To cap off the slew of basketball-related posts I just put up, I direct you to my article on the Boom Squad, the b-boy crew that performs during breaks in Sonics games. As always, if you like it, feel free to leave a comment over there.

Now it’s time for some shameless self-promotion. In case you don’t live in Seattle or haven’t heard, I got the cover story in this week’s Seattle Weekly. Click on the mini-cover below to read it:

As always, should you be inclined, leave a comment (at the Weekly site) and/or use the e-mail the article to a friend feature, so the wonderful folks at the Weekly can see how wonderful I am, too.

My good friend Jason “Reidster” Reid and I also made a video trailer for the article:

And finally, a version of my blog post on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels ran in the print edition as well.

Mayor Greg Nickels talked tough this week about his intention to implement the 29 reforms suggested by his panel on police accountability. The panel was a response to criticism of the SPD’s handling of the cases of Officers Greg Neubert and MIchael Tietjen, who were accused of planting drugs and whose penchant for making statements of dubious veracity led the King County Prosecutors office to drop numerous cases in which they were involved and add them to the list of untrustworthy officers. It was also a response to criticism that Nickels was blindly backing Chief Gil Kerlikowske, whose reluctance to discipline officers and interference with the Neubert and Tietjen investigation led the Seattle/King County NAACP to demand his resignation.

Most of all, the panel was a presciently clever political move by Nickels, who once again is turning a liability into a strength by co-opting one of a potential 2009 opponent’s key issues: should he decide to throw his hat in the ring, it’ll be hard for Nick Licata to beat the accountability drum if Nickels is doing battle with the police union, just as it’ll be tough for Peter Steinbrueck to boast of his work towards a surface-transit option for the waterfront now that Nickels is supporting it and stealing headlines with an “over my dead body” approach to viaduct reconstruction. (It remains to be seen whether there’s anyone to make a viable anti-development or pro-law and order challenge to the mayor.)

On to today’s news: Nickels got more ammunition for his looming battle with the Seattle Police Officers Guild with the publication of the Seattle PI’s second piece this week on the SPD’s (and other departments’) reluctance to discipline officers for misconduct (the first was on officers who make false statements). In today’s excellent report, Eric Nalder documents the SPD’s handling of accusations of excessive force and finds that the accusations are rarely sustained and the officers even more rarely disciplined. (For some reason, people keep attacking the swinging foot of Officer Aaron Parker.) While it’s true that using insufficient force can lead to more violence, most of these cases don’t appear to this untrained mind to be anywhere near the line of ambiguity.

It remains to be seen whether Nickels will back up his tough talk with tough actions. While we wait to find out, Licata will have his so-Seattle meta-panel examine how best to implement Nickels’ panel’s recommendations. If they want to steal his office, or even just keep him in check, Nickels’ adversaries are gonna have to tighten their game.

It appears that SPD parking enforcement has a new weapon in its arsenal. (It’s the first I’ve seen of it, at least.)

My good friend and Haymaker & Sally collaborator Jason “Reidster” Reid recently spent some time filming his home turf of Georgetown. The below music videos are the result.

The first, shot on Martin Luther King Day and set to the tune from Hawaii 5-0, shows costumed representatives from Liberty Tax Service canvassing a strip mall. Reid encountered this bizarre sight from his back window and figured it was worth capturing for posterity.

Reid also made this dirge for the recently demolished Rainier Cold Storage building, whose haunting remains he filmed at night:

When I was in sixth grade or so (back when “Baby Got Back” was just an inkling in Mix-a-Lot’s loins and Swass was the hottest shit around), my friend Matt and I used to call Mix-a-Lot’s agent’s office and pretend to be Matt’s older brother, Scott, who had played on the same 3-on-3 basketball team as Mix. Perhaps our pubescent voices gave us away, or perhaps the star had no interest in reconnecting with his fellow weekend warriors, but for whatever reason, we were never able to get him on the phone.

First, Robert Jamieson details how drunken/disruptive/occasionally violent late night customers and loiterers have led the SODO Denny’s (Seattle’s last) to close it’s doors on late Saturday nights. It’s a bummer of a story, but kudos to Jamieson for using the word “numskulls”; I’d been hoping for “hooligans”, personally, but as always, the piece was boosted by a foray into archaic lexicon.

Also in the P-I, the Landmark Preservation Board is at it again. This time, they’ve held a preliminary vote to designate the 15th and Market Denny’s a landmark, potentially thwarting a big condo development deal. Anybody else detect a whiff of underhanded downzoning—especially given other recent landmarking news (such as Peter Steinbrueck’s sweeping and seemingly rushed list of downtown buildings to preserve)?

PS–Denny’s, if you’re reading this, bring back the Veggie Cheese Melt. I loved that sandwich. So did my mom.