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Kate Shanaman Bender starts her day by going downstairs for coffee with her neighbor. “What’s the good news?” she asks Chiara Wood. She calls Wood by many names: Chiara, Kiki, my mother. “We have a unique situation,” Bender admits. Together they’ll begin their commute down one flight of stairs into the offices of
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I was surfing the Internet for prom shoes and shoes for the springtime when I came across a Web site called www.shoes.com. On the site, I saw the cutest pair of red patent shoes that strapped across the ankle and had an opening over the tops of the toes with
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Shopping-gasm There is nothing on the planet that inspires warm, fuzzy, happy, elated feelings quite like a perceived good bargain. Throw in a really good bargain and you can amp that emotion up about 17,000 notches. So there I was at Dame Lola picking up my long-forgotten AG cords, busted apart by my
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Rockaroake reigning champ and all around fun chica Najamonique Todd took a minute to chat with me. We overheard the tattoo guys in back talking about something, and Todd clarified what the subject was: “They’re talking about Monday nights at Jazzbones — the whole indie rock scene in Tacoma shows
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So you thought, after your senior prom, that you’d never have a chance to don your fanciest clothes again. Well, I’m happy to say you thought wrong. Go now and buy yourself a beautiful dress or a French-cuff shirt (go ahead and rent a tux, if you must) so that you
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It has become customary this time of year for me to celebrate the coming of spring by previewing shows and concerts the dawning season has to offer. If all goes according to plan, this will be the most comprehensive preview yet. In the past, after scouring piles of show listings
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Wine and jazz have quite a few similarities. They are both enjoyed by a select group of connoisseurs; both are an acquired taste; both are considered to be elite and refined, and they both can be either robust or smooth on the palate. So it only makes sense to dedicate
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Two hundred thousand people. Give or take a few, that’s how many T-town hustlers there are. Lately, I feel like I know all of them — or at least the ones who party on a regular or even semi-regular basis. Just like Tupac’s song said, “No matter where I go, I see the
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They’re manly men. They have names like Tom, Chuck, and Richard. They hold down manly jobs titles like mechanic, firefighter and retired IRS. And in their spare time, they like to hold large, smelly, cylindrical things between their lips and suck. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or a mechanic; you’ll
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According to a traditional children's song, little boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails." Whoever wrote that crap obviously never went to a drag race. If he had, he'd know that boys, from little to big, are made of nitromethane fuel, turbochargers, burnt-out tires with smelly
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The biggest highlight from last week can be summed up with one four-letter word. And, surprisingly, it’s not even a dirty word. It’s actually quite clean and pristine, that is, unless it’s yellow. Snow, snow, SNOW! All week long I’d been getting the Crystal Mountain snow reports via e-mail, which had me dreaming
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If you see Ron Hinson’s show at Art on Center Gallery, you might think it is simply a rehash of the show he had there in August 2005. The painted constructions look identical to the ones he showed then. That is, if you don’t look too closely or don’t remember
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The Night Tacoma Danced is not for everybody, believe me. It is meant only for those of you who like to eat a variety of yummy food, enjoy a lot of fine entertainment, appreciate good art and are willing to have fun to support programs for kids. Sounds like a
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Tacoma. Art. The two go together like love and marriage, peanut butter and jelly, and gin and tonic. And the two are equally broad spectrum with Tacoma’s art scene encompassing a range from coffee to dance to clothing to paintings to parties to food to random acts of kindness. But is it
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First up — a shout out to the newbie in town. The Horatio Theater Company's first full production, "Molly Sweeney," isn't showing at the theater's home stage but in a coffee shop across town, but it is still a stage to watch in the coming years. The show is a theatrical
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It’s a loud night. Randy Oxford’s music set a scene, and that scene is vibrating with excitement, loud excitement. Then the first singer hits the stage, and says “Hi!” The crowd says hi back halfheartedly. She calls them on it. “I didn’t hear you!” she shouts, and the crowd responds in full volume. And
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I stopped dead in my tracks. Glancing over my mom’s shoulders at “The Young and the Restless,” I saw a teen girl wearing leg warmer’s; except, they weren’t on her legs. They were on her arms. Arms! I guess they’re called arm warmers. I have no idea, because I have never
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‘Speak’ Though the Weekly Volcano is certainly a city kid at heart, we like to let the wild things in every once in awhile. And what better way than listening to animals speak? Ice Box Contemporary Art is doing just that. “Speak,” an installation by Joseph Miller, is a conversation between
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Bootsy McGhee. Some say that’s me. There are people in this world who collect all sorts of things — stamps, baseball cards, automobiles and the like. My collector’s items are a little out of the ordinary, and they’re one of the biggest components of my personal brand identity. CFM boots. Normally I’d spell out what