Staffers and free-lancers at two West Coast alt-weeklies are nervously awaiting whatever unpleasant news comes with the sale of those papers to local conglomerates. Like all of the once-mighty urban weekly papers, the SF Weekly and Seattle Weekly are struggling to survive in a time when it's not at all clear what these kind of publications are supposed to do when all of their one-time informational and advertising monopolies—music and movie listings, sex personals, roommate ads, alternative news, restaurant reviews, anti-Republican ranting—have moved online.

In both cities, the one-time New Times and then Village Voice Media/Voice Media Group-owned papers will go to local publishers. The San Francisco paper joins [...]

What to even say? There's more on this vitally important story here, but I am mostly surprised that they call it "pop" out in the Emerald City. I thought that was just a midwestern thing. Anyway… what a world. [Via]

Close to home, in and around Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, is where Starbucks conducts its experiments. It's the home not only of their public test lab, "Olive Way," there's also the matter of those liquor licenses filed in the last year, and of the "Starbucks-inspired" 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea locations. Most media coverage still seems more concerned with the fancy new coffee machines and the slimmer-profile barista counters than the white elephant in the room: now Starbucks sells booze.

You'd never think of this elsewhere in the country, but the megatronic coffee company sells wine and beer, which feels to me about as likely as Ahab [...]

This account of the launch party for SeattlePI.com, which is the website that used to be a newspaper in Seattle, is so horrifying. For just one thing, it's disturbing to find out that the editor of their site's most popular blog ("by a factor of 10") has a day job! What the fuck! They can't pay him a living wage? (Secondarily, his day job is installing software for a military contractor. Which means he works for Skynet.) Anyway, everything else about this party is so much worse!

"All over the country, in the last few years, police have moved in on the tent cities of the homeless, one by one, from Seattle to Wooster, Sacramento to Providence, in raids that often leave the former occupants without even their minimal possessions. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, last summer, a charity outreach worker explained the forcible dispersion of a local tent city by saying, 'The city will not tolerate a tent city. That’s been made very clear to us. The camps have to be out of sight.'" —"Homelessness is not a side issue unconnected to plutocracy and greed." Although don't remind Jersey gov Chris Christie about his plans [...]