Goddammit!

There's a good chance that Ileen's Sports Bar, a tequila-in-the-morning kind of joint, is closing. Like Belltown's surly Rendezvous and Georgetown's homey Jules Maes, Broadway's endearingly crusty dive apparently can no longer withstand Seattle's inflated sense of self-worth. According to Krista LaFontaine, an Ileen's waitress who spends her off-days at the bar, the boss, Ileen Schumaker, has been making noise about closing for a year, and could shut down the bar as soon as March. ALLIE HOLLY-GOTTLIEB


Dicks

"It was a sting operation," claims a local man who was given a citation for jaywalking outside Dick's on Broadway late Saturday night, January 27.

The unlucky man, along with a friend, was prevented from pulling his car into the Dick's parking lot on Broadway because an SPD squad car was blocking the path. Boxed out, the hungry duo parked across the street and ambled over to Seattle's late-night mecca.

After they crossed the street, they were stopped by two Seattle police officers: "You two get in line, you're next." After the officers finished filling out a jaywalking citation for a previous miscreant, they proceeded to issue a $38 whammy to our unsuspecting pair.

"Let's go see if we can catch some more idiots jaywalking," one officer reportedly said after issuing the ticket.

Was this a response to the January 23 Seattle Times article reporting an 82 percent decline in jaywalking citations issued by the SPD in the last 13 years?

"There has been no change in policy," says SPD traffic cop Mark Kuhen. NANCY DREW


Not So Fast, Locke!

Of all the proposed cuts in Gov. Gary Locke's state budget, State Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry L. Alexander is focusing on the elimination of the state prison's law libraries.

Alexander first took a public stand on the issue in a letter to Paul Wright, a Washington prisoner and the editor of the newsletter Prison Legal News. In a letter to Alexander, Wright had originally raised an obvious point: With no prison law libraries, indigent inmates have reduced access to legal resources, thus limiting their access to fair treatment in the criminal justice system.

"I share your concerns [about eliminating prison law libraries]," Alexander responded. He added that the state Supreme Court was looking at it. "I feel certain [fellow justice Richard B. Sanders] will advise the court on how we can best react to what appears to me to be an unwise effort." PHIL CAMPBELL