West Seattle, Washington
18 Thursday
… and your flashlights, and your battery-powered radios … The forecast now claims we might see 50 mph gusts during the next storm blowing through tonight.
Power outages and holiday events got in the way, for a while, of our regular Friday morning routine — posting what’s happening around West Seattle in the coming weekend. Today, the roundup’s back. Let’s start with tonight, when High Point Community Center resumes Fabulous Family Fridays with a “toy swap” … also tonight, Twelfth Night Productions’ three-day run of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” begins @ Youngstown Arts Center (tickets here) … tonight, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, Kenyon Hall’s the spot for the Fox Movietone Follies of ’07 … live music Fri & Sat nites at Skylark Club as usual … Saturday night, the monthly “Rocky Horror” screening takes over the Admiral at midnight … Sunday, the Farmers’ Market is due back for the first “winter market” (hours will be a bit shorter, 10 am-1 pm) … also on Sunday, the monthly meeting of the determined folks you see at and near the FM each week, West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice … What did we leave out? Click the “comment” link on this post, or e-mail us.
You might recall today was the deadline to propose a name for The Big Storm. The National Weather Service’s local site says FIVE THOUSAND SUGGESTIONS blew in, and its ace committee will make a decision by the end of the month. (Speaking of stormy weather: EEK!)
What a great note to get — from a relatively “new” West Seattleite, who wanted to share the wonder of seeing a bald eagle flying over The Junction today. We still marvel at the sight ourselves, even after all these years; we get frequent flybys up here, but the most recent sighting to thrill us was down on Beach Drive, the last morning our power was out, when a friend with a killer view let us drop by and clean up … before we left, an eagle buzzed our pal’s balcony almost within touching distance. The unfortunate flip side of life for our local eagles is that seagulls and crows pester them to no end, as our e-mail correspondent noticed, writing that “two angry adult seagulls” were in pursuit of The Junction’s eagle. (Honestly, have you ever seen a seagull that didn’t look/sound ticked off about something?)
First the Fauntleroy Place plan … now this: After 60 years in the car biz in West Seattle, the Huling family’s getting out of it, per the P-I. You can read more here about the Spokane-based car company that’s taking over.
We have not yet watched last night’s “Lessons from the Windstorm” City Council hearing (should turn up today on the Seattle Channel site), but at least one WSB reader who saw it “live” describes it exactly the way the Times and P-I do today — mostly a ventstorm from City Light workers who bravely stood up in front of politicians and media to accuse their bosses of bungling things while tens of thousands of us spent days in the dark, in more ways than one. We heard some of this during the outage, of course; then we heard city management take the first opportunity to refute it. But what’s that old saying about “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”? So the real issue is … what now, when the hearings end, when the bad weather retreats for another year, will anyone really change anything?
If any Christmas-light nuts are still lurking out there … one last sight worth seeing, just happened onto it tonight. On the north side of Roxbury, just west of 35th (across from the ex-Safeway-now-church), someone’s covered a tree in red and white lights shaped to perfectly simulate a giant Santa hat.
If the DNDA gig we mentioned recently isn’t quite your thing, how about the job that’s open for the West Seattle Junction Association? As we mentioned in the WSYIR, things are a-jumpin’ in The Junction, so it’s bound to be fun.
If you’ve got business at the post office — you might want to wait a while. WS Blogger Spouse reports that after two postal holidays (New Year’s Day plus National Day of Mourning for Pres. Ford), it’s a spillover crowd, at Westwood, at least. No word yet on the Junction branch.
… you see sandbags miles from the nearest river/creek. Last night we spotted several in what must be a strategic spot outside Aaron’s Bicycle Repair in Morgan Junction. Makes sense.
Quote of the day, from city councilman Richard Conlin, in the P-I, looking ahead to the hearing he’s leading tonight on “Lessons from the Windstorm.” He’s talking about how city agencies, especially Seattle City Light, handled the storm’s aftermath, including the outages that left so many of us without power for so long. And he appropriately spotlights the fact that so many of us didn’t and couldn’t get any information about HOW long we would be without power. Even information on who had their power back on and who was left to work on, would have been great; during that long dark week, we were reduced to driving around once it started getting dark, to get a take on things. Really, for those of us who were out of power for days, did you imagine, when it went out, that it would take so long to get it back? (By the way, if you can’t make it to City Hall to tell your story tonight, you can watch the hearing live on the Seattle Channel, ch. 21, or a replay Friday morning.)
The city decision is in for the 53rd Avenue wastewater pump station upgrade @ Alki. We’ll confess to not knowing enough about the project to be able to say how many more steps remain before the work will start … but we’ll be looking to find out. According to this handout from last summer’s public meeting, once the work starts, it’ll last (gulp) more than a year and a half.
