2 finales tomorrow
Tomorrow, you get two “last chances”: First, last chance to ride the Elliott Bay Water Taxi‘s special early run, 6:10 am. As you may recall, this extra run was added for Freeway Fright ’07; the road work ended early, but Metro stretched the bonus WT run one full week to gather data. The Water Taxi’s regular season, by the way, has another month to go — it continues through September 30th.
Second, it’s the last non-holiday weekday of the year at Colman Pool. The beautiful beachfront pool at Lincoln Park will be open daily through Labor Day, then closed till one final “post-season weekend” Saturday-Sunday, September 8th-9th. For us, it’s just not summer unless we swim there at least once.
Hello fire station, goodbye house
WSB reader Val sent the two photos below from 35th & Holden, where the end seems near for a nondescript little house that’s on part of the land where the city will build the new Fire Station 37 to replace the historic building 4 blocks north (the substation next door is on the other part of the land and is going away too).
From Val’s e-mail:
This house was remodeled a few years ago after being vacant for a while (before the remodel, it inexplicably had two front doors) and obviously wasn’t anything special, but I hate to see a loss of housing anywhere. I believe there is a new fire station going in to these two lots, and unlike in Queen Anne, there was no public outcry about the loss of historic housing in the neighborhood. I suppose it is too much to ask to hope that the house is being moved somewhere instead of being trashed … Plus, I’d like to see the old fire station become a local (British for nearby bar). There’s really nothing along 35th, and the E-9 in Tacoma has been doing great business for years.
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More WS “sharrows”
Next major WS road to get the “sharrows” now gracing Beach Drive (photo right) and Lincoln Park Way: Admiral. We noticed them roughed in (like this) on the fresh pavement after striping crews finished their work last weekend.
WeSea?
Some folks grump at us from time to time for deciding to refer to the venerable California Avenue Southwest as “Cali.” Yes, we admit, we made it up, although there is at least one business that uses the shorthand (Cali Nails, south edge of The Junction). Other new abbreviations have started to appear in the past year or so, such as SOA. But now, here’s one we have never heard/seen before — interested if you have — a blogger who apparently moved to WS recently is calling it “WeSea.”
From the “those blog people will post ANYTHING, won’t they” file
A tongue-in-cheek note accompanied the photo of recently harvested carrots from a Gatewood garden …
The e-mail subject line: AMAZING WEST SEATTLE CARROT. The text follows. Perhaps a flood of comments from insistent carrot lovers will force the gardeners to bask in their deserved spotlight.
We just pulled this pair of intertwined carrots from our garden in Gatewood and thought you should know about them. Feel free to publish this incredible photo on your blog — we have decided to keep it in the public domain and not pursue monetary rewards. In fact we humbly wish to remain anonymous.
Flocks of fun
September is almost here, and with it arrives your annual chance to pull a fun stunt for a good cause: 
The Furry Faces Foundation is offering you the chance to send somebody a flock of plastic pink flamingos — 10 bucks for every five birds you would like them to land in your target’s yard. To quote the FFF press release, “All flamingo flocks are modestly accessorized with Hawaiian leis, boas or Mardi Gras jewelry and after a 24-48 hour stay over, they will mysteriously disappear.” The concept has a few more fun enhancements, including the ability to purchase “insurance” against somebody sending a flock your way. You can order a flamingo flock by e-mall (furryfaces@hotmail.com), phone (932-1652), or by picking up/dropping off an application at Hotwire Coffee or Pet Elements.
West Seattle dishes to die for
Ever since we discovered the tater tots at Skylark (shown right in all their golden crunchy goodness), we’ve been meaning to post this as a discussion topic: What are your favorite West Seattle dishes “to die for”? Besides those tater tots, ours include the West 5 BLT with avocado, Caffe Ladro cardamom coffee cake, and New Teriyaki & Wok General Tso’s chicken. With a lot of runner-ups!
Plum job
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That could be the fruit from your overladen trees, filling a car and eventually bellies, rather than rotting in your yard or on your sidewalk. Aviva sent us the photo and this explanation:
Got Fruit?
