West Seattle, Washington
27 Saturday
(adding frequent updates, including photos, at the bottom of this post – scroll down!)
(that whimsical chair’s on sale at the Art Dive tent, just north of Oregon, artist is Alicia Hopkins, mnahopkins (at) aol.com)
Our third and final day of frequent updates from the WSB Summer Fest HQ in the official Information Booth (come say hi, right in the Walk All Ways intersection at California/Alaska) starts shortly. Our team member who’s first on the scene reports things are getting busy already. The booths are scheduled to be open till 7 pm tonight (fixed typo from earlier – it is SEVEN, and the music continues till then too). More to come – you can find all the official info (including the music lineup) here. 11:58 AM UPDATE: Read More
As we got ready to add that video clip from yesterday’s Ercolini Park dedication to the original report we posted shortly after the event (that report is here), we realized it’s worth a breakout to call attention to the other new parks now in queue for West Seattle, all in various stages of development:
Two are right in the heart of business districts, the as-yet-not-officially-named Morgan Junction park on the former Fauntleroy Auto Repair (and, briefly, monorail-station-earmarked) site north of the new Beveridge Place Pub, and Junction Plaza Park, at the northwest corner of Alaska/42nd. The Morgan Junction project just got $90K in additional city funding to make the preferred design happen (funding coverage here; design coverage here) – here’s the most recent rendering shown to the community:
Junction Plaza Park needs more $ for full development (next steps on that are being planned now) but in the meantime is getting some irrigation and grass seeding (recent WSB coverage here) – we took this photo while a Parks crew was working there earlier this month:
There’s also Dakota Place Park, proceeding somewhat slowly at the old substation site at California/Dakota (haven’t gotten a progress report on that lately), and the Myrtle Reservoir park, to be built next year at the 35th/Myrtle site where the city has just undergrounded a reservoir; our recent Myrtle updates are here and here, and this is the latest design (click it to see a larger version):
There are other park-related projects in the works around West Seattle – new playgrounds, playfield upgrades, etc. – but those are the four brand-new parks next to be added, after Ercolini. It’s worth nothing that all four of these parks are being created with money from the citywide Pro Parks Levy that is expiring this fall (you can explore the background on each site, and other area Pro Parks projects, through this city webpage); the City Council is close to deciding whether to recommend a new parks levy be placed on the ballot – we detailed here some of what it would include for West Seattle (we are currently checking the latest version to see if any significant changes were made to the final proposal). The city council’s Committee of the Whole considers it tomorrow; then the Parks Committee has one more public hearing on the proposal this Wednesday, 5:30 pm, City Council Chambers. (All city info on the proposed levy can be found here.)
Though it’s Day 3 of West Seattle Summer Fest, you’ll find the West Seattle Farmers’ Market in its usual place at the usual time (44th/Alaska, 10 am-2 pm) too. Just remember, if you haven’t been down to The Junction yet this weekend, Alaska’s closed off between 42nd and 44th, California’s closed between Oregon and Edmunds (and most of the block north of Oregon, after a break for crosstraffic to get by on Oregon itself), and parking is a little crunchy. Here’s the link to today’s fresh sheet (for markets citywide so look for a few notations of items not available in West Seattle).
We didn’t make it back for a decent Street Dance photo-op after all, but that video shows about :30 of the Saturday Knights, Saturday night’s most-inquired-about act at the Info Booth. Live music today runs 12:45-7 pm; full list here – in our music-lineup preview last month, festival organizers recommended Capping Day and Green Pajamas as Sunday highlights (Carrie Akre‘s on the schedule too). Also today, we are going to have a ringside seat for Kids’ Karaoke (same place the Lion Dancers performed today, middle of California/Alaska intersection), 11:30 am-1 pm, 2:30-4 pm, hosted by Matthew Darling. And a vendor recommendation: WSB’er Diane Vincent recommends Frog Hollow Coffee, offering 10 flavors of iced coffee in the block between Alaska and Edmunds. West Seattle Summer Fest gets going for the day at 11 am – see you then!
