West Seattle, Washington
03 Thursday
Christopher Boffoli tells WSB that the first meeting of the new Junction Neighborhood Organization, JuNO, had a great turnout last night (especially considering the temptations of a warm summer night). He also passes on some updates about area crime, procured from a Seattle Police rep in attendance — click to read what Christopher reports about that:Read More
-If you live in/around The Junction, don’t miss the first meeting of JuNO — Junction Neighborhood Association. 6:30 pm Thursday @ the Senior Center.
-If you’re concerned about the future of the Charlestown Cafe and the site it’s on, Our Town West Seattle invites you there, 7 pm Thursday, for a briefing before the next city Design Review Board meeting on the project.
WS writer/broadcaster/blogger John Moe wrote to let us know his latest piece for public radio’s Weekend America has a WSÂ angle — as he describes it, “comparing and contrasting Lindsay Lohan and West Seattleite Frances Farmer. I talk about her life in West Seattle, mention West Seattle High School, and a couple other local things.” Here’s the link.
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.)
… witness Miss Seafair Erin Waid, a West Seattleite who reigned over Hi-Yu last year, caught on camera tonight by the P-I’s new Big Blog, out for burgers — at Interbay Red Mill! — with the rest of the Seafair court. (Erin’s Seafair reign runs till just before Saturday night’s Torchlight Parade, when for the first time the new Miss Seafair will be crowned pre-parade instead of at a separate evening event; contenders include West Seattle’s Michelle Edwards.)ÂÂÂ
No, JuNO is not another one of those condo names. It’s the Junction Neighborhood Association, a new group of, and for, people who live in and around The Junction. If that includes you, you’re invited to its first meeting, next Thursday (August 2), 6:30 pm at the Senior Center. The special guest will be Seattle Police Southwest Precinct crime-prevention coordinator Benjamin Kinlow. You can find out more about JuNO and its upcoming meeting by clicking here to download the official meeting flier (which includes the e-mail address for JuNO organizers, and a reference map for the area JuNO is focusing on).
While we sit back in our fold-up chairs and enjoy the parade, we can’t forget how many people it takes to make it happen — not just the hundreds of participants, but the others behind the scenes. Kudos to the Hi-Yu and American Legion folks, among a legion of others. Now, another group of photos — focusing on people. We start with the Hi-Yu royalty and other Hi-Yu folks (red shirts), who held court on the SW corner of Cali/Alaska (the camera crew you see behind/above them involved Art Institute students who have been shooting video at Hi-Yu events as a project):
Click ahead for more parade people, from the famous to the oughta-be-famous:Read More
Yet another tidbit from last night’s Alki Community Council meeting, big changes ahead for the semi-monthly Alki News Beacon: Its webmaster Cami MacNamara will take over as editor, as Christine L’Ecluse moves on to “a new adventure”; plus, toward the end of the year, subscribers will receive the Beacon by mail instead of by carrier. (If you pick it up at local businesses, don’t worry; Cami tells WSB that copies will still be made available at Alki/Admiral-area businesses.)
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.
Much more WS news to tell you about, but it’s going to have to wait till morning. For now, we close the night with words of thanks for polite WS drivers, from a WSB reader who hopes to see more of them:
I know that it’s been tough for commuters using Admiral Way lately.
From those of us living just off Admiral between 37th and 39th, I’d like to send out a thank you to the few drivers who have been kind enough to let us into and out of our neighborhood.
Some days (like Monday when I had to take my cat to the vet) I waited 10 minutes to turn right onto Admiral from 39th. Finally, one driver, a man in a black sedan, let me in. Special thanks to that driver!
This week’s Seattle Weekly has a mini-profile of the man who runs Easy Street, including his five fave records albums (what do we call them these days, anyway?) of all time.
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.
More than two dozen heat-braving souls just wrapped up the first of two meetings led by an earnest Alki couple, Libby and Paul Carr, who are trying to salvage the stalled Alki Statue of Liberty plaza project. Ultimately, the final say on the future of this West Seattle icon rests elsewhere …Read More
Time & place: Somewhere after noon today atop the Alki seawall. One of the hundreds of small children awaiting the Seafair Pirates‘ Landing said to an accompanying adult: “We’ve been here THREE HOURS!”
Said the adult: “Yeah, we’re not doing THIS again next year. We’ll just watch it on the news.”
Having watched this particular orchestration of the Seafair Pirates Landing two years in a row now (as we wrote last year, we had given up on the whole thing long ago, till we launched WSB and therefore felt dutybound to check it out) — we might do the same. Why, you ask? Click ahead for more, including more photos, and links to some other writeups already up online:Read More
Every weekend this month has something huge in WS — and it all kicks off this morning with the Seafair Pirates’ Landing bash at Alki. According to the Pirates’ own website (yes, even these scalawags of the sea can be found online), they’ll storm the beach around noon-ish, but fun can be had starting around 9:30 am; read full details here, including special freebies for kids. All this will also kick West Seattle Hi-Yu events into high season; check the Hi-Yu schedule here. (If you’re interested, our writeup of last year’s Pirates Landing is here. Note the part where we did NOT park near Alki. Don’t even try. Take the free Water Taxi shuttle’s Alki route, take the regular bus, walk, ride your bike, do anything but turn side streets into Attack of the Parking-Challenged.)
Until this article turned up in today’s Times, we had no idea WS is home to a champion “competitive eater.” The article mentions he’s got a blog; looks like this is it.
As of today, West Seattle Helpline joins the WS Food Bank, Megawatt, and others in the WS Community Resource Center @ 35th/Morgan. (Their old corridor in The Junction just got a little lonelier …)
2 years after Hurricane Katrina, its survivors are still struggling. In about a week, right here in WS, you’ve got two ways to help: The Total Experience Gospel Choir is leading a benefit at Kenyon Hall on 7/8, and advertising right now for more musicians to join in. If you can’t help with that, at least mark your calendar to drop by and chip in — there’ll be good food as well as good music — 1-9 pm a week from Sunday.
This Saturday, 11 am-2 pm, is the big pro-Charlestown Cafe picketing rally (backstory here). So that participants can prepare, a selection of sign suggestions has just been uploaded to the Our Town West Seattle group (join it and you can download them too, while getting full details on the latest developments) — here are four of them; the last is our fave:
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We just got e-mail about Alki Boot Camp. What an awesome name for a workout class.
The West Seattle couple featured in the documentary “Inlaws & Outlaws,” Jane Abbott Lighty & Pete-e Petersen, are celebrity grand marshals of today’s Pride Parade downtown.
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