Seattle Wa

When you stay at a Doubletree Hotel, little sets it apart from other mid-priced business/leisure hotels except the warm chocolate chip cookies at check-in -- more than 10 million a year, by the chain's count. But it's not the promise of a chewy nibble that's likely to catch your attention when you enter Doubletree's Arctic Club in downtown Seattle. Rather, it's the property itself: an immaculately restored, nearly century-old social lodge so specific in its Gold Rush details that you want to pull down one of the many vintage maps from the lobby walls, jump on a dog sled and head for the Klondike.

Just in time for the summer tourist throngs, mimes, musicians and balloon-animal shapers have been newly empowered to bring their entertainments and tip jars to public parks. In a ruling with potentially wide implications for street artists throughout the West, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday struck down curbs imposed by Seattle on those performing at the popular Seattle Center, home of the landmark Space Needle.

In this noisy den of brine and ice, scales and slime, fish always have been part meat, part missile. One man points to an enormous white-bellied fish, and another man in a wet apron scoops it up from the ice, hoists it over his shoulder and sends it flying 15 feet toward the counter. "Hali-BUT! Hali-BUT! Heyyyyyy!" six men scream in unison. "Goin' right home! Goin' right home!" The counterman catches the hurtling fish neatly between the head and tail fin and slaps it onto a wrapping sheet.

They were a distasteful breed, all in all, the loud-mouthed young hustlers who sold newspapers on this city's street corners, and when the 11- and 12-year-old newsboys got driven out in the early part of the last century, the old men and toothless reprobates who replaced them were scarcely any better. "In every condition of decrepitude, some with two crutches, some with one, some with but one arm, some partially blind and some totally blind," a county judge wrote in 1937.

In the summer of 1993, everything seemed to be going the Gits' way. Bypassed in the initial wave of interest in Seattle's grunge bands, the punk quartet was close to signing with a major label and had begun recording its second album. But on July 7, after leaving friends at a local bar, the Gits' singer, Mia Zapata, was raped and murdered, her body dumped on the street. Within days, the Gits were national news for the worst imaginable reason. Zapata was famous, not as a singer, but as a victim.

Conservation-mindful Seattlites know their garbage. They pack compost bins, fill yard waste carts, separate glass bottles and jars into tubs, and pack paper, cans and plastic jugs into oversize recycling containers. A city ordinance prohibits putting recyclables in the garbage. Residents can be fined for tossing too much glass or paper in the trash. Low-cost city-issued rain barrels help homeowners reroute well-known Northwest drizzle.

If there were a list of the geekiest landmarks to visit in Seattle, RE-PC would be near the top. It's the place that old computers go to die. Most are disassembled for parts, stripped down like wrecked cars at a junkyard. Some are recycled. But a select few escape. They make it to a tidy room in the corner of the folksy high-tech salvage shop. That's the site of the RE-PC Computer Museum.

This city's historic landmarks include the majestic St. James Cathedral, the elegant Paramount Theatre and, best-known of all, the towering syringe known as the Space Needle. Soon this list may include a Denny's. This month, a city board opened the way to give historic landmark status to a recently closed Denny's restaurant in northwest Seattle, a decision that has left some questioning the city's selection process.

It's the kind of house that a year or two ago would have been snapped up in days: a refurbished rambler in a woodsy residential neighborhood minutes from downtown. The asking price: $559,000. But after seven weeks, Kristen and Al Dittmaier have not received a single offer on their Wedgwood home. "I really believed there would be no problem selling," Kristen Dittmaier said. "But the whole feel of the market has changed. We might have to drop the price."

As has happened in other states, cash-strapped schools in Washington are dropping librarians to save money: This year, Federal Way cut 20 librarian positions. Spokane reduced 10 librarians to half-time. Darrington cut two librarians. A school in Marysville eliminated its half-time librarian. Libraries are open less, their programs minimized, jobs combined. In many cases, part- timers with little formal library training are replacing skilled veterans.