West Seattle, Washington
10 Tuesday
Great Presidents Day article in the P-I, set at the retirement home near Westwood Village.
Just saw bold new T-shirts on the “Walking on Logs” figures alongside the Fauntleroy end of the high bridge — bearing the official Rat City Rollergirls logo. Bet that’s in honor of their season-opener next weekend.
If you see this before 5 pm — a big weekend event that didn’t make it to C Ro’s roundup (linked below) is happening right now — the West Seattle Rock Club’s annual Gemboree, at the Masonic Temple on 40th. Free!
A list of great/not-so-great moments in Seattle transportation history that’s in the Times today includes this line:
1984  Scandal-plagued high-level West Seattle Bridge survives referendum and opens.
Had no idea, about the scandal OR the vote — just the freighter crash that accelerated the bridge work. Online, we found a little bit about the scandal (design problems, city employees getting fired over them), but can’t find more about the vote. Old-timers, any enlightenment? (We weren’t here in the eighties.)
Quiet night, weather’s turned miserable again, nothing in WS seems to be making news right about now. So how about a little discussion? Tell us about your favorite shop (non-food/beverage, please, we’ve talked about all THAT enough for a while) in The Junction. We’ll start — Pegasus Book Exchange. You can take in books to sell, and you get credit applicable to part of the price of anything there you want to buy, same day or even years into the future. So what’s your fave? Leave a comment!
One result of a No/No viaduct vote might be the so-called retrofit. Viaduct, The Blog coined a new catch phrase for it: “Repair & Prepare.” LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE: Just read at Friends of Seattle that the 34th District Democrats decided this week not to endorse the rebuild (so did they go pro-tunnel, or No/No?).
Yes, we know new owners have taken over Huling. But the fallout from the recent scandal continues, in little ways as well as big, such as this blogger deciding to finally write, in furious detail, about a previous experience at the dealership.
If you didn’t see the mobile light-up signboards today, here’s the warning in writing: Some WS Bridge ramps will be out of commission for a while 2 am-10 am Saturday.
We’ve been slacking lately on our previously reliable Friday roundups of weekend events. Luckily, today, Alki’s contributor to Metroblogging Seattle, C Ro, did it for us — although with a lot more drinking opportunities!
Two bits of good news:
–The P-I says (opening with a couple of West Seattle anecdotes) car theft is way down.
-The minutes from the last SW District Council meeting say tagging is way down because cops have recently nabbed no fewer than 10 graffiti vandals.
Don’t know if we’re ready for another community meeting till we truly recover from WSDPM, but this one could be good. Same location as WSDPM — The Hall at Fauntleroy. The Fauntleroy Community Association has enticed West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician to travel a few miles south from his Admiral home base to answer citizen questions at 6:30 pm March 1 (but will it be over in time for GA?). The FCA site asks that you e-mail questions, however, so we’ll have to get some clarity on whether there will be any actual audience open-mike time at this event. (We still have the same question we had two months ago — why was he virtually invisible when thousands of us were without power for days after the windstorm?)
So we show up at Thriftway a little while ago — right around 9 pm — look around at the nearly empty parking lot, and exclaim “where IS everybody?” Slowly a vaguely-aware-of-pop-culture light starts to flicker to life … Seattle’s favorite TV show (starring a ferry catastrophe this week, to boot) is on. Next Thursday at 9, we’ll pick some hot restaurant to try to crash …
If you are one of the few people who knew we were around last summer, you know we are nuts about the Hi-Yu Parade (and a few other summer staples). Seems the fine folks who organize it, and take the Hi-Yu float to other festivals, need some space this spring.
Three more of the remaining houses along Alki Avenue are about to make way for apartments (six stories, 11 units, according to the permit application).
Sorry, we know we should just subtitle ourselves The Viaduct Blog these days, but really, several other blogs are doing a much better job of that — however, since so many of us use the darn thing, it seems important to track the crazily twisting tale here too. That said, here’s the latest: We’re voting, and that’s final.
Yet ANOTHER voting matter: That blog popularity poll we somehow wound up in has moved on to the third round … it’s styled after the NCAA Tournament so it’s dragging on a while longer. Let’s win one for the West side! Please click here. And you can vote again at least once a day, apparently. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now back to the search for more West Seattle news ‘n’ info ….
Now our County Councilguy Dow and his fellow KCC Dems suggest we vote on the Sonics tax plan (the one co-sponsored in the Legislature by our state senator). Er, didn’t some of us already kinda vote on that sort of thing? How about we just have a daily vote on something or another so we can get all these votes out of the way more quickly?
The controversial construction site on ex-Gatewood Church property (across Cali from the still-for-sale church) suddenly, belatedly, has one of those big white city land-use-notice signs on the chain-link fence. The sign only mentions part of the development, however — five units — not all the permits that have been issued, totaling more than a dozen units. (By the way, the city seems to be reworking the permit status pages to make direct linking tougher, so some of our older links on this project are broken. We’ll find a way around it! Meantime, two recent complaints about the project/s have been dismissed — here and here.)
At least, so says West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician. (Yeah, we know the ballots already have been printed, but couldn’t we save a few thou on postage? On counting?)
The “hard copy” version of this week’s Herald has something you won’t find online — a big color ad from the folks who run Guadalajara Hacienda, on Cali between Morgan and Alaska Junctions. Says the restaurant’s closing as of this Sunday. We checked the city land-use system; you probably don’t even need to click this link to guess what’ll be built at the site.
That’s the wish to all of WS from Kelly — who took this photo tonight to capture a view you may have spotted from the waterfront or the bridge (it’s the WaMu building):
John at Georgetown Stew (just east of WS) says — just boycott the election, period.
The ballots are supposed to go out in days … but now the state says, “don’t bother.” Incidentally, KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross proposed earlier that we all just boycott the viaduct tomorrow as a taste of what we’ll be facing regardless of its fate, since it’s going to be out of commission one way or another. Meantime, we’re awaiting the mayor’s reaction to the state’s latest missive. Perhaps Seattle should secede?
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