West Seattle, Washington
18 Thursday
Before we get to the 2-part (more like 4-option) viaduct vote in March, don’t forget the 2-part school vote next month, with a big West Seattle project on the ballot, as the Times reminds us again today. (Then if you’re still trying to sort out the viaduct conundrum, check out this excellent Slog breakdown, with reader comments that inspired us to suggest the slogan No/No, The Way to Go.)
A month after Beato Food & Wine opened in the ex-O2 space on Cali between the Admiral and Alaska Junctions, its website is finally up, including links to its food and wine menus. (And the home page tells you twice how to pronounce Beato. Hint — it’s not “beet-oh.”)
We wondered for a few weeks why our site logs showed a couple people every day finding WSB while searching for “Rolf Neslund.” We knew the name — in case you don’t, he’s the ship pilot you can thank for the West Seattle high bridge; he helped smash a freighter into the old WS bridge in 1978, accelerating the process of getting a new one (which sounds like it was as tangled a process, till then, as the current viaduct mess). Then Neslund gained double infamy as a murder victim whose body was never found. We eventually learned he’s back in the news, so to speak, because his tale is at the heart of Ann Rule’s latest true-crime book, which was on the bestseller lists till a few weeks back. (The author lives not all that far south of West Seattle, we understand; also we discovered she keeps a lively blog.)
Didn’t get around to spotlighting this sooner, but shortly after we noted that one of the recent Mars Hill-West Seattle blog updates on the Doxa remodeling listed a mid-February target date, a reader pointed out that’s been changed to “spring ’07.” If you’re tracking this project (anyone heard yet what they’re going to do about parking near the ex-Doxa? just drive by Chief Sealth some Sunday morning and you’ll see how much they use), here’s the latest post.
You’ve seen the divers just off Seacrest a million times. But unless you too have gone into the water — way into the water — you probably haven’t seen what they’ve seen. One is kindly sharing a recent Seacrest six-gill shark sighting with the world via this webpost, featuring video (note that besides the embedded player, there’s a link at the very bottom to a high-res version).
This morning’s Seattle Times article has many more details, including the contention from Huling’s new owners that they weren’t really briefed by the old owners that this was about to come slamming into them like a tsunami.
Reminder that tonight’s the night for the new microbrewers in town, Schooner Exact, to debut their brew with a party (7 pm) @ Beveridge Place Pub in Morgan Junction.
… who, if you haven’t been following the thread, has been posting answers to questions in the comment section of our post about his impending opening date. The comments on this here blog are often more interesting than our posts, the way we see it, and this is an absolute first, for a new businessperson to “come in” and not just say hi, but also respond pleasantly to others’ comments and questions. Even if they don’t wind up delivering this far south, we’re definitely giving them a try. By the way, don’t forget that Westwood Village is allegedly bringing in some new pizza joint this year as well — though we still can’t find any info anywhere on who or what a “Gionnoni’s Pizza” (as it’s listed on the WV site) is.
The council’s Viaduct Vote Verdict is in. Instead of voting between tunnel and replacement-a-duct, we get a two-part vote: Yes or no on a tunnel, yes or no on replacement-a-duct. So that means this is actually a four-ply vote, with these possible combinations:
-Yes on both
-No on both
-Yes on tunnel, no on replacement
-Yes on replacement, no on tunnel
How are they even going to interpret the results?
Shocking story just hit the news about an alleged ripoff involving some Huling Brothers employees and an incapacitated older man. UPDATE: The city site has a press release about this up now.
-A gushy Seattle Times writeup on the “pay by touch” technology that’s in its fifth year at Morgan Junction Thriftway confirms our November suspicions that it remains the only store in Seattle using PBT. Nothing personal against the Thriftway, which we adore, but we still don’t get why anyone would link their finances to their fingerprints. If you use it, we’d love to hear from you; we still have never seen, or heard from, anyone who has.
-The whole viaduct-vote thing still has our heads a-spinning. OK, so never mind what the Gov said the other day, now we’re going to have a vote? All just complicated political positioning, we suppose. So how ’bout they throw The Third Option and even The Retrofit on the ballot too, while everyone’s changing their minds every five minutes? Or are we supposed to be happy and relieved now that at least we get some kind of vote?
-Thanks to the reader who tipped us to the effervescent Elliott Bay Brewery feature on the Seattle Weekly site. (We’re not much for beer but we like their burgers too!)