For the first time since the first day after The Storm To Be Named Later, West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician turned up on weather watch today, musing about mud. Even though the latest forecast doesn’t look so dire, we’ll give him props for calling out the cavalry just in case.
P-I says we’ve already got another WS outage. Let us know what’s happening where you’re at.
Yeah, the wind out there makes us nervous too. We’ll probably feel that way for a long time.
There’s a lot at stake for West Seattle in the school vote coming up five weeks from today. The measures are mentioned as part of this “year ahead for Seattle Public Schools” story in today’s Times. To find specifics, you have to scavenge through the SPS site; a no-frills doc outlines the half-billion dollar bond measure that we’ll be voting on, a large chunk of which would go toward combining the Denny Middle School & Chief Sealth HS campuses on this side of WS (new turf for the Denny/Sealth field is in the bond plan too). But when you go vote, keep in mind the bond measure is separate from the $400 million levy the district needs just to keep running. And neither will pass, no matter how many “yes” votes, if not enough voters (at least 40% of the # who voted last November) show up.
As first mentioned here back in the thick of Outage #1, the city council’s making time this Wednesday night to listen to The Public regarding “Lessons from the Windstorm.” (Yes, a public hearing with a title. Maybe it even deserves a theme song.) 5:30 pm Wednesday, City Hall. If there’s a lesson you hope the city powers-that-be learned, it’s your big chance.
Looks like our neighborhood is still in one piece this morning, despite thunderous midnight explosions (even saw a red flare in the distance, as if someone was sending up the signal to say YO! NEW YEAR! WE’RE OVER HERE!). Now a day to recover, before we start looking ahead to the next “holiday season” (summer, of course — 4th of July! parades! Blue Angels! and so on). Meantime, some practical information — here’s what to do with the tree.
Since we’ve been keeping an eye on WS this whole year, our 2006 WSYIR will be way meatier than our 2005 WSYIR, which was our 13th post (viewed on 1/1/06 by a grand total of 0 visitors, since this blog had existed, fanfarelessly, for all of eight days at that point).
Enough about us. Here they are, the year’s top 10 WS “stories” (as we see ’em, anyway):
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Staked out your fireworks-watching spot yet? Ours is in front of the tv; much as we enjoy the West Seattle waterfront, we won’t be out on it this night, this year. The internet also makes New Year’s Eve more interesting for us homebodies; here at WSB World HQ, that dates all the way back to ’94, when we shared NYE virtually via the original mainstream chat program, IRC, with all sorts of folks hopping on and off to report on the New Year’s status in their part of the world/country. Now things are more compartmentalized and sophisticated online; already this morning, we can watch video from NYE celebrations already complete, like Sydney, on computers much faster than the one we used in ’94. We’re also still working on our West Seattle 2006 Year In Review, which you’ll find here by midafternoon. First, a few last things to procure for tonight’s party!
–Bubbly: We mentioned the other day that while state liquor stores aren’t open New Year’s Eve, West Seattle Cellars is. Also just found out they’re having a sale (big sign outside), so you can get a decent deal on your champagne/wine/champagnish-type sparkling wine.
–Giggly: After the latest major West Seattle power outage, we decided you’ve gotta laugh or else you’ll cry. So, having been through three of them this month here at WSB World HQ, we decided they might be well-named after the Star Wars trilogies. So far — we’ve got A New Problem, The Substation Strikes Back, and Return of the Blackout. Next 3 might work well with The Powerless Menace, Attack of the Trees, and Revenge of the Laterals.
Old news to some, since apparently this has been out there for a few weeks, but we just happened onto it while making a periodic check of the site for the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, the organization behind a variety of community improvements including most famously in the past year the Youngstown Arts Center transformation: DNDA’s longtime executive director Paul Fischburg is leaving, and they’re looking for somebody new. (We wrote to ask what he’s moving on to; he forwarded us a copy of his announcement memo, which mentioned that he’s leaving after 10 years with no particular plans, but will enjoy some down time while mulling the future.)
Thought we heard a broadcast report mentioning some people are still out, but a quick spin around found no evidence of that, and there’s nothing on the City Light hotline. (The SCL website’s been useless; they haven’t updated since last Tuesday’s outage.) Did see a SCL crew at Caffe Ladro, but it looked like a well-deserved coffee break, nothing more. All the Morgan Junction businesses are back on, and darn good thing, since there’d be hell to pay, for example, if one of WS’s two liquor stores were closed the day before New Year’s Eve … but it’s not, and looks like all’s right with the world. We’d expect a fresh run on D batteries today, though. (P.S. Let us know if you DO know of any “pocket” that’s still out.)
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