One "Chock-full-o-things-to-do" week
The last couple of days have been uncommonly busy
with street fairs, open-air concerts, bike rides and the finishing touches
getting done on the house - things like the railings and handrail. Photos
illustrate the various fairs and other comings-and-goings.
The house has taken less and less time and the
past few days have been "chock full-o-things-to-do." So I did. This was one
rock-and-roll weekend which has continued apace this week. Saturday I went out
for both a long walk and reasonable (10 miles) bike ride - even though it was -
so far - the hottest day of the year. As a newbie cyclist to Seattle I've had
to learn a few things different from the way things were either back East or
specifically in DC. I'm still amazed by how courteous and (because it's so
rarely experienced we perceive it as) kind drivers are out here - to pedestrians
and to cyclists. Interesting similarity, though, the bus drivers here and the
bus drivers in DC seemed to act like "protectors" for bikes, especially if the
bike was in a road area where the car had the advantage. So, my hats off to bus
drivers everywhere.
Oh, I experienced the random extraordinary kindness of King County Metro. I was waiting for a bus to take me to Ballard for their 40th Seafood Festival (think of it as an evolving Ballard street festival) and this 21 heading for "Central Base" stopped and picked me up on 35th about three blocks from my house. I asked him if he was going downtown, he said "no, Central Base." Well, duh! the sign did say that. Thereby ensued a discussion of Atlantic Base, Central Base, Ryerson Base and one more which name I forgot. As far as I could tell, the entire area east of the two stadiums between 4th and 7th Avenues South is taken up by one huge - frickin - bus barn-parking lot-garage and admin series of buildings and parking garages. In DC, Metro has at least four bus barns which I was familiar with, and they were huge. All of them together (Western on Wisconsin, Southern in Fairfax, Eastern near Ft. Totten, and Central near the Capitol) together wouldn't come close to these KC Metro barns. Turns out they're all the same thing, one huge - fricking - bus barn broken down by operating divisions but sharing all the buildings and acreage - with their own street even running between the south Pioneer Square area to well south of Safeco Field. Anyway, he could only take me as far as the West Seattle Bridge crossroads at Avalon-Fauntleroy-35th-Alaska area. Where, by the way, my chances of catching a real, working bus, were now four times more likely. He picked up three other folks and we all got off at the last stop before he boogied to the garage.
So, Saturday was the Ballard Seafood festival, which I took to be as close to a street fair as Ballard got and went. I'd heard about how the salmon barbeque had rescued the Ballard Chamber of Commerce forty years ago and how after that it was a tradition to have the salmon roast and they've added crafts and music and amusements - all based on being local to Ballard. I've now attended four "major" local events in the form of fairs or parades or neighborhood-community oriented shindings. The first was the Fremont Solstice parade and set of fair days. The second was the Gay Pride Parade and two-day turnout at Volunteer Park. The previous before Ballard was the West Seattle street fair and the very morning of the opening day for the Ballard festival was the 70th annual West Seattle Hi-Yu parade - an old-fashioned, country-America, street parade with clowns, pirates, marching bands from the local high schools and baton-twirlers from all over. And, the Ballard Seafood Festival. I inadvertently missed the U-District street fair. From my limited experience so far, I'd rate the Gay Pride and Summer Solstice events as the more political of the series, with definite "statement" oriented floats and tents at the fair - in addition to the usual food, crafts, organizations and services. The West Seattle and Ballard fairs are very typical of what I've seen in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maryland, and a bunch of other states for small town or small city afffairs - family oriented, reasonably broad-spectrum politically (like, what candidate WOULDN'T want to march in a parade or have a booth or tent - it's the nature of the beast), and replete with clowns and high-school musicians and the various Eagle, Rotary, and Lions club events. As already noted, the major difference out here is the quality of the bands playing at these festivals - and the quantity of them.
Fun stuff for someone like me who likes watching people. The crowds are almost always as much fun as the parade participants or fair goers. The Ballard fair was the smallest of the various neighborhood festivals I've attended, only two blocks of Market Street and two blocks of Ballard Avenue with only one music stage. I bought my six-dollar salmon barbecue dinner and sat at a table where there was some slight shade - remember, Saturday was the hottest day of the year so far. While eating my salmon, cole slaw and garlic bread - all produced by Ballard area food vendors or the Chamber of Commerce, I was talking with the folks around me. The food area was set up at the intersection of Market and Ballard, an area where there had previously been a triangular Scandanavian-themed park which had been undergoing a renovation and re-work for the past year. The new park is actually very nice - it joins Market Street, which is an east-west main thoroughfare and shopping street, with Ballard Avenue, which is a diagonal street which joins Market to the shoreline at Salmon Bay and which was formerly the main drag when Ballard was an independent town at the turn of the previous century.
