It really is quite incredible to look at a diagram of all the recent and on-going construction projects in downtown Seattle (on the right). At this time, there are 65 buildings under construction, with the total construction cost estimated at about $3.5 billion. The two pictures below are from my walk-about late Friday afternoon.
Sunday/ Seattle Gay Pride 2016
The City of Seattle held its Gay Pride Parade today, and the perfect weather made for record attendance. The Orlando tragedy of just two weeks ago may very well have contributed to more people attending as well. The parade is the third largest in the country, and by some estimates as many as 500,000 people lined 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle. I made it out there for an hour or two, and below is a compilation of some of the pictures that I took.
Monday/ construction update
Here are some pictures from Sunday. It was sunny and mild, and I went downtown to check up on the construction activities there, and ended up at Pike Place Market as well.
Sunday night
Sunday/ the Montlake Cut
I walked along the the Montlake Cut this afternoon, on the warmest-recorded-so-far June 5th for Seattle at 93 °F/ 34 °C. (The temperatures are expected to cool down to the normal average high of of 68°F/ 20°C by the end of the week).
The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the City of Seattle, ultimately linking the large body of water Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It is approximately 2,500 feet (760 m) long and 350 feet (110 m) wide. The center channel is 100 feet (30 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) deep.
Tuesday/ Neo-Gothic at U-dub
The weather here was finally warming up a little on Sunday, and I took the Light Rail train out there for a random walk around the campus. The 40,000-some students must be knuckling down right now in the dorms and in the library, and study for just a little longer : Final Examination (‘finals week’) starts next week.
Friday/ the maple tree next door : no more
Our departure last night from San Francisco was delayed by 3 hours due to 60 mph winds, but I finally made it in a little after midnight. The big maple tree in my neighbor’s back yard had been in bad shape (rot in the tree trunk, main branches) for a number of years now, and a note in my mailbox said that they had scheduled it to be taken out today. So this morning I kept track of the activities (hard to ignore with all the chainsaw noise!), and in the space of 5 short hours or so, the whole tree had been taken down – all the way to the ground. There was a wood chipper on hand as well, to make it easy to take away the wood. Here is a sequence of pictures. I was sad to see the tree go, but it will certainly let in a lot more afternoon sunlight into the western rooms of my house.
Saturday errands
I drove out to the South Lake Union on Saturday to 1. take my old camera to Glazer’s Camera (got a $300 exchange voucher for it, not bad), and 2. to finally hand in the modem that my internet service provider has been charging me $10 a month for. (More a matter of principle than a matter of saving money. I’m not paying $10 monthly ‘rent’ for an item that costs $80 outright!).
Wednesday/ a bandit did it
I thought the report of a power outage of many thousands of Seattle area homes early this morning was odd – given the perfect sunny weather we had today here. It turned out it caused by a raccoon breaking into a substation, creating several system circuit outages. The raccoon did not survive.
Friday/ biosphere progress
Below is a pictures that I took today of Amazon’s biospheres, showing the progress that has been made in their construction. Here are more pictures and a report from the Seattle Times.
Wednesday/ paying for parking (the old way)
We went to Columbia City on Wednesday night for a beer and a bite, and lucked out with the last parking spot in the lot across from our regular ‘watering hole’. I love that lot’s parking fee ‘machine’ .. hanging in there, defiant, retro and analog, with no such fancy tech as accepting payment by mobile phone or debit card. Paper money and coins, stuffed into a slot !
Saturday/ tunnel update
The elevated stretch of waterfront highway called the Alaskan Way Viaduct closed on Thursday night, for two weeks. It is as a precaution for the digging of the new tunnel for State Route 99 that goes under the Viaduct at this point. (When the tunnel has been completed, the Alaskan Way Viaduct will be demolished). On a typical weekday some 90,000 drivers used the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and for the next two weeks there will be a lot of extra traffic using the downtown Seattle streets. For those that can : use the bus, use the light rail, bike, walk. Driving around in a car in downtown Seattle should only be done if there is no other option.
