Santa’s schedule at Westwood Village
(photo from Christmas Past by WSB contributing photographer Matt Durham; prints of his work are available at his site, MattDurhamPhotography.com)
We’ve heard from West Seattle parents wondering if Santa Claus is coming to Westwood Village as usual this year, since they hadn’t seen any flyers up — Fear not, we just checked with WV management and they confirmed Santa will be there for photos on holiday-season weekends, starting this Saturday (Nov. 24), noon-4 pm. As in years past, Santa’s “house” is in the streamside courtyard area between Bed/Bath/Beyond and Wyatt’s Jewelers. Photos are free with just one prerequisite; here’s the WV flyer with full details:Read More
Plan your procrastination: Thanksgiving grocery-store hours
(THIS IS A 2007 POST – OUR 2008 INFO FOR WEST SEATTLE IS ON THE HOLIDAYS PAGE)
Still working on the list of “where you can get your latte on Thanksgiving,” but we have the West Seattle supermarket holiday hours nailed down so we thought we’d pass them along: PCC will be closed, Metropolitan Market will be open till 2 pm, Thriftway will be open till 4 pm, QFC till 6 pm, the Safeways say it’s 24-hour business as usual.
Welcome to the latest WSB sponsor
There was a time you didn’t hear much about the mortgage business unless you yourself were in the process of getting one. Then – times changed. But the latest 
West Seattle businessperson to join the WSB sponsor ranks has a clear, authoritative, helpful voice that has emerged from the middle of it all: Rhonda Porter, CMPS (Certified Mortgage Planning Specialist), who has gained local and national attention with her blog The Mortgage Porter. It’s a place not just to find information such as her weekly Friday Mortgage Rate Update (last Friday’s edition here) but also background information and context (check the left sidebar for “Favorite Mortgage Posts” such as How to Pick a Lender, and a group of posts explaining specific mortgage programs). Rhonda also contributes to the respected regional real-estate blog Rain City Guide. You can reach Rhonda at 206-718-9488 or by e-mail (click here). This Thanksgiving week, we are thankful for Rhonda Porter and for Hotwire Coffee and Garlic Jim’s Pizza in The Junction, Click! Design That Fits in the Admiral District, and West Seattle Realtor Bill Barna, our first fabulous WSB sponsors; here’s how to join them. (And we are thankful for YOU and all our fabulous WSB visitors/readers/contributors/participants, too!)
Junction Hometown Holidays: New details
The West Seattle Junction Association website now has new details about the 
Hometown Holidays weekend-long celebration that’s less than two weeks away, including a new location for the tree — the site describes the Saturday night 12/1 event as “inaugural lighting of newly planted Community Holiday Tree at 6 pm … in the Farmers’ Market Parking Lot.” Check out the full list of activities here, including the especially festive-sounding “Adult Cheer Garden.”
Another Fauntleroy Way chunk on the market
Even before the destiny of the ex-Gee/ex-Huling dealership parcels becomes clear … even before Fauntleroy Place breaks ground … another chunk of Fauntleroy Way business land east of The Junction is now on the market: 4415-4425 Fauntleroy (map), perhaps best known as home to Tervo’s Mini-Mart (whose proprietor died this past Labor Day), listed for sale for $2,900,000. Here’s the listing; the flyer describes it as “commercial, retail, or mixed use; potential for 79 units, plus 5 commercial units; 108 parking spaces.” Here’s a screen grab of the flyer:Read More
Pet projects: 3 notes for those who love ’em
“TOAST TO THE ANIMALS” TONIGHT AT BEVERIDGE PLACE PUB: This puts the “fun” in “fundraiser” — a benefit for Furry Faces Foundation. Their announcement is livelier than any rewrite we could do:
“Raise your glasses and ring in the Holiday Cheer for rescued animals,” say Terri and Gary, owners of the Beveridge Place Pub, “as we are delighted to announce another Wine Tasting Fun-Raiser, benefiting Furry Faces Foundation, a.k.a., F3. And, if you like a particular wine (s), you may purchase a bottle or two or more … right then and there.” “For a mere $15 you get to taste 4-6 lovely wines, savor light appetizers, mingle with your neighbors, and help defray the cost of spaying ‘n’ neutering rescued animals,” raves Lora Vickrey, F3 treasurer and Hotwire Coffeehouse owner [also WSB sponsor], “plus, we will be previewing our soon to be infamous, nefarious game of kismet, called …. Box-a-Rama! Be there, or be square.”
That’s 4:30 pm-7 pm tonight (here’s a map to Beveridge Place Pub).
GET YOUR DOG GROOMED ON TURKEY DAY: Across California Ave from Beveridge Place and a bit north, The Wash Dog is taking appointments for grooming on Thanksgiving morning. We heard from Wash Dog owner Bernadette Cassidy after our post seeking info on West Seattle businesses open Thanksgiving. We’re building that list now; meanwhile, you can call Bernadette to snag one of those holiday appointments at 206-935-4546.
YOGA WITH YOUR DOG? Wendy Hughes-Jelen from the High Point K9 Club is trying to organize a “yoga with your dog” class or workshop. Wendy had a great time taking a class in Bellevue that’s taught by an instructor who lives in West Seattle, Brenda Bryan. Wendy is working with Brenda and the High Point Community Center to get West Seattle dog yoga going, but she needs at least 4 people/dog pairs to rev this up; e-mail her at wendyhj (at) greenspacesrealestate.com if you want to get in on it. (Read more about “yoga with your dog” at Brenda’s website.)
Reader Recommendation Request: Local housecleaners
Last time we asked for RRRs on house-cleaning services, we paired it with an unrelated request which stirred up most of the discussion and stole the spotlight. Now with holiday guests looming, we have a new RRR on the topic — Lisa is looking for a house-cleaning/maid service based in, or willing to come to, West Seattle. Please leave your recommendation as a comment; previous RRRs and responses are archived here.
