West Seattle, Washington
26 Tuesday
The Christmas Ship makes 4 West Seattle stops this weekend; Our Lady of Guadalupe lights its tree at the summit of Seattle’s highest hill; and West Seattle High School‘s Travel Club raises $ to cross the Atlantic — all part of the 51 West Seattle weekend events ahead:Read More
Two nights till the Christmas Ship sails to West Seattle — and the good news is that the weather looks great! The Christmas Ship and its floating entourage will make three West Seattle stops on Saturday night: Seacrest 5:15 pm, Lowman Beach 8:50 pm, Alki 9:40 pm) and one on Sunday night (Don Armeni, 7:10 pm – you can find the schedule linked from our Holidays page, where we just added another nightly highlight for tonight: Pathfinder K-8 has its holiday Craft Fair & Culture Night, 6-8 pm tonight. (We love hearing about, and sharing news of, school activities – so if you’ve got one or more kids in West Seattle schools, please make sure the school office and PTSA have WSB on their mailing lists — all the info, from e-mail to postal mail to phone # to even where to find us on Facebook, is on the Contact WSB page.)
Activities at Hometown Holidays in The Junction continue through 5 pm (full schedule here), including free photos until 2 pm with Santa Claus. (Those pix, taken by Erik Clineschmidt, are all online here.) We asked Santa if West Seattle’s been naughty or nice in ’07:
Santa also accompanied our video crew on a visit to kids making ornaments yesterday:
Back to today’s WS activities — tons of other stuff going on, all over town – it’s all listed in the latest West Seattle Weekend Lineup, including an artists’ show/sale this afternoon-evening at Ginomai (SW corner of 42nd/Genesee) and then tonight, right across the street at West Seattle Christian Church (just east of The Junction), a free concert (doors open @ 6:30) by the African Children’s Choir (donations will be accepted to help fight AIDS in Africa).
Still seems to be a chance you might get caught in a flurry (here’s the latest forecast) — but what could be more Christmasy? Day 1 of Hometown Holidays in The Junction starts @ noon; remember to bring donations for the Warm Clothes Drive (at left, we caught up with West Seattle Junction Association executive director Susan Melrose a short time ago at HH HQ — aka the Farmers’ Market parking lot — with one of the first donations). The full list of today’s activities, noon-7 pm, in stores and all around The Junction, is now posted online here. (And you can peek ahead to tomorrow’s 10 am-5 pm lineup here.) Tonight’s highlight, of course, will be the Christmas Tree Lighting, starting with Dickens Carolers music @ 5:30 and the ceremony commencing @ 6. Here’s the tree, just about ready for the switch to be thrown; see you there!
Don’t get freaked by flakes in the forecast; it’s Hometown Holidays weekend, 
with the official West Seattle Christmas Tree Lighting on Saturday night, a chance to share a charity fundraising breakfast with the West Seattle Kiwanis before the fun, and then later, a charity-fundraising dinner with the West Seattle Eagles (that’s all happening in The Junction too), a chance to explore Youngstown Cultural Arts Center during its Open House, a free Sunday night concert by the African Children’s Choir, and a ton more — 44 West Seattle events starting just a few hours from now:Read More
A little quieter than usual but not that quiet, with events featuring Christmas trees, Santa Claus, and even The Beer Church: 20 West Seattle events ahead for the last weekend of November:Read More
In addition to what’s already listed in our latest West Seattle Weekend Lineup (posted on WSB every Friday morning), we just got word from Julie @ Divina (California/Genesee) of an event there with live music 8-11 tonight. The rain stopped – go out! (We’re going to try to take that advice ourselves.)
A free early Thanksgiving dinner tonight … another chance for you to drop off donations to brighten somebody else’s Thanksgiving … bazaars, music, more … among 35 West Seattle events for today, tomorrow, and/or Sunday:Read More
In the past few days, two of the bloggers on the Other Blogs in WS page, Rhonda and Alice, have mentioned the schedule for one of our favorite holiday highlights, the Argosy Christmas Ship Festival. Its West Seattle stops have been listed on our Events page (along with many other WS holiday happenings; please let us know if yours is missing!) for a few weeks now, but in case you hadn’t looked that far down, here are your choices:
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8: With Northwest Girlchoir Vivace on board, the Christmas Ship and its accompanying vessels will be at Seacrest 5:15-5:35 pm; with Canterbury Belles on board, it will visit Lowman Beach 8:50-9:10 pm, then sail along Beach Drive and around the point for an Alki stop 9:40-10 pm.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9: With Soundwave on board, a Don Armeni stop is planned 7:10-7:30 pm.