Several of the folks eating at the table with me made comments about how "Ballard residents weren't polled as to what they wanted in the park." I was being conversed with as though I was a Ballard resident. I guess the other Ballard residents figured only Ballard types would schlepp down to Market and Ballard for the salmon barbecue so I must be a Ballard resident. There were a lot of opinions about the new park, most of them along the lines that it looked more like it belonged in Fremont and not Ballard because of the tall sculptures which lined the Market Street side. They were, indeed, of a variety of style which would be right at home in Fremont (a metal toadstool?, something else which looked like it came right out of "Alice in Wonderland," and a few which were recognizable but still offbeat). I commented that Fremont was, after all, just about half-a-mile down the same road and that some of the sculptures did have a Scandanavian theme and overall the whole thing worked because it tied the two main business streets together - and besides which, it looked a lot better than the triangle-lot did before with the storm fence around it and the bobcats and piles of dirt. Harrumph was the mostly universal response I got from the other Ballard residents.
Oh well, they're stuck with it now and it's pretty nice anyway. One of the fun things about the community fairs - and Ballard's, like West Seattle, is definitely aimed at the neighborhood residents (both West Seattle and Ballard had open-sidewalk booths for all the local vendors whose shops the fair was in front of and both featured food courts with strictly local, neighborhood, cooking establishments), is the local police precincts and fire stations come out and actually mix and mingle. Since Saturday was so hot, the local fire station for downtown Ballard had a ladder and water cannon truck set up right at the intersection of Market and Ballard, diagonal from the park, and had several brigade members in the street using the water hoses to douse locals who were dashing in and out of the powerful spray. Then, the fire crew in the street decided they'd hose down the truck, which was being staffed by the brigade captain. After a few vollies of water, with the Captain ducking behind the truck's cab, the Captain struck back. He used the water cannon on the truck to basically destroy his staff in the street. The street guys tried a few more times but the cannon was just too much - all to the great delight of the crowd both watching and getting wet. I later talked with the Captain, telling him that I thought he was cheating since he was hiding behind the cab of the firetruck and using the cannon. He said, "I'm the Captain and rank does have its privilege." So, take that street water fighters. He then told me and a small group which had gathered to watch the water fight, that he and his crew had been in a neighborhood recently just driving through - as the fire department does on occasion - when a bunch of neighborhood kids were dousing them with these super-soaker water guns. He says they stopped the truck, hooked up the canvas hose to a fire plug and let the kids have their fun for a bit then used the water cannon on them and "that was that, all she wrote."
There was one really excellent rasta band - Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band, which was here from Belize, and which has quite a local following as well as a pretty good international following. I sat on the curb, in the shade, and caught the last forty minutes of their set. Absolutely great reggae music with a universal underlying message of peace and harmony. After a few hours of hanging around, checking out the tents and some of the sidewalk sales, I meandered down to Leary Way to catch the bus home - the buses were rerouted because of the street closings.
Summer time in Seattle can be great for food, music and crafts if one gets out and about to the many and various street fairs and parades. Most of these are the kind of thing that's "not that big a deal" but definitely fun to take in. What's really nice is there are so many of them that no one event is the "mega" event, though some are larger than others such as the Solstice Parade which draws a really big crowd. And, they are local enough that one could expect to see neighbors they knew at these events. So far, probably because I don't know that many people, I've not run into more than one or two people I actually knew at any of these.
Sunday was not quite as hot but was still one of those "summer days." Which actually was a good thing because I had a ticket (only one left) for the John Hiatt "ZooTunes" concert Sunday evening in the great meadow at the north end of the Woodland Park Zoo grounds. I arrived about an hour before the concert, found a spot right behind the sound mixer area (figuring that if I couldn't see the stage, at least I'd have good sound) and put down a camping pad, took off my socks and shoes and waited for the concert. Washington DC has Wolf Trap Farm Park which has an amphitheater with seats and a large surrounding grassy knoll where folks can set up picnic blankets and lawn chairs. There's no "Wolf Trap" park here but the ZooTunes works pretty much the same way. There were about six or seven hundred people, spread out and set up in the meadow - some folks taking way more room than they should have. The opening act was a singer-songwriter with guitar from Austin, Texas, who was both really good with the voice and guitar and also rather funny. He was on for about thirty minutes and at the designated moment, John Hiatt showed on stage and began his set. He was unaccompanied and played one and then another and another of the three guitars he'd brought and for a couple of songs an electric piano. He's really good with the guitar, with his voice - he has such a range and can really sustain a note - and with the piano. The set ran for about ninety minutes with three encore songs and just about the time the sun was sneaking behind some of the hills in the city, the concert was over. Hiatt played quite a few of the songs from his existing albums and two new ones for an album coming out this Fall. He was "slightly" political, I don't think any musician misses the chance to be political and Seattle is such an open and willing political venue for these folks. He also played a few Bonnie Raitt songs with a few phrases altered for the occasion - the occasion being a hot summer day in Seattle with the elections coming up in the Fall.
