AS-IT-HAPPENED COVERAGE: West Seattle Summer Fest, day 3!

(QUICK LINKS: Music lineupfood/drink infomerchant/vendor infoKids Zone infobus reroutesprevious WSB coverage here)

10:20 AM: West Seattle Summer Fest‘s third and final day is on! Managing a festival involves a lot of tasks large and small – above, that’s Stacie Woods, event director for the West Seattle Junction Association (which presents Summer Fest) writing the stage lineup on a chalkboard out front of the Info Booth. We’re on the north side, WSJA volunteers with merch are on the west side, and SPD crime-prevention coordinator Jennifer Satterwhite is back with free steering-wheel locks (32 of them, while they last – they’re going fast!) and other swag until 1 pm.

If you don’t get to the festival today, you can email Jennifer to get one at the precinct. … If you’ve missed previous mentions, the Farmers’ Market is NORTH OF SW OREGON today, since there’s no main-stage music today, just the West Side Stage (in Junction Plaza Park) plus buskers – the band Better As Brass will be starting soon on the east side of California just north of Alaska. More coverage to come – the festival is on until 5 pm today!

11:11 AM: One more reminder – Farmers’ Market vendors are north of Oregon today – one block north of their usual spot. We just strolled through and saw all the usual favorites. Also along the way, the north face painter (there’s also one on the south block, both midblock) – busy!

Bringing your pup to the festival? They can cool off in the mini-pools outside Next to Nature on the west side of California a bit north of Alaska:

11:35 AM: Better As Brass is taking a break (after their last set included street-band versions of Britney Spears‘s “Toxic” and The Eurhythmics‘ “Sweet Dreams”) but will resume playing soon! We recorded a bit of their opening set:

12:01 PM: You have another hour and a half to go contribute to the community mural that Stacey Sterling is leading in Junction Plaza Park:

Stacey tells us you can help paint until 1:30 pm. After that, the mural-in-progress will be available for viewing only, until the festival ends at 5 pm. Also in the park, The Potholes’ second show of the festival is happening right now on the West Side Stage. … Up on the north block (between Oregon and Alaska), east side, look for the West Seattle Food Bank‘s booth to get your $10 raffle ticket that is also a discount coupon for some local venues, as we explained Thursday:

Back here at the Info Booth, SPD has now given away all the steering-wheel locks they brought (but, again, there’s more at the precinct, so contact Jennifer).

1:06 PM: Over at the Kids’ Zone, Tilden School (WSB sponsor) is in charge today:

If you’re just plugging into festival info today – new at the Kids’ Zone are the “foam party” and arcade games (courtesy of West Seattle Arcade, which is hoping to open its new Gary’s Place at 2820 Alki in September). … New shift for nonprofits here at the Info Booth – Seal Sitters Marine Mammal Stranding Network on the east side….

… and WestSide Baby on the south side.

1:28 PM: Half an hour left to get to the Farmers’ Market, if you’re hoping to shop there today – their hours are the same as always today, until 2 pm, though the location is different. … On the West Side Stage this hour, we caught a bit of Cellobration – whose music is exactly what you’d guess from their name:

2:24 PM: Just two and a half hours left to get here if you haven’t already visited. We’ve enjoyed seeing so many people we haven’t seen in years – so much of our communicating is done via email and texts – and it’s been great to meet more of the people who send photos and tips, which is why we call WSB a community-collaborative news site. (westseattleblog@gmail.com and/or 206-293-6302, text/voice – we’ve had that number since launching WSB as a business in summer 2007). … Casey Freedom, second-to-last musical performer of the festival, is on the West Side Stage right now, and the final band, Annie O’Neill w/ Jim and Beth Wulff, is coming up at 3. … Roaming here at California/Alaska a few minutes ago, the robot you otherwise can visit in the Kids’ Zone (SW Alaska west of California):

The Kids’ Zone also has visitors from the Pacific Science Center today with an engineering-themed exhibit.

3:20 PM: Last musical act of Summer Fest (not counting the scattered buskers), Annie O’Neill with Jim and Beth Wulff, is onstage at Junction Plaza Park right now:

Meantime, the biggest food-related question we’ve received is where to find Dirty Dogs. They’re up near California/Oregon, where you’ll find a few additional food vendors beyond what’s in the “official” food zone on Alaska east of California. Another big food question – where to find ice cream – one local option is the Shug’s cart in the official food zone (visiting from Shug’s Mini at California/Charlestown); Seattle Pops is over in the Kids’ Zone; there are others too.

4 PM: Final hour of Summer Fest 2024! We just took one more stroll through the vendors. Stopped again at the Author Event Network booth (west side of the block between Oregon and Alaska), which – as we mentioned in Friday coverage – has been hosting independent authors all weekend. There right now – Irina Van Patten and Guy Morris.

You can read about Irina’s books here – she’s written memoirs about being an immigrant – and Guy’s books – which he describes as “intelligent thrillers” – here. … Not far from the Author Event Network booth, a nice shaded place to sit and enjoy a beverage – The Beer Junction:

If you’re here – music’s done – but the vendors and food/drink are still open for business!

