Last November, a film crew set up in downtown Tacoma with its subject – an unidentified car – shrouded in a tight-fitting car cover. When the crew got ready to film, its security crew shooed off anyone with a camera and yelled, "No pictures!"

Local blogger Kevin Freitas managed to get some photographs.

I don't know why the film crew worried about it. Who can afford to buy a car these days anyway? But if you have watched any NFL football playoffs, you may have seen the unveiling of the Toyota Venza. Thanks to Julie Pisto at the Museum of Glass for bringing this to our attention.

Here's a peek at the YouTube version of the television commercial. Do you recognize any of those architectural treasures in the background?

The Associated Press reports that Starbucks Corp. is asking its customers to volunteer as part of an initiative timed to coincide with President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Here's the rest of the AP story:

Customers who fill out a pledge card to give five hours of time to a local “volunteer opportunity” of their choice will receive a free tall brewed coffee beginning Jan. 21 through Jan. 25. Customers can pick up pledge cards inside stores.

The initiative comes as Obama, who called during his presidential campaign for a renewed commitment to community service, is sworn in to the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Starbucks said it is partnering with HandsOn Network, a nonprofit organization that attempts to bolster volunteerism, for the program. Starbucks said it hopes to raise pledges for more than one million hours of service through the campaign, called “I’m In.”

Starbucks is not alone in commemorating next week’s inauguration with special initiatives and offers. Starbucks competitor Dunkin’ Donuts said Tuesday it will celebrate the event by selling a new “Stars & Stripes” doughnut for 89 cents from Saturday through Tuesday. The frosted doughnut is decorated with red, white and blue star-shaped sprinkles.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc., meanwhile, is giving away a free doughnut of choice to every customer on Tuesday.

Among the areas we’ll be covering this year, the business team will be reporting on the state of small businesses in the South Sound.

First off, we’d like to report some of the challenges of financing. If you’re a small business owner, or if you know of a small business in the South Sound that is having trouble finding adequate financing, please let us know.

And if the business is doing well, we’d also like to know that so we can pass the information on to other business owners. What successful tips can your business offer to others?

We’d like to know what you’ve found on your own road to success. What resources are available? Where can a business find financing in troubled times? What’s the best way for a business to address short-term financing needs?

Please reply with a comment, or send an e-mail to c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com.

Thanks. It’s going to be an interesting year.

Gas prices after dropping to as low as $1.49 a gallon here in December, could top $2 a gallon here this week.

The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas in Tacoma stood at $1.995 this morning according to TacomaGasPrices.com.

Upward momentum should raise the price over $2 a gallon today or Thursday.

Gas prices, after a two-month slide, began rising again in mid-December.

The price a month ago here was nearly 31 cents less than it is now.

Relatively inexpensive gas is still available at multiple stations in the area. Most of those low prices are at Costco stores or ARCO stations. Low price this morning was $1.81 at the Costco store near the Tacoma Mall.

Though prices have moved upward, the price still remains far below the $3.055 a gallon at this time last year or the $4.35 a gallon we saw in mid-July.

Seattle port commissioners have approved the beginning of design work on a centralized air conditioning and heating system for planes at the gate that is expected to save airlines thousands of gallons of fuel.

The system would provide heated or cooled air to which planes could hook up at the gate. Most aircraft now operate their auxiliary power units, small gas turbines in the plane's tail, to provide heating and cooling at the gate.

The new system would also eliminate that emissions from those power units to the tune of 69,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The project is expected to cost just over $33 million, the airport said. Much of that cost will be paid by a Federal Aviation Administration grant.

Design work on the system is expected to be completed by early next year with construction starting in July 2010. The system is scheduled to be operational in December 2012.

Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain wants Congress to abolish a law that limits flights from two East Coast airports, New York's LaGuardia and Washington's Reagan National, to distant destinations.

The rule limits flights from National with limited exceptions to cities 1,250 miles away or less. The maximum for LaGuardia in 1,500 miles.

The rules were enacted to control traffic at the two crowded airports and to concentrate long-haul traffic at the two cities' other airports, Dulles in Washington and JFK and Newark in New York.

SeaTac's Alaska Airlines, which has won some of the limited exceptions to the perimeter rule at National for flights from there to Sea-Tac Airport and Los Angeles, is likely to oppose its removal.

The removal of restrictions at LaGuardia could open up the market for flights from there to Sea-Tac.

The New York airport, the closest of the area's three airports to Manhattan, is particularly hard hit by too much traffic from closer cities. That airport also has relatively short runways posing potential range issues for planes taking off from there on hot days when takeoffs require more runway length.

