West Seattle, Washington
29 Tuesday
Thanks again to eagle-eyed goat-spotters for letting us know Rent-A-Ruminant (read a recent article about them) is in action along Admiral. Here’s the photographic proof:
Sorry we just woke up to something the rest of blogland has been chattering about for, well, hours … Since it’s 7/11, you can get a free Slurpee at 7-11. In WS, 7-11s are on Harbor Ave, at 35th/Avalon, Admiral south of Cali, Charlestown/Cali, and Cali/Erskine.
… big high temperature coming … It’s 7 degrees hotter than it was this time yesterday (Boeing Field 84 now, 77 24 hours ago). Our refuge suggestion this hour: Indoor swimming @ Southwest Pool & Community Center. (Public swim coming up at 1:30 pm!)
-One last reminder, the Alki Statue of Liberty meeting is 7 pm tonight, by the statue site. Up for discussion: Put the new statue on the old base and call it good, or keep the new statue in storage till a “plaza” for it can be paid for and built. (“Do it now” supporters are running this on Craigslist.)
-Tonight and every Wednesday night through Aug. 22, West Seattle’s megachurch is inviting its flock to weekly Lincoln Park barbecues.
-Not only will The Junction be jumping for Summer Fest this Fri-Sat-Sun, but tomorrow night has two big events as well: “Hair” opens at ArtsWest; and Divina plans a “post-construction celebration” to commemorate the completion of the paving project, with art as well as live music by Brazilian singer/guitarist Kiko Freitas.
-Art is also in the picture for the south edge of WS tomorrow night @ 7 pm, as Cafe Rozella premieres a photo exhibit, described as “native youth look(ing) at their environment.)
-And if you like low-tide beach walking, enjoy four days of midday low tides starting tomorrow.
We won’t be able to check this out in person for a few hours, so we don’t know yet if they’re back in action today, but a couple notes have come in saying The Goats were at work in West Seattle again, this time on hillside brush toward the bridge end of Admiral.
People in WSB-land who haven’t passed out from heat exhaustion yet (78 at midnight! 12 degrees above San Diego!) were nice enough to send photos that might cool you off a degree or two.
First, from Luckie, a “party island” spotted off Alki on pirate day:
Second, from Jerry at JetCityOrange, a decorated tree in the window at Sleep Country in Westwood Village (we’re sorry we didn’t snap the inflatable snowman we saw the other day at Renton Honda, would have been a nice accompaniment):
Send us your pics, thoughts, tips, rumors, whatever, anytime.
5 pm temperature check: 89 at Boeing Field and Sea-Tac. Regarding ways to stay cool, the windsurfer we spotted in WS waters this afternoon (photo below) sure had the right idea. On the water is always the coolest place to be — check out this personal weather station on Beach Drive. If you don’t have your own board (or boat), maybe a ferry ride – here’s the Fauntleroy-Southworth schedule.
If you’re still in the market for a fan or air conditioner you’re not completely out of luck, but you’re running out of choices.
Here’s the mini-AC shelf at the Delridge Home Depot as seen just before noon.
And as of lunchtime this is what the fan aisle at Target looks like.
According to the National Weather Service hourly temperature updates (KSEA is Sea-Tac, KBFI is Boeing Field, K91S is Alki Point but only shows windspeed, no temps; we’ll link to some personal weather stations later) — it’s about 80. Going for low 90s in the city but tomorrow’s in-city forecast alarmingly suggests possible upper 90s. Stay safe. For those of you pondering a movie to keep cool in those brutal early-evening hours, “Blades of Glory” at the Admiral at 6:45 pm might be just the ticket.
8:20 am, 70-plus degrees. Workers at Westwood Village Target are joking about someone interviewed on tv last night about how fast fans and air conditioning units are selling. They seem more impressed by how fast the interview went – five minutes distilled into five seconds.
At the front counter, a clerk is ringing up the first fan sale of the day. Out in the parking lot, closer to WaMu, a work crew is kicking up a dirt devil. And over Barton Street, looking east, the sun looks like 8 am Vegas more than 8 am Seattle:
Tomorrow (Wednesday) night, at the height of the heat, you can multitask by cooling off at Alki and joining in a meeting outside the Bathhouse, to help determine the future of the statue that might otherwise soon earn a nickname like “Liberty in Limbo.” Seems the replacement for the old one (Northwest Programs for the Arts photo at left) is done but fundraising for the “plaza” to surround the new one is not, so a community meeting is being called to discuss, among other things, whether to just install the new one and be done with it sooner, or carry on with the “plaza” project and see the installment happen later. Read the meeting organizers’ explanation, in their own words, after the click:Read More
Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson (official district photo at right) has started work as Seattle Public Schools superintendent, and the P-I and the Times both note that she stopped at two schools on day 1, including West Seattle HS. (The writeup starts with a great aside about what was apparently her first trip on The Viaduct — which by the way got a status update in this Times article, in case you haven’t seen it already.)
