West Seattle, Washington
01 Thursday
Actually, in his latest blog post, Mark Driscoll calls the September 14th Alki event “baptismalooza,” while also giving a nod to “pajama blogger jihadists” whom he believes are posting from “the comfy confines of their mom’s house.” (We own this ourselves, thank you very much.) His retelling of the seal incident is pretty close to other accounts except for two things: we don’t remember “animal-rights activists” showing up unless he means the Seal Sitters, and his crowd estimate of 3,000 is about 4 times what we got at the scene. SUNDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: MH’s WS pastor Adam Sinnett estimates that same crowd at 2,000 in his latest blog post, which also touts the congregation’s growth, mentions they are moving from “live” to “video” preaching (does that mean MD via video to all campuses? we can’t sneak in to see for ourselves, we’re way out of their demographics), and says they’re having a big bash this Wednesday 9/26 (neighbors take note).
Along Delridge, the North Delridge Adopt-A-Street volunteers have been busy this midday — we saw groups mostly in twos and threes, with bright yellow bags, taking the time to make their neighborhood a better place.
On the Alki promenade, the Evergreen State Barbecue Championship participants spent the morning setting up. This photo shows the stack of wood one team brought along. The barbecuers say they will be cooking all night, judging tomorrow; apparently one vendor will be selling food tomorrow, but the others are just there to compete (different health regulations, too). The video clip after the photo is a short walking tour going past about a third of the booths.
In The Junction, construction/excavation crews have taken down most of the graffiti-laden retaining wall at the back of the ex-Hollywood Video/future QFC-Office Depot-apartments megaproject on Alaska:
One other note if you will be out and about — the last leg of Erskine, going southwest from The Junction, is blocked off at the five-cornered intersection (7-11, Uptown, etc.), because of road work just to the west.
This is one of the most unusual e-mails we’ve received lately. Someone who recently found WSB is wondering if anyone out there can help him figure out whatever happened to a waiter who worked at a now-closed Junction restaurant.Read More
The new Seattle CAN (Climate Action Now) campaign asks us all to take a few simple steps, such as using energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs. You can get one free today by going to any of the following:
–The WS kickoff event for Seattle CAN featuring Hizzoner, KC Councilmember Dow C, Sustainable West Seattle, Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association, the Delridge councils, Chief Sealth HS, performers, and a lot more, at Youngstown Arts Center, 9 am-1 pm (info provided by SWS includes notes about refreshments @ 9, the mayor speaking @ 9:30, and a biodiesel demo @ 9:45)
–Public libraries around the city, including the four here in WS (Delridge, High Point, Southwest, West Seattle, all open 10-6 today according to those branch websites) – 1 PM UPDATE, we just stopped by the WS branch to get one, and the people manning the Seattle CAN table there told us they are there until 4.
-On the door at La Rustica tonight: “Closed For Remodel/thanks for your patience.” (Interesting way to put it.)
-On the gate at Hotwire tonight: Sidewalk Cinema rained out one more time. This was supposed to be the reschedule of last month’s “Monty Python & the Holy Grail” rainout. When the raindrops started smacking the windshield just as we entered The Junction, we were mega-bummed, to say the least.
-On the window at Chuck & Sally’s tonight: The same “closed for several days” sign that’s been up for several weeks. City records show that someone filed a “land use code” complaint a few days after our early September report, but no indication exactly what they’re alleged to have violated, and no resolution of the complaint yet.
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This morning, the Budget rental trucks on Harbor Ave, which on occasion cause a bottleneck we first mentioned last December, were behind their fence and in their lot (photo above). Perhaps the business got the message conveyed at last night’s Alki Community Council meeting — much of the problems reported by area residents involve activity that, if true, would be against the law, according to the city Transportation Department reps at the meeting — they say citations would be warranted for such things as parking with wheels up on the sidewalk and detaching trailers. They said they had messages out to the business owners responsible for the rental-truck business and that they also planned to alert their “commercial compliance” squad, as well as Seattle Police parking enforcement. So keep your eyes out and if you don’t think things are getting better — let the city know.
We just called to check; the person who answered the phone at La Rustica said they’re closed tonight for sure and not sure how many more nights beyond that, because of today’s fire. More pictures, courtesy of reader David Schneider (thank you!!!).
Big fire/rescue callout so we rolled down to check. Fire crews are still there; heavy smell of smoke in the air, no external damage visible. No details yet about what happened; will be checking later how this affects business for tonight — let us know if you hear sooner.
