West Seattle, Washington
19 Thursday
#1 — Buy a backpack (or more than one) and donate it to the West Seattle Helpline back-to-school backpack drive, under way right this very moment. They hope to hand out hundreds next month. Drop off the backpack(s) at Capers in The Junction, or at Helpline’s new HQ in the WS Community Resource Center, 35th & Morgan (Tues-Thurs, 10 am-2 pm).
#2 — Pre-order your copy of the new “Harry Potter” book from Square 1 Books in Jefferson Square before Friday, and $5 will go to WestSide Baby — plus you’ll get two tickets to a special “Harry Potter” event at the Admiral Theater on Friday. (It’s also not too soon to start gearing up for WestSide Baby’s “Stuff the Bus” diaper drive on 7/29!)
The first banner to appear on the Fauntleroy overpass since its last cleaning has also appeared online, thanks to the birthday girl’s proud dad.
Great news for garden lovers — organizers tell us tickets are still left for this weekend’s West Seattle Garden Tour. At your leisure, as long as it’s between 9 am and 5 pm Sunday, you will get to go gawk at “an eclectic mix of eight residential gardens” and hear from guest lecturer Marianne Binetti. You can even buy tickets online if you do it by tomorrow, or you can get tix in person up through tour day at a variety of locations including ArtsWest, West Seattle Nursery, Capers, True Value, and Metro Market.
We’ve confessed before that food-waste recycling is the one type of recycling we just haven’t quite gotten on board with yet. Looks like we’re going to have to; reports this morning (Times here, Weekly here) say we’re all going to be paying for pickup in less than 2 years. We hate paying for something we’re not using. Like the basic cable channels we don’t watch. Wish tv channels could be purchased a la carte. But we digress. So, we’ll get with the program. Maybe Sustainable West Seattle has advice! (More on the city’s “zero waste strategy” here.)
With the West Seattle Hi-Yu Festival American Legion Grand Parade just days away, your resident parade maniacs here have to kick the countdown machine into gear. And now that our favorite e-mail of the year — the sneak peek at the parade running order — has arrived, we can start with reason #5: More than 75 entries, including the only Seattle-area performance by the ever-wild Vancouver (B.C.) Motorcycle Police Drill Team (VPD photo at right from an ’06 appearance).
We haven’t updated WS gas prices for a while; the price situation has stayed relatively stable. Arco on Delridge by Home Depot retains the title of WS Gas Station With The Lowest Posted Price, $2.87 as of early this afternoon (photo left); more than half a dozen other stations are in the $2.90s. This all puts us way below the state that now has the highest prices in the nation (Nebraska!), and even below the national average.
The Stranger’s bodacious blog paid a visit to The Beach and concluded that anyone whining about Alki nightlife trouble should pretty much just shut their pie hole. They checked back on last year’s controversy spots; guess they hadn’t heard about this year’s radio-fueled controversy spot, which the Alki Beach Community group on Yahoo! has been discussing for a couple weeks.
Everyone watching the Charlestown Cafe site/potential Petco project has been waiting for another city Design Review Board meeting to be scheduled, as a key next step in the process. According to the city website, that meeting is now set for August 9th.
More Hi-Yu Festival fun tomorrow night: The West Seattle Big Band concert at Hiawatha Park (hopefully the weather will hold), following a speech by Hizzoner in honor of West Seattle’s annexation centennial. It all starts 7 pm. NOON UPDATE: A little more info from the mayor’s office – he will dedicate a commemorative plaque and tree as part of the pre-concert festivities.
You have another chance tonight to hear organizers make their case for keeping the recast Alki Statue of Liberty on hold till a “plaza” and new base can be built for it. We reported on their meeting last Wednesday; they say the gathering tonight by the old statue base, 7 pm, will be similar, and they’re planning to be at the Alki Community Council meeting this Thursday as well. Here’s an updated architect rendering of what the plaza would look like (more here):
And here again is the e-mail address for the Parks Department (which has the final say) person who’s on the project — write to let ’em know what you think.
Just after sunset, the vista from Marine View Drive:
Late afternoon, many of those Vashon-visiting Vespa riders trickled off several ferries in succession – we caught this one passing the homes across from Lincoln Park:
Also on Fauntleroy alongside Lincoln Park, a sign caught lying down on the job:
Now, the story, e-mailed by a reader who says she moved to WS 3 months ago and loves it:
I was visiting my son and his wife who live a block off Alki up against a greenbelt; we were sitting on the deck talking when a very large otter walked out from under the blackberry patch. He stopped and made eye contact with each of us, then turned slowly and with belly low crawled back from where he came. It was amazing. When I stopped to ask the men working on a roof a couple doors down, they laughed and one said it must have been what he saw crossing Alki late one night …
Thanks to the reader tip pointing us to a website now up for Ama Ama Oyster Bar & Grill, which is following Ovio at the NE corner of Cali/Edmunds. Not much on the site except the promise “Coming in October!”
if you haven’t been yet – or even if you have – wander down to The Junction before Summer Fest ends 7 pm-ish. Part of the WSB team made another run through it this afternoon, catching street magic along the way:
The Vespa enthusiasts who are rallying in Seattle this weekend headed out WS way today. Chris sent us word of his Flickr page with video and pix after spotting the huge group coming off the low bridge. Looks like they were headed to the Fauntleroy ferry dock for a ride to Vashon, so watch out for the procession heading the other way later this afternoon.