If you haven’t gone out to see the Christmas Ship before, the sounds and sights are always splendid: the brightly lit boat pulls close enough to shore for the choir on board to serenade landlubbers with holiday songs. (Here’s a Seattle Channel video from the 2005 season, featuring a West Seattleite — the announcer shown early on in this ’05 video, Dano Beal, is a teacher at Lafayette Elementary.) All the West Seattle stops are planning bonfires again this year as well (the flames roaring up from a burning pile of pallets are sometimes a more dramatic sight than the Christmas Ship itself!).
After more than a month at ArtsWest, “Bat Boy” flies off into the night following two more shows tonight (7:30 and 11 pm; tickets available online). Throughout the run, local theatergoers have continued to stream in; we got this unsolicited rave just yesterday from a WSB regular: “We saw it last night, my first experience at ArtsWest. It’s totally over the top and perhaps a little edgy for some folks around these parts (not me, but I was enjoying the reactions from some audience members almost as much as the show) but still hilarious and very entertaining.” It’s drawn reviews from this one in the Weekly (second item) to this one in the P-I to this one at the youth-edited site teen tix. After tonight’s “Bat Boy” finales, ArtsWest moves on to more traditional holiday fare, with O. Henry’s “The Gifts of the Magi” opening December 5th … although we have to say, “Bat Boy” in a Santa hat might have been a hoot. (“Bat Boy” photo by Matt Durham, courtesy ArtsWest.)
We say that, in honor of the Seattle International Comedy Competition happening tonight at Admiral Theater; also in that vein, you can go batty with “Bat Boy” at ArtsWest for its final performances this weekend — those are among 40 WS weekend events ahead:Read More
First: Word comes from Divina that the shop @ California/Genesee will feature student artists, K-12, from around West Seattle, during tomorrow night’s monthly West Seattle Art Walk in The Junction (more participants are listed on the Art Walk blog). A separate e-mail, from Amy, alerts us to the fact that this year’s Poetry on Buses poets include two Gatewood Elementary students — 6-year-old Sharon Zumwalt (read her poem here) and 6-year-old Giovanni Paredes (read his poem here); this year’s winning poets are being celebrated at a launch party tonight.
(photo taken this week at WS Target) It’s that transition-between-seasons weekend — plus time to set your clock back! — and the weekend for Green Seattle Day, the Log House Museum 10th anniversary dinner … 36 WS events ahead:Read More
Two clips from West Seattle’s own homegrown Skeleton Theatre last night; you may recognize the soundtrack. (Read all about Skeleton Theatre, including where and when to go see it for Night 2 tonight, on the ST site.)
(video no longer available due to host’s shutdown, sorry!)
Two nights till Halloween! As we count down … first, a photo from what promises to be one of the wildest Halloween night events in West Seattle (and it continues the night AFTER Halloween as well) — Skeleton Theatre at 36th & Hanford. This free neighborhood production drew thousands last year; this year, the Skeleton Theatre team has a website up with lots of info about the show, the people, when and where to see it. And they sent this cool photo:
And we continue showcasing the pumpkin photos you’re sending. In honor of the High Point award mentioned earlier, here are three jack-o-lanterns by a family in HP — first by Rachel; next by Galen; then, by Michael (more later!):
Halloween itself may not be till Wednesday but you’d never know that with all the activities this weekend. (Some calendar synergy finally comes into play next year when it’s on Friday, and 2009 on Saturday.) You can see the full list in the latest edition of the WSB West Seattle Weekend Lineup, but here are more of today’s highlights (graced by good weather, too!):
SPIDER-POWERED CARS: Happening 10 am-1 pm @ Hotwire Coffee on the north edge of The Junction, cool Halloween craftmaking to benefit animal rescuers.