There were only two other people who had arrived at the Zoo by bus and the three of us waited a short time and hopped on the bus to get home. Most of the other folks seemed to park on neighborhood streets in the area west of the Zoo - which is probably fine since there's ample on-street parking in that neighborhood and nearly everyone has a driveway so nobody was "stealing" a parking space.
Monday and Tuesday I spent doing more setup for all the stuff I'd been unpacking upstairs. Most of my photo collection is now unpacked and accessible. I've still got about half-a-dozen boxes to go through and I'm still missing some of the music, collections of CDs and a few LPs. I've also got my entire software library and manuals to unpack but will probably defer on those since I've run out of places to put this stuff. I will have to get a few more bookshelves but that will also have to await the return from the East Coast since I've sort of run out of both time and money at this point. However, nearly everything is where it should be in the house - even if it's still inside a box, except for the art. Ah, the art. There are seven four-feet by six-feet by about eight inches thick cartons of packed art in the shed. They contain some fine art, all my oil and acrylic canvas work, a huge number of framed photos and unframed but mounted photos and even some pastel work of mine. We've obviously got lots of new wall space and so I'll eventually get around to unpacking all that, too. There's also a lot of boxes in the shed of stuff which I need to transfer to the new storage area - the plenum. Stuff like every single stuffed animal either Adam or Leif has ever had - inside these huge plastic bins. Anyway, the unpacking will continue for a while it seems.
On Tuesday I got on my bike for the third time in the past week. Friday I'd gone for a quick bike ride around the peninsula - down to Lincoln Park, around the beach on the walkway and then on Beach Drive, Alki Avenue and Harbor Avenue and then back down Delridge Way to home. That's a 14-mile bike circuit which is pretty sweet. I start out at nearly 500 foot altitude, drop within 10 blocks to sea level and then bike flat for about 10 miles and then make a slow climb - just under three miles - back up to the 500 foot elevation of my house. Tuesday I rode across town and up about halfway to the northern border of Seattle in Ballard - Loyal Heights neighborhood. The Monorail will continue for a few more blocks than I biked so I sort of got to see the other end of the Green Line. That was a 29-mile ride and both my rear end and legs felt fine at the conclusion. It's taken me a while to get accustomed to the hills, how to ride them and still continue on a long bike ride. In the District, it was not that big a deal to go for a thirty mile bike ride since it was mostly flat except for a final two mile uphill haul to get home - but there the hills are shallower and significantly fewer.
It's been a busy and distracting summer so far and I'm somewhat chagrined that I've only got 80 or so miles on my bike odometer. Granted I didn't put it on for the first couple of rides on the new bike and I do have a few hundred miles from last year here. But still, that's a pathetic showing for a cyclist. That'll change as things settle down and I get on the bike more. It took me a while in DC to get a regular bike routine - several years in fact - so I shouldn't be that surprised that I've not got that many miles under my belt out here yet. I am learning my way around town, no longer, for instance, do I get to an area and find I don't know what's on the other side of the hill. I feel quite comfortable at this point just getting on the bike and heading out and I also think I've managed to gear my body up to the hills and inclines of this town in such a way that I don't return home either exhausted or pained. All good things.
The outside balcony steel railing wires are now in place and the spiral stairway handrail and wood foot treadles are done and look really nice - photos soon of all the finished work - so by the end of the week - save for a bit of paint patching and minor electrical rework, we should expect the final house inspection. That will be the "end" of the construction phase and just in time for the block party open house. I've extended the open house to quite a few neighbors who actually live outside our "block" to drop by on the evening of August 3 to have a look and see what the inside looks like. Everyone who walks by has commented on how extraordinary the exterior looks and how nicely it fits the neighborhood and the corner. I think they're going to be surprised at how much nicer and incredible the interior spaces are - not to mention what one can see from both the second floor and the aerie.
There are photos from a variety of walks and bike rides posted below. I'm gearing down to get ready for the trip back East - about a dozen days or less to go. While away it's really doubtful that I'll be posting anything so there will be a long pause between posts for a bit. Since I'm going cross country again there's every likelihood that I'll return with hundreds of photos, score or more of new VR views of North America and probably a boatload of family beach photos.