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Not far past the spot shown above (west end of the public Alki waterfront), the sidewalk on the north side of Alki Avenue mostly stops, and to keep walking west to Alki Point, you have to cross the street and stay on that side till you get south of Alki Point. But for the first time in years, there’s hope that might change, according to what we heard at last night’s Alki Community Council meeting. After years of trying, Alki community leaders have gotten the sidewalk proposal onto the list of potential Neighborhood Street Fund projects, and the more “votes” it gets, the better its chances of happening. The sidewalk project is one of the Bridging the Gap projects shown at the WS meeting this past Wednesday night, but if you didn’t attend the meeting to “vote” in person, you can do it online: Go to this site, choose South Sector, then rank projects on the list (which includes other WS proposals). This project is sixth from the bottom of the list. Deadline to “vote” in this survey: Next Thursday (September 27).
Fall officially arrives early Sunday morning. Before and after that, there’s a massive amount of things to do in WS — from Holy Rosary’s annual WestFest tonight and tomorrow, to the North Delridge Adopt-a-Street cleanup, to tonight’s rescheduled outdoor movie (weather looks better), to the last Children of the Revolution appearance (they’re fabulous) of the season at Cafe Rozella tonight, and tons more: 37 events ahead!Read More
More news from the east edge of The Junction: In a little brown house kitty-corner from the 42nd/Oregon development plan we posted about yesterday, The Good Book is closing after five years in business. Co-owner Shirley Geller sent us the photo at left and asked us to let you all know this:
West Seattle’s only Christian store is going out of business. Everything is on sale – including the fixtures. We need to sell everything by October 15th. Our hours are 10 to 4 everyday except Sundays. Telephone 206-935-1722. Address: corner of 42nd SW and SW Oregon St.
Shirley says a chiropractor moving from another WS location will be taking over the space.
… watch for Alki residents vs. city land-use planners. But seriously — we have attended two Alki Community Council meetings now, and they (the officers and the members/attendees) — are a genteel bunch, as well as lively, involved, engaged. All the things you would want a community group to be. ACC vice president Randie Stone ran tonight’s meeting and she was even passing around a basket of treats during a break in the action. But before visiting DPD planner Mark Troxel was finished with his guest appearance, the room was in a lather over teardowns and soulless redevelopment. Especially considering, as calm and polite as he tried to be, his answers about why there are no rules governing some preservation of neighborhood character in redevelopment, boiled down to nothing more than (we’re paraphrasing) “well, that would cost too much, and we really have to be concerned with housing affordability.” 
The spark for tonight’s briefly fiery discussion was the impending teardown-to-townhome project we have mentioned before at the site of the Shoremont Apartments (photo right) at 57th & Alki (on the corner east of Alki Auto Repair). “Those townhomes aren’t going to be affordable,” one attendee pointed out, laying waste to the “things might look nicer if it didn’t cost so darn much” defense. Another audience member chided the city, in the person of stalwart Mr. Troxel, for “lack of courage.” He was actually there to talk about amendments on the drawing board for a city planning document, but that discussion got derailed. After a cathartic burst of outrage about cookie-cutter townhouses, which the city rep said he isn’t thrilled about either (because they fail to maximize density potential, as well as because of their aesthetics), all ended fairly civilly, but we were a little worried there for a moment. Randie noted that the topic is enough for a meeting unto itself, and perhaps the group can invite Mr. Troxel, or another city planner, to return. Meanwhile — we’ll have several other ACC meeting items to report tomorrow, including what the city says can be done about those rental trucks that have long been bottlenecking Harbor Ave by ActivSpace. P.S. If you live in the Alki area and you’re not an ACC member yet, you can join online.
-Almost fainted (but that would have caused a crash) while driving toward Fauntleroy on The Bridge this evening — the sign was still up.
-This (and many more events) will be in tomorrow morning’s WS Weekend Lineup, of course, but did want to call special attention to the fact that the fabulous folks of the North Delridge Neighborhood Council are inviting you to an Adopt-A-Street Cleanup this Saturday. Meet in the Delridge Community Center parking lot at 10 am to pick up city-provided supplies and get going. Every little bit helps.
-If you glossed past our item earlier this week about the West Seattle HS schedule-change controversy, the comments (scroll down) are worth another look — a lively debate has developed, especially once “5766324” joined the fray.
