Ballard Baldy

On utility poles in Ballard and Interbay, near the Ballard Bridge and Fisherman's Terminal, there are ominous cutouts of a wrinkly old bald man's head tacked up 20 feet off the ground. "The bald man is watching you," says a message scrawled on the guy's scalp. What gives?

"We have no clue," says a friendly woman answering the phone at the Wharfside Pointe Apartments, near two of the mysterious signs on West Nickerson Street. The only hint we do have: Ballard is Middle English for "bald head." AMY JENNIGES


Nickels' Dunce Cap

On April 8, Mayor Nickels announced his $103 million Family and Education Levy proposal at the Tiny Tots Development Center on Renton Avenue South. Given that Tiny Tots specializes in early learning--the critical 3-year-old and under group--the press conference seemed ironic to critics of the mayor's proposal. While the package includes everything from $1.3 million annually for high-risk teens, $3.3 million for health programs, and $4 million to provide free preschool to 400 4-year-olds from low-income families, there's no early-learning money, a point council member Peter Steinbrueck highlighted in an April 5 letter to Nickels criticizing the mayor's lapse. JOSH FEIT


Blethen Head

The upside of working for The Seattle Times Company, as its PR flacks repeatedly state, is that employees get to work for a family-owned company rather than a corporate media conglomerate. The downside, at least according to one former reporter, is that your job could be in jeopardy if you don't suck up enough to the Blethens, the family in charge. The Phoenix, an alt-weekly in Portland, Maine, where the Blethens own the daily Press Herald, ran an illuminating story last week about fired reporter Ted Cohen, a 30-year vet of the Herald. His sin? He asked to work with another editor after he had conflicts with his boss, young Ryan Blethen, who just happens to be the son of Frank Blethen, the mercurial Times Company chieftain. SANDEEP KAUSHIK