About to get the boot — renters at a building that just about everyone in WS has driven past at one time or another, thanks to its amazing Alki Point location, the Rip Tide (photo below). An Alki-area reader just pointed out to us that the Rip Tide changed hands a few weeks ago (for $4 million) and is going condo, fulfilling fears voiced more than a year ago. (Sure won’t make this situation any better.)
Looks like the Saturday night Summer Fest street dance really rocked The Junction. Charles Redmond sent photos of the crowd and The Retros:
If you haven’t been to the historic Admiral Theater lately, you may not have noticed it’s starting to expand what it offers — such as, more midnight movies than just the monthly Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday nights …
… tonight, for example (as per the marquee above – though the rest of it’s a bit out-of-date since we took the pic at midweek), it’s the burgeoning cult fave “Harold & Kumar.” Then there’s a new series of Sunday morning classics kicking off 10 am tomorrow with “Casablanca” (also ahead: “African Queen” and “Singin’ in the Rain”). The Admiral website has been inconsistent lately (the link went to a parking page at last check) but there’s lots of info posted out front at the theater itself, including updates on the fundraising project for major interior fixes (such as, they hope hundreds of people will pony up $40 each so they can buy new seats, which aren’t covered in the types of government grants they’re pursuing for landmark restoration.
P.S. While fishing for Admiral Theater history, we learned that today is a notable anniversary for the Admiral District in general.
As mentioned in our weekend-events list, tonight is the fundraising dinner and auction for, and at (map), the Community School of West Seattle (photo right). As we reported 6 weeks ago, they are trying to raise enough money to buy their building, which otherwise will go to a developer, and they only have another month and a half. Here’s what one organizer writes about the event (6:30 pm tonight):
This will be a spectacular evening, with live entertainment by local performers and delicious food from local eateries. Some of the items available for auction include: a cruise to the Galapagos Islands, a week at Whistler, Botox cosmetic treatment, art from local artists, and exquisite jewelry.
If you can’t go but you still would like to help CSWS, donation information is on its website.
Only one week till the Hi-Yu Festival‘s American Legion Grand Parade (preceded by the kids’ parade) down Cali — our favorite WS event of the year (here’s our report from ’06). If you’re going to Summer Fest in The Junction today/tonight, you can check out the Hi-Yu group’s own float (which appears in other parades around the area too, such as Kent tomorrow), parked at the NW corner of Cali/Oregon:
As of this morning, Shoofly Pie Company is open in The Junction, in the ex-Bobby’s Hobbies spot on Cali north of SW Oregon. 
We dropped in and can tell you most of what’s on the menu right now: Pies, whole ($21-$22ish) or by the slice ($3.50 for most) including shoofly, cherry, apple, strawberry-rhubarb, lemon meringue, key lime, chocolate cream, “deep chocolate tart”; quiches (same price range) are tomato goat cheese and ham gruyere; and they’re also selling cute-looking individual chicken pot pies ($5). Espresso drinks too, as well as tea and soft drinks. The decor could best be described as simple, clean, IKEAesque, with wood tables and floor, and a fair amount of stainless steel inside to echo the outer trim. Be sure to bring cash, as a sign on the register says they’re not set up for credit cards just yet (but expect to be “soon”).
8-11 am this morning, as part of the Hi-Yu Festival, the West Seattle Sportsmen’s Club is presiding over a temporary pond outside Seacrest Boathouse, for the annual Kids’ Fishing Derby. The latest WSSC newsletter mentions some changes this year. The group set up the pond last night; we stopped by and snapped some of the fish (200 rainbow trout):
We didn’t return to Summer Fest until most of the booths were preparing to fold up for the night, but there were still sights to be seen, such as this small train display outside the train shop (note the wishing well bowl and a lizard/dinosaur chewing on a car):
North of Oregon, the “car show” near the Rat City Rollergirls‘ booth turned out to be a grand total of three cars by the time we got there. Nonetheless, this classic was a sight to see, especially with its original $2400ish price sticker in the window:
Then it was time to head closer to the water, and we found ourselves at Seacrest, where the pier bustled with crab pots and fishing rods, with cotton-candy thundercloud-wannabes behind the downtown skyline:
Seacrest will also entertain young fisherfolk in the morning at a special pond set up for a Hi-Yu event. We’ll have more on that after dawn’s early light.
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