A few weeks after we talked with Sean Goff and Sofia Zadra Goff for this WSB preview of their restaurant-in-progress Cafe Revo on Avalon, they just sent this update to their mailing list (which you can sign up for here):
Our building plans have been submitted to the Department of Planning. We now wait for the approval so we can begin the permit required buildout. Meanwhile we are hand building all of our wood tables for the restaurant. (see website for photos). The building of our hand-crafted wood bar will also begin soon. Painting continues on the outside of the building. We have been busy meeting with many wonderful companies, choosing our vendors mainly based on that they are local businesses and that their company works in a ‘Green’ friendly way. We have also recently gotten other permits in place (electrical) and our sign permit is in process. The tentative date for the fabulous Cafe Revo sign to go up is August 7th, thanks to our signs creator, Western Neon. We also have decided to use Seattle’s own Caffe Vita for our coffee and espresso. We hope to open by the end of September. Thank you to everyone for the wonderful support already of Cafe Revo. We appreciate it more than words can say. Sean and Sofia
The e-mail update also points to a page on their website introducing “Nonno,” who — as explained in our story last month — is Sofia’s dad, called that by the Goff kids because it’s Italian for “grandpa,” but also how the Goffs hope their customers will come to know him too. They’re inviting people to e-mail him (address is on that page) with questions about the restaurant, his family’s ancestral hometown (and the restaurant’s namesake) Revo, and/or “about growing up in West Seattle in the ‘good old days’.”
Weekend after next, Fauntleroy Church (WSB sponsor) is throwing a whale of a party for its centennial – and getting ready for it now; this morning, Judy Pickens, Pat Gedney, and Marilynn Bernahl were among the volunteers sprucing up the church grounds during a centennial-prep work party. Special events for the centennial weekend celebration July 25-27 include the Friday Night Bean Feed and Talent Show (followed by Vespers on the Beach) on July 25, an open house and dinner/documentary showing on July 26, and a special anniversary worship service and reception on July 27. Full details at the church website.
The forum this morning at North Seattle Community College was intended to focus on the proposed Aurora site, though the city had said discussion of any of the 4 sites (including the two in West Seattle) would be welcome. 
We’re expecting an update from Highland Park Action Committee reps in attendance, but in the meantime, the P-I has posted a story. 9:05 PM UPDATE: HPAC tells us members will be at Summer Fest in The Junction tomorrow gathering signatures, and they’ve sent a report from Ken Knoke, who attended today’s north-end forum:Read More
(adding frequent updates and new pix through early evening – scroll to the bottom of this post)
That’s “Sonic Pezz” from the Rat City Rollergirls, at their dunk tank next to Shoofly Pie Company on the east side of California, north of Oregon. Meantime — three hours till the Street Dance – we’ll be here in the Information Booth at least till 7, then back to cover the Street Dance. Evening music interest is revving up, if the questions we’re getting here at the booth are any indication. Just had a lesson in “you never know who’s within earshot” — a booth visitor was asking some questions about West Seattle development, and where public input comes into the process, so we were giving a Cliff’s Notes explanation of the Design Review process – and then found out that Southwest Design Review Board member Deb Barker was standing barely inches away. (We didn’t misspeak about anything, Deb assures us.) Also dropping by moments ago: Michelle Edwards, former Hi-Yu Festival royalty (and daughter of Jim Edwards, who’s involved in tons of cool things from the West Seattle Big Band to next week’s American Legion Post 160-presented Grand Parade – we’ve got the list of entrants and we’ll post a few notes a little later). 5:27 PM UPDATE: Ryan Reese from Garlic Jim’s Pizza (WSB sponsor) is here talking with us and the Chamber folks now; our booth still has some shade on the east side. When WSB’s Patrick the Sales Guy brought back the RCRG dunk-tank pix you see above, he quipped, “The Rat City Rollergirls say it’s so hot, they’re now self-dunking!” 5:48 PM UPDATE: Not all the food booths are in the “food court” zone on the west side of Alaska – local venues along the street have stands too, like Husky Deli, where we caught owner Jack Miller working with the condiments:
And of course, the festival’s full of kids burning off energy – like the Junction Jam skateboard zone by Wells Fargo at 44th/Alaska:
Just realized we never posted this video clip from first thing this morning (9:30-ish) when Mayor Nickels and wife Sharon stopped by to say hi to Patti Mullen of the West Seattle Chamber, with whom we’re helping staff the Info Booth:
6:09 PM UPDATE: OK, tonight’s hot music act is clearly The Saturday Knights – more than a few people have stopped by the Info Booth (where we’ll be till about 7; the rest of the Info Team has cleared out) to ask when and where they’re playing. (Answer: South stage, at California/Edmunds, 6:45 pm. Beer gardens at both ends of Summer Fest, by the way). Forgot to mention yet another notable visitor from the past few hours — Scott from Central District News, one of the few other serious neighborhood-news sites in the city (Scott was one of the other guests during our KUOW appearance a couple weeks ago) – he joked he’s here to check out the neighborhood-festival competition. 6:45 PM UPDATE: More scenes from today – first, the rock-climbing “wall” that’s part of the kids’ fun zone on Alaska east of California:
Another local vendor we’ve spotted – these are the glass clams from Avalon Glass Works, whose proprietor Shannon Felix has a booth here:
And one more scene of the amazing lion dance/martial-arts demo we mentioned in our first update.
