Yes, Seattle needs a state-run music hall! It’ll be so punk! Will the commissars running it let folks play “Brown Sugar” covers?

@1:

Well, the City already owns McCaw Hall, as well as the buildings housing The Vera Project and KEXP/The Gathering Space, not to mention several other arts and performance venues around town. So if your "argument" is that the City shouldn't own music or other public events spaces, I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but that horse left the barn quite a few decades ago.

But hey, thanks for playing "False Equivalency: The Game Show"! We'll send you some fabulous parting gifts, plus a home version of the game!

This didn't "turn into" a rally for Kshama Sawant, "socialist that she is". It started out that way. If Sawant hadn't seen political advantage in producing (at taxpayer expense) this extravaganza, it wouldn't have happened. This is more "Save the Showboat" than "Save the Showbox".

4:

Yeah, these Mayberry Marxists are a fucking hoot.

Below mediocre bands that will never go anywhere and that nobody cares about....yay!

And of course our favorite Marxist narcissist was in middle of it all.....

Oh, and #4 just touched the surface of that scam by Kshama and her husband......funny how the Stranger won’t dig into that one....

"Only three council members showed up for the public hearing"

lol .. it was just a lame publicity stunt. Nothing more. The city council broke the law and will lose in court if it goes to that.

"While everyone else headed up to council chambers following the set, Peter Richards, Dude York's lead singer, was actually on his way to the Showbox, where he works as a security guard."

I can understand why a musician who works at a venue wants to preserve his job, but why should every tax payer in Seattle subsidize his place of work?

This sort of activism comes with an enormous price tag. I can think of much better ways to spend $40,000,000.00.

If you haven't yet, might be worth reading this: https://crosscut.com/sites/default/files/files/petition.pdf

Lays out the case pretty plainly, but the TL;DR of it is that this property (showbox building is only worth $1,000) doesn't belong to Seattle. The council spot zoned it as a response to Sawant seeing a populist movement to exploit.

Interviewing guy-in-a-band who moonlights as a security guard about housing policy. That's crack journomalism right there.

Developing a dilapidated old 2-story building in the heart of downtown? Oh the humanity! That priceless 1916 masonry architecture is a beauty to behold... it brings tears to my eyes almost as much as the Key Arena's "iconic" sloped roof that so much deserved landmark status used to corruptly ensure it would remain a City asset and we would forever remain in the arena business.
Why does anyone care about the Showbox? Because you saw a few cool bands there once? Seems like a justifiable reason for the lone Socialist council member to seize private property and spend millions of tax dollars fighting a losing battle against a $40 million lawsuit.
You think it is a priority for this city to renovate an ugly ass building from 1916 and bring it up to fire code just to keep one of a dozen venues alive? Density belongs downtown, that's what a downtown is for. Unless you want urban sprawl, or let me guess nothing at all to change ever.
I had good times at the market too, but things change except for pretentious, know-it-all, uppity Seattleites who give lip-service to housing affordability then do everything in their power to restrict the housing supply by "preserving" this and "saving" that and stopping any development from changing their nostalgic vision of "cool" Seattle.

I rode by City Hall on my way home last night. The band sounded great. Dude York played a great set at KEXP, a Bumbershoot or two ago.

Did anyone tell these folks at the hearing that (a) The Showbox doesn’t own the building, (b) the City Council probably acted illegally to “preserve” the building, and (c) grow up, already?

Did anyone volunteer to help us pay for the lawsuit?

Cool!

Within a year, most of the current council members will be voted out. They are too biased towards liberal ideas. We can replace them with people like Saul Spady, a so called man of the people with a conservative leaning bias. Sawant gets her allowance from her husband. Spady is the greasy burger grandson prince who never actually worked at Dick's. Ask him. They both oversold their self worth to us. We get screwed either way. Fuck Saul. Fuck Sawant.

@13 - I listened to 15 minutes or so of the meeting. It became clear quickly that the people in that movement believe that if they passionately want something, they can appeal to government to make it happen. It was completely bananas.

I almost feel bad for the people who flock to Sawant. They don't realize they have no chance of winning this one.

The irony ... the same dumb trolls who couldn’t wait to fork over $135,000,000 million tax payer dollars to billionaires that like to swat at tiny balls.

@12 I don't know about the Showbox; but the Coliseum is a legit historical design, just like the Space Needle.

Komrad Kshamalama looks like she is stacking on the pounds.

I guess it’s a battle between her and Komrad Nikkita Oliver for who is the biggest narcissist in Seattle

By the by, has anyone looked into who is funding Nikkita’s lifestyle? It sure isn’t from a 9-5 job, because she doesn’t have one....there’s some interesting info out there, if a Stranger “journalist” actually decided to, you know, be a journalist and look into it....

