Portage Bay Cafe Will Open in July!

Portage Bay Cafe owners John and Amy say the local, organic and sustainable restaurant will open on July 7th. They'll be located at 2821 NW Market Street where Grace's Kitchen was located.

This will be a great addition to Ballard's booming brunch scene and another alternative for lunch. They'll be open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

We can't wait to try the food with a conscientious philosophy behind it. They get their food from local farms like Full Circle, organic joints like Great Harvest Bakery and feature Fonte Organic coffee. We're bringing our appetite!

Max is Back

Hattie's Hat is being sold by its current owners to Max Genereaux who you may know as the owner of Al's and The Sunset. What you might not know is that Max used to wash dishes and bartend at Hattie's. Yep, just a little old Ballard history for ya.

The Seattle Weekly says that Max will be removing that Gawd Awful fish tank from the back room and re-introducing music nights. Thank the Lord - it's about time someone took that hideous tank out of the back room.

Personal Note to Evan Dando...

Lemonheads, Tractor, Friday Night

Okay, this is a terrible picture, but we just wanted to take this opportunity to say, "WASH YOUR F*CKING HAIR EVAN DANDO!"

We probably wouldn't care about your hair that much if you hadn't delivered such a lackluster piece of crap performance. Mumbling and uninspired are the best things we can say about it. At least you looked like you wanted to get it done with as quickly as we did.

You should know that your status as an Indie Rock Sex Symbol and one of the only truly Hot Guys in an alt-band is hereby revoked. Actually, it probably was revoked long ago but it took us this long to get around to seeing you.

I Want You to Take Me Home

Hey Ballardites - June is Adopt-A-Cat month at the Seattle Humane society. They're waiving all adoption fees on cats over a year old if you bring in a donation of cat food. This weekend they're also adding a seriously great incentive - Popsicles for kids! How could you resist?

This little lady to our left is named Ziggystardust and we think she's really cute. If we didn't already have our fill of pets, we would be making our way down to the Human Society to check out some kitties. We'll be donating to the Humane Society instead. Here's a link if you want to help out!

There are a number of really great reasons to adopt older cats instead of kittens. Everyone loves kittens so they are usually adopted quickly, but there are many great cats looking for a home. Older cats are more mellow than kittens which makes them much more sutiable for children. They're less likely to claw or scratch kids. Adult cats have developed personalities and are less likely to surprise you with unexpected behavior or temperment. And older cats really like to cuddle. What's better than that? Oh, yeah, owning cats lowers your blood pressure and fights depression. You can see the cats and dogs that are available for adoption on the Humane Society's web site - www.seattlehumane.org/adopt. People, it's serious cute overload.

The Seattle Humane Society is located in Bellevue (what? I know!) at 13212 SE Eastgate Way. They're open 7 days a week from noon to 6 p.m. Now, go adopt a cat and send us pictures!

Beware of the Bicycling Meter Maids!

We're very careful about paying for parking in Ballard. We know the drill, we pay at the pay station, stick the sticker in our car and go about our business... We also keep an eye out for those pesky parking cops on their Segways and Scooters.

But alas, we weren't paying attention to the time and we have received a parking ticket - at 10 minutes to 6 for cripes sake. But what shocked us was that this new breed of Ballard parking cop is handing out tickets from the seat of their bicycle!

Yeah, we know we were in the wrong, we should have paid parking during our 2 minute errand. And we'll suck it up and pay. But we thought we'd warn you parking risk takers to be on the look out for these two wheeled harbingers of annoyance.

Chase Online Can Suck It

As a long time Washington Mutual customer, we've been muddling through the conversion to Chase. But we've finally had enough. No, not when they changed the signage on the Ballard branch, but when they switched us over to Chase Online. We just wanted to say we think their online interface sucks. You can't drill into more details on transactions and it's poorly designed. We just wanted to gripe about it. Oh, yeah, and it's going to be a scorcher in Ballard today.

Any suggestions for a new bank?