More Summer Fest updates to come … with the street dance tonight, The Junction will jump well into the night. 7:12 PM UPDATE: Spare battery’s about to die, we’re going home to switch gear out and come back for the big dance. More later, including a couple other non-Summer Fest events we covered today.
Fire on Findlay just west of California. Your editor here happened to be on the 22 headed back to Summer Fest when Engine 37 and Medic 32 screamed past – and stopped right in front of the bus, at Findlay. Smoke was visible coming from the lower floor of an apartment building on Findlay just west of California. The bus was blocked, so we got out; talked to the passer-by who first called 911 – she said she was walking back from Summer Fest when she saw the smoke and flames from a dumpster on the street (carport) level of the building. Firefighters got it out quickly; California is now open again (we got back on the 22 a few minutes and a few blocks later). Cameraphone photo to come. 4:36 PM UPDATE: Just added our cameraphone photo – and we’re adding another below – thanks to West Seattle’s State Sen. Joe McDermott, who also found himself at the fire scene as he was heading north on California – he’ll be here at Summer Fest in the 34th District Democrats‘ booth for the next few hours, and when he stopped here at the Info Booth, we found ourselves comparing notes on the fire:
ADDED 8:40 PM: Thanks to Adam for this pic:
(frequent updates, including photos and video, added at the bottom of this post throughout the afternoon)
If you want to see the West Seattle Hi-Yu Festival float up close and personal before the Grand Parade (one week from today; want to join the marching unit that WSB is part of? here’s how – and watch WSB later this weekend for some advance scoop on parade highlights) — it’s on display toward the north end of West Seattle Summer Fest today, just north of Oregon. Buy a “Luna Park” Hi-Yu button and support the festival, whose volunteers put on so many fun events each summer (Concert in the Park at Hiawatha, with West Seattle Big Band, is coming up Tuesday night). Not far from the float, you’ll find the first-ever Summer Fest Art Dive tent:
Again today, we’re with West Seattle Chamber of Commerce reps in the Information Booth (California/Alaska, heart of the “Walk All Ways” intersection) – stop by and say hi if you have a moment (and answer the informal survey we’re taking, with questions including “where are you originally from?” and “does West Seattle need a hotel?”. We’ll continue posting new pix, info, sightings, etc., all day as we did yesterday; already today, Mayor Nickels stopped by the booth on the way to the Ercolini Park dedication (video later; see the previous post for a photo from Ercolini), Peter Wolf from Neighborhood House stopped by to chat about the upcoming groundbreaking for the new center in High Point, and shortly afterward, High Point Neighborhood Association president Andrew Mead happened by. 12:25 PM UPDATE: We managed to catch up with “The Velvet Bulldog” (from the WSB Forums) during her volunteer shift at the West Seattle Food Bank booth, where you can buy $5 raffle tickets for some great prizes (including 2 unrestricted R/T tickets on Alaska Airlines or Horizon Air; the raffle ticket itself is good for discounts at Elliott Bay Brewery or Christo’s on Alki) – that’s her with the dark hair, with Barb Bollero, Elva Dodd, and Dee Hayward. The WSFB booth is on the east side of the block between Alaska and Edmunds.
