Warning Shot
Starbucks Coffee Company has asked the Rat City Rollergirls
(RCR)—a Seattle-based roller-derby league—to modify its
logo. According to Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum, the league’s
logo has a “very similar look and feel” to the Starbucks logo.
Both logos feature a picture of a woman surrounded by a circle with
stars on either side, although the woman featured in the Starbucks ad
is a mermaid while the woman in the RCR logo looks like Bettie Page
with a black eye.
Starbucks has previously sued a comic-book artist, a Chinese
coffee company, and a Texas bar owner over trademark issues.
“They’re claiming their mark is so famous, any use of sans serifs,
stars, and circles is a dilution of their mark,” says Quinn Heraty,
RCR’s attorney. Heraty says she’s not aware of any intention on
the Rollergirls’ part to mimic the Starbucks logo. “Why wouldn’t they
have put in a beat-up mermaid instead of a rollergirl?” she asks.
JONAH SPANGENTHAL-LEE
Triple Shot
A 22-year-old Snohomish County man is being held on $350,000 bail
for allegedly shooting three people on Saturday, May 24, at
Seattle’s Folklife Festival.
At around 6:15 p.m., the man allegedly got into a scuffle near the
International Fountain, grabbed a gun from his ankle holster, and
discharged one shot. The bullet hit one man in the nose, passed
through another man’s arm, and hit a woman in the thigh.
The gunshot did little to disrupt the festival’s drum circles and
Estonian folk dancers. JONAH SPANGENTHAL-LEE
“Oomph”
On May 22, the city’s Department of Planning and Development
convened a forum of architects and neighborhood activists to help
rewrite citywide design guidelines for proposed multifamily and
commercial buildings. The new rules, if adopted by the city council,
could replace design standards adopted in 1993 and override more-recently adopted guidelines applied to individual
neighborhoods.
“It doesn’t need to be fixed if it isn’t broken, but if it can be
improved, we can do that,” said Cheryl Sizov, an urban planning manager
for the DPD. Key areas that require “more oomph,” says Sizov, are how
buildings should be designed on major arterials, how to mitigate the
impact of long building facades, and what rules should apply to
locations of citywide significance.
A consultant firm, which was allocated up to $90,000 to
oversee the process,
will incorporate comments from the meeting
into a proposal for public comment, says Sizov. The city council could
codify
the new guidelines by early next year. DOMINIC
HOLDEN