FOSSIL FUEL

TO THE EDITOR: Bravo to you for the only balanced story on the Critical Mass incident ["Critical Error" Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, July 31]. As soon as I read all the dinosaur-media descriptions, I said to myself, "The Stranger will get it right," and you did. No doubt the members of the dinosaur media will cling to their original, sensational version of events, because their reptilian eyes see driving as a right rather than the privilege that it is. The Stranger will outlast the dinosaurs.

Dan Ruisi

UNCORKED

The first time I heard about the Critical Mass mess, it was on KIRO-AM radio, from überconservative talking head Dori Monson. Typically, Monson was going off on the Nazi bicyclists, blaming the altercation—resulting in many injuries and many mixed signals—on them. His reasoning was the bicyclists shouldn't have corked the driver in the first place. All I know is what I do when I see a bicyclist when I'm driving. I make sure I'm extra careful, and go around him/her in a wide berth. If I encounter a Critical Mass, I get the fuck out of the area ASAP. Maybe that says something bad about me, like I'm a goddamned coward or something, but better safe than suffering a concussion from some grass-eater swinging a bike lock.

Coggie

THE END OF THE DAY

EDITOR: Henry Abbott's TrueHoop, perhaps the best sports blog on the planet, steered me to Sherman Alexie's splendid "61 Things I Learned During the Sonics Trial" [July 31]. I am not a Seattle resident and have spent only a few days in your magnificent city, but like sports fans across the country I have followed the defenestration of pro basketball in Seattle with the same shocked queasiness one feels when driving past a nasty traffic accident. (The Sonics' move has disinterred unpleasant childhood memories of that-bastard-Charlie-Finley sending all the good Kansas City As players to the Yankees before moving the team to Oakland.)

Mr. Alexie berates himself because "I couldn't, with my testimony, single-handedly keep the Sonics in Seattle. I have been punishing myself for my courtroom failures of nerve, imagination, and poetry." But I see no failure. The whole business was contemptibly handled, the fans were pummeled with the dirty end of the stick, and the suits made off with all the money, as the suits usually do. At the end of the day, there was nothing a mere fan could do to stave off this outcome, but Mr. Alexie did far more than most of us ever will.

There can be no giving up. Sez Whitman: "Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,/No birth, identity, form—no object of the world./Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;/Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain." Or as Mr. Alexie succinctly put it: "But it's ball, man. It's pro hoops."

Bravo Zulu to Sherman Alexie for sharing with us the emotional roller coaster that was his passionate—and honorable—effort to combat the pitiless power of a corrupt league.

Patrick Quinn

NOT COOL

If Sherman Alexie had spent less time trying to convince the reader how cool he is, I would have found his article moving. He may have a National Book Award, but damn does he need an editor.

Walter

DOG DAYS

If Nick Licata, the city council, the mayor, and the legislature weren't, in one way or another, subservient to and beholden to landlords, developers, and corporate interests, they'd bring the city back to the lower and middle classes, not by "trying to halt some of the displacement" but all of it. Who owns and operates Seattle? The people and their elected representatives, or developers and landlords?

Chris Kissel's article ["Priced Out," July 31] is about real people and their real HOMES—not dog kennels. Tenants don't call their apartments homes. Their apartments are their homes, such as the tenant who has lived at COHO for 18 years.

Who is developer Michael Malone trying to impress with his double-talk? Kissel writes that Malone "wants to keep Capitol Hill's classic architecture out of the hands of condo developers." Malone says, "I want to be the one responsible for this building being here for the next 100 years." Savior Malone demonstrates his "responsibility" by buying a building and evicting the tenants. People are expendable, and profit comes before people.

Has the American Dream evolved into out-of-control rent increases and eviction? It's time for the city, county, and state legislature to stop passing the buck and end "legal" evictions and the economic cleansing of neighborhoods. Either our so-called "Democratic" legislators work for the people or they work for developers. It's one or the other.

Bob Miller