West Seattle Saturday: Seafair Pirates land on Alki; city reps at ‘Let’s Talk’ in The Junction; more highlights…

What you should know about today, primarily from the WSB West Seattle Event Calendar:

(WSB photo: SDOT crew working on California just south of Fauntleroy)
TRAFFIC ALERTS – ROAD WORK TODAY: Paving work is scheduled all day at California/Fauntleroy, 7 am-7 pm; two lanes of northbound I-5 are scheduled to be closed all weekend at the West Seattle Bridge, and the Highway 520 bridge is closed too.

(added) BUS ALERTS: The California/Fauntleroy work includes bus reroutes – Rapid Ride between Fontanelle and California; Route 128 between Graham and Morgan – Metro sent them as e-mail alerts on Friday.

Also today:

(WSB photo: Relay-ers on the track, 8:30-ish this morning)
RELAY FOR LIFE CONTINUES: You’re welcome at West Seattle Stadium as the all-night cancer-fighting fundraiser Relay for Life of West Seattle continues, including a fire truck scheduled to visit at 8 am, the kids’ parade at 10, a “dance party” at 10:30, and the closing ceremony at 11:30 am. Here’s our story from its start last night. (4432 35th SW)

‘WEST SEATTLE: LET’S TALK’: City reps from the Department of Planning and Development, Department of Neighborhoods, and SDOT will be at the Senior Center of West Seattle, 9:30-11:30 am, for what’s described as an open-house-format meeting – we’ll update on Twitter when we’re on site.

(added 10:21 am) We’re at the event now – there were a few minutes of remarks including DPD and DON’s directors, Diane Sugimura and Bernie Matsuno. But the emphasis is on one-on-one conversations (below, Sugimura speaking with attendees shortly after we walked in):

DPD director Diane Sugimura is among the city reps here. Open house until 10:15, then brief remarks. pic.twitter.com/Nd1YBnCfpT

— West Seattle Blog (@westseattleblog) June 28, 2014

(They are now convening informal chat groups toward the back of the room, upstairs at the SC.) If you just can’t make it, watch for our report later and followups with the information the city departments are sharing via boards on easels. Sugimura said basically, growth won’t stop, but they’re hoping to hear from people around the city – starting with this meeting in West Seattle – about how to accommodate it. (California/Oregon)

SEAFAIR PIRATES’ LANDING: On Alki, with events centered in the Bathhouse vicinity – including live music starting at 10, Seafair Pirates (watch the bay!) expected sometime after 11:30, vendors, kids activities, and general revelry continuing on into the mid-afternoon. (added) Hi-Yu royalty too:

More details in our preview from last night. (60th/Alki)

BENEFIT CAR WASH: Hope Lutheran School 7th and 8th graders will be at West Seattle Autoworks (WSB sponsor) today, 10 am-3 pm, washing cars to raise money for a trip to Washington, D.C. (35th/Webster)

HIAWATHA YOUTH FAIR: 10:30 am-3:30 pm at Hiawatha Community Center, presented by West Seattle Wildcats Junior Football and Cheer organization. Details in our preview from last night. (2700 California SW)

LOW TIDE WITH BEACH NATURALISTS: Not mega-low but low enough (-1.4 feet just after noon) for beach exploration, with volunteer naturalists at Constellation and Lincoln Parks 10:30 am-1:30 pm.

CAT/KITTEN ADOPTIONS: Two opportunities in West Seattle today (and tomorrow) – Friends of the Animals Foundation at Next-to-Nature in The Junction (4543 California SW), 11:30-3:30 pm (details here); Kitty Harbor just north of the West Seattle Bridge at 3422 Harbor SW, noon-5 pm (info here).