West Seattle weekend sights: Tool time
WSB contributing photographer Matt Durham took these photos at an every-other-month West Seattle event that your editors admit to having never heard of before … antique-tool enthusiasts gathering at the Alki Masonic Hall on the east edge of The Junction. Matt writes:
Today members shared information and auctioned tools designed for ship-building, scrimshaw and various other uses. The Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors invite all tool collectors and dealers to join them at their meetings. To attend, you must be a member of PNTC, a guest of a member, or register at the meeting. Contact info is at tooltimer.com.
(Prints of Matt’s WSB photos and his other work are available through his site, MattDurhamPhotography.com.)
Gee vs. Huling: No arbitration, says judge
The auction is over, the first ex-Huling employee verdict is in, but the court fight over who’s to blame for the dealership failure continues: Latest development in the Gee vs. Huling lawsuit (full lawsuit document linked from here), according to the newest publicly downloadable court documents, is this — 
King County Superior Court Judge Harry McCarthy has ruled against the Hulings in their contention that the dispute with the Gees should go to arbitration rather than court because of terms in their original dealership sale agreement. (The judge wrote “… the dispute falls outside of the arbitration provision in the parties’ contract”; read the ruling here.) So now the Hulings are taking it to the state Court of Appeals. (Read the “notice of appeal” here.)
Holiday help
THANKSGIVING #1: Bless everyone who has to work on holidays. We know it’s no picnic. Again this year, we are compiling a list of who’s open on The Big Holidays in two categories: coffee shops and grocery stores. We have started our Thanksgiving list already but we are asking for your help, if you own or work at a West Seattle business in one of those categories — let us know whether you’re closed or open on Thanksgiving, and if open, what hours. Post a comment here or e-mail WSB directly. Thank you!
THANKSGIVING #2: We’ve talked here before about the free community Thanksgiving feast that will be hosted noon-3 pm Thursday by Tuxedos & Tennis Shoes on their home turf at The Hall @ Fauntleroy. According to the West Seattle Helpline website, while there are enough volunteers to serve the dinner, they need some things you could drop off at The Hall (map) before 11 am Thanksgiving morning: a pie, new socks, winter hats, or gloves.
CHRISTMAS ETC.: Once you get those outdoor decorations up (the weekend forecast doesn’t look too conducive) keep WSB in mind if you have an extra-festive display — let us know where you’re at so we can come by for pix/video, or send us your own pix/video for posting, so we can all share the season’s sights; a special Holidays page is one of two new features we’re adding to WSB this weekend.
New neon in The Junction
The latest touch on the much-watched sign for Shadowland in The Junction is neon — as photographed today by WSB contributing photographer Christopher Boffoli. He went by shortly after we sent a note to Shadowland co-proprietor Joe to ask a question we’ve heard from a couple people — what’s going in the circular space in the middle of the sign? Joe says, “A moon. The face is being painted now. Still a mystery on how we will get it up there but we have a team of engineers working on it :) …” Joe says they’re expecting to open the week of the 25th, depending on how city inspections go next week. No detailed menu scoop yet but we’ve had hints here and here. (Joe added in a later note that it’s exciting to finally get so close to opening after all this time – and the birth of a business can take a long time indeed — we looked back into the WSB archives and found our first mention of this project was more than a year and a half ago.)
Reader report: Gables condo conversion slowing?
That was the scene outside the West Ridge Park apartment complex on Delridge in mid-summer, as the complex advertised cheerily for “month-to-month” and “short-term” renters while proceeding with plans to convert to condos and rename the complex “Gables,” under the umbrella of Mosaic Homes, which recently turned the Graham Street Apartments into “Strata.” We had been wondering why we hadn’t seen any stirrings of marketing yet for Gables, though the city permit files show work aplenty; this note from a reader may give us a clue:
Thought you might be interested to find out that the West Ridge Park Apartments are no longer going to be converted to condos anytime in the near future. I am a resident there and recently inquired to find out when I would receive my 90-day notice to vacate. The front office worker told me that I wouldn’t be receiving a notice because the real estate market had turned and the remaining buildings were no longer going to be converted (at least for a while). They have begun the conversion of four of the buildings, which are almost finished, but according to the worker, the owners haven’t decided what to do with them once they are finished. She thought they may either keep them vacant for purchase at a later date or eventually lease them out.
We have a message out to Mosaic asking for comment; will let you know if they respond.
Three ways to be greener
Three things of environmental note:
FREE E-CYCLING: This isn’t happening in West Seattle but it’s not far, and it’s free: 9 am-3 pm tomorrow, Safeco Field parking structure at Occidental & Edgar Martinez (map), you can bring certain electronic items for free recycling: specifically “any make or model of computers and related equipment, including monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, laptops, gaming consoles, and mobile entertainment devices.”
GREEN PAINT: The folks who run Authentic Home, the bright blue interior-design shop (AH-provided photo at left) that relocated to The Junction 2 months back, have a new line of environmentally smarter paint, described thusly: “Our new paint is Zero VOC and solvent-free and environmentally responsible. All 60 of our colors can be made with Authentic Home COLOR Paint GREEN and remain true to the colors and vibrancy in our original low VOC paint.” We’ll confess, we had to look up “VOC” (here’s the explanation).
SUSTAINABLE WEST SEATTLE: Want to get an early start on a New Year’s resolution for all of West Seattle? Be at the Camp Long lodge tomorrow, 9 am-2 pm, for the Sustainable West Seattle Open Space Forum addressing “How do we make West Seattle more sustainable in 2008?” Free breakfast and beverages (bring your own mug and utensils, in the sustainability spirit). Read more here.
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