Random note – following up on one of our stories from yesterday – Junior Member of the Team was off buying some sunscreen in Jefferson Square; he ducked into the Starbucks and (no, we didn’t ask him to do this) asked “Is this store closing?” and they said “Yes.” Future journalist, perhaps. 12:45 PM UPDATE: Dave Montoure from the festival-presenting West Seattle Junction Association just stopped by to tell us about the results of an impromptu veggie-hotdog-eating contest on the South Stage: Manny from Georgetown Brewing Company won, putting away 6; close behind with 5 1/2 was Marcus from West Seattle-based Schooner Exact. 12:50 PM UPDATE: A lion-dancing group just went by, from Belltown Martial Arts – down one side of California and back up the other, and now they’re performing right in front of us – here’s a photo from their first passby:
Video later (the show’s continuing – martial-arts demo now.) 1:45 PM UPDATE: Just talked with Alan Harrison from ArtsWest, who reminded us of something that Forum members had discovered — a season-ticket special that’s only being offered during Summer Fest weekend — buy a season ticket this weekend and you get a free ticket to “bare,” plus a $10 gift voucher. On the east side of the same block as ArtsWest, you’ll find Furry Faces Foundation, whose Teri Ensley is famous for the fabulous “F-Cubed” plant sales, among other things:
2:08 PM UPDATE: Lt. Smith and Sgt. Strand (seen in yesterday’s coverage) are back – just reunited another lost child with parent(s) – now they’re “14 for 14.”
Less than an hour ago, Mayor Nickels and various other city dignitaries joined neighbors of Ercolini Park – and Jim Ercolini (with the mayor in that photo) from the family whose homestead was on the park site west of The Junction — for the official dedication, just a few weeks after it opened to a joyful reception.
Others on hand from the city included West Seattle-residing Councilmember Tom Rasmussen (chair of the council’s Parks Committee) and Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher:
Also, Parks Board Commissioner Jackie Ramels of Alki. But the real stars of the show all along have been the community members who banded together to push for this park, and then to give the time and money it took to make it reality — including Friends of Ercolini Park chair Katie Hjorten, who acknowledged that during the ceremony:
The next big gathering at Ercolini Park will be the community gathering for Night Out on August 5th (you can still sign up your neighborhood for an event that night – go here to get that done).
Those are the West Seattle Little League 9-10 All-Stars players who toured The Junction the other day and were pleased to find numerous businesses willing to go to bat for them as they raise money to go to the state tournament (Easy Street among others). Today, they’ve got a car wash and bake sale 11 am-2 pm at West Seattle PCC, perhaps on your way to Summer Fest (which itself is full of chances to help – like the raffle tickets the West Seattle Food Bank is selling at its booth on the east side of California between Alaska and Edmunds). Tons of other things going on – highlights include “gaming for adults” (learn what all the Wii fuss is about!) at the Delridge Library at 10:30 am, as well as the Ercolini Park dedication celebration with a ribboncutting that’s also at 10:30, the Vietnamese Cultural Festival just north of Home Depot 11:30 am-5 pm, and three live theater productions (“Bare” at ArtsWest, “Mother Courage and Her Children” at Youngstown, and Shakespeare in Lincoln Park). It’s all listed in the West Seattle Weekend Lineup.
