With street fashion site Pike/Pine calling it quits back in June, Capitol Hill's fashionable sidewalks haven't gone undocumented thanks to upstart style spy It's My Darlin. With a mix of fashion-focused posts from across Seattle -- and lots of Cap Hill screen time -- IMD can usually inspire you to at least throw a decent sweater on before heading onto the Hill.

To find out more about what catches her eye, CHS sent a few questions to the woman behind IMD, Dana Landon.

Do you live on Capitol Hill?
Yes, I live and work on Capitol Hill.  I love this neighborhood and have a hard time trying to imagine living anywhere else in Seattle.  It is the ideal place for anyone looking to not have a car (I haven't had one for two years now), have easy access to all areas of the city, and be surrounded by amazing food, shops and music.

Why did you start a street fashion blog?
I have been following street style photographers the Sartoralist and Garance Dore for several years and have always had such immense admiration for what they do.  Last year I started It's My Darlin' as a place to document things that I come across online and in Seattle that I like and one day it hit me that there was no reason why I too couldn't do street style photography and include it on the blog. I immediately fell in love with it.

IMD's Dana Landon (Photo: It's My Darlin)

How do you approach somebody you'd like to photograph? Why haven't you asked me? I'm quite fashionable.
It is tricky because we live in a city where you can't walk down the street without being asked for change or if you have a minute to learn about an organization or cause.  I try not to be a pushy or abrasive way in any way and I just approach each person as I would want to be approached myself... politely.  I ask them whether they would mind if I took their photo for my fashion blog and I tell them that the reason I have stopped them is because their outfit is fantastic.  I generally point out a specific part of what they are wearing that caught my eye and I tell them a little about my blog.  Some people are in a hurry so the interaction is very brief and others are interested in what I do and we end up talking for a very long time.  I love meeting all of the different people that I come across in this process.  It never ceases to amaze me how friendly people are once you break that barrier that most of us have when walking down the street with our eyes down and no smiles on our faces.  There is the occasional uninterested party as well.  Although they are generally friendly in declining it always leaves me just a little apprehensive for a while about approaching people.  I am hoping that it is something that eventually won't phase me.    

Why haven't I asked you?  It's all about timing.  Unfortunately, this isn't my day job so there is a very limited time frame in which you will catch me snapping photos on the street.  In my experience doing this I have learned that the best outfits are worn by people who are either talking on their cell phone or in the middle of what looks like a very involved conversation with someone else on the street.  So if you are a fashionable and live on either Capitol Hill or downtown you were probably doing one of these two things when I have seen you. 

How would you describe Capitol Hill's sense of style? What do you like about it? Anything you don't like about it?
The reason I love the style on Capitol Hill is because you can't pinpoint it.  When I am out taking pictures I am looking for outfits that seem to exude personal style rather than what is currently on the runway or in stores.  Capitol Hill is filled with people who wear what feels right to them and they really express themselves through their clothing and accessories.  When I am taking photos of people downtown I oftentimes find out in talking to them that they live on Capitol Hill.  So I think that the sense of expression on Capitol Hill really tends to catch my eye.  An interesting thing I have found is that some of my favorite outfits are worn be people who, when I stop them to get a picture, claim that they genuinely do not think they have any sense of style and are in complete disbelief that I have stopped them.  I don't think that Capitol Hill style makes too much effort to be right on trend and that might be what makes it so great.

As for what I don't like, that is hard to say, but if I had to pick one thing that I really don't like right now it would have to be people using their clothing to advertise for a brand (e.g. Ed Hardy t-shirts or other items with enormous company logos on them).  There is something about this that just goes in the complete opposite direction of personal style for me when I see it on people. Other than that I think just about any style can be pulled off when done right.  I even walked past a man last night drinking coffee in front of Bauhaus who was successfully pulling of Crocs and looking really good doing it.  Anything is possible.

Best current trends you're seeing on the streets?
There has been a recent move in fashion back to shape and fabric.  For a while I felt as though the only time I could find find either of these traits without spending a fortune was going the way of vintage (which I am happy to do) but lately I have been noticing an increase in affordable companies putting out lines that include pieces with creative shapes and higher quality fabrics and in effect it is showing up more often on the streets.  As for specific trends, I can't get enough of the tailored menswear look on women.  Blazers, pants, button up shirts and even mens dress shoes.  On men I have been enjoying the increase in dressing up that I have been seeing lately.  It seems like men are having more fun with this recently.  A bow tie just to grab a cup of coffee or passing up that pair of athletic shoes and throwing on a pair of vintage inspired oxfords to walk the dog.  These are the things that grab my attention and leave me unable to resist stopping an unassuming person to capture their style.