Sunday
It was another nice spring day here in Seattle, but there is some rain on the way for Sunday night and Monday morning. I walked by the St. Nicholas* Russian Orthodox Cathedral on 13th Ave to check on the progress of its entry-way renovation, and saw that it is almost done.
*[From Wikipedia] Nicholas II was the last tzar of Russia, ruling from Nov 1, 1894 until his forced abdication on Mar 15, 1917. His reign saw the fall of Imperial Russia from being one of the foremost great powers of the world, to economic and military collapse.
Saturday/ SR 520 floating bridge opening
The new SR 520 Floating Bridge and Landings project has been underway since early 2012, and parts of it is really for final commissioning and use by the general public. Bryan, Gary and I went to the official opening of the new State Route 520 Floating Bridge today. The new bridge has been built alongside the old (which will be dismantled and recycled). The final work on the ‘approaches’ to the bridge (the on-ramps and off-ramps) will continue, but vehicles (and pedestrians and cyclists) will be able to start to use the new bridge just a little later in April. The west-bound lanes will open first, with the east-bound lanes to follow two weeks later.
Friday/ more art
Here are a few more pictures from my visit to the Seattle Asian Art Museum on Thursday night. We have had a nice run of warm spring days here in Seattle, touching 70 °F (21°C) for the first time since October of last year. 70° weather usually arrives only in mid-April.
Monday/ the new South Lake Union
I wanted to go check up on the latest construction in Seattle’s South Lake Union district, and went there with the light rail train and South Lake Union street car on Sunday afternoon. Soon after I got there, a persistent downpour started, and I had to curtail my picture-taking and call it quits.
Friday/ Bernie Sanders in Seattle
The two remaining Democratic Party candidates for President of the United States are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. There was a Bernie Sanders for President rally in Seattle’s baseball stadium tonight. Some 15,000 people attended (a large crowd for a political rally). Sanders was on his home turf. Washington State (or at least the Western part of it) is one of the bluest* in the nation. And so Sanders ran through a litany of progressive issues still needing work in the USA : immigration reform, paid maternity and family leave, equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, criminal justice reform, environmental issues and pollution, free college education and reduced student loan debt, infrastructure funding .. a long list. The primary elections tomorrow are all about the Democrats, in the States of Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.
*Blue (state) on a political map of the USA means Democratic. Red states are Republican.
Monday/ biosphere update
I went to the dentist early Monday morning, and had some time to walk around the block nearby to check up on the construction of the Amazon biospheres. There is still some way to go, but the frames are in place.
Sunday/ the vernal equinox
It is officially spring* here in the northern hemisphere ! .. even though it was a rainy, cloudy day here in Seattle. (The sun did come out early evening afternoon, just before it set at 7.24 pm).
*Spring starts at the vernal equinox, the day the sun ‘crosses’ the celestial equator (the imaginary line in the sky above the earth’s equator), from south to north. The sun does not really cross the equator. The earth spins like a top around a tilting axis, which at this time of year is at a right angle to the sun. So that is why day and night are nearly exactly the same length (12 hours) all over the world at this time of year, and again at the autumnal equinox.
Saturday/ the Light Rail UW-extension opens
There is a lot of excitement here in Capitol Hill today with two new light rail stations opening : one here in my Capitol Hill neighborhood, and one more at the football stadium of the University of Washington. My friend Bryan and I did a round trip from Capitol Hill Station up to the University of Washington, down to Westlake in downtown Seattle, and back up again to Capitol Hill. I was going to say the project came in 6 months early and $200 million under budget, but I see that comes with a big asterisk. The original schedule and budget that voters had approved in way back in 1996, called for a $1.8 billion light rail line from the airport to the U-district, opening in 2006. Instead, $2.3 billion was spent on a light rail line from the airport to Westlake Station (completed in 2009). This extension cost an additional $1.8 billion. I guess it is this part that came in under budget.