That’s a better clip of the West Seattle High School cheerleaders we showed briefly earlier, rooting for the football team’s sandwich/salad booth — raising money for new uniforms (as previewed here last month). The WSHS booth is right across Alaska from Easy Street, just yards away from the official West Seattle Summer Fest Information Booth, partly shown in this photo featuring your editor here (not even remotely to be confused with a cheerleader) in the process of posting some of yesterday’s multiple updates:
Team WSB will be back in the Info Booth – center of the “Walk All Ways” intersection – with the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce, all day, 10 am till 7 pm-ish. (Thanks again to the many wonderful people who came by Friday to say hi.) Meantime, back to the more interesting attractions; WSHS is not the only school with a presence at Summer Fest. Pathfinder K-8 is presenting a kids’ craft area near the inflatables to the east of us on Alaska:
(The grownups shown in that video clip are Junction Association executive director Susan Melrose and Pathfinder K-8 principal David Dockendorf.) Free face-painting and cookies there, too! Nearby, Curious Kidstuff is offering a place with fun stuff for little ones to play with – MargL sent this photo of her two-year-old checking it out:
But Summer Fest is for all ages – look closely at the inscription on this guy’s shirt (thanks to Rasmus Rasmussen for the photo; check out his site at theprint.dk):
Of course, we have to say a few words about the food. For one – there’s the semi-official food zone on Alaska west of California, where the aforementioned WSHS football players’ fundraising sandwich/salad booth holds down the east end – their coach, Davis Lura was spotted sampling the fare:
At the north end of Summer Fest (near the Twilight-presented Art Dive), Trisha from Red Cup Espresso showed off those “frozen donuts” we mentioned on Thursday night — and treated us to one (not really frozen by the time we brought it back to the Info Booth, but it was still a truly cool treat):
As mentioned in our earlier coverage, even if you came to the first day of Summer Fest, you’ll find added features today — like the pet zone by Next to Nature and the skateboard zone by Wells Fargo (both detailed here). Music starts at 12:30 (lineup here), and then there’s the Street Dance, 8 o’clock tonight. Plus – besides chatting with everyone who stops by our booth, we’ll also still be collecting answers to a short informal survey – including “where are you from BEFORE West Seattle?” (if applicable) and “do you think West Seattle needs a hotel?” … See you in The Junction!
Just before our sudden downtime, this came in from Ann:
My husband and I just witnessed a couple abandoning an iguana near the High Point pond. They were driving a newer compact gray 4 door pickup, license was something like (WA plate that appeared to start with A). We saw them take it out of a styrofoam container and they seemed to be walking it on a leash. Next thing we knew they took off so we went over to investigate and sure enough, it was climbing the hillside just east of the pond. We called Animal Control but they were closed. Then called the Seattle Police non-emergency number and they told us they couldn’t do anything. We flagged down an officer patroling the neighborhood and she told us that she was sorry, but that there was nothing she could do. I’ll call AC again in the morning to see if they can come look for it. Just doesn’t seem right to abandon an animal that surely is going to die in our cold weather as well as put our neighborhood kids at risk of possible danger, in broad daylight and get away with it.
(video no longer available due to blip.tv shutdown)
Just before the site’s semi-surprise outage, we happened to be out checking out another fire call that didn’t turn out to be news. On the way back, headed up the hill from Lincoln Park – didn’t catch whether this was Thistle or Rose St. – we spotted a coyote poking around a house, pulled over, and whipped out the camera to capture the above-viewable video — low quality but kind of interesting just to watch the way the critter moves. (And the frames where it passes by the fake duck.)
Looks like we’re back up – after an hour of downtime – we discovered AFTER it started that our hosting company had a “planned outage” to do some repair work, but had only posted a warning on a website that customers wouldn’t have occasion to visit until and unless there was trouble. So we didn’t see the warning, and therefore didn’t/couldn’t warn you, or else we would have. Thanks for your patience. Couple posts in queue so they’re coming right up …
WSB contributing photojournalist Christopher Boffoli sends first word from the scene: “Some kind of electrical fire” on the industrial waterfront. Huge callout, per the live 911 log, which describes it as “pier fire”; nobody hurt, according to what Christopher’s been told at the scene. ADDED 9:53 PM: Photos from Christopher. No further details on exactly what happened, except for re-confirmation everybody’s OK:
Home now from Day 1 of West Seattle Summer Fest – our running updates/photos/video from earlier are here; we’re going to post another wrapup/look-ahead report with more pix a little later – but we’re checking around to be double-sure we didn’t miss anything too big this afternoon, and just found this: Beach Drive Blog reports that volunteers from REI were out cleaning up the Beach Drive shoreline at Emma Schmitz Viewpoint. (You’ve got a couple chances to join volunteer cleanups tomorrow, by the way – two Saturday midday work parties in West Seattle are listed, along with dozens of other happenings, in our WS Weekend Lineup.)