4:58 PM: A final view looking north from California/Alaska:

It’ll take at least several hours to break down all the booths, cables, signage, and everything else that it took to build a festival, so the streets through the heart of The Junction will remain closed until late tonight. Thanks to everyone who was part of the festival, whether a vendor, visitor, volunteer, production crew member, and/or Junction business owner/staffer … it’s been another fun three-day extravaganza!

12 Replies to "AS-IT-HAPPENED COVERAGE: West Seattle Summer Fest, day 3!"

  • anonyme July 14, 2024 (11:32 am)

    Went to the information booth to get bus reroute information, which they didn’t have.  OK. But the WSB table was right next door, and they had the information on their fingertips.  Shoulda just gone to you guys first, you know everything!  Thanks.

    • WSB July 14, 2024 (11:54 am)

      Sorry! We usually tell the Junction volunteers (who are next to us) to just point to us for the bus info because I have the laptop up and running and I can look it up.

  • Walkerws July 14, 2024 (11:34 am)

    After many years, I’m finally resigned to admitting that other than the music (and to a lesser extent some of the local business sidewalk sales), WS Summerfest is really disappointing. Random booths of junk for sale with no relation to the Weat Seattle community, food vendors that make generic festival food that isn’t as good as what you can get for the same price from the restaurants around the junction, and a mediocre “kid zone”. The music is great though. Maybe they should scale back the crummy parts, make it more about local food and business, and focus on the music. 

    • Anne July 14, 2024 (12:22 pm)

      There’s always going to be a mix -but that means there’s something for everyone. Our family  bought several & gave rave reviews to at least 2 (out of area) vendors selling cool Seattle & West Seattle & White Center t-shirts. Curious did you have kids telling you the “ kid zone” was mediocre or was that just your impression? From what I saw-kids were having a pretty fun time. 

    • WSeattlite July 14, 2024 (12:56 pm)

      I can agree with a lot of this feedback. I think it could be cool to have most booths be specifically from businesses across West Seattle- Alki, Morgan and Admiral Junction, Delridge, maybe even into White Center and Burien? I know they all have their own events too, but this IS /West Seattle/ Summer Festival, not just Alaska Junction Summer Festival. Would be fun to have so many businesses across our “island” in one spot for a weekend!That said, I still love the West Seattle Summer Festival every year! Great atmosphere all weekend long. Thanks to the organizers and vendors who put in lots of work before, during, and after this event.

    • Nitro July 14, 2024 (6:02 pm)

      Regarding the local vendors, I did enjoy the ones with local gear- but I’m not sure about the complaint of not having enough. Every local business is welcome to get a booth- the Summerfest organizers can’t force local businesses to participate if they don’t want to. I guess I’d rather have a few more outside vendors to fill the space than only having the sidewalk sales of the adjoining businesses and just a few others in the middle of the street. I can walk by the booths I’m not personally interested in. Now if the Summerfest organizers want to create some sort of unique signage for each local vendor to post at their booth identifying them as a West Seattle business- I’d be up for that to help identify the West Seattle vendors easily.  

  • Katie July 14, 2024 (1:08 pm)

    I will say that i was super disappointed in the food truck choices this year. They all seemed to be selling the same type of stuff in the same genre of food. We need some diversity in choices next year please!!

    • Darren July 14, 2024 (4:30 pm)

      I was super disappointed at how people parked and drove on streets near the fair. Same as every year prior. 

  • HS July 14, 2024 (5:23 pm)

    I had fun! I felt like there were more booths and a greater diversity of “product” than I remember in years past. It was a beautiful day to be walking around and checking stuff out. I did patronize a local restaurant versus the food trucks but that was mainly bc I wanted to sit after walking in the sun. There were a TON more people than shown in the photos. I thought it was a good turnout – especially for the afternoon of the final day. Lots of different ages and booths, affordable for, and appealing to people under 25. 👍👍 Nice to see. Really good music. We need a dancing space next year.

  • Alki resident July 14, 2024 (5:55 pm)

    We ended up going to a restaurant because of the lack of good food choices this years. We’ve never done that before so that was disappointing. I agree about the lack of vendors, something seemed so off with that. I’ve been going since childhood and so have been to almost all of the West Seattle street fairs. I hope more vendors can show up next year both with food and merchandise options. I met the guy selling sunglasses from Portland who said he’s been a vendor for 27 yrs here and loves coming back because he does real well. Let’s get more people like him who really draw a crowd. Are they charging a lot more for vendors to sell now or something? What’s changed? I heard a couple other people walking by us say they were disappointed and wanted to chime in here in case someone can elaborate on this. 

  • Me Mma July 15, 2024 (7:33 am)

    We had the Kenyan food and the Nepali dumplings. We really liked both!  Also Lily’s pupusaria is excellent and was there, Bang Bar was there (both are local)  I actually thought the food curation was better than usual- maybe you just don’t like “ethnic” food?   It was expensive, but everything is! 

    • Alki resident July 15, 2024 (11:33 am)

      We ate the Kenyan food at the Puyallup food fest recently and it was delicious so we wanted to try other things. The prices are expected to be what we see. They’re small businesses which I mainly support over bigger ones or chains. 

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