…report selling out of Vanishing Seattle. Thanks to you all, it’s become the surprise local bestseller of the season. Epilogue Books in Ballard will have approximately three dozen copies at 10 a.m. Saturday, if you need yours before the big holiday.

…Vanishing Seattle signing party was even more spectacular and better-attended than the first. Epilogue Books had one copy at the end of Monday’s event. It got 40 more copies by Tuesday evening. Only seven remained at Tuesday’s closing time. The store expects to get more copies in by Friday.

Other outlets report having sold out of their initial stock in one or two days. The following other places are, or were, known to have had it in stock, or to be ordering/reordering:

• Virginia Mason Hospital Gift Shop
• FriendShop (Seattle Public Library gift store)
• Ye Olde Curiosity Shop
• Exclusively Washington (next to Ivar’s at Pier 54)
• Broadway News
• Le Frock Ltd, 317 E. Pine St.
• Ballard Home Comforts
• Portage Bay Gifts, Fremont
• Walgreens (various) in Seattle
• Bailey-Coy Books
• M. Coy Books
• Museum of History and Industry
• Fremont Place Book Co.
• Culpepper Books, Tacoma
• NW Museum store, Tacoma

And it can be attained online, from the link near the top left corner of this page.

After the holidays, I hope to offer autographed copies to site readers.

…impromptu Vanishing Seattle book signing was a smashing success. I met many old and new friends, and Epilogue Books sold all but one of the copies they had in stock. Fret not, however: A fresh batch will be unsealed and unboxed in time for the regularly-scheduled book release party, 6:30-8 p.m. tonight (Tuesday) at 2001 NW Market Street in brilliant Ballard.

…not to trust the mainstream news media: SeattleTimes.com listed the Vanishing Seattle premiere party as a “Hot Ticket,” but then got the date wrong. As a result, many people may show up at Epilogue Books (2001 Market Street in brilliant Ballard) tonight, Monday, instead of the scheduled night, Tuesday. I’ll show up both nights just in case.

…to Steve Mandich, whose blog contains a lovely rave review of Vanishing Seattle.

Spent six hours today convincing stores to carry our lovely new book. Here’s a fabulous promo display at that un-disappeared Seattle landmark, Ye Olde Curiosity Shop.

Vanishing Seattle is now out, at least in some stores. I’m going on a sales junket around town in the morning to make sure it gets stocked prominently in your local book outlet.

A special sudden Vanishing Seattle release party will be held Tuesday, Dec. 19, 6:30-8 p.m., at the fabulous Epilogue Books in beautiful bodacious Ballard. Be there.

Our latest book Vanishing Seattle exists! I’ve seen a copy, and it’s damned beautiful if I do say so myself.

It will appear in local stores starting Monday. It’s already available for preorder from Amazon (check the link near the upper left corner of this page). Every home should have one. Seriously.

Yes, there will be a release party, but it will probably occur after the holiday season so all of you can attend. Watch this space for further details.

In keeping with her well-contrived “hot mess” public image, it’s a disjointed scrapbook of images and random thoughts. Salon’s reviewer can’t seem to get out of the cookie-cutter mode of feminist analysis, spending paragraph after paragraph discussing whether the book proves or disproves Love as being some sort of role model for All Females Everywhere. Silly reviewer: Of course she’s not. That’s part of her appeal, or at least it used to be.

Our newest book is at the presses, and will be out for the holidays.

Vanishing Seattle collects over 200 pictures of former local icons and landmarks. It’s a book every Seattleite of a certain age will crave.

Until I get a proper ordering page set up, here’s where you can pre-order it thru Barnes & Noble.

Spectacular promo events will be scheduled. Watch this space.

…is now 52 percent female, according to unnamed sources cited by In These Times. One more geek bastion breached.

Both the Vanishing Seattle book and the September Belltown Messenger are outta here and on their way to your adoring eyes. So I can now resume this here corner of what used to be euphemistically called “Cyberspace.”

Among the things I haven’t gotten the time to write about these past almost two weeks:

• The 25th anniversary of the first IBM PC. Personal computers had already been around a half decade. IBM saw the character-generating on the wall and realized it had to be in that market, before its own sub-mainframe workstation computers were obsolete. An “Entry Level Systems Division” was set up in Florida, far from IBM’s mainframe designers in upstate New York. A workable and expandable machine was swiftly designed, mostly from off-the-shelf parts. Corporate schmoozing between IBM bigwigs and UW Regent Mary Gates got Mary’s son Bill the chance to bid on the operating system contract. He bought the existing QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from a couple of Seattle nerds. His then-small staff made two variants, PC-DOS (for IBM) and MS-DOS (which, under the MS/IBM contract, Gates & co. could sell to anybody). From this one deal arose the Puget Sound country’s new #1 economic force, the driver of real-estate hyperinflation and the flow of money into local “alternative” culture.
• 
  The first sign of hope for saving the Sonics and Storm. The Okie owners say they’d be perfectly happy with staying in Seattle Center, as long as it’s not in KeyArena. They suggested the Memorial Stadium land, already set to be cleared under a blue-ribbon committee’s master plan for the Center grounds. That’d be perfect with me. The high school football games can go to Husky Stadium or even Qwest Field. KeyArena can be re-remodeled as a concert and convention facility. We can get an indoor arena big enough for a National Hockey League team, plus the food-court and amusement-arcade sections the Okies want. I may be the only one I know who believes this deal can indeed be worked out without excessively draining local tax coffers, but I do believe it.
• 
  Safeco Insurance plans to leave the U District; the UW plans to buy the Safeco Tower. Let’s just make sure the U keeps the IHOP, next to the tower on Safeco-owned land.
• 
  A dog-days lull in the Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer soap opera. I’ve been talking with others who, like me, would like to be involved in starting a new local-news venture should the P-I call it a day. Should this project progress, and should I become a real part of it, I’ll wind up saying less and less about it due to the ol’ non-disclosure falderal.

…the last eight days, and what I’m doing at least the next six days: Finishing the huge Vanishing Seattle book project. That, and maybe a little bit of sleeping and eating.

But I can tell you there’s a new Belltown Messenger on the streets. And work on the Vanishing Seattle book continues apace. I still seek pix and mementos of several long-gone landmarks, including:

• The Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse;
• Free Mars cafe/SCUD artists’ co-op (the “Jell-O mold” building);
• the original Herfy’s drive-in chain;
• punk and “grunge” era nightclubs;
• Jones Fantastic Museum; Seattle Center House;
• Orestes restaurant (“the Blob”);
• The Monastery disco;
• Trade Winds bar;
• the former downtown Nordstrom store;
• Osborn & Ulland sporting goods;
• the Vault and Penthouse jazz clubs.

Send any potential leads to this special email addy.