DS writes in with scary details of an attack on him, his two children and others innocently walking on Broadway on a warm Thursday summer night.

As I walked back from yogurt land with my infant and toddler.  A man of the streets sprayed mace all over us and a few others on bway in front of Bonney Watson.  Guy was arrested , clearly crazy, many victims,check out police report.

We walked to John and bway before stopping cause I  didn’t know what the dude was gonna   i could barely see!  Medics checked us out, everyone ok.

We have not yet confirmed details with SPD on the arrest. Seattle Fire responded to the scene around 6:45 PM. We’ll update when we get more from both on the incident.

On Tuesday, an 86-year-old man was injured in what he says was an unprovoked attack as he sat on a Cal Anderson bench near E Pine.

The long anticipated opening of the controversial Chieftain Pub near Seattle University at 908 12th Avenue is finally here, and it will have its grand opening Friday, August 19th.

Peter Johnson and his crew have been working for over 6 months to transform the old Doc Hastings night club into a new Irish pub for the Capitol Hill community, and the place is a wonderful homage to the past, to Ireland and to its namesake, the Chieftain.

In 2000, in order to deflect charges of racism and native oppression, Seattle University changed its mascot from the Chieftains to the Redhawks.  While acknowledging the controversy of the past mascot, the naming of this new pub is just a bow to the past and present.  Foremost in Irish-native Johnson’s mind was Charles French Blake-Forster’s account of the Williamite War in Ireland from the perspective of the Galwegians, called “The Irish Chieftains, or a Struggle for the Crown” published in 1872, and of course the six-time Grammy winners and the world’s most popular Irish traditional music group, the Chieftains.

This new Irish pub will feature Happy Hour all day Monday and Tue-Fri 3-6pm and will have special events such as Tuesday night Trivia contests, Thursday Karaoke and Saturday nights live music.

I took a look at the menu and it seems evenly divided between American and Irish food, including Guinness Beef Stew, Shepherds Pie, Bangers and Mash, Whiskey Crab Soup and something called “Irish Nachos” which substitutes fried potato slices for the corn chips.

They’re open starting at lunch, Friday, August 19th and will be open through dinner until the wee hours, and I’m especially looking forward to the 20+ Scotch and Irish whiskey selection, Mac ‘n’ Jack’s on tap and the Three Cheese Bacon Mac pasta.  Yum!

Editor’s additional info:
Drawing from his experience with his other two pubs, Finn MacCool’s in the U District and McGilvra’s in Madison Park, Johnson told CHS the Chieftain will likely be more of a combination of the two.

Several Irish pubs take the name Chieftain in reference to Irish clan leaders. However, the Chieftain of Seattle U’s past referred to Chief Seattle. The University switched the mascot to the Redhawks in 2000. According to the Spectator, SU’s student newspaper, some faculty members were not happy with the pub’s name:

“Reinvention aside, the chieftain that people will always associate with Seattle U is Chief Seattle,” said Ted Fortier, an associate professor of anthropology, who supported the change of the university’s mascot from the Chieftains to the Redhawks.

David Madsen, an associate professor of history, felt that the university’s former mascot was an honor to Chief Seattle, but that the portrayal of the chieftain as a mascot was inappropriate. Like Fortier, he finds it difficult to think of any other type of chieftain so close to Seattle U’s campus.

“As long as [the pub] is where it is, it’s going to be associated with the former mascot,” said Madsen.

Johnson said people at the school are excited about the bar, and he hopes it will change what the word “chieftain” means for the school. He understands some people are just not going to like the name, though.

“You’re never going to please everyone,” he said.

Fall classes at Seattle U begin September 21st.

If your favorite Capitol Hill watering hole has a dance floor — and a fuzzy grasp of the state’s tax code — the place might be in trouble. The Stranger is reporting on several unnamed nightclubs across the city including Capitol Hill owing thousands in back taxes due to a part of the tax code club owners say is confusing and, they say, suddenly being aggressively applied by state auditors:

The owner of one such bar, who asked to remain anonymous, concurs that unless the state waives the huge, unexpected bill, “I’ll be shut down.” And at this rate, the bar owner continues, the state is “going to shut down more businesses.”

But the state Department of Revenue (DOR) insists the tax, which is being applied to venues where people can dance, is nothing new. “It is not a new interpretation of the code, we’ve always been doing this,” says Mike Gowrylow, a spokesman for the DOR.