There's probably one or two more posts before I leave but in the meantime enjoy the last days of July and whatever vacation plans you might have. Oh, and be careful - this is the time of the year when there are endless auto accidents as the entire country takes to the road.
Chas
It's hard to see in this panorama of Elliott Bay from Alki Beach, but both the Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Mountains were
clearly visible on this day. A rarity for the area's weather. That's Magnolia, Queen Anne and Downtown in the middle of the Bay.
This is from the same spot and shows Magnolia and the islands and the Olympic Mountains slightly better than the shot above.
Same thing for this image which shows downtown and the Cascades better. The Space Needle is left of Center. Alki Beach and the
whole area along Alki Avenue offer superb views of downtown, large sections of the rest of the city and all the mountains. Great bike
circuit living here in West Seattle!!!
And just so no one feels left out, here's downtown, Queen Anne and Magnolia with Interbay between them. What's so cool about Seattle is
all these great views of the city are FROM the city. Most other seaports have great views but they're usually taken from some suburb or
other town across the bay or river or harbor entrance. Here it's just another view of town from in town.
And, on occasion, Mt. Baker makes an appearance from Alki Beach between Magnolia and Queen Anne. It's about
80 miles north of here and is nearly as tall as Mt. Rainier, which is a mere 50 miles from here - although it appears
to be much closer. Just an odd sighting of one of the local volcanoes - cool and somewhat scary at the same time.
I found this inscription written on one of the fence railings next to the Alki Beach bike trail. Tried to look up the few
names and dates left here on the web and found no references to anything bad having happened to anyone named
Louis on the date in question (see next image). So, perhaps this was just a sweet note from a kid to his parents.
This is a series of three shots taken directly over portions of the writing to better capture the message.
This is along the Harbor Avenue-Spokane Street access way for cyclists. The next view was taken from this
position - which shows Harbor Avenue on the left, the slag piles from the steel mill in the harbor area in
the center and the access points to and West Seattle Bridge on the right. The black stick in the middle of all
the orange harbor cranes is the Bank of America tower, the city's tallest structure, downtown.
A view of downtown from across the harbor. Taken from the walkway and bikeway on the northern side of the Spokane
Street access to the West Seattle Bridge. Yes, those are slag piles in the nearground of the harbor area. Not a pretty
sight and the Port of Seattle apparently does have some plans for this area - but won't reveal them just yet.
This is a tighter view of the same photo showing the harbor cranes and downtown buildings all lined together. The
view is looking southwest to northeast across Elliott Bay, which is below all the buildings and therefore invisible here.
When I say that West Seattle cyclists don't have very scenic access to the rest of the city, I'm not kidding. Although
West Seattle itself has great bike streets and bike paths, getting from here to the rest of the city takes a cyclist through
such wonderful terrain as this bike access point from the Spokane Street underpass of the bridge to Delridge Way. On
the other hand, there's not that much traffic so it's a pretty fast route even it it isn't all that pretty.
Just so you know what's on the other side of the bike path pictured above, it's this - the Nucor Steel plant's back end.
This is the area where scrap metal is piled up waiting to be smelted and turned into new steel ingots. The central ridge
of West Seattle rises behind (to the west of) the plant.
One of the few shaded areas in Ballard for the Seafood
Festival was along Ballard Avenue.
This is at the corner of Market Street near Ballard Avenue and shows the Seattle Fire
Department ladder truck set up in the intersection. The new park is the area with the trees
on the left.
Another shot along Ballard Avenue at some of the local crafts in their tents. It was a good
turnout but not crushingly crowded.
Like the West Seattle fair, the Ballard fair also had a "kids" play area with these inflatable
amusement park rides or attractions. This was set up along Market Street, and this
view is on Market facing east towards Fremont and Greenwood.
This is at the corner of Market and 24th where the Seattle Fire Department had set up
their ladder truck. Members of the brigade are dousing folks walking across 24th with
regular hoses and nozzles.
This is the brigade captain standing behind the cab of the truck and next to the water
cannon.
This is his drenched fire brigade staff in the street after they tried to "wet" the Captain and
he returned a volley with the water cannon. These guys never stood a chance.
This is Clinton Fearon (under the tent, third from left, next to Congo drums) and his
Boogie Brown Band - from Belize. He was excellent and as can be seen even had folks
dancing in the street - even though the temperatures were in the nineties and there was
NO shade here. Highly recommended if you like reggae.
