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After decades of failed attempts and almost-but-not-quites, there will be a real supermarket in downtown Seattle.

It'll be an IGA franchise in the lower level of the old Kress variety store at Third and Pike. It will serve the more than 18,000 residents in greater downtown (and the 160,000 who work or visit downtown each weekday). The store is set to open in February.

Greater downtown will also have a hardware store again. City Hardware, an Ace Hardware franchise, holds its grand opening Oct. 19-21 at 901 Harrison St., one block west of Westlake Avenue.

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DiscoverU, "the premier adult and continuing education program in the Seattle metropolitan area," has moved its self-improvement classes from the Northgate neighborhood to 2901 Third Ave.

That's the black building between KIRO-TV and the Pacific Science Center; its street entrance is actually on Second.

An open house will be held at the new location Tuesday, Oct. 16, 6-9 p.m. Management promises "live entertainment, registration discounts, drawings, and complimentary hors d'oeuvres, wine, and beverages."

The for-profit DiscoverU (www.discoveru.org), founded in 1992, offers both credit and non-credit classes. Belltown-related class offerings include "Seattle Food Tours: Belltown & Pike Place Market" and "Secrets Of Belltown: A Dinner Tour."

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Fire Station #2, Seattle's oldest extant firefighting site, will hold an open house on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 6-8 p.m., at 2334 Fourth Ave. More info's at 386-1366 or christina.faine@seattle.gov.

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Another learning institution in Belltown, Mars Hill Graduate School, will hold a preview weekend for prospective students on Nov. 16-17. Registration info's at www.mhgs.edu. Mars Hill Graduate School currently enrolls some 300 students at 2501 Elliott Ave., in what it calls "the study of the Scriptures, the human soul, and the culture." It began in 1997 as a branch campus of Western Seminary. It became an independent entity in 2002. (It's not affiliated with the Ballard-based Mars Hill Church.)

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Get ready to match the stars! Babe of Belltown Productions is mounting a game-show parody, Match Game Belltown ("with your host Richard Rugburn!" and "local celebrities"), Oct. 7 and Nov. 11, 8 p.m., at the Rendezvous. Admission is $5.

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A feature film set in Canada but shot in Seattle? Now that's a switch. And the Northwest Film Forum and Winnipeg director Guy Maddin have made it.

Brand Upon the Brain! has its gala local premiere Oct. 10-11 at the Cinerama, followed by four subsequent nights at NWFF's Capitol Hill quarters. Madden's fictionalized, surrealistic childhood memoir is a "modern silent movie." The Cinerama screenings will include live musicians, sound effects, and narration (by Karen Black at the first screening, by Maddin at the second).

The screenings are part of the Local Sightings Film Festival, running Oct. 4-11 at NWFF, 1515 12th Ave. Full schedules are at nwfilmforum.org.

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Another local film production, a burlesque documentary called A Wink and a Smile, has begun filming in and around Seattle. Director Deirdre Allen Timmons follows ten women learning the recently-repopularized art of exotic dancing.

A "Fabulesque Fundraiser" for the film will occur Tuesday, Oct. 9 at the Heavens nightclub, 172 S. Washington St. The live show, co-curated by veteran impresario The Swedish Housewife, includes live music by Orchestra L'Pow and more than a dozen performers. More info is at goldenechofilms.com.

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My Day Office, a rental space for "the mobile workforce," is now open at 2820 Elliott Ave. It offers open work areas, private individual offices and conference rooms for hourly, daily and weekly rental; mail box and shipping services; and administrative support on a fee or membership basis. More info: 853-9402 or mydayoffice.com.

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Art Beat: "Le Tomb," an exhibit of oil paintings by Jeff Jacobsen, opens Friday, Oct. 5 at Form/Space Atelier, 2407 First Ave. Jacobsen, founder of the "Writers Union" mural collective, promises a look at "the future of the vampire, his royalty and the world he lives in." The show closes with a Halloween-night party; call 349-2509.

Oct. 5 is also the closing night for the group show "Party" at Suite 100 Gallery, 2222 Second Ave. Artists Andrea Heimer, Jonathon Kimbrell and Greg Gossel each offer their own take on "party art," in retro pop-art styles

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Amid widespread speculation over the state of the housing market here and nationwide, two more luxury high-rise residences have been announced for the Second and Virginia intersection. Both towers would rise 40 stories, with street-level retail and below-grade parking. One project would bring 182 residences and a 135-room hotel to the intersection's southwest corner. This project would include demolishing three existing buildings, including the Terminal Sales Building Annex. The other would bring 240 residential units and 7,500 square feet of retail space at the intersection's northwest corner, where the Commodore Hotel used to be.

