West Seattle, Washington
08 Sunday
Tomorrow night (Thursday), Madison Middle School here in West Seattle is the site of the first hearing on the latest Seattle Public Schools closure plan-in-the-works. From the sound of articles like this, more SPS parents are resigned to the idea of closures. Why aren’t we putting pressure on higher-up leaders for more school $ instead? Why are our city and state leaders running around wasting even one iota of breath on a whiny sports team that wants hundreds of millions of dollars, when schools are so deeply in need? Reminds me of the poignant old bumper sticker that said something like, “It’ll be a great day when schools have all the money they need and the military has to have a bake sale to build a bomb.” Let’s make a new version: “It’ll be a great day when schools have all the $ they need and sports teams have to have bake sales to get new stadiums.”
Stroll through the Junction and you can get a good closeup look at what’s going on inside the ex-Ben-&-Jerry’s-turning-cupcake-joint and the ex-New-Luck-Toy-turning-pizzeria. The former isn’t really much more than a ripped-out shell, though a flyer on the window promises a “mid-May” opening; the latter has made much more progress, and the past two nights, windows fronting on Cali Ave have been so wide open, you could literally stick your head in and watch crews working into the night. Looks like it’s going to be gorgeous in there, BTW. Which reminds me, the very last paragraph of this Seattle Weekly article has a report about who’s behind the pizzeria, in case you missed it.
Oh goody, a new transportation tax idea.
The reason many of us don’t take buses to work is NOT the fact they don’t run every 10 minutes. My challenges alone include safety, odd scheduling, and route quirks (unless you work downtown, you have to deal with some kind of transfer). And then, as the afore-linked article mentions, there’s the little problem of, where will the buses go once the Viaduct goes …
I just know this will all eventually turn into a water-taxi ride followed by a very long walk. Which STILL will likely get me to work before a Byzantine series of bus-route transfers, twists and turns.
OK, if you can get past NEXT weekend, looks like TWO big events are happening here on the West Side the last weekend of the month: one has earned the nickname “Geek Slumber Party“; the other, just sounds like a big fun excuse to wander around the Junction (maybe a couple of the new businesses will be open in time)!
We didn’t realize till tonight that the Lincoln Park pipeline project has torn up Cove Park just north of the Fauntleroy ferry dock. The little park has been a favorite stop of ours during spring and summer walks — a nice place to sit on one of the driftwood logs for ferry-watching and Olympics-admiring. Tonight, once the weather cleared, we went down to Cove Park for the first time in months — and were absolutely shocked — the driveway down to the park from Fauntleroy is stripped of its artsy inlaid glass border; the driftwood logs are mostly gone; the beach is a staging area for the pipe work, complete with humongous backhoe; and a joint on the above-ground temporary pipe is venting sewer gas right at the entrance to the beach (no wonder the first house north of the parklet is vacant and posted “for rent”). We understand this project was necessary but that doesn’t make the loss of the little park any less heartbreaking. With that and the loss of the southernmost Lincoln Park parking lot (also a staging area for equipment, gravel, etc.), we don’t think we’re going to be spending much time on this end of the WS waterfront until the work is done in a few months. We find it hard to believe this won’t affect Colman Pool access, at least for the first few weeks, but the city brochure doesn’t reflect any impacts …
Managed to miss this while I was on blogging semi-hiatus the past two weeks. Funny, I was just telling a visitor the story behind the building’s massive flag. So will that stay or will that go? I always wondered what kept that guy in WS this long anyway, considering the oxymoronic nature of the term “West Seattle Republican.”
… went the Bubble Lounge Cafe, on California a bit north of Morgan Junction. Just noticed it’s gone out of business. Stopped there a time or two, and never saw much of a crowd. A bit of an odd location, too, and being closed on Sundays couldn’t have helped (we would have patronized them a few more times if not for that scheduling quirk). However, hats off to them for trying; entrepreneurialism is never easy.
Sorry for the downtime. We’ll be back in daily (at least) posting mode as of tomorrow (Saturday) … meantime, as we catch up, we see the county’s finally officially announced the start date for the Elliott Bay Water Taxi. Woo-hoo-hoo! Just in time for the Maritime Festival, as usual.
Seems Elliott Bay Brewing Co. is expanding to a second (albeit secret) location (Puget Sound Biz Journal report via MSNBC). I think I mentioned here a while back that we re-tried them a while back and their burgers definitely passed muster, and then some.