This is a set of five images of the posters set up along Ballard Avenue and of the store front to Bop Street Records, in Ballard
on Ballard Avenue. This is probably the best used record-CD-tape (even 8-track) store in the Puget Sound area - compares
favorably with Amoeba in San Francisco and even has autographed walls from bands, including Pearl Jam. The owner has been
doing this same gig for about three decades - nearly two decades at this location.
And yet another splendid Western Sunset from - this time, not the roof, but from my desk looking out the corner
windows. Perhaps I should consider renaming my room from Studio C to Sunset Studio?
Oh, I experienced the random extraordinary kindness of King County Metro. I was waiting for a bus to take me to Ballard for their 40th Seafood Festival (think of it as an evolving Ballard street festival) and this 21 heading for "Central Base" stopped and picked me up on 35th about three blocks from my house. I asked him if he was going downtown, he said "no, Central Base." Well, duh! the sign did say that. Thereby ensued a discussion of Atlantic Base, Central Base, Ryerson Base and one more which name I forgot. As far as I could tell, the entire area east of the two stadiums between 4th and 7th Avenues South is taken up by one huge - frickin - bus barn-parking lot-garage and admin series of buildings and parking garages. In DC, Metro has at least four bus barns which I was familiar with, and they were huge. All of them together (Western on Wisconsin, Southern in Fairfax, Eastern near Ft. Totten, and Central near the Capitol) together wouldn't come close to these KC Metro barns. Turns out they're all the same thing, one huge - fricking - bus barn broken down by operating divisions but sharing all the buildings and acreage - with their own street even running between the south Pioneer Square area to well south of Safeco Field. Anyway, he could only take me as far as the West Seattle Bridge crossroads at Avalon-Fauntleroy-35th-Alaska area. Where, by the way, my chances of catching a real, working bus, were now four times more likely. He picked up three other folks and we all got off at the last stop before he boogied to the garage.
So, Saturday was the Ballard Seafood festival, which I took to be as close to a street fair as Ballard got and went. I'd heard about how the salmon barbeque had rescued the Ballard Chamber of Commerce forty years ago and how after that it was a tradition to have the salmon roast and they've added crafts and music and amusements - all based on being local to Ballard. I've now attended four "major" local events in the form of fairs or parades or neighborhood-community oriented shindings. The first was the Fremont Solstice parade and set of fair days. The second was the Gay Pride Parade and two-day turnout at Volunteer Park. The previous before Ballard was the West Seattle street fair and the very morning of the opening day for the Ballard festival was the 70th annual West Seattle Hi-Yu parade - an old-fashioned, country-America, street parade with clowns, pirates, marching bands from the local high schools and baton-twirlers from all over. And, the Ballard Seafood Festival. I inadvertently missed the U-District street fair. From my limited experience so far, I'd rate the Gay Pride and Summer Solstice events as the more political of the series, with definite "statement" oriented floats and tents at the fair - in addition to the usual food, crafts, organizations and services. The West Seattle and Ballard fairs are very typical of what I've seen in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maryland, and a bunch of other states for small town or small city afffairs - family oriented, reasonably broad-spectrum politically (like, what candidate WOULDN'T want to march in a parade or have a booth or tent - it's the nature of the beast), and replete with clowns and high-school musicians and the various Eagle, Rotary, and Lions club events. As already noted, the major difference out here is the quality of the bands playing at these festivals - and the quantity of them.
Fun stuff for someone like me who likes watching people. The crowds are almost always as much fun as the parade participants or fair goers. The Ballard fair was the smallest of the various neighborhood festivals I've attended, only two blocks of Market Street and two blocks of Ballard Avenue with only one music stage. I bought my six-dollar salmon barbecue dinner and sat at a table where there was some slight shade - remember, Saturday was the hottest day of the year so far. While eating my salmon, cole slaw and garlic bread - all produced by Ballard area food vendors or the Chamber of Commerce, I was talking with the folks around me. The food area was set up at the intersection of Market and Ballard, an area where there had previously been a triangular Scandanavian-themed park which had been undergoing a renovation and re-work for the past year. The new park is actually very nice - it joins Market Street, which is an east-west main thoroughfare and shopping street, with Ballard Avenue, which is a diagonal street which joins Market to the shoreline at Salmon Bay and which was formerly the main drag when Ballard was an independent town at the turn of the previous century.