Hot out of today’s city Land Use Information Bulletin: A Design Review Board meeting has just been set for October 11th for a proposed 6-story, 90-unit mixed-use building at 4502 42nd SW (southeast corner of 42nd/Oregon); the architect for the project is Mark Travers, who has info, renderings, and more about it online here. If this goes through, there’ll be a whole lot happening in that area, with Hope Lutheran also planning a construction project nearby (congregational meetings on that are set for this weekend). Side note on a different project that we noticed the same architect is handling @ 3295 Avalon — Starbucks fans and foes alike will be interested in the renderings of that project here. (Three blocks from Java Bean?)
Often, readers tell us WSB has helped them learn something they didn’t know about our community, what’s happening around WS, or the services available. We have to say, it’s been educational for us too. Only after 15 years in WS are we beginning to learn about the full scope of what’s out there. The West Seattle Community Safety Partnership is one of many groups that just weren’t on our radar, for whatever reason. But it should have been on ours, and allow us to be so bold as to say it should be on yours. Long ago, the WSCSP was known as the “anti-crime council” — but its scope goes beyond crime. 
As demonstrated at Tuesday night’s meeting, the group is there to gather and share information about how to pro-actively protect yourself and your family and improve your neighborhood. Its officers are volunteers, but the group is assisted by a regular allotment of time provided by the Seattle Neighborhood Group for one of its staffers, Lois Grammon-Simpson (SNGi photo of Lois at right), who lives in WS. The room all but gasped Tuesday night when Lois revealed that SNG might stop providing the group with her services, as has already happened for a similar group in Southeast Seattle. But it’s not too late to change the course …Read More
The West Seattle Junction Association e-mailed us to help get the word out about its job posting for an event planner to help with Hometown Holidays (Christmas, after all, is just 3 months away); checking out the listing, we noticed WSJA revamped its website sometime in the past week, with features including an updated Junction business directory. On a semi-related note, we discovered another Junction business is blogging; we’ve mentioned the Clementine blog before — now meet the Friends and Company blog (belated congrats on the store‘s 10th anniversary).
West Seattle’s most famous daddy talks about fatherhood. Revelations from WS-dwelling music star Eddie Vedder, courtesy of People magazine.
5-8 PM TONIGHT: Fall art show reception @ Alki Bathhouse.
7 PM TONIGHT: Alki Community Council meets @ Alki Community Center.
7 PM TOMORROW: Gate opens, next to Hotwire, for rescheduled Sidewalk Cinema presentation of “Monty Python & the Holy Grail.” Hope the weather holds!
No further details, but we have verified the reader tip (thank you!!!!) that a note on the door of Coyotes on Alki says “closed till further notice,” bearing yesterday’s date. Some may wonder if the 17-month-old restaurant has fallen victim to the curse of everything that’s been in there since The Point Grill (which we personally still miss), but it might just be closed because of the side-sewer work for which a permit was granted today.
While we were at Alki to get a visual on the Coyotes note … stopped for this gratuitous shot of the 4th-to-last sunset of Summer 2007:
Four clips from today’s event: First, the kids — from Gatewood Elementary, Denny Middle, and Chief Sealth HS, with EarthCorps assistants:
Here’s Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai assisting with one of the trees — this is what she’s famous for, if you aren’t familiar with her work; this online reference calls her the “Tree Woman of Kenya”:
Also at Pelly Place: King County Councilmember Dow Constantine. Our videographer asked him for a few words, and he reminded us he’s no stranger to ravine restoration:
Last but by no means least, part of the poetry performance by Gatewood Elementary students:
No wonder the traffic was nuts getting through the last leg of the Fauntleroy “exit” from The Bridge. Somebody has a sign on the overpass for the first time in weeks. Given what anti-banner watchdogs have done in recent weeks (see comments on this post), we expect it to have lasted approximately 3 minutes after our driveby. So we snapped a quick pic in case “Torie” doubts somebody really tried to wish her (?) a “happy b-day.” Yes, yes, we know, banners are illegal and a traffic hazard and all that, but we have to say, without them, West Seattle feels like a slightly lonelier place.
Just a quick advance mention of two WS weekend events that hit our radar today — the Evergreen State Barbecue Championships are happening on Alki both days this weekend (usually quite a scene with barbecue crews camping out in RVs nearby); the West Seattle Farmers’ Market on Sunday is hosting Zucchini Races, 10 am-1 pm, inviting kids to build and race “vegetable vehicles” like the one below (photo courtesy Neighborhood Farmers’ Market Alliance):
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