Notice that stressed tone in my typing? I'm on the way to the airport headed back to my NorCal homeland for a few days in Baghdad by the Bay. I'll be three-dotting it around the city -- and trying to run a neighborhood blog remotely. Wish me luck. Don't tag my fence or smash my car window to steal my scratched up CDs.

• Reportedly, you can see Rainier from Cal Anderson park on these cool, crisp February days. Or, at least, Yancy can.
• Anybody a Broadstripe internet access customer? They went bankrupt, turns out. Still operating. We only had about 200 visits from Broadstripe customers in January. About 0.625% of our userbase.
• We got Slogged. Voting got all wacky in the Who should be on the Capitol Hil $1? vote but can't complain that many are celebrating Boe Oddisey. The whole thing is, um, advisory so hopefully the council will consider some fo the, um, feedback if the project goes forward. Probably not going to do a runoff (unless I need an easy item. Item, item, who's got an item?)
• We'd be happy for this...

The party kids over at cap to the hill stepped over the line today, stumbling off their comfortable bar stools just far enough to make a visit to Broadway's Museum of Mysteries, and worse, writing about it.

This is against the rules. Quirky neighborhood discoveries are our beat. My only choice is to fight back. Thursday night is cap to the hill's happy hour at Moe Bar from 5p-8p. I'll be there at straight up 5 geekin it up and making c to the h sorry they ever walked outside the friendly confines of Pike Pine. Join me. Let's teach these brats a lesson.

Also, I want to talk with c to the h about their liberal stance on graffiti and tagging -- look what it's done to my child.

Often when the weather is cold and icy, Aloha hill between 18th and 19th avenues east becomes a slippery, dangerous mess. But with today's impressive snowfall, Aloha hill turned into a winter playground.

Come along for a ride:

We ran into Seattlest's MvB -- not literally though we were aiming for him -- and he took a lot of pictures and video so expecting an Aloha post out of him too. Tag team coverage of the Hill's best -- and safest with no parked cars -- street hills to play on. You can see MvB's snowy photography technique in the last image in set below:

You can also watch Mr. Slow Poke MvB poke slowly down the hill here

And this, btw, is what Aloha looks like normally.

View Larger Map

snow in seattle [:
Originally uploaded by Shawna Scott

As we await the next round of snow on the Hill, here's a look at how a few other Capitol Hill blogs have been spending their icy days since the last flakes fell.

• Miller Park has a cool (cold?) look back at the snowstorm of 1990 when a foot of snow got dumped on the city. Best part is the 'pancake brigade' that was formed by neighbors to feed the schoolkids stuck at Meany.
• Blogazar has pictures and musings on icy Capitol Hill. Why do people like writing in the snow?
• cap to the hill tries to warm things up with some (NSFW) promises.
• Central District News has a neat map of the steep (and therefore bad for icy driving) streets in their neighborhoods. No Capitol Hill edition yet but maybe next storm!
• Hillku suggests staying closer to home for your holiday activities but if you are going for a long walk, you might want to put these on.

seriously Originally uploaded
by Matt Westervelt

Here's a smattering of Hill-related stuff we found bouncing around the Internet. Miss anything?

• Neumo's as a house of worship? Stranger notes possible conflict between Hill culture, nightclub church.
• Capitol Hill Triangle highlights two of its favorites Hill sandwich places.
• Tonight, a Capitol Hill tasting of wine made in industrial South Seattle.
• cap to the hill announce a new content initiative. We say never depend on children. Can't be trusted.
• So, McGilvra Place "pocket park"? Capitol Hill, Central District or First Hill? Want it?
• Congrats to the Capitol Hill Community Council for securing its new semi-permanent home at the shelter house in Cal Anderson Park. Meeting tonight -- and every third Thursday of the month -- from 7p to 9p.

cap to the hill's white on black

We're proud of cap to the hill -- they set out to have a different voice on the Hill and tell the stories from some of the slices of life we miss here on CHS. We've supported them from the beginning. They call us momma.

If only all Hill neighbors looked like this

Now that they're all growed up and a big blog, they can mother Hill blogs of their own. Recently, they welcomed Capitol Hillebrities to the spotlight. Now, we don't know Capitol Hillebrities -- and we really only just recently met cap to the hill. But here's a toast to more stories of the Hill on teh Internets -- even if the stories look way more glossy and beautiful than my neighbors (sorry neighbors, but it's true).