Several of the folks eating at the table with me made comments about how "Ballard residents weren't polled as to what they wanted in the park." I was being conversed with as though I was a Ballard resident. I guess the other Ballard residents figured only Ballard types would schlepp down to Market and Ballard for the salmon barbecue so I must be a Ballard resident. There were a lot of opinions about the new park, most of them along the lines that it looked more like it belonged in Fremont and not Ballard because of the tall sculptures which lined the Market Street side. They were, indeed, of a variety of style which would be right at home in Fremont (a metal toadstool?, something else which looked like it came right out of "Alice in Wonderland," and a few which were recognizable but still offbeat). I commented that Fremont was, after all, just about half-a-mile down the same road and that some of the sculptures did have a Scandanavian theme and overall the whole thing worked because it tied the two main business streets together - and besides which, it looked a lot better than the triangle-lot did before with the storm fence around it and the bobcats and piles of dirt. Harrumph was the mostly universal response I got from the other Ballard residents.
Oh well, they're stuck with it now and it's pretty nice anyway. One of the fun things about the community fairs - and Ballard's, like West Seattle, is definitely aimed at the neighborhood residents (both West Seattle and Ballard had open-sidewalk booths for all the local vendors whose shops the fair was in front of and both featured food courts with strictly local, neighborhood, cooking establishments), is the local police precincts and fire stations come out and actually mix and mingle. Since Saturday was so hot, the local fire station for downtown Ballard had a ladder and water cannon truck set up right at the intersection of Market and Ballard, diagonal from the park, and had several brigade members in the street using the water hoses to douse locals who were dashing in and out of the powerful spray. Then, the fire crew in the street decided they'd hose down the truck, which was being staffed by the brigade captain. After a few vollies of water, with the Captain ducking behind the truck's cab, the Captain struck back. He used the water cannon on the truck to basically destroy his staff in the street. The street guys tried a few more times but the cannon was just too much - all to the great delight of the crowd both watching and getting wet. I later talked with the Captain, telling him that I thought he was cheating since he was hiding behind the cab of the firetruck and using the cannon. He said, "I'm the Captain and rank does have its privilege." So, take that street water fighters. He then told me and a small group which had gathered to watch the water fight, that he and his crew had been in a neighborhood recently just driving through - as the fire department does on occasion - when a bunch of neighborhood kids were dousing them with these super-soaker water guns. He says they stopped the truck, hooked up the canvas hose to a fire plug and let the kids have their fun for a bit then used the water cannon on them and "that was that, all she wrote."
There was one really excellent rasta band - Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band, which was here from Belize, and which has quite a local following as well as a pretty good international following. I sat on the curb, in the shade, and caught the last forty minutes of their set. Absolutely great reggae music with a universal underlying message of peace and harmony. After a few hours of hanging around, checking out the tents and some of the sidewalk sales, I meandered down to Leary Way to catch the bus home - the buses were rerouted because of the street closings.
Summer time in Seattle can be great for food, music and crafts if one gets out and about to the many and various street fairs and parades. Most of these are the kind of thing that's "not that big a deal" but definitely fun to take in. What's really nice is there are so many of them that no one event is the "mega" event, though some are larger than others such as the Solstice Parade which draws a really big crowd. And, they are local enough that one could expect to see neighbors they knew at these events. So far, probably because I don't know that many people, I've not run into more than one or two people I actually knew at any of these.
Sunday was not quite as hot but was still one of those "summer days." Which actually was a good thing because I had a ticket (only one left) for the John Hiatt "ZooTunes" concert Sunday evening in the great meadow at the north end of the Woodland Park Zoo grounds. I arrived about an hour before the concert, found a spot right behind the sound mixer area (figuring that if I couldn't see the stage, at least I'd have good sound) and put down a camping pad, took off my socks and shoes and waited for the concert. Washington DC has Wolf Trap Farm Park which has an amphitheater with seats and a large surrounding grassy knoll where folks can set up picnic blankets and lawn chairs. There's no "Wolf Trap" park here but the ZooTunes works pretty much the same way. There were about six or seven hundred people, spread out and set up in the meadow - some folks taking way more room than they should have. The opening act was a singer-songwriter with guitar from Austin, Texas, who was both really good with the voice and guitar and also rather funny. He was on for about thirty minutes and at the designated moment, John Hiatt showed on stage and began his set. He was unaccompanied and played one and then another and another of the three guitars he'd brought and for a couple of songs an electric piano. He's really good with the guitar, with his voice - he has such a range and can really sustain a note - and with the piano. The set ran for about ninety minutes with three encore songs and just about the time the sun was sneaking behind some of the hills in the city, the concert was over. Hiatt played quite a few of the songs from his existing albums and two new ones for an album coming out this Fall. He was "slightly" political, I don't think any musician misses the chance to be political and Seattle is such an open and willing political venue for these folks. He also played a few Bonnie Raitt songs with a few phrases altered for the occasion - the occasion being a hot summer day in Seattle with the elections coming up in the Fall.