Airbus today began construction on a new plant in Toulouse, France, where its new A350XWB aircraft will be built.

The A350XWB is Airbus' answer to Boeing's revolutionary 787.

The first A350XWB is expected to be delivered in 2013.

Under Boeing's original schedule, commercial deliveries of the 787 were to have begun last May, but the company now says the first delivery will be sometime in the first half of next year.

The first test 787 has yet to fly.

For more information on the new Airbus plant check out the A350XWB Web site.

Airbus has orders for 478 A350XWBs and Boeing has 910 orders for its 787 Dreamliner.

Here's bad news if you drink a lot of coffee each day: Consuming the caffeine in seven cups of instant coffee a day may leave you more likely to see, hear and smell things that aren't there, U.K. researchers said.

Bloomberg News reports that people who drink at least 330 milligrams of the stimulant a day were three times as likely to have hallucinations as those who consumed less than 10 milligrams a day, Durham University researchers found in a study of 219 college students published today in Personality and Individual Differences.

How much is 330 milligrams? One 16-ounce Starbucks drip coffee has 330 milligrams of caffeine, according to the Starbucks Web site.

The amount of caffeine linked to hallucinations in the study would also be equivalent to about seven 8-ounce cups of brewed black tea or about 3 1/2 8-ounce cups of brewed black coffee, according to the Mayo Clinic Web site.

The study, the first to link caffeine and hallucinations, explored the relationship between high caffeine consumption and an increased release of cortisol, a stress hormone believed to contribute to delusions, lead researcher Simon Jones said to Bloomberg News. It forms the first step toward examining nutrition as a factor in the occurrence of hallucinations, he said.

=> Read more!

Ehli Turners Auctions in Fife, a longtime auction house that went out of business in December, owes the state of Washington almost $60,000 in unpaid taxes.

The state Department of Revenue reports that it has filed two warrants against the business: $40,350 due on Sept. 30 and $19,470 due on Dec. 31.

Heidi Woodward, who co-owned Ehli Turners with her husband, Walter, said Tuesday that the unpaid taxes were not the reason the business closed.

"My company turned mainly because at a volatile time and business wasn't at its greatest, I had ... deposits of cash that are missing," she said by phone. "It's frustrating and sickening and we put our heart and our soul into this."

Woodward said that to her knowledge, the September bill had been paid. Department of Revenue spokesman Mike Gowrylow said Tuesday that a bill was paid in September, but that the two abovementioned warrants still were outstanding.

Fife police Lt. Tom Thompson said Tuesday that there is an ongoing investigation into allegations regarding missing money.

"Right now it's just an allegation," Thompson said. "We've had some employees who have come in and disputed that. We haven't had a chance to sit down and interview everyone involved."

As for the unpaid taxes, department spokesman Mike Gowrylow said Jan. 6 that the department doesn't file a warrant immediately after a business gets behind.

"If a taxpayer fails to pay all the taxes due, we call them up, contact them, send letters and try to get them caught up," he said. "If all that fails we file a warrant against them. That's basically a lien filed in the county where they're based."

The process doesn't stop even though Ehli Turners is out of business.

"We exhaust every possibility to recover unpaid taxes," he said. "For the most part these are sales taxes that are paid by the customers."

Gawrylow said it's fairly common for businesses to fall behind in remitting their taxes to the state, particularly when the economy slows down.

The Washington restaurant industry may see the disappearance of 4,000 jobs in 2009. Or thereabouts.

The Washington Restaurant Association has begun working with its national counterpart to collect data – actual numbers, rather than anecdotal reports – on the state of the industry.

The association has invited its 5,000 members to participate in the monthly poll, and the figures from November have just arrived, says Camille St. Onge, WRA director of communications.

“What we saw for November, looking at same-store sales ‘07-’08, 57 percent of the restaurants have seen their sales decline. That’s a big chunk.”

She continues, “Fifty-three percent of them are expecting to decrease staff. That’s a huge number.”

Washington supports 13,000 restaurants (not all are members of the WRA), and St. Onge says the industry is the state’s largest employer. If 53 percent are planning to cut staff, then that’s at least 6,890 jobs.

Twenty-two percent of those businesses responding said business was expected to stay the same, and 22 percent said they would add staff. Do the math, and that’s around 4,000 jobs gone, if the estimates are correct.

The Washington Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey will continue throughout the year. “We’re going to bring the information forward and compare the changes and use if as a barometer,” St. Onge says. “It’s intended to give public policymakers a snapshot of what’s going on in the industry.”