In this week's paper, Queer Youth Space gets its cash!

Look at these queer kids. They're earnest and smart—so earnest and so smart that you'd give them lots of the city's cash to start a clubhouse and community center for queer youth, right?

The city's Department of Neighborhoods thought so, too, and awarded them $100,000 on June 16 to open a "queer youth space" on Capitol Hill. ...

But after the excitement of getting a grant ebbs, the group must do what few have managed to do successfully in Seattle: operate a social-service organization for gay people.

We toast to the 300th anniversary collapse of gay pride!

The annual angst production from this festival—which in the last few years has been broke, sued by the city, and riven by dissent about everything from parade routes to beer-garden locations—always seems to exceed everyone's expectations. ...

"There were some of the more genderqueer elements of the community that wanted a more socialist/communist theme, based on what I could figure out," said Jon Mejia, a former board member for Seattle Out and Proud (SOAP), the group that organizes the downtown parade.

And we take an overdue look at lesbian meth heads!

"There's been virtually no research done on female meth abusers," says Susan Millender, Women OUT's project manager, who adds that the outreach is badly overdue in the LBTQ community. "What little research there is shows that lesbians are at a higher risk than straight women, and there's been no support in place."

Plus don't miss our (slightly) less gay news: How a dog barking almost leads to a stabbing, the council grows a (little tiny) spine on the tunnel, initiatives are pouring in, neighbors stage an intervention with a cop in Georgetown, neighbors are pissed about crime in Belltown, mayor puts more cops on the streets about town, the SPD has a fancy new crime map, group denounces booze initiative, and the mayor refuses to re-open the search for a police chief. Please drink responsibly.