Now, club owners around the city are petitioning the state to clarify the code and forgive their past debts—which the state is attempting to collect retroactively for several years—before it bankrupts them. We can’t name the bars involved, but you’ve probably heard of them. None of the nightclub proprietors contacted by The Stranger would speak on the record for fear of reprisal from the DOR, which confirms that it intends to collect the money from bars and clubs.

Here’s the Stranger’s full report. It goes on to paint a picture of the businesses in the city that might be shuttered because of owed taxes or the need to charge more to cover the “dance tax.” None of the currently targeted club owners would go on the record with the Stranger. It will be interesting to hear from those who will and, if they exist, those who have been paying the tax.

This month The Questionland Book Club will be reading True Grit by Charles Portis. Join the Book Experts on Questionland: including The Seattle Librarians, the Staff at Elliot Bay Book Company, Paul Constant (Book Editor of The Stranger), and the Questionland Community for a discussion of True Grit online followed by a meet-up in September (TBA).There are still copies at The Seattle Public Library and it will be on sale (20% off!) at Elliot Bay. It’s a ripping yarn.

Under new rules approved by the Washington State Liquor Control Board, more Seattle restaurants will be able to open up outdoor seating on the sidewalk in front of their buildings meaning some of Capitol Hill’s more pinched sidewalks might have space for a cafe, after all.

While sidewalk cafes were previously only allowed if the sidewalk adjacent to the establishment was available for tables and chairs, many sidewalks in the city are too skinny to allow seating without impeding pedestrian accessibility. The new rules will allow businesses to set up sidewalk seating along the curb in pockets between signs and tree wells with the sidewalk running between the building and the seating area. The result could be even more Capitol Hill restaurants adding sidewalk seating — and, perhaps equally important for the Hill’s economy — some retail spaces suddenly penciling out for a new restaurant.

It almost makes Seattle sound downright cosmopolitan.

“It makes Seattle in line with other cities like Montreal and San Francisco” that have been active in supporting sidewalk cafes, said Dave Meinert, an owner of Big Mario’s (a CHS advertiser) who is a frequent advocate for liberalizing the rules under which Seattle food and drink establishments operate. While the new rules probably won’t affect any of Meinert’s businesses — he’s already won his long-running effort to add outside seating at his 5 Point bar in Belltown and he won’t be changing Big Mario’s outside seating into anything but a takeout hangout — he sees it as a promising sign that the city is helping restaurants out. “It’s great to see something coming out of the city that is actually pro-business.”

The rules should help restaurants that can take advantage of them stay in business. More seats means more potential inventory and more inventory, if you’re doing it right, can mean an increase in revenue and, hopefully, profitability.

In order for a restaurant to start a curbside sidewalk cafe on the Hill, there would need to be on-street parking in front of the new seating — presumably parked cars form a protective barrier to street traffic — with three feet of distance from the curb to allow cars to open doors. All areas around the new seating would need to be ADA compliant, and there would also need to be at least five feet of clearance from the building, curb ramps, bike racks, bus stop zones, parking meters, etc.

Given that framework, the situations on the Hill where a restaurant could take advantage of the new rules might be as rare as, well, places on the Hill where the new street food zones might actually be able to be created.

But there are stretches where the rules could come into play including around the oft-maligned Joule Building where the Broadway sidewalk widens out.

One other area that could be interesting to consider is the development that will occur around the Broadway light rail station. There, ground level retail space is likely along some portions of the property and sidewalks could have a little more room for maneuvering.

But another important example of where this kind of change might hit home on the Hill can be found in the 600 block of E Pike. Unlike much of the surrounding Pike/Pine area, this area — gasp! — is currently restaurant-less. Under the old rules, cafe seating in front of the building would have been too small to comfortably seat customers. The new ruleset would allow a restaurant to utilize the space between the tree wells, adding valuable seating an helping the restaurant eek out a profit or at least break even. That kind of flexibility could change the game for some of the empty spaces on the Hill and help some of the properties left out of the current Capitol Hill food+drink boom to join the rush.

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At this point, the new rules do not yet allow for sidewalk cafes in space that would replace on-street parking, as San Francisco has started doing (see also this video) — but they could be a first step.

“We haven’t gotten that good yet,” said Meinert. But he said it’s something the city should look into. “We’re saying food trucks can use street parking space, so why not let brick and mortar use it that way?”

We’re not quite at La Rambla, yet — but we’re closer.