West Seattle, Washington
19 Friday
So we show up at Thriftway a little while ago — right around 9 pm — look around at the nearly empty parking lot, and exclaim “where IS everybody?” Slowly a vaguely-aware-of-pop-culture light starts to flicker to life … Seattle’s favorite TV show (starring a ferry catastrophe this week, to boot) is on. Next Thursday at 9, we’ll pick some hot restaurant to try to crash …
If you are one of the few people who knew we were around last summer, you know we are nuts about the Hi-Yu Parade (and a few other summer staples). Seems the fine folks who organize it, and take the Hi-Yu float to other festivals, need some space this spring.
Three more of the remaining houses along Alki Avenue are about to make way for apartments (six stories, 11 units, according to the permit application).
Sorry, we know we should just subtitle ourselves The Viaduct Blog these days, but really, several other blogs are doing a much better job of that — however, since so many of us use the darn thing, it seems important to track the crazily twisting tale here too. That said, here’s the latest: We’re voting, and that’s final.
Yet ANOTHER voting matter: That blog popularity poll we somehow wound up in has moved on to the third round … it’s styled after the NCAA Tournament so it’s dragging on a while longer. Let’s win one for the West side! Please click here. And you can vote again at least once a day, apparently. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now back to the search for more West Seattle news ‘n’ info ….
Now our County Councilguy Dow and his fellow KCC Dems suggest we vote on the Sonics tax plan (the one co-sponsored in the Legislature by our state senator). Er, didn’t some of us already kinda vote on that sort of thing? How about we just have a daily vote on something or another so we can get all these votes out of the way more quickly?
The controversial construction site on ex-Gatewood Church property (across Cali from the still-for-sale church) suddenly, belatedly, has one of those big white city land-use-notice signs on the chain-link fence. The sign only mentions part of the development, however — five units — not all the permits that have been issued, totaling more than a dozen units. (By the way, the city seems to be reworking the permit status pages to make direct linking tougher, so some of our older links on this project are broken. We’ll find a way around it! Meantime, two recent complaints about the project/s have been dismissed — here and here.)
At least, so says West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician. (Yeah, we know the ballots already have been printed, but couldn’t we save a few thou on postage? On counting?)
The “hard copy” version of this week’s Herald has something you won’t find online — a big color ad from the folks who run Guadalajara Hacienda, on Cali between Morgan and Alaska Junctions. Says the restaurant’s closing as of this Sunday. We checked the city land-use system; you probably don’t even need to click this link to guess what’ll be built at the site.
That’s the wish to all of WS from Kelly — who took this photo tonight to capture a view you may have spotted from the waterfront or the bridge (it’s the WaMu building):
John at Georgetown Stew (just east of WS) says — just boycott the election, period.
The ballots are supposed to go out in days … but now the state says, “don’t bother.” Incidentally, KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross proposed earlier that we all just boycott the viaduct tomorrow as a taste of what we’ll be facing regardless of its fate, since it’s going to be out of commission one way or another. Meantime, we’re awaiting the mayor’s reaction to the state’s latest missive. Perhaps Seattle should secede?
-Guess who’s surfaced in the growing push to keep Charlestown Cafe from being replaced by a standalone Petco store: Former City Councilman Charlie Chong. His letter to the current council members is in one of the latest posts on the Our Town/West Seattle group site, as it moves to organize the fight.
-Also stepping up their fight: The Morgan Junction/Gatewood neighbors who say the construction across the street from Gatewood Baptist shouldn’t have sneaked through the permit process as a group of small projects instead of the one semi-big project it really is. One neighbor has just posted a new comment on this WSB page, contending the project is clearly illegal, and also wants everyone to know project updates are on the ORCA site.
-And one last reminder regarding a (so far as we know) noncontroversial project: As we mentioned Sunday, tonight’s the third and final public meeting to talk about what’s going to be done to transform the “Ercolini property” (photo below) into a park.
A reader reminds us that we weren’t imagining things when we read recently that West Seattle’s State Senator Erik Poulsen is co-sponsoring the bill to extend various taxes to raise up to half a BILLION bucks for a new Sonics arena. Um, what part of the overwhelming yes vote on I-91 didn’t he understand? If you want to ask him yourself, start here.
Can’t go out Wednesday night? This Friday, Alki Community Center offers another “Parents’ Night Out” opportunity — they’ll watch 5- to 10-year-olds from 6:30-9 pm, $10/child, but you have to register by this Wednesday. And if you’re thinking, “Great, but what’s there to do Friday night?” we just heard about a splendid, affordable music/dining opportunity — a Chief Sealth HS band benefit at the school, 6-9 pm Friday, featuring music, dinner, and not only the Sealth jazz band, but also the fabulous West Seattle Big Band, $10 per person (under 12 welcome too, $5 each) — no web link on this but 938-3531 is the number for tickets.
If you haven’t seen the latest semi-satirical video by the pro-tunnel camp, it’s here. Nowhere near as good as the classic “Committee to Save Big Ugly Things” video, in our opinion. But the link did lead us to videos we’d been looking for — the official animated renderings of Replacement-A-Duct and Original Tunnel, first released last fall. P.S. Turns out there is an actual NO/NO group. Here’s their rather grabby logo/slogan:
If you drive a few blocks west on Alaska from The Junction, you’ll see a big grassy lot on the right. This is the future park currently known as the “Ercolini property,” and the city’s final public meeting on its development is coming up this Tuesday night (6-7:30 pm at the Senior Center). For a tidbit of history on the park site, check out this photo page from a relative of its namesake. Kudos again to the community members who worked to get this land turned into a park instead of, oh, say, townhomes.
One Metro route through eastern West Seattle just got extra service as part of the Transit Now tax increase that voters passed countywide in November. Route 120 goes between downtown and Burien via Delridge and White Center. Besides expansion of that route and several others, the county says it’s working on the new express routes promised in the TN initiative, including one (see this map) to get more of West Seattle downtown (especially once The Viaduct is out of service — speaking of which, the No Tunnel Alliance launches its campaign tomorrow, days after the kickoff for Not Another Elevated Viaduct — can’t find any official site yet for the No/No faction).
-As a couple people wrote to tell us, a “retirement sale” is now under way at Leslie’s, just south of Spiro’s.
-The construction site at Westwood Village now has a banner up promising GIANNONI’S PIZZA (different from the website spelling but we still can’t figure out who’s behind it), COMING SOON, PIZZA BY THE SLICE.
-Lots of signs of progress as Garlic Jim’s Pizza in The Junction gets ready to open next month, including a NOW HIRING sign.
-Just up the block from there, facade work is under way at the ex-Bobby’s Hobbies, future (apparently) bakery.
-Today’s supposed to be the last day for Hollywood Video at 41st & Alaska (mixed-use megaproject coming soon).
This sad tale of what happened to a West Seattle man’s dog — despite it having a license and microchip — while he was on vacation, is a must-read if you have a pet.
Rhonda had been blogging about her business for a while (linked from our Other WS Blogs page), then wrote about 3 weeks ago to tell us she’d started up a Beach Drive blog. We’ve been watching daily and think BDB is definitely worth sharing, especially this post about Bob the Beach Drive seal. Keep up the good work, Rhonda!
As they used to say in the print heyday, “from the mailbag” … in this case, e-mailbag: Two people have written with questions to throw out to the WSB world — one about a restaurant, one about a “mysterious light.” They’re kind of LONG questions, so we’ll excerpt both e-mails “after the jump” … and if you have any answers, please leave them as comments …
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