Like we said in the headline, we have a gift for the new site. Having worked in the "online space" for a decade, we're a little Web tech obsessed. So checked out whether the domains capitolhillebrities.com and hillebrities.com are available. They are -- or, they were. We snapped them up before the forces of...

Any neighbor can post on this site. While only the best stuff gets promoted to the CHS Homepage, everything appears on the CHS Posts page.

Why contribute a great post to Capitol Hill Seattle?

1. We've had more than 10k people participate in the site in the last 30 days so it's a good way to get the word out to people who care about Capitol Hill.
2. It's easy. Just create an account and go to our Create Page.
3. It's an opportunity to share what you think and promote the stuff you like best about Capitol Hill.
4. We spread the wealth.

If you're willing to jump in with both feet, consider joining the CHS Revenue Sharing Program. We're open to all -- young journalists in training, struggling writers, folks looking to have their lattes subsidized by the Internet, etc. The more your posts are read, the more you make. The more you make, the better you feel. So make CHS posts with, um, every meal.

If you are interested in joining:

1. Sign up for a CHS account and make at least three posts
2. Send us a mail with your CHS username and any other...

One of my favorite things about working on this site is taking geek technology and using it in the neighborhood. The best tools bust out of the tech blogs and nerd sites and become useful. With that as intro, here's your invitation to follow me on Twitter.

Many (most?) of you dear neighbors are already Twitter savvy. You are geeks. The rest of you -- yes, the same ones who decided to join Facebook to friend this blog and are still wondering why -- should take the leap too.

Here's how I use Twitter and why you might be interested:

• I promote my favorite CHS posts there. Probably less interesting for you because you sit there and refresh our homepage all day. But useful for others perhaps.
• I tweet valuable information that doesn't always make it into a post on the site.
• I ask questions, gather feedback and talk about what I'm working on.
• I watch everybody else's Twitter actions to find out what is happening around Capitol Hill.

So please consider adding me to your Twitter club and I'll surely add you -- it's a great way...

Tuesday night, I was living the neighborhood blogger dream. I was covering a celebration that will be remembered in this city for a very long time -- and it was all happening in the heart of the neighborhood I write about every day. I broadcasted pictures. I captured video. And I was worried the entire night.

I wasn't freaked out by the raucous crowd or even worried that the Shell station's gas pumps still seemed to be operational. I was worried that my journalism was going to turn into evidence.

Obama famous

Obamanonymous

What would have happened had Obama Day not been so joyous? What if the crowd had done what crowds have been known to do and turned angry and destructive? For every person dancing in the streets, there was a phone cam screen glowing somewhere in the nearby crowd. And there I was taking pictures of everything and everybody.

What this neighborhood blogger wanted that night and every time I am out taking pictures of my neighbors is a way to record but let you all be. Give me technology in every...

Enjoy Hill blog-related happy hours from one end of Capitol Hill to the other tonight.

• Join the East Precinct police scanner report slingers in celebrating the first birthday of Central District News tonight from 5:30p to 8p at the BottleNeck. Congratulations to our Neighborlogs.com cousin! You can also enjoy this CNN article featuring CDN's Scott and then tease him a little bit about it tonight. The BottleNeck, if you haven't visited before, is located at 2328 Madison and, thanks, is a CHS sponsor.
• Meanwhile, those go-go kids over at cap to the hill are hosting tonight's c-to-the-h happy hour(s) at Moe Bar. Why should you go? If you like sites like cap to the hill, you gotta take care of them like little goldfishes and feed them what they thrive on -- attention.
• Bonus item: Blog types, mark your calendars for Monday night, Nov. 17th for Blogsgiving 2008.

Have fun putting the attend in attention. See you out there hopefully.

Want the real scoop on the Barbarella-Obama mural transmogrification? The artist has a blog with details about the reaction she's received from the neighborhood and what's she's learned about the tagger who broke a few rules of the tagger creed.

he is what we refer to as a "toy" and that was a definit toy move…That kid has no can control, he writes for a whack crew that gets no love in seattle and doesnt even existed outside the 206 like the better more prolific crews that have cells here.

I'm trying really hard to be supportive of this -- a new police blotter blog from Seattle Police Department.

On one hand, any effort by SPD to make news and information available via the Internet should be applauded. On the other, looks like the blotter will be mainly a rundown of the good guys getting the bad guys. Neighbors will need more efforts like this to keep track of the straight scoop.