TRICK OR TREAT IN THE JUNCTION: Big fun expected throughout the business district in the heart of West Seattle, 1-3 pm.
HALLOWEEN IN THE FOREST: Two sessions tonight @ Camp Long.
FAMILY REUNION IN HELL: At Skylark, starting at 9 pm.
WHO’S MORE HALLOWEENISH THAN ‘BAT BOY’? ArtsWest presents a special late performance tonight at 11 (in addition to the regular show at 7:30).
Every city-run community center in West Seattle had a Halloween/Fall carnival tonight; we stopped briefly at Southwest Community Center to check out the decor:
The signature event at the adjacent Southwest Pool happens this Sunday — a Halloween family swim at 2 pm, with pool games including the chance to swim among floating pumpkins. (Family swim means kids under 12 must have parents in the water with them, regardless of how well the kids can swim.) Tomorrow afternoon, it’s West Seattle’s best-known Halloween event — trick-or-treating in The Junction, 1-3 pm. See the WSB West Seattle Weekend Lineup for dozens more fun options. Side note, one thing that’s got us a shade unsettled this weekend — the Saturday night before Halloween is traditionally the night the clocks get set back, but not this year (good news for partiers); that’ll happen on Saturday night 11/3 (technically Sunday morning 11/4).
(Photo: Fairmount Springs traffic-island decorations along Fauntleroy.) ‘Tis the weekend before Halloween, and all through the peninsula … Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), nothing rhymes with “peninsula.” Let’s just get to the 47 events lined up for you this weekend, many of which are Halloween-themed, so get those costumes ready:Read More
Our frequently updated West Seattle-wide Events page now has 
25 WS Halloween/”harvest festival” events — some as soon as Friday. The 25 event listings include everything from three groups of local merchants offering trick-or-treating (The Junction on Saturday, Admiral and Westwood Village on Halloween) to a local dive club that’ll be carving pumpkins underwater at Alki. Check it all out here (and if anything’s missing, please let us know!). 10:40 AM ADDENDUM: Yet another of the featured events, Skeleton Theater, now has a website.
Not that quiet – still 33 things to tell you about for today-Sat.-Sun.:Read More
Good thing it’s sounding more like we won’t just have to hunker down and hide inside tonight (unless the forecast changes again – next update should be out within an hour or so), because there are some big things happening tonight (all from the WSB Events page – keep sending us the word on what’s up with your school, business, organization, community group, etc., thanks!):
GOOD FOOD, GOOD WINE, GREAT CAUSE: 6:30 pm tonight at the Hall at Fauntleroy, it’s the winetasting fundraiser and auction for West Seattle Helpline.
GOOD BEER, GREAT CAUSE: Murphy’s Furniture on Avalon has a benefit tonight for the West Seattle Food Bank — Oktoberfest beer tasting with Elliott Bay Brewery’s brewer talking about the price of hops (almost as hot a topic these days as the price of gas). Brats to go with the beer, too!
INFO NIGHT FOR INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE PROGRAM @ CHIEF SEALTH HS: If you haven’t heard about IB, it’s a rigorous high-school program and CSHS had to go through a lot to get it — this is its first year and the CSHS community is incredibly excited about it. Find out more about IB at Chief Sealth at 7 pm tonight.
ALKI COMMUNITY COUNCIL: Tonight’s the monthly meeting, featuring Q/A with candidates for key open seats on the City Council and School Board. ACC meetings are always great places to find out what’s happening in West Seattle’s highest-profile neighborhood. 7 pm, Alki Community Center.
This big bright banner on the side of the Corner Inn (Fauntleroy/Cali) says it all:
Events are planned at The Hall at Fauntleroy, Fauntleroy Church (full lineup in last Sunday’s bulletin), and Fauntleroy YMCA. Many great local performers are participating, including the West Seattle Big Band (4-6 pm @ The Hall).
Another reminder that festival season doesn’t end when summer sails away: An annual autumn highlight in West Seattle, the Fauntleroy Fall Festival, happens this Sunday afternoon — with music, food, and tons of fun — and it’s one of 31 listings on this week’s edition of the West Seattle Weekend Lineup:Read More
| Comments Off on West Seattle Weekend Lineup, Christmas Ship edition