Your favorite Junction shop?
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!
Coming, going, building
-As a couple people wrote to tell us, a “retirement sale” is now under way at Leslie’s, just south of Spiro’s.
-The construction site at Westwood Village now has a banner up promising GIANNONI’S PIZZA (different from the website spelling but we still can’t figure out who’s behind it), COMING SOON, PIZZA BY THE SLICE.
-Lots of signs of progress as Garlic Jim’s Pizza in The Junction gets ready to open next month, including a NOW HIRING sign.
-Just up the block from there, facade work is under way at the ex-Bobby’s Hobbies, future (apparently) bakery.
-Today’s supposed to be the last day for Hollywood Video at 41st & Alaska (mixed-use megaproject coming soon).
Who you gonna call?
Not the owner of a business that’s moved out, if you are interested in its old space, apparently. Got e-mail from Emerald City Locksmith, which (as we mentioned last week) has left its JuNo — sorry, we mean, north-of-Junction-location. The e-mailer claims to be getting besieged by calls and respectfully asks everyone to please stop, so (he?) can finish working on the move to a new Harbor Ave location. If you’re interested in the space, the e-mail goes on to say, Landlord Management Inc. is who to call, NOT ECL.
Friday morning headlines
-A gushy Seattle Times writeup on the “pay by touch” technology that’s in its fifth year at Morgan Junction Thriftway confirms our November suspicions that it remains the only store in Seattle using PBT. Nothing personal against the Thriftway, which we adore, but we still don’t get why anyone would link their finances to their fingerprints. If you use it, we’d love to hear from you; we still have never seen, or heard from, anyone who has.
-The whole viaduct-vote thing still has our heads a-spinning. OK, so never mind what the Gov said the other day, now we’re going to have a vote? All just complicated political positioning, we suppose. So how ’bout they throw The Third Option and even The Retrofit on the ballot too, while everyone’s changing their minds every five minutes? Or are we supposed to be happy and relieved now that at least we get some kind of vote?
-Thanks to the reader who tipped us to the effervescent Elliott Bay Brewery feature on the Seattle Weekly site. (We’re not much for beer but we like their burgers too!)
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New year, new WS businesses
-Back in September, we discovered that the former Cat’s Eye Cafe north of Lincoln Park would be transformed into the Four Aims Center. One of its owners — who mentions having been an original Cat’s Eye owner — just wrote us to say they’re finally in the home stretch with city signoff and so forth, and planning the grand opening Feb. 4.
-Several people have written to make sure we know about a milestone for something else we caught wind of last year, the new West Seattle microbrewery Schooner Exact (named after the Denny Party’s ship). Its licensing process is just wrapping up and its creations will debut Jan. 20 (a week from this Saturday) at Beveridge Place Pub in Morgan Junction — its founders say everyone’s invited.
New owners on the move
We got a note wondering about a huge new FOR LEASE sign right behind Safeway @ Jefferson Square. Still haven’t uncovered exactly what’s for lease but we did get a reply from a rep for the center’s new owners, saying there IS open space and reminding us all that the center does have new owners — we don’t remember much local press about it, but Pan Pacific Properties, which bought Jefferson Square two years ago, was purchased a few months back by Kimco Realty, which runs these types of “grocery-anchored” shopping centers around the country (and outside the U.S. as well). Will this mean some change? Keep an eye out. But don’t forget, the center ownership doesn’t actually include the land under Jefferson Square – that’s leased out by Seattle Public Schools.
Seen around WS on Christmas Eve-Eve
-First, the non-merry note: After just 6 months, looks like Al’s Cafe & Espresso on Cali Ave north of Morgan Junction is out. We thought it seemed odd this morning to see it closed this morning when we stopped by during prime coffee time to check on its Christmas hours; drove past this evening, suddenly the sign’s gone from its window, and a light inside shows the place pretty much stripped bare. Tough location, with so much so close right at the Fauntleroy/Cali crossroads.
-Now, the holiday cheer: One more light display to recommend — 56th & Alki, Santa in the front yard on a brightly lit replica of construction equipment (with a sign for a construction company cleverly placed beneath it). And at 42nd & Raymond, we passed a parked pickup truck with HONK IF YOU LOVE SANTA written big and bold in the rear window.
-Just ’cause the power’s back doesn’t mean City Light crews’ work is done … saw a truck in action after 8 pm tonight, back at the scene of The Tree That Blocked Fauntleroy.
