People/Media/Smarts >>

• 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... 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... 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... 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... More >>
• Best Seattle-Centric iPhone App (1 Comment)
  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... More >>
• Best Tweeting Mortgage Broker (1 Comment)
  @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... 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 >>
• 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.... 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... 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... 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... More >>
• Best Local-Foods Blog (13 Comments)
  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... 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... 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... 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... More >>
• Best Free, Boozy Art Lesson (1 Comment)
  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... 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... 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... More >>