some ridiculously positive Yelp reviews, I made an… More >>

• Best Reason to Learn a Slip-Slip-Knit

  Seattle Purly Girls

  Knitting is hot, hot, hot with the hipsters. Everyone, it seems, has a scarf they made themselves. Along with that, knitting groups have popped up all over the city. The Seattle Purly Girls are a notch above—first, because of where they meet: the Blue Star Café in Wallingford. Beers make the stitching go better. And second, for the topics of… More >>

• Best Free, Boozy Art Lesson

  Hotel 1000

  Usually it's only the big donors who get access to world-class museum curators, but a monthly series from Hotel 1000 and the Seattle Art Museum gives the rest of us entrée. One Wednesday evening each month (which Wednesday? it varies), a curator from SAM holds an informal presentation and discussion in the hotel's cozy lobby lounge with a fire-pit table.… More >>

• Best Time Waste-preneur

  Ben Huh

  Though he didn't invent icanhascheezburger.com, Ben Huh has capitalized and leveraged the lolcat meme like no one else on the Web. His two-year-old Pet Holdings, Inc. has spun off a book of those krazy kaption kats and amassed an entire portfolio of desktop diversion sites including failblog.org (photos and videos of things that have gone horribly, stupidly wrong), graphjam.com (PowerPoint… More >>

• Best Redoubt of Eastside Literacy

  Bellevue Regional Library

  Sure, we've got the glamorous Rem Koolhaas library downtown, but its utility is completely secondary to its status as architectural statement and tourist destination. Meanwhile, over on the Eastside, the Bellevue Regional Library is going about its business, attracting droves of patrons for author readings (including Mary Guterson, Garth Stein, and J.A. Jance), workshops, and other events. Since the handsome… More >>

• Best Recession-Proof Business

  Russell Investments

  Investments. No, really. At least if you are Russell Investments, the global financial company headquartered in Tacoma for almost 75 years. Seattle had been quietly wooing the 900-person firm to move north, so CEO Andrew Doman effectively launched a bid war betweenthe two cities: "Who loves us more?" Seattle has offered a break in city business taxes tailored specifically for… More >>

• Best Environmental Rebound

  Total Reclaim

  The climbing, clattering disassembly lines at Total Reclaim's crammed-to-the-rafters SoDo warehouse have a mysterious,sci-fi feel to them. Old computers,fat monitors, obsolete TVs, and a tonnage of weird electronicstrundle up two-story conveyor belts to...where? Another dimension? In a way, yes. Masked-up workers tear apart the glass, plastic, and wire innards, some of them hazardous,for recycling and a second chance at life,… More >>

• Best Place to Learn Something You Never Thought You'd Need to Know

  Applied Physics Laboratory

  Remember back in college when you used words like "ontological" and attended lectures on string theory? That felt good, didn't it? Well, now that you're out of work and have nothing much going on Thursday afternoons, it's time to recapture that. The University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory hosts semi-regular public seminars with titles like "Barents Sea Heat: Transport Storage… More >>