FIELD DAY AT SSC: Amateur-radio operators are set up from noon today until 10 am Sunday in the field on the south side of the South Seattle College (WSB sponsor) campus and welcome your visit – details here. (6000 16th SW)

LIVE MUSIC TONIGHT: See our calendar for listings at venues including C & P Coffee Company, The Cask, Feedback Lounge (WSB sponsors), Kenyon Hall, Benbow Room, Skylark.

miws June 28, 2014 (7:51 am)

Seeing the juxtaposition of “Seafair Pirates“, and “Let’s Talk“, in the Headline, brings to mind how interesting it would be if “Let’s Talk” happened to occur on “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. ;-)

Mike

Dave June 28, 2014 (11:12 am)

Hard Rock cover band, The Throbs, will be rocking tonight at the Poggie Tavern. AC/DC, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, etc. Female vocals belting out all your hard rock favorites.

WSB June 28, 2014 (11:24 am)

Thanks! We keep hoping the Poggie will have an online calendar someday so we can incorporate it in ours as we do with other venues … I know it’s posted in the window but we just can’t get by for a snap regularly :)

transplantella June 28, 2014 (1:09 pm)

Why is the C line bus and the 128 running down little old Lincoln Park Way, behind the Kenney??

What in the world is going on?

WSB June 28, 2014 (1:18 pm)

The reroute is mentioned above. Full details on the Metro site. It’s because of the California/Fauntleroy repaving – the intersection is closed for the day, supposed to be done by 7 pmish.

benbow owner's band June 28, 2014 (1:26 pm)

the benbow room’s new owner, Ian, is a member of the Brian Marshall Band playing tonight. Been pretty interesting line ups there thus far. Nice open space for music…versus the claustrophic but cool Pogies

btw, kind of curious = does anybody know if the benbow kitchen has a new menu yet? I went in a couple of weeks ago and it was still the old one.

42nd Ave June 28, 2014 (4:28 pm)

Nice that they made no provisions whatsoever for re-routing the traffic from California. Everyone is flying down 42nd Ave, which is effectively a one-lane road on either side of Morgan. Lots of horns and people swearing at each other and there have been two fender benders already at Graham and 42nd.

WSB June 28, 2014 (4:30 pm)

There were lots of no-parking signs on the side streets – thought maybe that was for detouring? We would normally go through that intersection about five times a day and my plan has just been to detour all the way to 35th.

42nd Ave June 28, 2014 (4:52 pm)

@WSB – I just spoke with someone in charge at the work site. He said he was going to close the left turn lane from East-North bound Fauntleroy on to 42nd Ave (heading North).

He said they couldn’t close the residential streets around the site. I suggested that they should have made 42nd Ave a one-way heading South and 41st Ave a one-way heading North, so at least the detouring traffic would not keep meeting head to head in the middle of these one lane streets and having horn duels.

Apparently some of the businesses on California weren’t even aware this was happening today. The SDOT guy asked them if they’d checked the blog. WSB is a great resource, but if SDOT is going to cause a traffic snarl such as this, isn’t their responsibility to notify those affected and mitigate the consequences? He said they put out 300 flyers around the neighborhood. Couldn’t they have put up signs on California a week ago? This isn’t that complicated or even expensive.

WSB June 28, 2014 (5:20 pm)

Signboards were up on Tuesday afternoon. I don’t know all the spots, but we saw one on Fauntleroy just south of Alaska – I took a phone photo and just checked back to make sure I had the timeframe correct – and then SDOT sent the announcement out on its various mailing lists at about 5 pm Tuesday. We published that notice Tuesday night and mentioned it in our daily traffic watch stories Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings (as well as social media), as well as in the daily event lineup this morning. That’s the absolute most we can do – can’t force people to read, but we have traffic/road-work info/previews every day.
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I’d encourage anyone who has a suggestion for SDOT re: notification improvement to contact them (206-684-ROAD is their main question/answer line) and let them know what would have been better. I don’t know if they planned this far enough in advance for something via snail mail. We did hear from a local community leader who noted that the bus stops weren’t posted with the changes (Metro did send text alerts yesterday – we are signed up for every West Seattle route so I saw them). – TR

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