West Seattle, Washington
18 Thursday
The folks @ Divina say they’ve got to call off tonight’s Junction Art Walk, even though they were hoping weather wouldn’t get in its way again (last month, the Art Walk coincided with the 2-inch deluge that preceded The Windstorm To Be Named Later). Not only is the icy weather a problem, today’s power outage got in the way of hors d’oeuvre-making. But, with determined optimism, they’re working on a Youth Art Walk for next month. Dare we hope for calmer weather by then?
According to this Seattle Times update, not only do we have most of the snow woes, we’ve got a power outage. Again.
It’s official … Seattle Public Schools are all closed today. Watch out for those snowballs!
Remember we have the West Seattle-area city and state traffic cams linked from our WS cams page. If you want to see highway conditions around the rest of the metro area, the state’s cameras are linked here; other Seattle city traffic cams can be found here. For weather conditions, forecast, and radar, this is a good page. Be careful out there!
Even more than the snow on the road, the sidewalk, the parked cars … the snow on branches is one of the loveliest sights. (See photo below; Comcast was doing its slowdown thing again, so it took us a while to upload.) If you’re natives of warmer climes, as we are, this is always still so fresh and new — get out and take a walk — who knows what it’ll look like tomorrow! (Speaking of which, as of 10:05 pm, no word from Seattle Public Schools on whether they’ll call a “snow day” for tomorrow; you can keep checking their home page, though if they haven’t decided by now, they might not make the call till after 4 am or so.)
Most snow we’ve seen up here in a few years. The accumulation on fencetops and so forth looks like about two inches. How about where you are? (We know this is serious — just spotted a snowplow south of M-Junction on Cali Ave.)
Alki-based Metroblogging Seattle contributor C Ro posts today that the Casa Feliz Mexican restaurant at the beach appears to have folded. That space has had so much turnover, we can barely remember what was there before — wasn’t there a Cuban restaurant in the space for a while, or was that upstairs?
If you haven’t already heard, Seattle Public Schools are open for business as usual today, says their website.
We don’t talk much about the Fauntleroy ferry terminal here at WSB, but probably should, given that it brings hundreds if not thousands of people into (or at least through) West Seattle each day. There’s news today — some of its users might have to wait a bit longer for the next week or so because its biggest ferry had to be moved to another route, in a domino effect after a problem with one of the ferries on the Bainbridge route. (And we happened onto an unusual first-person account of how that problem happened.)
Once the wind stops and the (allegedly looming) snow melts … here are 2 things to look ahead to, maybe even look forward to, this coming Thursday: First and foremost, the folks at Divina confirm the monthly Junction Art Walk is indeed on for Thursday night; starts at Divina at 6 pm – maps of participating businesses and artists will be provided – wraps at West 5 with complimentary champagne. Also on Thursday night, if you’re not in the artsy mood, how about the Design Review Board meeting on the project proposed for the burned-out Schuck’s site at California/Charlestown? (6:30 pm, Southwest Precinct, just south of Home Depot)
In just about the past 15 minutes, the weather changed from cloudy and mellow to fierce wind and pelting rain. Haven’t we seen this movie before?
We got a note wondering about a huge new FOR LEASE sign right behind Safeway @ Jefferson Square. Still haven’t uncovered exactly what’s for lease but we did get a reply from a rep for the center’s new owners, saying there IS open space and reminding us all that the center does have new owners — we don’t remember much local press about it, but Pan Pacific Properties, which bought Jefferson Square two years ago, was purchased a few months back by Kimco Realty, which runs these types of “grocery-anchored” shopping centers around the country (and outside the U.S. as well). Will this mean some change? Keep an eye out. But don’t forget, the center ownership doesn’t actually include the land under Jefferson Square – that’s leased out by Seattle Public Schools.
23 hours after this ventfest, we spotted a DOT crew literally digging into F-Way right around Fairmount Park. Our unscientific road test tonight revealed some improvement — to a point; once you pass that south-of-FP point, it’s rutsville again. Still. And with flaky fun to come!
Next Sunday will mark two months since the 47th/Admiral crash that killed Tatsuo Nakata. A conference next Tuesday at Harborview is planned in hopes of honoring his memory with strides toward pedestrian safety. A site visitor from “Safe Admiral” posted complete details today in a new comment on an old post; we’re mentioning it here to make sure you don’t miss it.
After months of watching land-use applications, we’ve noticed they mostly fall in the categories of “build something new,” with the occasional “put antennas on building.” However, a couple hit the city site a few days ago (but dated 12/4, so it’s not windstorm backlash) for a plan to “remove vegetation,” including more than a dozen trees (center of the photo below, just to the left of the street light), on a lot over Beach Drive. The house on the property is on Atlas so one of the applications is for that address; the other application has a Beach address even though that part of the lot is steep slope, inhabited only by the birds. Seems too steep to safely get rid of the trees and brush without a major mudslide threat, but does the city ever say no to these things?
… that West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician was invisible during our long post-windstorm days of powerlessness. This column in tomorrow’s P-I hits that important point (before meandering off into a viaduct detour).
During lunch today @ Duke’s, suddenly the decorations came down before our eyes (and those of everyone else dining at the time). Strange to have the staff do it at a relatively busy time, instead of before opening or after closing; when they started reaching up between the tables to peel away the light-embedded garlands, we wondered if we would wind up with greenery in our chowder. No moss growing on the next holiday, though; Westwood Village Rite-Aid was unboxing the Valentine’s stuff as of a few nights ago.
West-Seattle-based County Councilguy, Dow Constantine, promised two weeks ago to look into why WS had so much power trouble because of stormy weather. Looks like he’s keeping that promise. In fact, the entire King County Council will hit the road for Fauntleroy in early February. (By then, we fear, we will need an “outage diary” to keep track of everything that’s happened. At this moment, in fact, we are under 3 separate special weather alerts!)
The wires have been spliced, the trees have been removed, but the Upper Fauntleroy sinkhole lingers. Two weeks ago, we wrote the city DOT to ask about its fate. After twelve days, a sort of reply came – from someone at SDOT who wrote, “I was told … you should contact (name) at Seattle Public Utilities. By way of this e-mail, I am forwarding your concerns to (name).” Mr. (name), who was cc’d, has yet to weigh in. (And why is this his project — the neighboring stairway, out of commission because of all this, is an SDOT responsibility.) Meantime, the sinkhole gapes, beyond just the barest of cordoning:
So what do you do to chill out after a nervous, stormy night? Go sailing, of course! (Looked like a regatta out in the waters between Vashon/Blake/Beach Drive early this afternoon – caught these 2 participants across from Me-Kwa-Mooks.)
Awakened to calm weather and a comment (post below) that power returned late last night … no outages on the City Light “hotline” now so here’s hoping that was the end of it!
As “The House” mentioned in a comment on our last post, we now have an outage in West Seattle — only one in the city at the moment, according to the City Light hotline; 3,000 customers. Seems like the boundaries they mentioned on the phone recording are a bit wide — “17th SW to 46th SW, Findlay SW to 112th SW” would seem to cover about two-thirds of WS, including our area, and things are OK here (KNOCK WOOD) — but they did say a crew was on the way. Hang in there.
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