West Seattle, Washington
13 Sunday
Sunset photo #1 hot out of the inbox, courtesy of WSB reader “K” (thank you!!!!):
Sunset photo #2 is one we shot from Golden Gardens tonight (heresy! we left WS! attempt at relevant linkage, below the pic):
Driving through Ballard on the way to GG, we mused that Ballard and WS really should be “sister neighborhoods” — lots in common, from condoization, to maritime history/ongoing industry, to the status as home to the city’s two most popular public beaches, and much more. As if to put an exclamation point on that thought, a sign caught our eye in a Ballard business window, triggering a not-so-long-ago WS memory: Ben & Jerry’s on Market has just closed. While we’re not sure about that (ex-)shop’s current ownership, we do know the former B&J’s in The Junction was owned by the people who (at least at the time) owned the one in Ballard. One other interesting sighting during our brief invasion of the north end tonight: This lovely charter yacht ($70K/week!) moored at Shilshole.
The latest from the Battle in Ballard is interesting, given the conversion-mania raging here on our side of the bay.
Several articles are out tonight about two men the FBI hopes someone can identify. They apparently were spotted on several ferry runs. The FBI isn’t saying which ferry runs, but if you look at the second photo in this story about them (another site has a larger version here), the backdrop certainly resembles a segment of Fauntleroy/Vashon/Southworth.
… the city just issued an interesting open invitation to anyone and everyone. Road closure included! Click ahead to read it.Read More
Wonder what these are going to look like? Our imagination doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
For those of you who were just holding your breath till this whole Seafair thing was over, thanks for indulging us and scrolling past these posts. As for us, well, one more round of photos from the Museum of Flight (today’s pre-takeoff and post-landing), and then it’s off to dream about ’08.
More of what you don’t see if you only watch the airshow over the lake … click ahead:Read More
We’ve mentioned that our favorite place to experience Blue Angels mania during Seafair weekend is on the fence by their parking spot at Museum of Flight/Boeing Field. After bringing the camera along today, we can show you what that’s really like:
That’s the fence crowd by the jets (not to be confused with the fence on the BF runway) around 1 pm, just before the pilots show up. We got there a lot earlier to be on the front line, inspected by the bomb-sniffing dog, whose photo you will see (and more) after the click:Read More
The “barely a sliver of sun before Sunday” forecast turned out to be SO not true today. Things improved steadily after our arrival on the lakeshore … see the two different views of the sky over Stan Sayres Pits, 11:30 am-ish and 1:30 pm-ish:
The Blue Angels still did their so-called “low show,” no doubt planned hours earlier thanks to the same gloomy forecasts. Fun anyway. More miscellaneous pix and tales, after the click:Read More
The tycoon who brought WS the Delridge megaflag (photo below, looking south from outside Uptown Espresso) has just put his Vashon ranch up for sale (Beachcomber story including detailed property description here; Times story here), less than a year after moving his company out of West Seattle. (The ex-SGA Delridge building, by the way, is no longer listed for sale anywhere that we can find. Oh real-estate insiders out there, does it have a new owner?)
7 am, just after the Blue Angels landed @ Boeing Field and parked @ their Seafair “home” alongside the Museum of Flight. (I-90 bridge closures start at 9:45 am.)
Love it or hate it, it’s here … the frenzied finale to Seattle’s biggest summer festival, Seafair. 
We had been debating whether to take up space here with our Blue Angels and hydro obsessions interest, given that it’s not WS-specific, but bless the reader who wrote us to suggest we do exactly that … so here goes.
SECRET #1 — Watch the Blue Angels take off from and land at the Museum of Flight, which is at Boeing Field, just a few miles east of West Seattle. You don’t have to pay MOF admission to go stand along their fence and do this, although we highly recommend the very affordable MOF membership — it’s a unique Seattle institution worth supporting. This is always stirring, particularly on the Friday-Saturday-Sunday occasions, when you can see the full pageantry of the “walkdown,” the synchronized crew checks, the jet engine smoke, the feel-it-in-your-bones takeoffs … anyway, you can read our tales from last year: day 1 here, day 3 here, day 4 here. The Angels will have two takeoffs and landings during practices tomorrow (Thursday), then one each for the “rehearsal” show on Friday and the real deal on Saturday/Sunday.
SECRET #2 — “Free Friday.”
