… be sure not to leave West Seattle next Saturday; our side of the bay will be in the spotlight that day (May 13) as the Garage Sale Capital of the World. The folks from Megawatt were out at the Farmers’ Market yesterday with reminder leaflets.

The WSB clan is not much for garage-saling; we bought our house from someone who apparently made most of her living having them, and for months afterward, we were rudely awakened many weekend mornings by people asking when we were going to start putting out the stuff. So we won’t be among the sellers, but we might try a little browsing!

… on a breezy, showery Sunday morning, than go outside!?

The Farmers’ Market awaits. We want to see if the Vashon Island nurseryfolk who grow offbeat plants including some spiky nightshade varieties are back. And the lettuce that’s so tasty, it reminds you that supermarket non-organic varieties are barely a cut above green paper.

Not sure yet if we’re going to make it to the Water Taxi party. I have to arm-wrestle other members of the WSB household as to what we’re doing beyond the Farmers’ Market.

No doubt the cloudy, coolish weather tamped down the turnout a bit, but it’s still disappointing to see so few people show up for a fun only-in-Seattle tradition. As planned, we water-taxied over — the boat’s added some ad banners this year, including one for “coming soon” Cupcake Royale and another for “Patron Saint of the Water Taxi” Councilguy Dow — and wandered up to Pier 66. The free harbor tour switched this year from an Argosy boat to a Kitsap Ferries boat, the Rachel Marie — lots more space but fewer takers. The Port of Seattle guy who narrated had some outdated facts; he claimed six cruise ships visit every weekend during the season, but this year it’s going to be nine. As for the tugboat races, it’s always hard for us amateurs to tell from the shore exactly what we’re looking at — just looks like a bunch of tugs out there, whether it’s mid-race or not. More interesting were the pierside booths, including one plugging the tunnel option for the Viaduct replacement (an excuse to mention that another round of public meetings is coming up). Anyway, we had a good time, but I would just love to have the pier be elbow-to-elbow some year with huge crowds enjoying the festival, which for me is always the unofficial Start of Seattle Summer.

Thanks to a tipster for writing WSB to tell us the Burger King Dave’s eyesore on Alaska east of the Junction is morphing into a bank. Info on the city business permit site appears to confirm this, and mentions “Viking Bank.” The VB site mentions it in the company’s latest newsletter, and I found info on the construction project elsewhere. Have a little lutefisk with your Money Market Account?

My personal pick for Best Cocktail in West Seattle is the mai tai at West 5. Discovered tonight that you can get it during “Happy Hour” for an amazing price — four bucks. Even at that price, I couldn’t handle more than one, much as I wanted to. (Happy Hour btw is 4-6 pm daily.)

Going to have to go look for something to report. Wanted to tell you about the banner from the Fauntleroy pedestrian overpass that’s in some language I don’t even recognize … but I didn’t get a chance to write it down. So that can wait till tomorrow. The sun’s too high in the sky right now to let me stay inside!

-First day of the new season of the West Seattle Farmers’ Market. I won’t make it there this week but if you see this before 2 pm, there’s still time for you to check it out!

-The Water Taxi hits the bay tomorrow. The official celebration’s not till next Sunday, but the WSB clan can’t wait to climb on board for the Maritime Festival next Saturday (which includes great freebie secrets that few people seem to catch on to, including free harbor cruises and free admission to the underattended Odyssey Maritime Museum).

-This one is West Seattle-related only because every Starbucks in the country, WS and elsewhere, has been promoting it: Akeelah and the Bee is actually a very good movie. Wonderful cast. No matter how cold-hearted and cynical you are, it will grab you. (Local aside, looks like our regional spelling bee was just a month ago. The champ came from the Eastside. I can’t find any evidence we’ve ever had one from our side of the pond.)

Some days back, WSB visitor Kathleen enlightened us as to the fate of the woman I remembered as “the bird lady of Beach Drive.” Now I’ve finally figured out what happened to a woman I could correspondingly call “the travel lady of California Avenue” — She runs a business called Cruises by Kay, which until a few years ago was housed in a house on the east side of Cali Ave, just south of the Morgan Junction biz district. Then she moved to a smaller house on the other side of Cali Ave; the previous house went down, condos went up. Now the house that used to bear her signs is also targeted for the wrecking ball (backhoe), and the building permit site says townhouses are going up. Rooting around a Web site for her agency, I found an address that suggests she moved to Bremerton. I hear that’s a hot neighborhood for real-estate gentrification too …

Looks like the folks behind Seattle Music Fest at Alki are going to try again this year. (If you’d forgotten, last year’s effort resulted in a last-minute cancellation.)

I’m not deeply into live music, so all I can say is, just don’t ever try mixing the music festival with the Fourth of July again … that happened at least once in the late ’90s, and I remember being at the beach and trying to reconcile the splendor of the fireworks with the grungy dirge of the 10 pm stage act … yii.

… so are the days of our West Seattle Lives?

Don’t know if “Days of Our Lives” is even around or, if it is, whether it still starts with something like that. Inspiration is this blog entry by somebody who seems to be mulling the creation of a soap set in West Seattle.

In my neighborhood, it wouldn’t be sex and other sassiness, it would be people slugging it out over hedge-trimming and obnoxious pets …

Continuing my blogroll theme … here’s an amusing post relating to West Seattle’s most famous rock star (be sure to scroll past the photo), whose palatial spread happens to be on “our side” of WS …

Checking the latest edition of the Alki News Beacon, I see there’s a big event tonight at the Alki Community Center. Even a casual drive-by reveals that a lot has changed at the city’s busiest beach since the last “warm season” — so it could be worth your while.

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.”

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)!

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 …

I thought the Monorail Board wasn’t supposed to decide the fate of the tab tax till they opened the bids and told us all how much $ they would reap from the real-estate sendoff. Guess not.

Also … for those of us envious of waterfront-property owners … here’s something to dunk your envy in today.

It’s nice to have this tiny nook on the Web to ramble about memories as well as what’s happening now. That said — our jaunt to Alki yesterday reminded me that I still don’t know the fate of The Bird Lady of Beach Drive. She lived in a white bungalow across from the open waterfront at Emma Schmitz Viewpoint, an older lady with wild long salt-and-pepper hair and glasses. Many mornings, you’d see her out on the grassy streetside waterfront bank across from her house, throwing food at seagulls and ranting loudly at the world as her hair danced in the breeze like a kite. More than once, I saw her at West Seattle Thriftway, continuing her semi-high-volume muttering while shopping.

In the past few years, I hadn’t seen her, but her old mini-station-wagon-type car was still parked next to her house, so I suspected she was still in there somewhere.

Then some months back — the “FOR SALE” sign went up, and the station wagon was nowhere in sight. Yesterday, in fact, as we passed the cottage, an open house was under way, and that reminded me I still didn’t know the fate of The Bird Lady of Beach Drive — dead? living with a caretaker? institutionalized? Certainly a memorable WS character, and those are in shorter supply these days.

The March issue of the Alki News Beacon is out … and our dear pals are revealing rough times. Good gosh, in a world where we can spend billions on bombs, we should be able to scrape up a few bucks for a good grass-roots community group & its newsletter.

I was going to suggest — have you guys tried brainstorming with Megawatt? Then I went to the MW home page & got an idea … how about a big rummage sale to raise $ for your group? I don’t live on that side of town any more but I promise I’d donate!