Everything about Capitolhillseattle.com is an experiment. It's a freak among freaks -- a neighborhood blog written by a loose confederacy of neighbors. We test a lot of things. Here's one test that did not pan out:

Sorry, anonymous, you'll need to register -- 8/6/08

Requiring registration to leave a comment is something we also did back in the Blogger days when the site was smaller but it didn't have as much impact as it did in the real world. This summer, we didn't go to zero on comments when we made the change. And we didn't get (too many) weird troll posts.

But we lost the drive-by comments.

Like this.

And this.

And comments -- be they from registered or not -- are one of the main things that attracts the mass of you who experience this site via RSS to actually click over and check out all the goodies on the Web site. And that's good for the site. And the business.

So, we're changing the experiment. Comments are open to all now. You can register and develop a voice and reputation. Or you can just cruise through...

Insert pithy introduction line here.

• Seattle blogger planning to open beer garden in Cal Anderson.
• Cap to the hill develops a blog crush on Hill street and party fashion site Discofunbath.
• I Heart Rummage returns this weekend. Special guest star: The Greenwood Space Travel Company
• Birth, a play about "eight powerful women giving birth today", opens at the Broadway Performance Hall.
• Slog has more details about the victim in this week's gas station fire.

Photo by: Roselle Kingsbury

Today's link fest has only one theme -- Capitol Hill:

• The oldest house in the city is on Capitol Hill.
• DOT responds to Car Free towing: "We don't want to create negative problem for the neighborhood, and that was an unfortunate consequence."
• Daily Candy tells you where to find the height of sartorial treatment on Capitol Hill.
• Wet, crappy weather means death from above. That tree was aiming for you.
• Press release for creation of a Capitol Hill Barrio.
• We all missed Sounds Outside last weekend. Except for Capitol Hill Triangle.
• My hobbies increase. More about this soon.

More about the Car Free breakdown and a few other links of note this autumn-like August morning.

• A 14th Ave E. neighbor speaks out on the Car Free debacle: "How much cooler would the whole thing have been if someone had organized a street-wide garage sale, a group jam session, or a scooter rally. Now that would have been cool, and all of those events could have happened at the same time on the same street to great success." FYI, the Capitol Hill Community Council talked to an organizer about this event way back in July but didn't hear back from her until a week ago with a mass e-mail looking for volunteers.
• PDX blogger gets high and mighty about Capitol Hill's yuppification by pointing squarely at Bimbo's: "Its new location, sans the lucha libre stain-gassed windows and south-of-the-border brick-a-brak, could easily pass for a martini bar."
• Blogging Georgetown notes upcoming neighborhood blog forum hosted by mainstream media blogger.
• The stories behind some of the neighborhood street art you've probably seen.
• And,...

You may have noticed the row of stars and the report abuse link at the top of every post on Capitolhillseattle.com. On lots of sites, those kinds of tools are little more than eye candy and silly decoration.

But on CHS, the features actually do something so watch where you are pointing that thing!

• Report Abuse: This link gives you and the CHS community the ability to work together to keep the site content appropriate and the type of material you want to experience. If we get enough abuse reports on a post and other positive factors aren't there to counterbalance the flags, the content is automagically removed from the site. This works for inappropriate comments, too. Please use your power with discretion -- don't want this place to become a one-note agree-athon but it's good to know you have the tool when particularly distasteful material comes along. To date, btw, nothing has been automatically flagged of this site. I'd love it to stay that way.
• Rating Stars: This feature is a little less concrete in purpose. You...

Curious as to how we make all this magic happen? I bet you are given how magical it is. Here are the tools powering CHS Capitolhillseattle.com's headquarters -- I'll let the other contributors sound off on what tech they're putting into play.

• Laptop: Panasonic Toughbook CF-W4. That's right. It's tough.
• OS: Vista Ultimate. Thanks Microsoftie neighbor for the company pricing!
• Browser: Firefox 3.0.1
• Fancy phone: Nokia E-70. Don't buy it. Sucks. Keyboard rows YUIOP and NM<>? stopped working months ago. Tired of paying $75 to outsourced hardware support company.
• Dishwasher: Asko D1716. Gets em clean.
• Analytics: Google Analytics for hardcore, Clicky for day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.
• RSS: Feedburner, of course.
• Neighborhood Blogging Platform: Neighborlogs, of course.
• Advertising, inbound: Google Adwords. Don't click on it. Costs us a nickel when you do that. Stop.
• Advertising, outbound (where we make the big, big, big money): Adsense, Project Wonderful, and our own amazing Neighborlog system.
• Ice cream maker: Cuisinart...

Starting tonight, you will need a user account to leave a comment on the site. Yes, the days of 'anonymous' comments are over. If you don't have one already, sign up for your Capitolhillseattle.com user account here (btw, you might need to check your junk mail for the confirmation e-mail -- gmail, in particular, hasn't been friendly to our sign-up process). 170 of you already have. Thanks for being part of the neighborhood.