There were only two other people who had arrived at the Zoo by bus and the three of us waited a short time and hopped on the bus to get home. Most of the other folks seemed to park on neighborhood streets in the area west of the Zoo - which is probably fine since there's ample on-street parking in that neighborhood and nearly everyone has a driveway so nobody was "stealing" a parking space.
Monday and Tuesday I spent doing more setup for all the stuff I'd been unpacking upstairs. Most of my photo collection is now unpacked and accessible. I've still got about half-a-dozen boxes to go through and I'm still missing some of the music, collections of CDs and a few LPs. I've also got my entire software library and manuals to unpack but will probably defer on those since I've run out of places to put this stuff. I will have to get a few more bookshelves but that will also have to await the return from the East Coast since I've sort of run out of both time and money at this point. However, nearly everything is where it should be in the house - even if it's still inside a box, except for the art. Ah, the art. There are seven four-feet by six-feet by about eight inches thick cartons of packed art in the shed. They contain some fine art, all my oil and acrylic canvas work, a huge number of framed photos and unframed but mounted photos and even some pastel work of mine. We've obviously got lots of new wall space and so I'll eventually get around to unpacking all that, too. There's also a lot of boxes in the shed of stuff which I need to transfer to the new storage area - the plenum. Stuff like every single stuffed animal either Adam or Leif has ever had - inside these huge plastic bins. Anyway, the unpacking will continue for a while it seems.
On Tuesday I got on my bike for the third time in the past week. Friday I'd gone for a quick bike ride around the peninsula - down to Lincoln Park, around the beach on the walkway and then on Beach Drive, Alki Avenue and Harbor Avenue and then back down Delridge Way to home. That's a 14-mile bike circuit which is pretty sweet. I start out at nearly 500 foot altitude, drop within 10 blocks to sea level and then bike flat for about 10 miles and then make a slow climb - just under three miles - back up to the 500 foot elevation of my house. Tuesday I rode across town and up about halfway to the northern border of Seattle in Ballard - Loyal Heights neighborhood. The Monorail will continue for a few more blocks than I biked so I sort of got to see the other end of the Green Line. That was a 29-mile ride and both my rear end and legs felt fine at the conclusion. It's taken me a while to get accustomed to the hills, how to ride them and still continue on a long bike ride. In the District, it was not that big a deal to go for a thirty mile bike ride since it was mostly flat except for a final two mile uphill haul to get home - but there the hills are shallower and significantly fewer.
It's been a busy and distracting summer so far and I'm somewhat chagrined that I've only got 80 or so miles on my bike odometer. Granted I didn't put it on for the first couple of rides on the new bike and I do have a few hundred miles from last year here. But still, that's a pathetic showing for a cyclist. That'll change as things settle down and I get on the bike more. It took me a while in DC to get a regular bike routine - several years in fact - so I shouldn't be that surprised that I've not got that many miles under my belt out here yet. I am learning my way around town, no longer, for instance, do I get to an area and find I don't know what's on the other side of the hill. I feel quite comfortable at this point just getting on the bike and heading out and I also think I've managed to gear my body up to the hills and inclines of this town in such a way that I don't return home either exhausted or pained. All good things.
The outside balcony steel railing wires are now in place and the spiral stairway handrail and wood foot treadles are done and look really nice - photos soon of all the finished work - so by the end of the week - save for a bit of paint patching and minor electrical rework, we should expect the final house inspection. That will be the "end" of the construction phase and just in time for the block party open house. I've extended the open house to quite a few neighbors who actually live outside our "block" to drop by on the evening of August 3 to have a look and see what the inside looks like. Everyone who walks by has commented on how extraordinary the exterior looks and how nicely it fits the neighborhood and the corner. I think they're going to be surprised at how much nicer and incredible the interior spaces are - not to mention what one can see from both the second floor and the aerie.
There are photos from a variety of walks and bike rides posted below. I'm gearing down to get ready for the trip back East - about a dozen days or less to go. While away it's really doubtful that I'll be posting anything so there will be a long pause between posts for a bit. Since I'm going cross country again there's every likelihood that I'll return with hundreds of photos, score or more of new VR views of North America and probably a boatload of family beach photos.
There's probably one or two more posts before I leave but in the meantime enjoy the last days of July and whatever vacation plans you might have. Oh, and be careful - this is the time of the year when there are endless auto accidents as the entire country takes to the road.
Chas
It's hard to see in this panorama of Elliott Bay from Alki Beach, but both the Olympic Mountains and the Cascade Mountains were
clearly visible on this day. A rarity for the area's weather. That's Magnolia, Queen Anne and Downtown in the middle of the Bay.
