Crocodile Cafe to reopen in early 2009

The Seattle Times: Sept. 9, 2008

The Croc lives!

"Right now it still looks like it looked last time you or anyone else was in it," says Kerri Harrop, spokeswoman for the Crocodile Café, Seattle's best and most-famous rock club. The Croc's "abrupt close last year left a lot of people reeling," Harrop says, and the plan is to reopen in "late January/early February."

What's going on between now and then?

Construction." When that's done, "I anticipate capacity will be around the 400 mark."

There will be two businesses in the building and two entrances. According to Harrop, Via Tribunali will sell pizza "where the back bar was," and that the wall separating the concert area from the cafe area will be knocked out. She won't specify exactly how the Crocodile will bleed into Via Tribunali.

Last month, The Seattle Times reported that area bar owner Marcus Charles had obtained the Croc's liquor license (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2008091508_webcroc05.html). Says Harrop, "Marcus Charles has assembled a good group of investors that includes Susan Silver, Peggy Curtis, and Sean Kinney."

As for who will book the music, Harrop confirms no more than "a human being."

Former Croc and current Chop Suey booker Pete Greenberg said he's not been asked to book the club, and Steven Severin, who books and runs Neumo's, said, "you can write that I don't know what the hell is going on."

Perhaps most important, "Jim Anderson will still be running the sound," says Harrop. In the past, he made the Croc Seattle's best-sounding rock venue. "All efforts are being made to make sure the room sounds and looks perfect," says Harrop.

There are new Croc photos online, on artist David Choe's Flickr profile, here — http://www.flickr.com/photos/invisiblehour/page6.

Andrew Matson, staff reporter
The Seattle Times: Sept. 9, 2008 (fourth article in the link)

Pan African Market - a dash of west Africa in Pike's Place

Sometimes you miss what's right in front of you, just as I have for so long. The punishment - living in the Seattle for years, going to the Pike Place Market, let's see...at least 52 times a year AND missing out on some fine West African delicacy from Pan African Market on 1st and Pike. It's a great place to sit outside on a sunny day and enjoy a plate of Beef Tibs, which is a delicious tender cut of beef sauteed with onions and peppers or my favorite - the spicy lamb stew - small tender pieces of (carnivorous) heaven which they often run out of and the vegetable sampler - a succulent medley of six different vegetables, almost forming the color of a rainbow and includes cabbage, spinach, peas, carrots, and more. Everything comes with their store made, really soft Injera - a delicacy from west Africa in the form of a flat bread.

Now if you want to go all out - don't be shy to order everything in one plate, roll up your sleeves and jump in with you hands - you won't regret it.

Death Magnetic...first impression

I'd say the three singles that were floating around were a pretty good sign of how this album ended up sounding like. OK, maybe I should listen to the whole thing a couple more times before jumping to any conclusions......too late...so here goes...Lars is definitely back with his double stroke beats and the crushing rolls. I'd even say the solos from Kirk are also "Metallica" material, and actually his love for the phrygian scale is still dominant. The riffs from James kick ass - some are actually faster and more intelligent than ever before. His vocal though, is a little disappointing. I don't know man...he's still somewhat stuck in the nineties, sounding like I disappear and fuel.The riffs in the End of the Line and the Day that Never Comes are so much like those in creeping death and master and actually, I felt subtle touches of seek and destroy in the the end's chorus punch. I could still hear the load/re-load grunges coming out from time to time like in the beginning of the Day. But hey...that doesn't sound bad. And Trujillo...he brought back fingerstyle, just like Cliff and unlike Jason - which sounds awesome in Cyanide and All Nightmare Long, which btw I think has the fastest playing riff in recent times. I also love the fact that they're back with the interludes with riffs mixed with solos coming in and out. Speaking about things coming back...all hail Suicide - which is an awesome instrumental. Another comeback - the Unforgive III, however, was unncessary and doesn't go with the rest of the album at all. Getting rid of Bob Rock was definitely a great first move on the road to salvation...hell yea! And Rick Rubin did an awesome job...but you know what - they should give production another shot...after all, the best songs out of Metallica are those that they produced themselves.But hey, this is definitely an album that I'll be banging my head to for a long time to come…

Trying out the new Windows Live Writer

Windows Live has this new app out, one that'll help publish rich contents to blogs and this is my first try! Actually, I've never tried any of these things, always used the web versions. So here goes...

Not bad, says my first impression - it's lightweight, allows connecting to all sortsa sites, provides the essential editing functionality...whoa, including taking a screen shot and pasting right into the journal...not bad, not bad. There's quite a few image formatting options such as color pop and watermark - something that you don't get in most similar apps.

Spell checker is up to the mark, but I wish it had a dictionary and thesaurus - even if it just connected up to some web service.

Now it's time to actually preview and publish it - let's see if it as WYSIWYG and whether what I see is what I get...

...preview is pretty nice, except it's not showing the blog break, maybe because it's still unpublished...

...oh I need to label this...here goes...not bad, it pulled all the labels I had in the site. Oh HOLD ON...this is bad, really bad - it misspelled a few of my labels - missing just the last letter!!! For a second I thought I myself misspelled it. But no...it's not me - it's a BUG!!!

...moving on and publishing...

...and it's posted! NICE!!! Hey and what do you know...it got me writing a real blog after six l o n g months.