Here's a resolution Seattlest hopes we can all get behind: let's go out more in 2009. More dinners at family-run restaurants, more happy hour cocktails at locally owned bars, more weekend getaways to nearby B&Bs.

It makes sense to spend money closer to home, and what's closer than our neighborhood diner, our local café? If we want to see them survive the downturn, if we appreciate their contribution to the city where we live, our patronage is vital to keeping them alive.

Remember Michael Pollan's injunction: if you enjoy your view, if you want to keep your view (of farms and fields), then eat your view. If you don't want to see that farmland turned into housing tracts, you have to buy and eat the food produced by local farmers. Same thing with local businesses.

...It's worth remembering that the restaurant industry in this country is roughly the same size as the automobile industry. On the other hand, with tens of thousands of individual business owners, it doesn't have nearly the political clout as Detroit's Big Three. Except for McDonald's and Starbucks, there are few national players. But millions of people work in restaurants as waiters, cooks, and dishwashers. Millions more depend on restaurants to buy their products and services. You may not see ads for an all-new, 500-horsepower Pasta Perfecta or its rivals, the sleek and stylish Sirloin Supra or the powerful Porkbelly Primo. Restaurants aren't asking for a multi-billion-dollar bailout; they just want us to come in for a test-drive. - Seattlest