This is from the same spot and shows Magnolia and the islands and the Olympic Mountains slightly better than the shot above.
Same thing for this image which shows downtown and the Cascades better. The Space Needle is left of Center. Alki Beach and the
whole area along Alki Avenue offer superb views of downtown, large sections of the rest of the city and all the mountains. Great bike
circuit living here in West Seattle!!!
And just so no one feels left out, here's downtown, Queen Anne and Magnolia with Interbay between them. What's so cool about Seattle is
all these great views of the city are FROM the city. Most other seaports have great views but they're usually taken from some suburb or
other town across the bay or river or harbor entrance. Here it's just another view of town from in town.
And, on occasion, Mt. Baker makes an appearance from Alki Beach between Magnolia and Queen Anne. It's about
80 miles north of here and is nearly as tall as Mt. Rainier, which is a mere 50 miles from here - although it appears
to be much closer. Just an odd sighting of one of the local volcanoes - cool and somewhat scary at the same time.
I found this inscription written on one of the fence railings next to the Alki Beach bike trail. Tried to look up the few
names and dates left here on the web and found no references to anything bad having happened to anyone named
Louis on the date in question (see next image). So, perhaps this was just a sweet note from a kid to his parents.
This is a series of three shots taken directly over portions of the writing to better capture the message.
This is along the Harbor Avenue-Spokane Street access way for cyclists. The next view was taken from this
position - which shows Harbor Avenue on the left, the slag piles from the steel mill in the harbor area in
the center and the access points to and West Seattle Bridge on the right. The black stick in the middle of all
the orange harbor cranes is the Bank of America tower, the city's tallest structure, downtown.
A view of downtown from across the harbor. Taken from the walkway and bikeway on the northern side of the Spokane
Street access to the West Seattle Bridge. Yes, those are slag piles in the nearground of the harbor area. Not a pretty
sight and the Port of Seattle apparently does have some plans for this area - but won't reveal them just yet.
This is a tighter view of the same photo showing the harbor cranes and downtown buildings all lined together. The
view is looking southwest to northeast across Elliott Bay, which is below all the buildings and therefore invisible here.
When I say that West Seattle cyclists don't have very scenic access to the rest of the city, I'm not kidding. Although
West Seattle itself has great bike streets and bike paths, getting from here to the rest of the city takes a cyclist through
such wonderful terrain as this bike access point from the Spokane Street underpass of the bridge to Delridge Way. On
the other hand, there's not that much traffic so it's a pretty fast route even it it isn't all that pretty.
Just so you know what's on the other side of the bike path pictured above, it's this - the Nucor Steel plant's back end.
This is the area where scrap metal is piled up waiting to be smelted and turned into new steel ingots. The central ridge
of West Seattle rises behind (to the west of) the plant.
One of the few shaded areas in Ballard for the Seafood
Festival was along Ballard Avenue.
This is at the corner of Market Street near Ballard Avenue and shows the Seattle Fire
Department ladder truck set up in the intersection. The new park is the area with the trees
on the left.
Another shot along Ballard Avenue at some of the local crafts in their tents. It was a good
turnout but not crushingly crowded.
Like the West Seattle fair, the Ballard fair also had a "kids" play area with these inflatable
amusement park rides or attractions. This was set up along Market Street, and this
view is on Market facing east towards Fremont and Greenwood.
This is at the corner of Market and 24th where the Seattle Fire Department had set up
their ladder truck. Members of the brigade are dousing folks walking across 24th with
regular hoses and nozzles.
This is the brigade captain standing behind the cab of the truck and next to the water
cannon.
This is his drenched fire brigade staff in the street after they tried to "wet" the Captain and
he returned a volley with the water cannon. These guys never stood a chance.
This is Clinton Fearon (under the tent, third from left, next to Congo drums) and his
Boogie Brown Band - from Belize. He was excellent and as can be seen even had folks
dancing in the street - even though the temperatures were in the nineties and there was
NO shade here. Highly recommended if you like reggae.
This is a set of five images of the posters set up along Ballard Avenue and of the store front to Bop Street Records, in Ballard
on Ballard Avenue. This is probably the best used record-CD-tape (even 8-track) store in the Puget Sound area - compares
favorably with Amoeba in San Francisco and even has autographed walls from bands, including Pearl Jam. The owner has been
doing this same gig for about three decades - nearly two decades at this location.
And yet another splendid Western Sunset from - this time, not the roof, but from my desk looking out the corner
windows. Perhaps I should consider renaming my room from Studio C to Sunset Studio?
Posted: Wed - July 28, 2004 at 02:24 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM