Call it the flip side of the phenomenon that occurs in spring and summer, when the sun temporarily blinds you as you’re driving eastbound to work in the morning on the WS Bridge.

The light that blinded me (figuratively speaking) tonight was … light in the western sky, as I drove home at dusk. LIGHT IN THE SKY, AT 6 PM! HALLELUJAH!

Speaking of driving, one more plug for my new friends at the Alki News Beacon — they’re running an online poll about whether signs on local freeways should point visitors to The Beach.

Sounds like a great idea to me. I didn’t even make it over to West Seattle the first time I came to the city as a tourist in the late ’80s; even though I had a rent-a-car and roamed quite widely around the area, this side of the bay was quite the well-kept secret.

I came back two years later, and found my way here after reading a blurb in a tourist guide. The rest was history … six months after that, WS Blogger Spouse and I were loaded in the car and headed this way, for good (in more ways than one).

Even now, though, West Seattle is way too “off-the-beaten-path.” I know we don’t want to be overrun with people, but still — a little tourism could be encouraged (scenic tours? see where Seattle’s first settlers landed?), without much skin off our backs. Just a little. Daytripping, they used to call it. Sunglasses & sunscreen, here we come!

Even if you don’t swim, pay the three bucks and change, and go hang out at West Seattle’s only city-run pool during one of the public swim periods. The air is tropical. If you choose to go in the water, you can also close your eyes and imagine yourself somewhere much, much warmer. Really, the admission fee probably falls short of what you’d pay to stay home for the same hour or two and keep the thermostat up. (I know I’m not the only one with an outrageous City Light or PSE bill these days.)

We are now more than halfway through those long, gloomy months between festival/parade seasons. Just five and a half months till the Junction Festival, for example. Hang in there!

Reportedly there’s a sewage leak in the Lincoln Park vicinity and authorities have “posted the beach (as) closed.” Well, whew. So much for that yearning to take a midwinter swim in salt water.

This afternoon, walking along an otherwise lovely, hilly block of modest West Seattle warboxes, I got the answer to a question I asked some weeks back, while reading this article: “Who in the WORLD plants ivy ON PURPOSE?”

Yes, there they were, about half a dozen snarling starter clumps of ivy, carefully spaced along the north-facing bank of a warbox that sits about five feet above the sidewalk.

I so badly wanted to just yank them out. But that’s vandalism, even if the cause seems just.

I don’t have the cojones for an anonymous note in the door or under a windshield. So this post will have to do.

West Seattle’s first major storm damage … or at least it sounds storm-related … a sinkhole closing one of the paths down to the beach in Lincoln Park.

… “Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon.” (1971) I refer to our soggier-than-usual weather, already blogged inventively today by Defective Yeti with an apropos screen grab. No new mudslides here in the west yet (a slide in Everett has been the big headline so far). But the “blue horizon” has indeed appeared — like — WAIT! RIGHT NOW! TO THE SOUTHWEST! I’m bolting for the front steps so I can get a fraction of a ray … later!

Half a dozen West Seattle elementary schools are on the latest list recommended for new water pipes, along with Denny Middle School & its neighbor, Chief Sealth High. The total project cost is estimated at $11 million plus. I’m wondering, how much is it costing, in the meantime, to provide alternative water sources for our kids? Do we really have to wait for another levy to fix this? Bill Gates is busy throwing money at Third-World health issues; maybe he could give a few centavos to Seattle Public Schools. Oh wait, he did, didn’t he, and regretted it, if I recall correctly …