Sonics vs. Alexie
On June 9, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled that author,
Stranger contributor, and longtime Sonics season-ticket holder
Sherman Alexie could testify at the upcoming Sonics trial.
Attorneys for the Professional Basketball Club (PBC)—the group
seeking to relocate the Sonics to Oklahoma City—previously
attempted to block Alexie’s testimony, citing “profanity-laced”
tirades in his weekly Sonics Death Watch column in The
Stranger.
“Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the fact that I get to
testify is a victory for season-ticket holders and all
professional basketball fans; one of us is being given a voice in this
potentially revolutionary trial,” Alexie said in an e-mail.
The PBC is attempting to move the team before the Sonics’ KeyArena
lease runs out in 2010, citing financial losses. The city is suing
to block the move—which was endorsed by a majority of other
NBA team owners—to force the Sonics to play out their final
season at KeyArena.
The trial is scheduled to begin on Monday, June 16. JONAH
SPANGENTHAL-LEE
Owners vs. Drivers
At a raucous public hearing in council chambers last week,
dozens of taxi drivers and taxicab owners squared off over proposed
changes to the code governing taxi licensing and rates. On the table: a
proposal that would require taxi companies to phase in fuel-efficient
cabs; increase the number of taxi licenses in the city, making new
licenses nontransferable for five years and capping the amount owners
can charge drivers to lease them; and increase several fees and rates,
including basic taxi rates.
Taxi owners, many of them Sikhs in brightly colored turbans, argued
that increasing the number of licenses would flood the market and
diminish the value of their own licenses, which cost as much as
$180,000 on the open market. “If [drivers] want to be owners, they
can go to Spokane,” said Farwest owner Harwinder Mattu, a comment that
prompted jeers from the mostly East African drivers in the room. Deb
Duggan, a driver for Yellow, noted that most drivers lease their cabs
from owners, often paying the cost of insurance, gas, and maintenance
on the car. “We want to reform the behavior of the owners that don’t
drive,” she said.
Jean Godden, who chaired the meeting, struggled to keep order in the
crowded room, banging her gavel repeatedly to little avail. Her
attempts to pronounce most of the cabbies’ names was no more
successful.
The council seems almost certain to approve the changes to the taxi
code later this summer. ERICA C. BARNETT
Rats vs. Development
A few days after a backhoe began demolishing several buildings in
the Central District along East Madison Street—including Deano’s,
near an intersection notorious for drug dealing and
prostitution—rats began to flee the site, “scouring around
for new homes,” according to the Miller Park neighborhood blog.
A week earlier, property owner Dean Falls had sold the parcel to a development company for $7.5 million. The buyer, Jim Mueller, says
he plans to construct a six-story building with retail on the street
level and around 200 apartments above.
Mueller doesn’t expect the nefarious activity to return to
the area after construction is finished because he is planning another
development across the street that will replace the Twilight Exit. “The
fact that we own the two pieces of property across from each other
allows us to really change the feel of the location,” he says.
Miller Park Advisory Council member Andrew Taylor also thinks the
crack dealing will gone for good. “Mueller handled the rat issue very
speedily,” he says. DOMINIC HOLDEN
Idiots vs. Art
On Wednesday, June 11, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Capitol Hill
Arts Center (1621 12th Ave), Sound Transit will host the second public
meeting about the installations proposed by Brooklyn artist Mike Ross
and Seattle artist Ellen Forney for the underground Capitol Hill
light-rail station. Ross’s proposal consists of two vivisected
fighter planes painted pink and hung nose-to-nose to look like
they’re kissing.
The first public meeting resulted in a steaming pile of
idiocy, of small-mindedness and xenophobia (including catcalls to
Ross of “You’re not even from here!”).
Ross’s project has plenty of promise. He’s working in the most
impossible medium (public art), in a completely impossible space
(an underground cavern choked with architectural crossbeams), and yet
he still has managed to come up with something that has poetic
potential.
Much will depend on the details—it’s never possible to judge a
sculpture before it’s built—but Ross’s idea has legs, and that’s
saying a lot in the usually deadly-awful category of public art. His
piece, working in tandem with Forney’s playful murals, could
actually succeed down there.
But not if it’s not built. Tonight is your chance to stop the
madness. JEN GRAVES