Surely you’ve heard by now that the next couple of days will be ridiculously hot. That means discomfort will skyrocket with the temperatures, since most of us don’t have air conditioning and just aren’t acclimated to 90-plus degrees. 
But we don’t all have to pack ourselves onto the sands of Alki to stay cool. We thought it would be worth discussing alternatives in advance; for starters, we managed to cope with the last megahot spell by taking a late-afternoon walk through Schmitz Park (photo @ right). The trees of Lincoln Park, Camp Long, and other green zones in WS can do the same trick. (You can follow up a walk through LP with a dip in Colman Pool, which is open through the peak of the heat, till 7 pm.) Got a heat-beating tip to share with the rest of WSB-land?
From a reader:
An Aussie was seen Monday afternoon around 5:25 pm on the corner of 35th Ave SW and SW Barton St, in the parking lot of the little fresh market on the corner there. The dog did not belong to anyone there.   The dog had a collar on with a visible bright blue bone-shaped tag on  it but the dog would not let me get close enough to check the tag. It seemed confused and scared. I offered some water which it drank but then was scared by the cars and another dog there and it was last seen heading north on 35th Ave SW. Animal control was called and was sending someone out but may not have been able to find the dog after it ran north. I’m posting this just in case someone might be checking here for a lost dog. Hope it finds its owners and home.ÂÂ
If you’re at Lincoln Park tonight, you might run into the 34th District Democrats, enjoying their annual picnic (6 pm, Shelter 3). You might see a few candidates too, since the primary election is so early this year (six weeks from tomorrow). In the interest of equal time, we tried to find out when the local Republicans are picnicking; closest thing we could find is the local GOP women having a bash at Salty’s tomorrow.
If you have passed through the Fauntleroy/Alaska intersection lately, you might have noticed the big new sign on the side of the Schuck’s/Hancock building that Fauntleroy Place will replace, trumpeting “Coming Soon … Whole Foods Market.” Not that soon, according to the latest info from the project’s development/management company (more below the pic) …
We pinged Blue Star to find out the latest on how soon “coming soon” might be, and spokesman Eric Radovich was kind enough to reply quickly. He writes, “Timelines have been a bit of a moving target but suffice to say we would like to move forward as soon as possible with construction. We still have some work to do with the City of Seattle. The process of securing building permits from the city will likely take 8 to 10 months. It is possible that demolition of the existing structure and groundbreaking for the underground parking garage could begin as soon as late February 2008. If the above timeframes hold true we could begin construction in spring of 2008, with a 16-20 month buildout taking us to late 2009 for completion.”
He also notes that Blue Star will have a booth as part of its sponsorship of this weekend’s Summer Fest, and you can drop by to get more questions answered about Fauntleroy Place.
P.S. on the subject of the potential grocery-store glut once Whole Foods and the new QFC to the west arrive — anyone else notice that Target in Westwood Village is expanding its food aisles, with a slew of new refrigerated cases just arriving, and some shelf-shuffling under way on the south side of the store?
We know you’re mad about crime and ready to tell the crooks “enough” — one way to make a stand is to organize a block party for National Night Out on August 7th. If you sign up with Seattle Police within the next few weeks (full info here), you get to close your block to traffic and dance (or whatever) in the streets.
The (unofficial) Seattle Public Schools Blog points out that the agenda for this Wednesday’s school board meeting includes a proposal to rename High Point Elementary (photo below) “West Seattle Elementary.” According to the agenda item, this name-changing is by “request of the High Point and Fairmount Park merged elementary schools.” (If you’re just coming in on this saga, the district closed several schools at the end of this past school year, including Fairmount Park, to save $; the students of FP are “merging” into HP.) Historical datapoint: This won’t be the first “West Seattle Elementary School”; the district’s thumbnail history of Lafayette Elementary says it briefly held that name about 90 years ago!
According to the map and list accompanying this P-I article, one of the Lincoln Park lots has had the 5th-highest number of car break-ins reported citywide in the past 18 years. (Although the number cited during that span, 452, “only” equals out to roughly one every two weeks.)
Next to QFC, the Pet Pros store-to-be (ex-laundromat) has a “help wanted” sign posted out front; on the south edge of WV, the suspense (?) is finally over regarding which of the new spaces next to Sally’s will be Giannoni’s Pizza and which will be Taco Del Mar:
Seattle City Light still hasn’t posted a peep about the power outages on this side of WS Friday night & Saturday morning, but King County has posted a press release noting the bigger outage caused an overflow at the Murray Street pump station @ Lowman Beach. NOON UPDATE: Warning signs (photo below) are still up at Lowman.
This holiday week has been anything but quiet. Along the way, we received three reader pix we didn’t get a chance to use. Click ahead to see them:Read More
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