Adding to the mix of insane mayoral candidates, a Capitol Hill feline is making a bid for the city's highest office. Meow Meow King Friday, the furry resident of Coffee Messiah on Olive Way, declared his candidacy too late to be added to the ballot, but hopes to garner write-in votes. Cat campaigner and Coffee Messiah employee Opus explained King Friday's platform: Sleep more than current mayor Paul Schell and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan combined. "King Friday has seen that this city apparently wants a mayor who's asleep on the job," Opus says. "So he's the right one for the job." AMY JENNIGES

Meeting McIver

Last week, local public housing advocate John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition (SDC)--along with SDC's John McLaren and Carolee Colter from Friends of Rainier Vista--met with City Council Member Richard McIver to discuss the fate of Rainier Vista, the public housing project at MLK Jr. Way and Tamarack Drive South.

McIver is a key vote in the upcoming decision to rezone Rainier Vista for mixed-use development. The Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) is pushing a rezone that would make it easier to weasel out of replacing the 481 on-site units that currently house people making 30 percent of the median income or less. Housing advocates like Fox want a tougher rezone that also calls for full replacement of all units.

Fox told McIver that the SHA previously committed to replacing all the units. The council member requested documents showing SHA's promises.

Fox has tons of documentation. (We've seen it.)

"If we can push the [SHA] obligation up to 100 percent, that would certainly be a victory for us," Fox says. "We're hoping we can influence [McIver]." AMY JENNIGES

Star Struck

In other Coffee Messiah news, owner Opus got in trouble with the law last weekend.

Opus (who likens his lone moniker to Madonna's) handed out stickers bearing the indie coffee shop's name to crowds heading to Bumbershoot on Saturday, September 1. An hour later, two cops cornered Opus outside his store.

"They told me that someone had destroyed public property and I was a suspect," Opus says. "Somehow some Coffee Messiah stickers found their way onto the doors of Starbucks." The coffee giant has a location one block northeast of Coffee Messiah, on Olive Way.

Opus says he was arrested for destruction of property--though he denies stickering Starbucks' door--and was transported to jail by a cop driving with one hand and holding a Starbucks beverage in the other. AMY JENNIGES