Ooh #4, “The Delusional Space Cadet” or whatever your moniker is,

. Kshama Sawant, just like every genuine socialist elected to any public position, keeps as her salary only the average wage of her constituents, plus publicly-audited expenses, and gives everything else to the freedom-struggle.

. In Kshama’s case, she keeps ~$45,000 as her annual salary and contributes the remaining ~$80,000 to the fight-back.

And how much do you contribute?

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

Hilarious!
Some capitalist billionaire scum hollers “Lawsuit!” — in the ‘Onanist’ Group’s case, “$40Million lawsuit!” — and a few milquetoasts on here lose bowel control altogether!
:)

We fight our corporate overlords in the workplace, in the street, in their courts.
And provided we build a strong-enough mass movement of the 99 Per Cent, we’ll defeat them!

https://www.socialistalternative.org/

@21 - can't tell if you're trolling or not. There's nothing wrong with voluntary socialism. You're all free to be poor together, if that's your thing.

The problem comes when you feel entitled to steal from others.

@23 I also couldn’t tell if SocialistWorld was trolling or not, so I read through some prior comments.

https://goo.gl/kGdXjZ

Note the odd repetitiveness, the overreliance on branding enemies with pat little names, the fawning adulation over Kshama Sawant (“intransigent, incorruptible, inspiring”!)...

...Kshama, is that you?

OK, but why is no-one asking if Sawant used the office copier to run off the fliers for the show?

Step it up, Lester. The People need hard answers to hard questions.

20:

"Kshama Sawant, just like every genuine socialist elected to any public position, keeps as her salary only the average wage of her constituents, plus publicly-audited expenses, and gives everything else to the freedom-struggle."

After the Revolution, you should take that comedy act on the road. It's pure gold.

19:

Excellent question. Nikkita gets around these days, what between trips to do her "activism" or to go on vaycays to tropical isles. I suspect she's funded by the Dunning-Kruger Foundation, but I could be wrong.

I just noticed the Stranger's admonition to "be decent to everyone all the time" (or some such. Is this satire, or the Stranger's riff on Google's "Don't Be Evil"? Indecency is the Stranger's coin of the realm.

20

Hahahhahahahahhaha, man thats funny.

So, no comment on the backdoor deal on Kshama’s husbands employment and salary eh?

It’s yet another story with easy to find facts that a “journalist” could look into.....ifn they were inclined.

Woo hoo #29 “bring nhl to Seattle”,

You seem to have pulled your “comment” from out of your “back-door”!
:)

The only way you can find out a Socialist Alternative full-timer’s salary is by applying to join us.
Or by joining the capitalists’ FBI and trying to infiltrate us!
:)

An elected-to-a-public-position socialist fighter such as Kshama Sawant’s expenses, however, are completely auditable and on public record.

If you’re too lethargic, silly or incompetent to audit them yourself, then you have only yourself to blame.
:)

We “live” in this vile capitalist hell.
Expenses are high.
Much higher, generally, for a socialist fighter elected to a public position.
Just think travel, accommodation — for speaking, meeting, organizing.
Of course Socialist Alternative pays for our comrades’ battle-expenses.

Sure, you’re most welcome to help us with those burdensome expenses by donating to us:

https://www.socialistalternative.org/donate/

30:

If being a Bolshie is so very, very expensive these days, why doesn't your "movement" start a "GoFundMe" account? Then, you'll be able to pay the rent on the office outfit with "more professional" (Gawd, that was a laff) equipment and furniture, obtained through SA's Amazon "Wish List".

Is irony blindness a prerequisite for joining "socialist alternative"?

30:

"Battle expenses"

Another howler. You children really need to find a hobby. Or a job.

@30: "Just think travel, accommodation — for speaking, meeting, organizing."

This is absolutely priceless! You're talking about someone who just got her ass handed to her in the EHT repeal, specifically because she'd engineered a 9-0 vote in the City Council -- without having bothered to organize any popular support for the policy. When tens of thousands of Seattle's voters signed the Referendum petition to recall the EHT, Mayor Durkan immediately marginalized CM Sawant -- and got the 9-0 vote repealed with such speed, the losers are still whining about how the repeal vote was somehow illegal.

CM Sawant has so little support, and knows it, that she's pandering to the "Save the Showbox" crowd in a pathetic attempt to manufacture the support she knows she does not have:

"We need to come back to organizing, so please stay in touch with us," Sawant said. "We will succeed in saving the Showbox but... this could be the catalyst for the future struggle for affordable housing. Maybe we can win the Amazon tax that was repealed, maybe we can win a tax on big businesses. Why should we stop with just saving the Showbox?"

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/08/13/30710670/city-council-temporarily-blocks-demolition-of-the-showbox)

Keep bringing the laughs! It's all CM Sawant and her rapidly-dwindling base of supporters can do for Seattle now.