Not exactly the calm after the storm
We were going to say that driving around WS tonight was “normal” — no major lights out, etc. — for the first time in more than a week, but the pre-Christmas craziness is making up for it. Crowds galore. Good for our local businesses, at least.
In post-storm notes … got e-mail from the office of local County Councilmember Dow Constantine (while Seattle City Councilmembers aren’t elected by district, King County Councilmembers are), saying he’s pushing for a “formal council review of the local response to (the) windstorm.” As for the city, haven’t seen anything yet about the outcome of today’s “briefing.” The video is now posted on the Seattle Channel site (with an ironic disclaimer about “diminished” audio quality because of an “unforeseen technical problem”).
Today’s storm-aftermath photo: proof some of the fallen trees in Lincoln Park are being cleared away; we spotted this pile in the central LP parking lot.
MIA (missing in aftermath)
Commenting on a post below, a reader asks a question that also occurred to us while checking out the “Webster pocket” earlier — what happened to the cow bull atop John’s Deli at 35th/Webster? Storm casualty, put away for safekeeping, or … ? If nobody out there knows, we’ll check. In the meantime, heading out for our early-evening pocket survey (even after so many years up north, it’s still weird to call 4:40 pm “early evening”).
‘Tis better to light a single candle than …
… Well, no, actually, flashlights are better than candles. We prefer ’em since a candle-sparked house fire in childhood. So we set out tonight to see if there are D batteries to be found anywhere in West Seattle. Our non-scientific sample revealed: NO. Not even at the Harbor Avenue 7-11, for heaven’s sake. Other notes from Power Patrol: Morgan Junction and environs remain dark (including Fauntleroy almost all the way to L-Park), and now the Fauntleroy/Cali traffic cop’s gone (just a commute thing?); and no juice yet to 57th Ave SW, from just south of Alki Ave all the way back to the bluff — apparently the northernmost powerless pocket in WS. This situation is painful for everyone affected, but tonight we’re feeling especially blue for the M-Junction businesses smacked by today’s re-outage, particularly the indies like Pet Elements, Teriyaki & Wok, Abbondanza, etc. Hope they’re back up by tomorrow. We’re planning to rise early to check on things, if tonight’s weather (starting to rustle the bushes even as we type) doesn’t keep us up.
Monday night miscellaneous mentions
-Last power update for the night: The pocket just west of Westwood Village is back on. The pocket near Home Depot (Delridge & Orchard) is not (at least, as of our drive thru the area a few hours ago). Meantime, the sinkhole saga on the hill over Lincoln Park seems to be even worse, at least for one homeowner featured again in tomorrow’s P-I.
-While checking out the Delridge/Orchard outage, we took an unintended turn and wound up on Puget Ridge. More than a decade in WS, and we’ve never been in the South Seattle Community College area before, believe it or not … hard to tell at night, but seems like some people up there must have a heck of a view.
-Non-outage related business notes: First, Bakery Nouveau. Ducked in on its second day of ops today to have a look (unfortunately we’d just had lunch so no room for a taste). Several of the items in the case at the time looked incredibly scrumptious, such as a chevre/garlic/pine nuts galette-type thing (sorry, our culinary vocabulary fails us), slices of dark chocolate cake, and brown sugar pecan brioche (gotta stop by tomorrow morning and see if they’ve got any more of those for breakfast). Also in business notes, the former Jan-Michael salon (and long-ago “frozen custard stand”) just north of Thriftway in Morgan Junction has finally revealed its new identity … a mortgage company moving from its prior spot a few blocks south on Cali.
Sunday night notes
-Just back from our first official drive in search of WS’s best Christmas lights. Will post our findings sometime tomorrow. To generalize wildly — so far, the north side of WS appears to have many more lavish displays than the south side.
-Sorry if this is old news to Morgan Junctionites; just noticed the big CLOSED FOR REMODELING, REOPENING FALL 2007 signs in the windows of Washington Federal Savings at Cali & Fauntleroy. Somehow you gotta wonder, will they really reopen as a bank? That corner is so incredibly prime … you’d think those “mixed-use” developers would be clamoring for it.
-Earlier this fall, when we posted a few times about best-selling author Terry Brooks (who lives in WS at least part of the time), someone wrote to say that other best-selling authors live in WS, including a couple, Skye Moody & G.M. Ford. If that’s so, apparently they won’t be here much longer, according to her MySpace page, which mentions they’re moving to the Oregon Coast next month.
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