Year in Review: A look back at 2013

THE WAY IT WAS: For Some a Year to Remember, for Some a Year to Forget.

Law: How do you say Early Bird Special in French?

Former real estate mogul Michael Mastro and his wife, on the lam from creditors and United States criminal charges, celebrated a French courts refusal to extradite the pair by going out to dinner. Under the terms of their house arrest, they had been restricted to their apartment quelle horreur! after 6:30 p.m.

Media: As Charles Foster Kane said, I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.

Most people, when they go out to buy a paper, do so with a fistful of quarters. Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos took a billion quarters and bought The Washington Post (along with some smaller suburban publications). If Bezos has a grand scheme for his new area of interest, hes not letting on. His comments to Post staffers included We will need to experiment and Dont be boring. Meanwhile, the Citizen Kane DVD is available at Amazon.com.

Public Policy: And lets be honest.Dont you think Mount Rainier has seen better days?

A committee of the Tacoma Landmarks Commission recommended that the citys 110-year-old commemorative totem pole, originally sponsored by civic boosters to top one in Seattle, be lowered and left to rot away rather than be repaired and restored. Considerable public criticism forced the commission to remove that course of action as an option.

Gaming: Fun in the living room.

Seattle video game developer Valve is introducing a standalone, Linux-based operating system for its popular Steam entertainment platform. But the free Steam OS, described by some as the Android of big-screen video games, could be a game changer the missing link, if you will, between PC gaming and console gaming. Gentlemen, start your sofas.

Baseball: Maybe thats why he lived to such a ripe old age.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, who ran Nintendo for more than 50 years, making it a world leader in video games and a major corporate presence on the Eastside with its United States division based in Redmond, died in September at age 85 never having attended a game played by the baseball team he acquired in 1992 the Seattle Mariners.

Media: Signing Off

Fisher Communications, the last locally owned TV/radio broadcaster in Seattle (it owned KOMO plus 21 other television and three radio stations), succumbed to pressure from investors unhappy over the firms performance and agreed to be acquired by Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group. Staff cuts followed in October.

Telecommunications: Your call is important to us.

Microsoft, fearful of falling even further behind in market share and perceived coolness in the crucial market for smartphone operating systems, agreed to acquire Finnish phone maker Nokia, which has a few challenges of its own, no longer ranking among the worlds top five smartphone manufacturers. The deal is part of Microsofts shift to a devices company; it also added a candidate to the list of potential successors to Steve Ballmer as chief executive, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft exec. Speaking of Ballmer.

Telecommunications: … Itll be nothing like the Zune.

The great and terrible thing about the internet is that it preserves for posterity predictions that cement ones reputation as a sage or an … um, un-sage. Consider, then, this pronouncement from Steve Ballmer in 2007 to USA Today about a certain Apple product. Theres no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. In possibly related news, Ballmer announced in 2013 he is accelerating his timetable for retiring from the company. The iPhones share of the market peaked at 24 percent in 2011, although it has declined since then. Microsofts share is still in the low single digits.

Banking: No more buy a toaster; get a bank.

Its quite a turnaround for from a few years ago when regulators had to pay buyers to take ailing and failed banking institutions off their hands. This year saw a flurry of Washington banks looking to expand territories and add market share. Among the announced deals: Columbia Banking System of Tacoma buying West Coast Bancorp of Lake Oswego, Oregon; Heritage Financial Corp. of Olympia acquiring the parent of Puyallups Valley Bank; a combining of two Bellevue-based single-office banks, Core Business Bank and Puget Sound Bank; HomeStreet Bank adding Fortune Bank of Seattle and Yakima National Bank; Oregons Umpqua Bank acquiring Sterling Financial of Spokane; Washington Federal buying 51 Bank of America branches; and Olympias Heritage Financial merging with Oak Harbors Washington Banking Co.

Aviation: Batteries not included.

At least thats what some airlines were wishing after the lithium-ion batteries on Boeings 787 Dreamliner proved a little too combustible. After at least four 787s caught fire, the aircraft, nicknamed the Firebird by some wags, was grounded for three months while Boeing worked on a fix.

Legalized Marijuana: The new green industry.

Thats the dominant color of the emerging marijuana business in Washington state, and it has nothing to do with the plants appearance. Lured by the prospect of big bucks, investors and entrepreneurs are staking out territory opened by the passage of Initiative 502 last year. Those prospects are attracting national attention. Fortune magazine led a cover story with an anecdote about a presentation to angel investors meeting at the stodgy Washington Athletic Club. But the mad dash to happy-weed cash still faces obstacles. Some cities have put moratoria on writing rules and approving locations for retail outlets. And theres still the matter of banking; most banks, fearful of what regulators will say, wont establish accounts or handle transactions for marijuana businesses.

Football: The art of negotiation.

Note to Russell Wilsons agent: The Seattle Sea-hawks can now afford to pay your client a ton of money. In May, team owner Paul Allen sold Barnett Newmans abstract painting Onement VI for $43.8 million.

Basketball: Sonic boo.

Chris Hansen said all the right things while pledging to bring an NBA team to Seattle, but he looked like just another carpetbagger when he secretly tried to undermine Sacramentos plan for a new arena. Hansen gave $100,000 to a group opposing Sacramentos attempt to keep the Sacramento Kings and was fined $50,000 by a California state commission.

Construction: Irresistible force, meet immovable object.

Bertha, the boring machine thats drilling a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, was lowered into the ground with great fanfare, traveled 24 feet and came to a dead stop. The material that Bertha couldnt chew through? Picket signs, as in those posted as part of an interunion jurisdictional dispute over a handful of jobs.

Transportation: Call me a cab. OK, youre a cab.

Nonregulated ride-sharing services are threatening the status quo in the car-for-hire world. Licensed, regulated cab drivers in Seattle fear theyll be put out of business by the emerging peer-to-peer economy. The new services let people use mobile apps to get rides with private motorists. Rather than paying a fare, Lyft and Sidecar passengers make a donation; riders using Uber pay a fee similar to taxi fares but dont have to tip. Drivers can rate passengers and even get them banned from the programs, so its not all bad news for cabbies.

Services: Moat and drawbridge sold separately.

Bellevue-based Coinstar changed its name to Outerwall to reflect that it is more than a coin-counting company it also owns Redbox, the movie-rental-kiosk company and to signify its intent to push the walls of retailing. Given that its other interests include Rubi coffee dispensers and ecoATM recycling stations for small electronics, Outerwall seems to be perfecting the art of avoiding human interaction entirely.

Software: Give or take a billion.

Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot seemed a tad boastful some years ago when he predicted his firm would be Seattles next billion-dollar company. Turns out Chabot was being modest. After Tableaus initial public offering of stock in May, the per-share price zoomed from $31 to $75, giving the maker of visualization software a market capitalization of more than $4 billion.

Fishing: Scales of justice.

Seattle-based American Seafoods was fined $2.7 million by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for repeatedly under-weighing its pollock catch and thus netting far more fish than its government-mandated quota permits. Reports of scale tampering go back as far as 2007 and involve thousands of metric tons of fish, making this weight-reduction program qualify as The Biggest Loser.

Related Articles

Year in Review: Were No. 1 (and 2, and 3, etc.)

Year in Review: High Fliers

Year in Review: You Say it’s Your Birthday

Year in Review: Exit Signs