We’ve got pickers! It’s that time of year again when neighborhood fruit trees are laden with ripe pears, apples, and plums. Perhaps you’ve seen a tree in your neighborhood with fruit starting to fall. Maybe you even own one of those trees, but never get around to getting the ladder out to pick, and the canner out to make plum preserves.
This year, consider contacting the Community Fruit Tree Harvest, an organization which matches volunteer harvesters with fruit tree owners. Fruit is picked and delivered to organizations such as the West Seattle Food Bank.
Fruit should be pesticide-free, worm-free, and on the tree. If you know of a tree, would like to pick, or know of a organization in West Seattle who could benefit from the harvest, contact aviva@duwamish.net or info@lawnandgardenhotline.org.
WSB Pledge Day, last update
GIANT THANK YOU to everyone who reads and/or participates in WSB – contributors and non-contributors alike. 
As promised, at the stroke of midnight, the Pledge Day posts stop, the “Support WSB” contribution “button” will drop to the bottom of the sidebar, and we’ll get back to posting at a dull-roar pace (a few notches lower than today’s frenzy). And stand by for a picture of the forthcoming video cam as soon as we find the right one in which to wisely invest some of the $ you entrusted us with to make WSB better! West Seattle, and everyone who’s part of it, absolutely rocks.
SRO @ B&N: Terry Brooks visit ’07
Somebody buy, or at least loan, Westwood Village Barnes & Noble some chairs. For the second straight year, as many people stood as sat during West Seattle mega-selling author Terry Brooks‘ annual appearance. Diverse crowd too, 7 months to 70-plus. As was the case for his ’06 visit, Brooks read from his next book and talked about his current one. The latter, “Genesis of Shannara: The Elves of Cintra,” hit bookstore shelves today; the former, the title of which he’s not disclosing (though his “Web Druid” Shawn Speakman tried tonight to get him to spill it), is still in progress — he admitted he’s rewritten its final chapters over and over. Tonight, he confirmed that book will conclude the “Genesis of Shannara” trilogy, though at one point he had hinted online it might run longer than three books. He also pitched a new graphic novel for which he provided the plot, “Dark Wraith of Shannara,” coming out next year (and offered fans in attendance cool promotional bookmarks), and noted his near-future plans include writing another book in his “Landover (The Original Shannara Trilogy)” series, plus traveling to Britain, Japan, and the Seychelles — in response to an audience question about how he so successfully imbues his stories with a “sense of place,” he declared that travel helps fire his imagination; each new place sparks thoughts about “what kind of story could take place here?” SIDE NOTE FOR WEST SEATTLE BOOK LOVERS: Square 1 Books’ “Words from the West Side” event featuring WS authors is coming up on September 16th @ ArtsWest; read more on the Square 1 blog.
Reader recommendation requests: 3, count ’em, 3
Another new-ish site feature we neglected to mention in WSBPD update #4 is reader recommendation requests, and the great response they always receive thanks to your helpfulness. After the last round, we assigned them their own category. Tonight, we have three recommendation requests to send out to WSB-land; please leave a comment if you’ve got thoughts on any of them.
First: A reader who’s a dog owner wants your thoughts on good doggy daycare(s) here in WS.
Second: Readers with a baby on the way (congratulations!) want recommendations for good pediatricians or even family-practice docs here in WS.
Last but not least: A reader who’s getting married in less than a month (congrats to you too!) has to get her dress cleaned and needs a recommendation for a cleaner “who does an impeccable job with silk.” Even if it’s not in WS!
Fauntleroy Creek’s best friends, hard at work again
Just south of the ferry dock, work has begun in earnest on a project Fauntleroy Creek stewards call “the reach to the beach.” Over the next 2 weeks, with the help of EarthCorps, they are working to transform the last stretch of FC into something more natural. Judy Pickens tells us major work won’t start till tomorrow, but we noticed a definite difference between the view of the beach this afternoon (first photo below) and yesterday (second photo below):
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The coho salmon of Fauntleroy Creek need all the help they can get, after a disappointing year; here’s hoping this project does the trick. By the way, the FC fish ladder on the other side of Fauntleroy Way celebrates its 10th anniversary next year!