So, why the change? For the first few months, we didn't require registration to leave a comment on this site because that's the way Central District News has been running their site. To post a story or a picture, you need a user account but to weigh in on the topics at hand, all you need to do is enter a name and e-mail address and, ta-dah, you can add your $0.02 to the conversation.

There are benefits to this arrangement. For one, the site gets more comments because it's easy for anybody to contribute. And we do have a lot of quality additions to the site's information from people who haven'...

I'm a big fan of neighborhood blogs. I was lucky enough to work on a project to help develop sites in every neighborhood in the country. That project ended but the buzz is still there -- this is an exciting time for local, community-driven journalism and activism. The most amazing elements are independent and homegrown. For the most part, they are unaffiliated with large, corporate entities. Some are businesses. Some are run by nonprofit organizations. Some are simple but productive hobbies.

Below, I've listed the Seattle place blogs that best represent this latest generation of community journalism. As a rule, I've tried to only include independent efforts -- so, the Seattle PI's blogs aren't in the list despite a few ongoing, quality efforts. For the most part, I've also included only sites with a multi-month track record of consistent posting. I've focused on sites that are updated regularly and are, for all intents and purposes, logs of the neighborhood's days.

These, basically, are blogs. But a few shows signs...

As online search more and more defines the way we learn about our world and Google more and more defines search, being the first result for a Google search defines success/fail for a web site. For a neighborhood blog, this means earning the top slot for the neighborhood's key keyword. It's an honor. And it's good for bidness.

So it hurts to announce we are giving up our top slot for capitol hill seattle. Go ahead. Search for it. We're gone. We were #1 for over a year. And now we're #30. Page 3.

So, why give up this power, this mark that we were the most useful result for human beings looking to learn about this Seattle neighborhood?

It's the price we pay for our new independence. For our first two years of existence, CHS lived on Google's Blogger platform. It was a good home but we didn't, to continue the metaphor, own the land. It was Google's URL. If we want to own our destiny completely, we needed to be re-born as Capitolhillseattle.com. So we made the break. And here we are.

Problem was Google was very attached...

It would be ridiculous for this little site to declare The Stranger's online behemoth, The Slog, dead. But some part of what we once called Seattle's best blog definitely bit the big one last week -- and it happened right here on Capitol Hill.

On Friday, Slogger Lindy West posted this photo of a remarkable patron visiting Liberty. The post was a typical Slog job, setting the Segway man up for ridicule. The Slog comment crowd, as usual, went for it: I wonder, if the bartender were to - as one might expect he would do - punch this person in the face repeatedly, would he just keeping popping up for more like a Weeble? Because I would love to see that.

Typical Slog stuff, really. But this time, the nastiness got shoved right back in our Slog-loving faces. Out of the comment cesspool, came the actual story:

i met this guy at cal anderson park a few weeks ago while i was with a quadraplegic friend who uses a wheelchair that untilizes the same technology as this man’s segway. i also thought this man a lazy fool until...

I'm not the biggest fan of Seattle Bubble, the naysaying blog that portends doom and gloom for the Seattle real estate market. I don't really believe in things like bubbles and the apocalypse. But when the Bubble compliments our site, well, I can get behind that! The Bubble hits the mark in this post about neighborhood blogging and why big business -- especially the real estate business -- will have a difficult time cracking the space. Here is the Bubble's comparison of CHS and the latest entrant in the neighorhood blog network field, Localism:

Capitol Hill Seattle
On the Capitol Hill Seattle front page, you’ll find twenty-five posts covering a host of local issues, all posted in the last five days. I’m seeing stories about local restaurants, neighborhood events, code changes, crime, and more. They’ve also got it split up even further to where you can filter the posts by seven different even more specific parts of Capitol Hill. Of course, they also have forums, and they’ve got a nifty little Google Maps application...

Placeblogs are fragile beasts. Focused on limited geography, they require endless creativity (as you have surely noticed reading CHS) and time to create for the sake of creating. Because of this fragility, it's important to show your support for placeblogs you like.

We like cap to the hill because it brings a big chunk of Capitol Hill culture to life on the Internet -- a big chunk of hipster nightlife cool kidism. Unfortunately, we've only seen two posts from c to the h in June and fear it may soon fade into placeblog oblivion. So, let's do the Tinker Bell thing and shout we believe in cool kid placeblogs! Or something like that. A good placeblog is precious. Don't let it die.