We’ve gone past the Cat’s Eye Cafe’ a few times recently to see if it showed any signs of reopening, three months after the crash that closed it. No signs of anything … till we went by last night; the cafe’s marquee along Fauntleroy Way has a hand-lettered sign stuck on its south side, NATIVE PLANT SALE. Hard to tell in the dark but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s associated with the cafe — the patch of ground between its parking lot and the sidewalk used to bloom profusely in spring and summer with wonderful plants including lupines. Is this “everything must go,” or just a desperate attempt to raise a few more $? We’ll keep an eye out …
Also a note, our updates here for the next few weeks won’t be quite as frequent as they’ve been. Big project at work is about to eat every waking hour and restrict personal Web access. But it’s got a definite end date, so we’ll ramp back up afterward.
If you were to pick ’em, would they be the same 4 as in this Times roundup (scroll down)?
I think West 5 belongs in that list, at the very least. But maybe that’s only because I’ve never been to Ovio. Peered at the menu a few times — will have to try it sometime — but it sounds a little too fused for me to bring West Seattle Blogger Spouse, who is a meat-n-potatoes type of person (and no, the meat can’t be “adolescent hamster raised on pinenut feed” nor can the potatoes be “spring purple fingerling speckled sardine-infused russets”).
Banner season continue to pick up on the pedestrian overpass that graces the first leg of the Fauntleroy bridge approach. One banner that’s been up for days now reads “MORGAN, WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME?” One problem, it’s almost impossible to read unless you squint hard when you’re practically directly under the bridgelet. So I wonder if Morgan has gotten the message yet, and if so, what her/his reply was … Advice: HUGE BLACK LETTERING. Like that “22’s About to B. Wilde” one I still haven’t figured out.
They’re just about to bloom at the Fauntleroy Creek overlook (across the street and up the staircase from the ferry dock).
They’re not big splashy flowers like tulips or daffodils. They’re small and relatively rare. They’re on a spiny plant called Darwin’s barberry, and they are the color of a tequila sunrise. No photos do them justice but here’s one anyway. They usually bloom at the start of April — that’s when we saw them for the first time, on a bush at Shore Acres State Park in Oregon, more than 15 years ago — and discovering them on a hedge at the salmon overlook here was more joy than we could stand. Just wondrous.
Tunnel? Viaduct? Neither? What about the rest of our … hmm … not-so-great transportation network — if you had the money and power, what would YOU do to fix it? Tonight’s your chance to say it straight to West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician (and others) — right in our own backyard. 6:30 pm, WSHS, be there.
Gosh, I hate to brag. Well, no, I don’t, really …
The P-I will report TOMORROW what you read here on West Seattle Blog back on March 8.
Also sort-of-new tonight: Someone who helps publish the WS Herald finally found this here blog thing and answered my question from last month (scroll down to the comment).
Taking a break from the Holy Rosary situation … another West Seattle pastor makes it into the news today. Unfortunately, it’s because he seems to be “our” version of noted prejudice-monger Ken Hutcherson (second-to-last paragraph here; at least this story rescues the WS image with a more reasonable quote from Councilguy Dow).
Sounds like things are getting a little scary on this side of the peninsula.
First the Fairmount Springs team runs yet another post about a car prowl.
Now the Fauntleroy folks are calling a “community security meeting” after a siege by smash-and-grabbers so brazen, they’re even hitting the church parking lot. Now that’s just evil.
Interesting tidbit about a West Seattle gas station toward the end of this P-I story.
Even with gas prices back on the brink of $3, I hadn’t thought much about the possibility of not always getting what you pay for. But one cup out of a $3 gallon would be more than 18 cents worth of gas — and in a fill-up, that could add up fast.
By the way, looks like they kinda need some West Seattle gas-price spotters at this site — I chose “SW Seattle” (W Seattle didn’t appear to be an option) and nothing came up but a plea for tipsters.
Our friends who attend Holy Rosary are keeping us up to date on the priest situation following the bombshell resignation of the church’s longtime pastor. They say today’s church bulletin said “this weekend, the identity of our new pastor will be revealed, but he won’t arrive until July 1” — however, at least at the service they attended, they didn’t hear an announcement.
Yet more press today for Option No. 3, my new fave.
Which gives me an excuse to link, a few days late, to this.
This morning’s deadly shooting rampage on Capitol Hill left me trying to remember if anything really horrific ever happened here in WS. I remember a particularly ugly summer in the early ’90s including someone getting shot and killed on a waterfront bench along Beach Drive. But I forgot the 1998 bridge shootings till this Times “side note” article on Other Really Bad Shootings in Our State. Anyway, condolences to the relatives of today’s victims, and prayers for all who are taken away too soon …
I’m a big fan of the smoking ban but I have to agree with West Seattle Blogger Spouse, it just seems wrong somehow for smokers to even have to take it outside at divey little joints like Chuck ‘n’ Sally’s. Quite the little clot of puffers standing outside there a bit earlier tonight, perhaps getting ready to tank up for the Big Basketball Game …
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