West Seattle, Washington
19 Friday
Some facade fine-tuning in The Junction: Bakery Nouveau
has finally erased the last traces of the previous occupant from its awning (left); Divina‘s front sign (right) is temporarily missing while some roof work is under way.
… a night when we could barely get into a WS restaurant. Maybe it’s all those folks moving into all those townhomes, or else it’s just that we’ve got great places dishing up great food. First we tried The Junction; barely found a place to park; walked into our restaurant of choice, were told we’d have to wait at least half an hour. Eventually moved on to Admiral; nowhere to park but that dingy garage near Bartell … eventually managed a table at one of the few not-so-trendy places nearby. Anyway, congrats to the places where business is booming; reservations might be in order soon!
The National Weather Service just announced the winning name in the contest (here’s a Times writeup) to name the December 2006 windstorm: The Hanukkah Eve Windstorm. We still think “Thursday Night Football Windstorm” would have been better. At least the winning name came from somebody in Burien, which was hit just about as hard as we were in WS.
If you have time to do more than sit around plotting a party for the early start of Daylight-Saving Time next weekend (or St. P’s Day, beyond), here’s what you can do THIS weekend (after the jump):Read More
Bless all you WSBers (we need a T-shirt, don’t we? soon as we get a logo!) who campaigned to help us get this far in the Metroblogging Seattle popularity-poll-that-won’t-stop. Now, we are in the Final Four (vote here) and proclaimed as “having moxie.” (Actually, we haven’t been there. Yet.)
Things are pretty tall and dense along the stretch of Beach Drive between Weather Watch Park and Me-Kwa-Mooks. This is likely to continue the trend, replacing a few surviving century-old homes:
“K” e-mailed us to ask if we have any taco truck recommendations, in WS or White Center vicinities. Sorry to say, we haven’t gotten any more exotic than Taqueria Guaymas. Anyone with a recommendation for “K”?
Wow, what a bizarre turn of events. So our latest opponent in Metroblogging Seattle‘s never-ending popularity poll registered a sudden burst of votes last night, and the poll operators started the whole thing over again, one-day sudden death. Now today the comments on the original poll post went totally nuclear. We appreciate the people who cared enough to vote for us (and if you haven’t yet, you can still vote, with just hours left to go), but gosh, it’s not worth mudslinging, it’s really just a goofy little blog stunt (we hope MS has gotten a few thousand extra pageviews for its trouble!).
-Two more cases for “no/hell no” — Geov Parrish and Cascadia Report.
–Viaduct, The Blog keeps shilling for “repair & prepare,” aka “retrofit” and … (You know, we just keep yearning to rhyme “retrofit” with “acquit,” a la Johnnie Cochran.)
-Shockingly, Slog hasn’t posted ANYTHING on the VV so far today.
Reminder — Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis talks transportation at the Fauntleroy Community Association’s community meeting at The Hall tonight. (He’s filling in for Hizzoner, who is in DC this morning to talk to Congress about global warming.)
Though the North End is still a mess, looks like WS made it thru the night snow-free. No school changes either, except for a few Head Start programs to the north.
That’s what Kokoras Greek Grill in Morgan Junction just got from the Seattle Weekly, five months after opening.
Kinda like that nickname for the upward development along Cali. Or maybe we’re just hopeless SW geeks. Anyway — today’s developer development: Houses going down, more townhomes going up, on the north end, on a lot sold to Omni for a cool $1.8 mil last spring.
Under The Viaduct, WSB reader Lillie found this wolf, clearly cousin to the owl and bear beneath The Bridge, perhaps howling in anger at the vote that’s wasting $1 million?
At least at our house … though Everett, Snoqualmie Pass, and other areas are getting snow-blasted. Let us know if you see WS snow!
It’s school $-raising season, and the parents at Madison Middle School asked us to share this request: Donate to their upcoming auction. They’re looking for new items, open to just about anything — art, gift baskets, sports souvenirs, you name it. If you don’t have schoolkids in your family, you may not realize how important these annual fundraisers are — a couple WS elementary schools, for example, are raising $ to fix deteriorating playgrounds. To offer an item (or find out about auction tickets), click here to e-mail the Madison auction chairperson, who also explains where the $ will go:
The auction benefits the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) programs and this year’s fund a wish item is a message board much like the one in front of West Seattle High School which will help to communicate to the parents/community the events at the school as well as important messages that somehow seem to get lost in a pre-teenager’s backpack!!!
-City Council member Peter Steinbrueck says he’ll leave the council when his term expires this fall, to focus on The Third Option.
-His current council colleague Nick Licata, who’s pro-rebuild, answers questions on the Seattle Times website from noon-1 pm today. You can send yours now. (If you missed it, here’s the transcript of Hizzoner’s lunchtime online Q-n-A from yesterday. Even just the photo of him at the keyboard is worth the click.)
-No surprise, this ballot of too many options, yet too few, is apparently confusing people. (Can’t say we didn’t warn ’em.)
As of this writing, we’re a bit behind in the Metroblogging Seattle popularity poll, which closes this round tomorrow. Boo! Please vote again today. Show ’em the West Side rules.
One month after our last post on the controversy over the city’s proposed crackdown on “nightlife” businesses — the so-called “nightlife premises legislation” — opponents and supporters are about to get their day before a City Council committee. Opponents, including West Seattle restaurateurs whom you would never consider to be “nightclub” operators, contend this law will hurt their businesses and your/our right to patronize them — so they’re pleading for backup at the meeting (9:30 am Thursday, City Hall downtown) to make sure they’re not outnumbered by community groups (reportedly mostly from other parts of the city) who have rallied in support of the law. If you can’t be there in person, here’s how to contact council members to let them know what you think. If you want to read the whole ordinance for yourself, here it is.
Thanks to CHS for pointing to Defend Capitol Hill. As in, from condos. In our case, townhomes. Perhaps the iconic image could be a red circle-slash through the Death Star Trench (as coined by “Steve E” in a comment on this post).
Seems that somewhere around the time some criminal idiots were stealing copper wire and throwing hundreds of people off the phone system the other night, some (other?) criminal idiots were smashing out car windows on lower Gatewood Hill. Happened to us near The Beach years ago. If the cops don’t get ’em, karma will. Here’s hoping.
Just spotted along the westbound Fauntleroy Way end of The Bridge — huge banners with a sequential message (a la the “Burma Shave” roadside signs way back when) — REPLACE IT?/NO … FIX IT! (We feel a growing sense of kinship in our pro-retrofit-ness.)
West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician is just wrapping up an hourlong q-and-a session on the Times website. Some WS-specific stuff, too.
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