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The local news media continue to cover Belltown street crime as sensationally as they can. The most recent tragedy-turned-shock-piece: A late-Saturday-night assault on First Avenue near Bell Street. Daniel Stoy, a 29-year-old South Dakota-based Microsoft engineer in town for a corporate conference, was standing outside a bar after closing time. He was apparently attacked by a group of men, knocking him down. His head hit the pavement, fracturing his skull. He was in a coma for about ten hours afterwards. Authorities say it might take as long as two years for Stoy to fully recover. As of the Messenger's press date, no arrests have been made and no description of Stoy's assailants has been issued. Meanwhile, citizens have raised their own individual voices in response to this and prior assault cases, to the ongoing "open air drug market" around First, Second, and Bell (as described by P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr.), to the City s response (or lack thereof) to the situation, and to the media's high-shock, low-information coverage of it all.

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Seven months after the Crocodile Cafe closed, three of its former employees showed up on July 23 to work on the building. They painted over graffiti-tagged walls. They removed posters on the window, placed by promoters of concerts at other venues. One of the ex-Crocsters said the summer cleaning wasdone on the behest of the building's owner, Howard Close. No new tenant for the space has been announced.

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What housing crisis?: While several condo projects downtown and in the Denny Triangle have been postponed, scrapped, or revamped for other uses, residential development in Belltown continues. One project's even growing. That one's at 1915 Second Avenue, currently the site of a parking garage. Intracorp first announced a 170-unit project at the site in 2006, which was to have broken ground in early 2007. Now, the developers have filed a plan with the City to build a 400-foot tower, with 432 units on 39 floors plus ground-level retail and 428 parking stalls (in four above-ground and nine below-ground parking levels).

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D.K. Pan, a promoter of art/performance events in about-to-be-demolished spaces, has formed the Free Sheep Foundation. The organization says it wants "to foster site-specific projects through artistic interventions in architectural spaces." Free Sheep's first space is in the former Exotique Records building at Third and Battery. The long-empty structure is where First United Methodist Church was to have gone, before that project moved to Denny Way. Now, Martin Selig wants to put up a three-story office and retail structure on the half-block (which would still help preserve waterfront views from Selig's Fourth and Battery Building across the alley). But for the rest of 2008 and perhaps a few months thereafter, Free Sheep will use the existing building for storefront-window and interior art exhibits, video installations, and performances. One of the latter, featuring the Spanish industrial-electronic act Filastine, occurs on Saturday, Aug. 15. The current window display features exquisite-corpse style riffs created by Pan and his partners on old architectural blueprints.

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Another new art space has an unusual site--the restroom at Jimmy K Salon, 2415 Western Ave. That's where you'll find works by painter Starheadboy, created on broken skateboards and other found objects. The next group show at McLeod Residence, 2209 Second Ave., opens on Friday, Aug. 1. It includes photographs and short-short films by Robert Zverina, "patterns in living plant matter" by Allison Kudla, and creations by local furniture and lighting designers. Zverina spins vintage 45s at the opening, on a 1960s tube-amp record player. Form/Space Atelier, 2407 First Ave., presents large abstract oil paintings by Shannon Barry, opening Friday, Aug. 8. Barry's brightly-colored workds are inspired by children's drawings.

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Antioch University alum Laurence H. Ebersole reads from his new book Mural Poems: Human Rights and Antiwar Poetry on Thursday, Aug. 7, 4-6 p.m., in Room 100 at Antioch, 2326 6th Ave. The ninth issue of Antioch's student literary magazine Knock is now on sale in the college's bookstore and at knockmagazine.com.

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KIRO-TV celebrated 50 years on the air with a self-congratulatory special on July 26. Among the documentary's topics: the occasion in 1968 when the station (the last of Seattle's "big three" network affiliates to launch) moved out of its original Upper Queen Anne quarters into Broadcast House at Third and Broad, which cohost Steve Raible called "the first complex in Seattle designed specifically for television broadcasting. State of the art, with just one flaw." Longtime "J.P. Patches" sidekick Bob Newman took the story from there: "Everything was good until the first rainfall. The rain came down, and I tell you we had a puddle 28 feet in diameter in the studios."

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On the cover
Belltown Clean and Green