Hours after we noted that West Seattle’s Jefferson Square Starbucks is reported to be on the list of 600 company-owned stores to be closed in coming months, the company has announced the first 50 – the ones that will be closed by the end of this month. Here’s the list; no Seattle stores are on this one, but the other 550 are yet to be announced.
(adding new info and photos frequently; keep checking the end of this post)
(video added 2 pm, WSHS cheerleaders rooting for the football players’ food both; updated clip shortly)
Junior Member of the Team and your editor here just arrived to join The Sales Guy — and the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce — in the Information Booth at the heart of Summer Fest. There’s a great crossbreeze along Alaska, and we’re facing north, so if you need a place to cool off, this is it — stop by and chat a moment, and if you can spare a couple of moments, we’re informally collecting answers on some important community questions including the Water Taxi’s future and whether West Seattle needs a hotel — plus we want to know “where are you originally from?” just for fun — Summer Fest T-shirts are for sale here at the booth too, “I LOVE WEST SEATTLE” BUMPER STICKERS!!! too … 1:43 PM UPDATE: Lots of great people have come by already. West Seattle Hi-Yu Festival is selling buttons – you can get a Hi-Yu program (listing activities including Concert in the Park on Tuesday and the Grand Parade a week from tomorrow) for free here at the Info Booth – Carol Winston from Hi-Yu stopped by to say hi and leave a stack of programs. WestSide Baby is nearby drumming up support for its upcoming “Stuff the Bus” diaper drive – here’s WestSide Baby’s leader Nancy Woodland:
We’ve also talked with Suzanne Kellar from the Seattle Opera Guild, which brings opera previews to West Seattle and elsewhere – she says the guild makes money off the sale of the Entertainment books that’ll be out soon – if you’re interested, e-mail her: srkellar@aol.com … More to come as the afternoon goes on! Good crowd here but not too insanely busy yet. 2:25 PM UPDATE: Free Jones Soda! On the east side of the street between Alaska and Edmunds. Also, police are here to help keep an eye on things – we got Sgt. Strand and Lt. Smith on camera:
2:46 PM UPDATE: Carol Johnston from West Seattle Senior Center just stopped by. She’s handing out flyers for “Rainbow Bingo: Hot Summer Nights” coming up August 22nd at the Senior Center — adding it to the Events page now! We’ve also chatted with Nancy Driver, who’s organizing the big September 13th cleanup along the Fauntleroy end of The Bridge, from Walking on Logs to 35th/Fauntleroy. As we wrote the other night – e-mail her ASAP if you think you’ll be able to volunteer for one of the biggest and most important West Seattle cleanup operations in a longtime: ndriver@quidnunc.net – she needs to have some semblance of a head count sooner rather than later, and she’s got some big organizational milestones coming up. 3:01 PM UPDATE: The Jones Soda freebies are so popular, Deni Tyler (shown below) told us they handed out 2,400 cans in the first 3 hours of the festival. We recommend “Fufu Berry.”
