Condo saga spinoff: Renter roulette
That’s the game at least two WS apartment-seekers are caught up in — the same ones who first tipped us to the impending condo conversion at a south Morgan Junction complex. After that discovery quashed their hopes of renting there, they thought they had found another place, this time in north WS — until their prospective landlord admitted, when directly questioned, that those apartments have just been sold. (We won’t name the building until and unless we find online records to double-verify this.) Will their third choice be the charm? We’ll wait to hear! Meantime, this blogger caught up in the M-Junction conversion has found a place on Alki.
Spectacle in the sky
Seconds away from shutting down the computer, we checked e-mail one last time, and good thing we did: a note had just come in from Joe (thank you!!!!) with these spectacular photos of the lightning we’ve seen the past few hours. Joe’s full gallery of pix taken from what he described as “the west tip of Alki, facing southwest” can be found here.
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Seen during a holiday stroll
From Admiral Junction to Morgan Junction on foot, much to be seen. Including:
-Dangerous driving at Cali/Genesee and Cali/Fauntleroy. At the former, a car turning right/north onto Cali (by Divina) almost took out a bicyclist that the driver would have seen with a good look south before the turn. The bicyclist shouted indignantly for a while, the driver paused, then both finally continued on. At the latter — a car almost took us out, turning right/west onto Fauntleroy (by the Corner Inn) as we stepped into the crosswalk. We’re not much for shouting so we just glowered.
-Banner up for a new business in the mixed-use building at 5446 Cali: “On the Way Maternity.” According to its city business-license classification, it’ll sell clothing. Doesn’t look too close to opening; various renovations are under way inside.
-In The Junction, the former Hollywood Video etc./future megaproject site along Alaska now has a “coming soon/Office Depot” banner on the fence. (Why not “coming soon/QFC” too?)
Two sunset photos, and a report from the “sister neighborhood”
Sunset photo #1 hot out of the inbox, courtesy of WSB reader “K” (thank you!!!!):
Sunset photo #2 is one we shot from Golden Gardens tonight (heresy! we left WS! attempt at relevant linkage, below the pic):
Driving through Ballard on the way to GG, we mused that Ballard and WS really should be “sister neighborhoods” — lots in common, from condoization, to maritime history/ongoing industry, to the status as home to the city’s two most popular public beaches, and much more. As if to put an exclamation point on that thought, a sign caught our eye in a Ballard business window, triggering a not-so-long-ago WS memory: Ben & Jerry’s on Market has just closed. While we’re not sure about that (ex-)shop’s current ownership, we do know the former B&J’s in The Junction was owned by the people who (at least at the time) owned the one in Ballard. One other interesting sighting during our brief invasion of the north end tonight: This lovely charter yacht ($70K/week!) moored at Shilshole.
West Seattle dream homes
Sunday afternoons often make us think of … real estate, perhaps because of the “open house” signs flowering on almost every corner, especially on the most famous streets of WS. We all know about Alki Avenue and Beach Drive and their incredible view homes — but if you don’t wander far off the main arterials, you might not know much about the other “streets of (WS) dreams.” In particular, this afternoon we are thinking about Sunset Avenue — a view-drenched blufftop street in north WS that you could consider to be a bit like a WS version of LA’s famous Mulholland Drive.
Sunset Ave parallels Alki Ave for quite a while, but if you look toward it from the shore, it’s hard to see anything but an occasional house from Sunset or other bluffside streets poking over the condo-tops:
Sunset wandered onto our radar screen during a real-estate search, where we encountered three homes for sale there right now: “The Castle” at 1545 Sunset ($1,595,000); a somewhat newer home at 1429 Sunset ($1,590,000); and a chance to buy into this neighborhood for less than a million, at 1532 Sunset ($959,000). Which WS street do you dream of living on?
While things are quiet: Looking ahead
Many big things coming up this month in WS. Here are a few we haven’t mentioned yet …
WEDNESDAY — First day of school for Seattle Public Schools (and many private schools too). Note that Cleveland HS is no longer in the Boren building on Delridge; its own new building is done. However, South Lake HS continues its temporary stay in the old Hughes building; and Fairmount Park Elementary will be empty after closing in June.