–
Just got a comment way down inside our site from the people opening Garlic Jim’s Pizza in the Junction, and they mention the opening date they’re shooting for, so we’re moving up the comment to post it verbatim here:
It is great to hear some positive comments about our new Garlic Jim's coming in March (March 20th) to be exact. My wife Candice and I are excited to open this location...it has been a lot of hard work. We will be open 11am-11pm (maybe later if there is demand for it)7 days a week. Candice and I have lived in West Seattle for a few years now and love it here. Hopefully we will see some of you soon. Thanks, Ryan
The previously mentioned Seattle Public Schools “when do you want to make up snow days” survey is up (scroll to the bottom of this page). It asks participants to rank six options in order of preference — but murkily notes that some combination of the options will be required to make up all of the days missed so far this year (not to mention whatever’s yet to come). They’re laying pretty much everything on the table — “mid-winter” break, spring break, end of year. We’d just as soon get rid of “mid-winter” break — it’s so unnecessary, coming so close to Christmas vacation, and not that far ahead of spring break. But our opinion may not matter anywhere near as much as the teachers’ union’s opinion; here’s what you get on the “thank you” page after taking the survey:
The district will tally and consider the response, discuss and bargain the calendar with the Seattle Education Association, and announce the revised schedule as soon as possible.ÂÂÂ
In the middle of this article, Seattle Public Schools’ spokesperson says we may find out next week what the district plans to do about making up the days lost to snow, ice, wind, all that fun stuff that’s smacked us in the past couple months. We were going to suggest that SPS follow Issaquah’s lead and survey parents about their wishes … then we went to this page on the SPS site and discovered that the district plans to do exactly that. Says a survey will be linked from that page no later than 5 pm today (you can bet we’ll be checking). Can’t wait to see what the options are.
Now we’re really confused. If the guv’s position was Replacement Viaduct Or Nuthin’, why didn’t she just say that a month ago instead of throwing the ball back for the whole advisory-vote thing? Or was it really Tunnel Lite/Less (Land)Filling that put her over the edge? Whatever the case, this morning’s update on the whole thing sure makes it sound like the tunnel’s toast (here’s exactly what she said), but the City Council’s going to meet tomorrow to talk about … something. A sit-in, maybe?
Now that the kids are back at school, let’s see what they’re up to. Took an unexpected turn around the web and found this feature about the West Seattle High Auto Shop. (And it’s not just a boy thing!)
Interesting tidbit in this city press release, regarding what happens to all the sand dropped on the bridges and arterials, after the snow and ice becomes only a memory.
Now West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician is backing something dubbed “tunnel lite,” according to this article. By week’s end, we should know what we’re being asked to vote on.
Looks like Seattle Public Schools decided to open 2 hours late today. That may even have been overly cautious, since it hasn’t even dropped below freezing yet (we can hear the snow from the roof melting slowly through the rain-gutter drainpipe), but better safe than sorry. For next time (somehow you know there’ll be one), a city source tells us that whenever Seattle Public Schools has a weather closure, there are “snow camps” for child care at Hiawatha and Southwest Community Centers. We can’t find details online but you can check with the centers: here’s contact info for Hiawatha and Southwest.
While Lady Liberty’s away, the snowpeople will play! (another Alki pic from Bob Bollen)
The crowd at Thriftway is positively giddy about the afternoon melt-off giving them the chance to flee their snowbound domiciles … one lady in the meat section nearly mowed us down with enthusiasm, declaring without provocation, “This is the FIRST time I’ve been out in A WEEK! My freezer’s almost EMPTY! Seeing all this is like a CANDY STORE!” Oh by the way, at least as of 4 pm-ish, despite this morning’s snow, the arterials are in better shape than ever; the bridge doesn’t even have as much ice/slush on the inside shoulder as yesterday; but the side streets’ condition depends on what shape they were in before this morning. The iciest ones stayed that way; the ones where bare spots had started to bloom still show blacktop. Here’s hoping tonight doesn’t REALLY get all that cold …
Even the beach got a blast of snow, and that made for some unusual sights, such as this one sent to us by Cami from AlkiNews.com:
We haven’t been out driving but wanted to remind you that our West Seattle cams page has the city cameras for the bridge and for Fauntleroy/Alaska and Fauntleroy/35th. As for buses, we’re not seeing specific alerts but there’s a lot of great info on the Metro page including where the buses are and when. If you’ve got road info, feel free to post it in the comments here.
| 1 COMMENT