I'm not sure a rundown of my weekend calendar is all that interesting, but this was a fun and inspiring weekend of events

Friday I helped out with Friday Feast courtesy of Roots, the young adult shelter in the University District. Friday Feast, in its 12th year of providing a hot meal every Friday night of the year, is open to anyone regardless of age, and an unfortunately long stream of people made their way through the line Friday night for meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes and salad. A great crew of volunteers joins Chef Colin to put together the meal and serve. Friday evening was sunny out, and it was hot in the kitchen near the stoves in the basement of the University Temple United Methodist Church. I think many of us don't think about homeless issues in the summer. Maybe the idea of people sleeping in doorways doesn't hit us as hard when the overnight lows are in the 50s. Maybe we assume fewer people need shelter. Unfortunately, Roots reports an upswing this summer in the number of people seeking shelter at night. Last week they had a night where they reached their capacity of 25 people and turned away 12 more.

Special thanks to Matt Fox, deputy director at Roots and former legislative aide to the late Charlie Chong, for letting me help out.

Saturday I swung through Rainier Beach's Summerfest and Back2School Bash at Beer Sheva Park. Parents and kids talked with reps from area schools and picked up free school supplies. Rainier Beach has had some bad incidents this summer, but Summerfest was a good reminder that a lot of things are going right. The new fence and check-in shack at Lake Washington Apartments look to be in place. Renovation construction is under way at The New School at Rainier and Henderson. A number of residents, businesses and City staff have banded together for the 4-S project (Safer Streets for South Seattle) dedicated to systematically cleaning up and improving the safety of neglected parts of south Rainier Valley.

After that, I made it up to Queen Anne for the grand reopening of their branch library after a major renovation (courtesy of the voter-approved Libraries for All bond). Queen Anne's branch is a great, classic brick box with a slate roof. Library openings are pretty much the coolest thing I get to attend as a councilmember. Everyone is happy, a great new or refurbished building fills with excited kids and adults, and there's a Cajun band and the oddly tall book fairy. It's even cool when patrons catch me by the arm and tell me how badly we need to increase the budget for buying books, magazines, on-line database services, compact discs, etc.

Sunday night wrapped up the weekend with the "Incredible Feast -- Where the Farmers Are the Stars," an event organized by Tamara Murphy of Brasa Restaurant in cooperation with the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance to benefit a disaster relief fund for local farmers. Small farms typically have a pretty thin operating margin. The boom in the popularity of shopping at farmers markets helps build demand for produce from small farms (thereby prompting more acres in cultivation), but even with the boom, frost or flooding at the wrong time can wipe out a farm. This was another great August evening made fantastic by food produced from pairings of local chefs with a particular local farm.

Farmers markets in most parts of the city will continue into October. I'm at work helping to figure out how we relocate a couple of markets that will have to move from their current locations. My Economic Development & Neighborhoods Committee will get an update on the City's efforts to help out with this relocation at our next committee meeting Thursday, Sept. 6.

I've received quite a few emails from people applauding my support for not letting the Sonics/Storm ownership bail from Key Arena before the current lease expires in 2010. Whether you're a basketball fan or not (and I am, though probably in the middle of the 1-10 fervor scale), it makes sense to:

a) keep the primary tenant at Key Arena in place as long as possible in order to keep the debt payment structure from crumbling and falling entirely on the City, and

b) buy a little time in order to give people a chance to make something work in Seattle at an appropriate cost to tax payers.

Of course, everyone has a different take on that "appropriate cost" part. According to voter-approved Initiative 91 any City investment has to make back the equivalent of the return on a 30-year U.S. Treasury Bond (that would be 4.88 percent today). So, I don't think love in Seattle is completely off the table, if the Sonics/Storm ownership really want love in Seattle. And, despite what that minority owner in Oklahoma says, I have no reason to doubt that the owners are smart business people looking to stay in a great media market with great fans.

Last weekend's Seattle Times included a troubling front-page piece about the wage levels accompanying Puget Sound's recession recovery. Unlike in previous recoveries we're seeing neither the previous high level of rehiring in high-wage industries (like aerospace) or high levels of new hiring in high wage sectors (like tech). Instead the most in-demand jobs behind nursing (a great high wage niche) are cashiers, farmworkers and retail salespeople, all paying a median wage of $8. That doesn't rent much -- and it certainly won't buy anything -- in the Seattle housing market without government subsidy or serious house sharing.

The Times story uses figures from Penn State's Poverty in America project for its definition of a living wage. The living wage clocks in at $832 a week or $43,264 a year for a family of two adults and two kids. Of jobs created in Washington between 2002 and 2006 almost 70 percent offered weekly pay under $832. This doesn't bode well for too many people seeking to build a life here. Yet more reason for Seattle to support job training that moves people up the income chain.

Intiman Theater's current production of "Prayer for My Enemy" adds to the long list of reasons that Intiman is such a core contributor to Seattle's reputation for thoughtful, contemporary, challenging (in a good way) theater. The Craig Lucas play brings you into a family and their friends struggling with sexuality, expectations, the Iraq war, illness, and the Yankees. "Prayer for My Enemy" is really good and you should go see it.

I have to admit I am surprised and happy (I think) that we're back considering the same idea I proposed in early June for a limited nightlife license. I still think the City needs a limited tool to employ when a club proves its not capable of keeping patrons and staff safe. However, throughout the debate, I've never counted four other councilmembers in support of the idea. Councilmember Drago has been supportive of the idea all along. We've been joined recently by Councilmember David Della. Based on this tiny ripple of momentum, Councilmember Drago has requested that staff work up the idea into draft legislation. The idea at this point: places that serve alcohol after 10 p.m. and that can handle 200 people or more (per their official occupancy) would need a "nightlife license." You'd pay a couple of hundred dollars annually and you'd have to commit to doing the best you can to prevent violent crimes (assaults, fights, etc.) from happening on your property. If events on your property indicate you can't do that, then the City could give you an initial warning and then, if more violence occurs, suspend your license. If you can't keep people safe after that, the City could revoke your license. The idea is that you would have a strengthened Nightlife Commission to review and make recommendations on possible suspensions and revocations.

What does suspend or revoke mean for the business? How many businesses would be covered under this criteria? How many Councilmembers are truly interested in going this direction? That's what the Economic Development & Neighborhood Committee will discuss August 16. That's an evening meeting, 6 p.m., at High Point Community Center.