THURSDAY — Shoppers go wild! It’s the Fall Fashion Affair in The Junction, 7-10 pm at Sweetie, Edie’s, Clementine, and Carmilia’s.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH — The Northwest Hope & Healing Breast Cancer Half Marathon, with an added 5K Walk/Run if the half-m is a bit much. Sign up now at Capers in The Junction or get the registration form online and send it in.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH — First-ever fundraising breakfast for Southwest Youth & Family Services, 7:30 am @ Salty’s on Alki. Read more at the SWYFS website about all the people their programs help.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND — Annual dinner & auction to raise $ for the Log House Museum, 5 pm @ Alki Masonic Hall in The Junction. Call the LHM for tickets (938-5293).
Site improvement: “Search” will comb comments, too
We promised during WSB Pledge Day that we would keep working to make the site worth your time and trouble (not to mention the $ that many readers were kind enough to invest). We’re working on several upgrades. The first successful one fixes a somewhat secret (but annoying) problem: Until now, comments on WSB were not searchable; if you remembered reading something in a comment and tried to find it with the WSB search box, no dice — “search” would only look at the posts (though comments at least were indexed by Google and other offsite search engines). Now, this is fixed, so whatever you put in the WSB search box, you will get back a page with any posts featuring that text in either the body of the post or its comments. (Test it by searching for the name you use to leave comments!) NEXT UP: We’re working on the oft-requested “open discussion” (forum/bulletin board) feature — thought we had one earlier tonight, but it blew up the site, so we had to cancel it — stand by for eventual triumph!
T-shirts to show your WS pride
If you’ve been looking for more ways to show your love for, devotion to, crazy-mad-nuts-aboutness regarding, West Seattle … check out the WS Art Dive next to Hotwire this weekend. Right at the gate, we found artist Jason Olcott selling two types of T-shirts that might meet your need … one is black, fists on the front with WEST SIDE across the knuckles, WEST SEATTLE on the back; the other is pink, inscribed in script, WEST SEATTLE GIRL. 20 bucks. Those are only two of the catchy creations we browsed at the Art Dive; participating artists are there, basking in the sun, awaiting your visit, till 5 today, 10-5 tomorrow.
Three more reader recommendation requests
First, a reminder that our “reader recommendation” posts (with all the incredibly helpful replies attached) have their own category now — use the link on the WSB CATEGORIES list on the right side of this page (you can also bookmark it or subscribe to just that category via RSS). Now, the latest requests:
–A request for opinions — good, bad, neutral — about bathtub refinishers (even if they’re not in WS, as long as they have done work for you here).
–A request for licensed/bonded arborist recommendations, to do what the reader describes as “pruning/storm damage prevention on (a willow tree).” The reader hopes to use someone who could said to be of the “‘plant amnesty’ mindset.”
–Last but not least, a reader is looking for a home-based child-care provider who would consider watching a 7-year-old with a nontraditional school schedule during certain months of the year when the child is out of school. (Responses to this one can be posted here or e-mailed to us and we will forward to that reader.)
Special shelter will be back soon
WSB reader Luckie asked us sometime back about the mysterious disappearance of the California & Admiral bus shelter that had been decorated with art tile. King County Councilmember Dow Constantine‘s office checked into it and got word from Metro that the tiled shelter is being “refurbished” and should be back within a few weeks. The generic shelter that’s there now is just temporary.
Pickup theft trend?
A comment just in on an old post a couple pages into the site seems to merit a brighter spotlight — this is from Roger:
My old 97 Nissan pickup truck was stolen from 35th and Avalon in WS on Monday 8/27. Why anyone would steal it is beyond me. Being so old, I only had liability insurance on it. I’m really bummed out – it wasn’t much, but it was paid for and it was mine. Are stolen cars really found sometimes? I’ve sort of written it off as gone.
Roger made that comment today on our 3-week-old post 3 about someone who blogged about the theft of a different pickup. (Checking back on that blogger — turns out he got his truck back this week, and police arrested someone.) Overall, though, we thought thieves mostly targeted sedans … guess any vehicle could be at risk.
4 days after we reported on
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