WSB Pledge Day update #4: Site features
As we mentioned in WSBPD update #1, the first thing we will invest in, to improve WSB, is a video camera. Some West Seattle people, places, and events just beg for moving pix and sound. Even still pix are a relatively recent addition for us — we bought a small Nikon with 10x zoom on closeout a few months back, and it’s enabled us to get beyond what we were managing to eke out with a combination of a dying decade-old Sony plus a cell-phone cam. Speaking of which, we also will invest in a low-cost blog phone line, since we’ve found that some information providers just don’t want to do business via e-mail. But that’s all “infrastructure” stuff, as our governmental friends might call it. We have tried to enhance the features you see — adding “live” screengrabs to the WS “Live” Cams page, refining and expanding the categories (list on the right-side sidebar) so you can subscribe via RSS to just the categories that interest you (Admiral Theater, Elliott Bay Water Taxi, Alki Statue of Liberty, among other topics, all have their own categories now) or bookmark the specific category page, and continuing to update the Other Blogs in WS page, currently with 91 blogs (and we’re always ready to hear about more!), as well as researching and posting the WS Weekend Lineup every Friday morning. For a while we were deluged with lost-pet announcements and about to create a pet page — that’s still in queue — and we’re mulling a few other ideas. Most important — is there anything you wish you could find at WSB? We can’t promise everything (some things aren’t scalable for a small family-run site) but we would love to hear your wish list.
4132 Cali fire: Ruins removed
A week and a half after the arson that destroyed the in-progress building @ 4132 Cali and forced nearby residents out of their homes, what was left of the charred ruins is now gone — driving to The Junction, we just noticed the demolition crew clearing the site (photo @ right is as close as we could pull over). Still no report of anyone under arrest; 800-55-ARSON if you have any tips that might help investigators.
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The stretch of street where you have to run for your life
Despite three crosswalks with pedestrian-activated lights, crossing Fauntleroy Way SW along the length of Lincoln Park remains hit-and-miss, at best. Sometimes literally. And right across from LP’s biggest parking lot, the city plans to take away a remaining non-signalized crosswalk, this one at Fauntleroy/Rose, while another problem percolates …
What makes this stretch of road more problematic than others, besides the presence of a big busy park on one side, is the traffic bound for the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Gary Dawson of the Fauntleroy Community Association says the crosswalks and ferry traffic aren’t mixing well, to say the least:
If you use any one of (the Lincoln Park crosswalks) during the afternoon commute period you put your life at great risk, stop lights or not. The reason is, the line to the ferry dock going southbound moves when queued, whether there are pedestrians in the crosswalks or not. Another near-miss (yesterday) afternoon. A neighbor going southbound stopped so a young boy could cross over to the park. The ferry queue did not. The lad had to run for his life. This, sadly, is more typical than not.
This time the Fauntleroy Community Association is contacting the Mayor’s office (the neighbor already has) to find out how serious he is with his pedestrian safety program.
We’ll stay in touch to find out what FCA hears back.
WSB Pledge Day update #3: What makes this so fun is …
If you’re just joining us, welcome to WSB Pledge Day (it ends @ midnight so if you don’t want to hear about it, it’ll be safe to come back then). 
MEGA-THANKS to everyone who has chipped in so far. The other type of contribution that makes this more interesting every day are your e-mails and on-site comments – from “news tips” to rants/raves, and way beyond. Right now, we wanted to call your attention to the comments on our favorite post from last weekend — the one about the yard-sale signs. Several members of the family that staged the sale have come to WSB to post some very touching, lively follow-up comments, just another example of how finding out more about our neighbors, whether through a website or through in-person conversation, gives us big thrills, every day, and we hope you get a kick out of it too; e-mail us any time with something interesting you’re seeing, hearing, planning, doing.
4 days after we reported on 
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