More freebies – Leslie Thomson (left in the photo below) from Dream Dinners (WSB sponsor) has been handing out lemon-bar samples:
3:42 PM UPDATE: A sample of music – 30 seconds of Verona, playing earlier at the South Stage:
4:01 PM UPDATE: Lots of nice folks we only previously “knew” via e-mail have stopped by to say hi. So glad to meet you all in person. We’ll be here at least another hour tonight, and we’ll also cover evening events even once the Info Booth shuts down – then we’re here starting at 10 am tomorrow. Also here tomorrow, among many others — the Hi-Yu folks tell us their Luna Park float will be on display tomorrow toward the north end of Summer Fest (around California/Oregon) — also we’ve heard from Furry Faces Foundation, which will be set up near Petco tomorrow and Sunday. That’s the same area where you’ll find the free Jones Soda; a rep from the promotional firm came by to tell us this is the first major event where they’re doing this – their goal is to give out a quarter million cans by summer’s end; they’re also proud to be the exclusive soda provider for the upcoming Seafair hydro races, and the Capitol Hill Block Party among other things. WSB contributing photojournalist Christopher Boffoli stopped by to say hi and has since sent some photos — first one is the midday crowd via long lens (really, it’s not a total zoo, but there are lots of people here having fun), second one is what Christopher describes as “Tow trucks being kept busy by people defying No Parking signs along Oregon”:
f
4:34 PM UPDATE: Two more pix. First, Tamar getting her face painted (Alvis left a comment wondering if we’d be getting the classic festival kids-with-face-paint pix, this is the best we could do for starters); second, one of the many artist vendors here – Christy Varonfakis Johnson of On Focus Photo, who has contributed photos to WSB before, posing with her husband, Jeremy, in their booth here at Summer Fest, where they’re selling her work:
5:14 PM UPDATE: Quarter past five and the info booth hasn’t shut down yet, so we’re still here. As we just mentioned in a response to a comment from “d,” the pet area that will be set up by Next to Nature tomorrow and Sunday sounds great – water, a wading pool for pets, a cool place for them to get their paws off the asphalt, and more – Louis from Next to Nature stopped by and was telling us all about it. Lora Lewis from Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor) also stopped by the booth a few minutes ago and gave us the scoop that barista Blayne will be back in town next week sometime (he’s on the new season of “Project Runway,” which debuts Wednesday; here’s the scoop on the viewing party at Ginomai). Still a nice breeze blowing east-west on Alaska, where we are, and a great crowd but not too insanely busy – of course, the evening has just begun; live music will continue till about 9:15 tonight, but it’s not overwhelming if you’re not near the stages at the north and south ends – we really can’t even hear it from here in the central part of the setup. 5:47 PM UPDATE: Info Booth “officially” shutting down in a few minutes, we will likely stay here till about 6:30 posting updates. “Busy today for a Friday!” pronounced the Chamber’s Patti Mullen, with whom we’ve been sharing the booth today along with Chamber volunteers, as well as a volunteer selling Summer Fest T-shirts on behalf of the Junction Association. (Check back here tomorrow after 10 am for the “I Love West Seattle” bumper stickers that the Chamber’s selling, as seen in the photo below from earlier this year.)
7:02 PM UPDATE: Finally ready to fold it up, though events here are going to continue another hour plus. In addition to the official vendors with booths, there are folks working the crowd getting the word out about various endeavors, from political petitions to personal projects – among them, local musician Philip Mariconda (you may have seen him perform at C and P Coffee), who’s got a new album (Corporate Dysfunction; read about it here) – we asked him to pause and pose for WSB Cam:
Speaking of music … Coffin Break must be pretty popular … several people have just stopped by to ask which stage they’re playing on (answer: south stage, right now), and that’s the first band-specific question we’ve fielded all day. P.S. There are at least half a dozen Seattle Police officers here, and they have just reunited another lost child with his/her parent(s) – to quote one of the officers, “So far today we’re 8 for 8.”
West Seattle Summer Fest in The Junction is the “star attraction” this weekend, but by no means the only one. A little further south, White Center Music Nights resume tonight at Cafe Rozella and Full Tilt Ice Cream; tomorrow morning, a Vietnamese Cultural Festival brings an invitation for you to find out more about what some had considered “the mystery statue of Orchard Avenue” (photo above; recent WSB feature story here) … there’s also Shakespeare in the park, a track meet, a high-school reunion … in all, 52 listings ahead (including a double traffic alert):Read More
As reported in recent weeks, both Roxhill Elementary and Schmitz Park Elementary lost their principals. The district has just announced who’s replacing them:Read More
First one comes directly to WSB from a reliable source that’s contributed important news here before, reporting that the closure was announced to the staff at a meeting within the past several days – this is the Starbucks store that replaced Infinity Espresso less than a year ago on the north side of Jefferson Square, 
NOT the “licensee” stand inside Safeway. Second report of this (hat tip to TPN from Blogging Georgetown) comes from a map the Times has been keeping of reported closures. This Starbucks is so relatively new, it’s only been 11 months since we first reported it was coming – it opened in late fall. The company itself has drawn criticism for the time gap between its announcement that 600 stores would close and its upcoming public announcement of which stores are closing. Its spokespeople are not currently confirming or denying closure reports for any specific locations; we requested comment on this one and received an official (albeit generic) statement – read on for the full text:Read More
| 14 COMMENTS