The projects will be discussed at consecutively scheduled early design guidance meetings on Tuesday, Oct. 9 at Seattle City Hall's Bertha Landes Room, 601 Fifth Ave., at 5:30 and 7 p.m. respectively. Contact Marty Goodman, 799-4071.

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The Seattle-based Runberg Architecture Group recently won one of eight "Show You're Green" awards from the American Institute of Architects for "excellence in affordable green housing."

The winning project, Denny Park Apartments, is a 50-unit, six-story building at 230 Eighth Ave N. Its features, according to Runberg, include "planters that retain storm water, low-maintenance materials with recycled content, energy-saving flourescent lighting and automatic lighting controls, central gas-fired domestic hot water and hydronic heating, and an overall space-efficient design that takes advantage of principles of passive heating and cooling."

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A big sidewalk improvement project for the 2100 block of Third Avenue has hit a snag. The Belltown Housing and Land Use Subcommittee's John Pehrson reports that bids for the sidewalk, street trees, and landscaping for the block's west side came in "unaffordably high." This was in part due to the significant cost increases in Seattle for all construction work, particularly concrete work. The Plymouth Housing Group is going ahead with improvements on its portion of the block, where it's building a three-story mixed-use building. Pehrson says BHLUS is still working with the other two property owners to see if they can do their portions, with available city matching funds, using their regular contractors.

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Pacific Science Center's holding a "Spooky Science Slumber Party" Oct. 26-27. It offers students in grades 2-6 a chance to "discover some of the exciting and mysterious science of the season." Students will be supervised by staff and teachers; no parent chaperones are required. Cost is $50 member, $55 non-member, with a $15 discount for families registering multiple siblings. Call 443-2925 or visit pacificsciencecenter.org. PSC's newest Imax film attraction is Sea Monsters 3D: A Prehistoric Adventure, presented by National Geographic.

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I think it is a bit of both coupled with the Great American Mirage (that bit of the American Dream that never was, or the way we never were but feel it must have been, and so therefore that we are entitled to our slice). The GAM is related to but separate from the American Dream: Owning a home and 2 cars in the suburbs and being able to send two or three kids to college and have a decent nest egg for retirement. This was all possible not too long ago; my parents lived it more or less.

But the GAM came with the Western movies and stories about the frontier. America always had a great "Out There" waiting to be discovered and tamed. The facts always were: Someone was There first (be they Natives or new settlers), and life There was never as easy as it sounds in stories and almost never easier than where ever you left to reach it (if you ever did).

We have the same irrational attachment to our cars that we do to the idea of a detached house. Philosopher and social critic Phillip Wylie once wrote in the late '50s about America's love affair with their automobiles: At the time killing almost 60,000 people on the highways yearly. (In 2003 it was nearly 43,000; better, but still awful in the old foreboding sense of that word.) Wylie said the reason we put up with the car and all of its dangers is that we love the sense of space it gives to us. You feel you own all of the space your car could take you to at this moment. When you get into it, you don't feel trapped in a metal box or a cage (even if you are stuck in a traffic jam). It is as if the illusion has set us truly free (never mind how much you still owe on the car or your home mortgage or other debts).

Wylie was not a fan of overcrowded cities, and compared them to kennels kept by behavioral scientists of the day who were studying social behavior. The kennels were deliberately overpopulated with rat,s who would then exhibit all kinds of antisocial and downright destructive behaviors. Wylie thought the car and the house in the suburbs with the acre of grass was our modern way of coping, if you could afford it. If you couldn't have the house, most people could afford a car. And if you couldn't, you had all the antisocial behavior you could get away with.

If this line of reasoning is even half right, we Americans may need to evolve as a species before we can live comfortably in "ant hives." Europeans have long lived at much closer quarters, and every European who did not like to do so has, over the centuries, moved to the Americas.

Now I do have a question for you Ms. Sanelli. This sentence from your essay has me baffled: "And, really, the answers will crowd together at an internal level for years before anyone agrees on anything."

What did you mean by the answers crowding together? Is this a metaphor for densification of the cities? Does each person have a piece of the answer? Or do we all have different answers that coalesce into one answer?

Did you mean to suggest there is more than one answer? And if so, what is it other than that we must live closer together than we Americans ever did (at least since the post-boom years after WWII), either to benefit our ecology or for developing a real and dependable community that we all can call upon when we need it?

Or have I missed the point entirely?

I look forward to your answer in a future column in the Messenger.

Very truly yours,
Stu Levy

PS: I agree very much with your sentiments here: "Perhaps once you get so used to living somewhere, you cease to see its possibilities. You get distracted by other things, day-to-day things that have you with your head down. No one can hold on to the past. It's a want that is a prideful insularity of its own. And it can become it's own depression. We have to accept our friends and family as they grow, change, hurt our feelings, or make us afraid. Same with a city."