The Stranger is generally pro six-story residential buildings. We don't like ugly ones, or proposed ones that take out a city block and then aren't built, but we did fight to raise height restrictions on Broadway.

Seattle Police have shut down an underground bar and blues club being run out of a house in Maple Leaf.

On February 28th, Police stopped by a house in the 7600 block of 5th ave NE after receiving reports about an unlicensed bar. According to a police report, officers found a group of about 25 men and women drinking. "The group was well behaved and none displayed signs of obvious intoxication," the report says.

Police contacted a 20-year-old man who was pouring drinks and asked him if he was running the operation for profit. The man told police he'd been running the bar for a few months with his roommates but was only doing it so he could practice his bartending skills.

"It wasn’t really about the money at all," says 20-year-old Nick. "People would donate their own liquor. Adults would bring their own liquor and I would make drinks."

Nick says he's been fascinated by bartending ever since he worked as a server at the Spaghetti Factory a few years ago and began pouring drinks at house parties in January, which often featured live blues bands or DJs spinning old blues albums on vinyl. It’s not something where I’m trying to get people wasted or get minors drunk," Nick says, adding that his specialty drink is the Bluesnick, a mixture of dark rum, pineapple, cranberry and grapefruit juices with a splash of 151.

Following the police bust, officers made Nick pour out 12 bottles of liquor but he says he hasn't received notification about any charges. "I’m an eagle scout, I’m not trying to do anything wrong," Nick says. "[The officers] said the court just might drop it, which is what I’m hoping for."

According to Washington State Liquor Control spokeswoman Anne Radford, the penalty for selling liquor without a license is $5,000 fine and/or a year in jail.

From the department of “man bites dog,” we bring you the story of a woman apparently using excessive force on police. She has called 911 “once or twice every night” for the past 21 months to complain about noise coming from Neighbours, a gay dance club that has operated on Broadway since the early 1980s. Her calls began in June 2007, when she moved into a low-income, partially subsidized apartment building at East Pine Street and Broadway, on the same block as the dance club. The most recent complaint on record, made at 2 a.m. last Friday night, summoned the police.

The responding officer notes in a report that the woman “calls nightly to complain about music from this club…. She is the only person who calls to complain. She has told officers in the past that she wants to close this club down and will call as many times as it takes to accomplish this.”

The woman, a 56-year-old retired nurse who asked not to be named, denies that she is trying to shut down the club. “I would call the police once or twice every night,” she confirms, sitting in her one-bedroom apartment, which looks south onto the roof of Neighbours and toward First Hill. It smells strongly of her two medium-sized dogs. “I’m an old rock ‘n roll queen from way back when, and if it was just music I was hearing, it would be fine,” she says. “But what we hear is bass and bass only. And it has been so loud in the past that the windows rattle.” She says drunken throngs in the alley are also noisy.

As a solution, the woman proposes that Neighbours close by 2 a.m. (the dance club is open until 3 a.m. on Thursdays and until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays). She also thinks club security should usher people in the alley down to Pike Street, away from her building.

The woman acknowledges that police resources are limited, but says that police asked her to call 911 to deal with "noise, prostitutions or drug dealing," she says.

John Kmetz, who has managed Neighbours’ sound and lighting system for the past 15 years, says that the club tried to address noise concerns in mid-January by installing sound insulation on the ceiling, covering skylights, and capping the sound system’s volume. “This place has been here for 27 years and she just moved in here,” he says. “I think she shouldn’t be complaining."

“Clearly the noise ordinance is not in effect or else the city would be fining Neighbours $1000 a week,” the woman says.

But the city noise ordinance, which passed in December 2007, only penalizes bars and clubs amplifying noise that is "plainly audible" from inside nearby buildings. However, the police report from last Friday says, “There was not enough noise coming from the club for a violation.” The officer adds: “I could faintly hear the sound of music coming from far off but I could not determine if it was coming from the club. Passing vehicular and pedestrian traffic was much louder.”

Lashunda Perez, a resident of the building, says, “When I moved in, they told me that it gets loud on the weekends. It’s not very disturbing to me.”

This year's crowded city council races are expected to get more crowded still. What that means—in a year when donors aren't giving to city races, or are giving less, because of the economy—is that most of the money that is out there is going to go to just a few people, leaving the remaining candidates to pick up the crumbs.

It's early yet, so this isn't gospel, but the candidates I expect to see raise serious cash—based on their name recognition, endorsements, and fundraising so far—are attorney Sally Bagshaw, son-of-Charley Jordan Royer, low-income advocate/organizer David Bloom, and Sierra Club leader Mike O'Brien. Bagshaw and Royer have both been in and around city politics for a long time; Bloom will be able to muster support from the Nick Licata crowd (much more so, obviously, if Licata changes his mind and decides not to run for reelection), and O'Brien is a powerhouse of the environmental community. All have shown an ability to raise a lot of money quickly, and all—save Royer and Bagshaw, who are running for different seats—are pulling on very different funding pools.

For example, digging into the campaign-finance reports and endorsement lists, Bagshaw's contributors (she's raised $6,300) and endorsers include a lot of old-school Seattle politico types — folks like former Seattle mayor Wes Uhlman (who maxed out at $700), former city council member Sue Donaldson (who gave $200) and numerous current elected officials, including County Council members Dow Constantine and Julia Patterson and state representatives Scott White and Jamie Pedersen. In contrast, Bloom's list (he's raised $16,836) includes housing and social-justice types like community activist Cindy Domingo (who gave $100), Bloom's Seattle Displacement Coalition co-founder, John Fox ($150), longtime downtown social worker Joe Martin ($200), former Seattle HUD director Bob Santos ($200) and Trinity United Methodist Church pastor and Tent City advocate Rich Lang ($250). Meanwhile, although O'Brien's list of financial supporters remains brief, it includes Northwest Energy Coalition director Sara Patton ($100) and Vulcan VP Chris Purcell ($375). And Royer's, like Bagshaw's, (he's raised $8,190) includes old-Seattle political types like former mayor Paul Schell ($200), ex-City Light chief Gary Zarker ($150), and, of course, Royer's father ($700). Of those four, Bagshaw's the only one in the red, with a deficit of about $15,000.

Of course, it's way too early to count anyone out. James Donaldson—whose campaign name, "TEAM Donaldson," stands for "Together Each Achieves More"—has pulled in $14,000 for his campaign for either city council or mayor, much of it from companies like Port Blakely Tree Farms, Windermere Real Estate, and insurance company Tyrisco, Inc. However, he's spent more than that, leaving him with a $1,000 deficit. Jessie Israel—one of only two women, including Bagshaw, running for council so far—has pulled in just over $6,400, with about $1,000 on hand. The remaining candidates, excepting incumbents, have all raised less than $5,000—except for third-time candidate Robert Rosencrantz, who gave himself $10,000 but is nearly $20,000 in the hole, thanks in part to a $5,000 (!) expenditure to speech coach Michael Shadow.

The next batch of campaign finance reports come out March 10.