Back from seven hours downtown (if you start parade stakeout around 3 pm, you can still get a great spot not too far south of Westlake Center, and catch up on reading). A few pix of WS relevance — first, West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician, back in the parade this year after skipping last year:
In honor of West Seattle’s many longshore workers, we snapped our first-ever sighting of the ILWU Drill Team:
Then there were the fine folks from the West Seattle Hi-Yu Festival, cheerily waving from atop and alongside the “Pearls of the Sea” float:
Their good cheer was extra-brave, considering the float was tow truck-powered by the time it got to our spot along the route (did the overheating problem rear its ugly head again?):
Next: Blue Angels mania! (Here are this year’s I-90 closure times, if you need ’em.)
Though tonight’s Seafair Torchlight Parade happens downtown, there are a few Seafair-related items of WS relevance:
-Because of the Torchlight Run preceding the parade, The Viaduct will be closed tonight, from 5:45 till 7:30 or so.
-The West Seattle Hi-Yu float got fixed, thanks to Alki Automotive, and is ready for the parade; it got a lot of ink (pixels) in this Seattle Times parade preview.
-Thanks to Northwest Asian Weekly, we found out a West Seattle teenager has a prominent role in one of the most popular parade entries: Jennifer Gee, featured by NAW as an “Outstanding Graduate” for her achievement as this year’s West Seattle High School valedictorian, is captain of the Seattle Chinese Community Girls’ Drill Team (photo taken by Jason Parker at Hi-Yu Parade last weekend).
-Last but not least, West Seattle writer/humorist John Moe (whose blog Monkey Disaster is one of the 70-plus sites linked from our Other Blogs in WS page) wrote an amusing piece about potential Seafair revisions for the Times.
If you’re going to the Torchlight Parade, we’ll see you there. If not, we highly recommend checking out the first night (since last week was rained out) of Movies on the Wall by Sidewalk Cinema, featuring “Best in Show,” next to Hotwire Coffeehouse. Free! Fun! (Here’s our post from the first time we went last year.)
He’s dropping by the weekly “Drinking Liberally” get-together (not in WS) tonight, according to HA.
Don’t faint. A West Seattle-based couple is opening their own bakery — but not on our side of the bay. We best remember Stephanie Crocker and her “Sugar” creations from the Farmers’ Market last year; also, last November we told you about the pie fundraiser to help Stephanie and her husband John with expenses from his fight against cancer. That’s going well and now they’re getting ready to open their own place, Sugar Bakery & Cafe on First Hill (and blogging about it too). Stephanie tells WSB they hope to open in October – just in time for the bakery-mania of the holiday season.
If you can’t wait till tomorrow night to see fireworks — catch a ferry, cross the Sound, and go to Fireworks on the Fjord in Poulsbo tonight. The fireworks follow an all-day festival, with food and music and all the classic summer stuff. (If you’re worried about parking, try the shuttle buses.)
-Bald eagles fly off the endangered species list. WS has regular sightings.
-Seattle Public Schools’ race-based tiebreaker, long on hold, is officially dead.
… to this: “Thou shalt not blaze through a four-way stop without giving all due respect to everyone else at/in the intersection.”
Back from RFTC. Intermittent sun, good crowd. But walking on The Viaduct now feels the way it felt to attend baseball games in The Kingdome in 1999 … end-of-an-era’ish. Here for posterity is the cobblestone/aggregate viaduct surface underfoot:
A few more pix (with people in them!) after the click:Read More
Lots of energy about to be put into two good causes:
-You have till noon tomorrow to sign up online for the Race for the Cure on The Viaduct this Saturday morning. (And even if you’re not going to join us and thousands of other runners/walkers, keep in mind The Viaduct will be closed for a few hours that morning because of this.)
-One week from Sunday, sometime between 3 and 4 pm, two Eastside men will arrive on the beach at Lincoln Park after swimming 3 1/2 miles from Vashon Island. It’s their 8th annual “Paddle for PAWS” to raise money for that animal-assistance group. They’re hoping to raise $10,000, and they’re accepting donations online right now.
Somebody at Jones Soda reads WSB so we wanted to say congrats to you all on the Seahawks deal!!!! (If you haven’t tried Jones lately, the “real sugar” makes it extra tasty.)
Two noteworthy articles just posted at the P-I site:
–First official online account we’ve seen of Charlie Chong’s funeral. Also, CharlieChong.com is updated with the funeral program that he wrote himself.
-For our fellow Blue Angels fans: Seafair says they’re definitely in.
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