Category: Seattle

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Monday 🍂

Fall colors, and a scooter, on the corner of 16th Avenue East and Republican Street in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

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Friday/ sunset 🌇

Happy Friday.
Sunset was at 6.27 pm today here in Seattle.

Looking west from 14th Avenue East and East Thomas Street, at 6.20 pm.
The setting sun is peering through the tree foliage. With the fall equinox here in the Northern hemisphere now long gone (at which time the sun set at due west), it will now appear to set further and further to the south every night— until the winter solstice in December.
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Thursday/ gold 🍂

It was a beautiful fall day here in Seattle (63° F / 17°C), with a blue sky and sun this afternoon.

This time of year there is gold in the leaves of the trees that line Martin Luther King Boulevard in Seattle’s Central District.
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Sunday 🍂

The leaves are turning, and the days are getting shorter.

On 17th Avenue here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
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Saturday/ a new waterfront park 🏙️

The new elevated Waterfront Park here in the city opened yesterday.
The park is on the central waterfront by downtown Seattle and connects Pike Place Market and  downtown neighborhoods with the waterfront.
A few public art installations and a concessions area are still to be added, by early 2025.

This picture is from Friday, and from the Seattle Times. People wait to take to the Overlook Walk before the grand opening on the Seattle waterfront.
[Photograph by Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times]
The view from the uppermost deck across from Pike Place Market today, and I am looking more or less south to the Seattle Ferry Terminal in the distance, on the left and behind the Ferris wheel.
There are several winding staircases down to the lowest level where the piers are. The blue building is the old part of the Seattle Aquarium, and the structure clad with the wooden slats outside is the new extension of the Aquarium.
Looking up from one the decks halfway down. The newly routed Alaskan Way and Elliot Way meet here. The elevated Alaskan Way viaduct that used to run along here is now long gone (demolished in 2019).
Looking north towards the Port of Seattle Cruise Terminal (Pier 66). The Norwegian Bliss is about to depart for Alaska.
In the foreground Palestinian flags are being waved by anti-war protesters. Some signs read ‘No War in Iran’, as well.
This structure houses the new pavilion of the Seattle Aquarium. The wood-clad outside is meant to weather to a gray color, I believe.
At the entrance to the aquarium, prospective visitors get a glimpse into one of the large tanks.
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Thursday/ on the RapidRide G Line 🚌

It was a spectacular fall day here in the city (a high of 65°F /18°C).
I made a quick stop at the dentist’s office on Olive Way, and then walked along Fifth Avenue to the Seattle Public Library.

The No 12 bus no longer runs along its old route up to Capitol Hill, and I hopped on the new RapidRide G Line stop by the library to get me to 17th Avenue and Madison.

Zooming in on a the upper section of the Seattle Public Library (on the right), using the 5x telephoto lens on my new phone.
This map posted by the bus stop at Fifth Avenue and Madison Street by the library shows thee ways to get Capitol Hill from downtown:
1. Maroon: the RapidRide G Line bus;
2. Green: the Link light Rail train;
3. Orange: Seattle Streetcar, First Hill Line.
Here comes the RapidRide G Line. The stop here has a side platform. Other stops are at a center platform. That’s why the buses for the G line have doors on both sides. I had a freebie ride: the Orca card reader at the front was out of service and the driver waved me to the back.
The stop at 12th Ave/ 13th Ave/ Union Street has a center platform.
‘Don’t run for buses, another will be here soon!’ says the electronic sign.
Down below the sandwich board says ‘Project Funded by President Joe Biden’s American Recovery Plan’.
The stop at 17th Avenue and Madison St by Trader Joe’s grocery store. Here comes a bus with another one on its heels, headed for the city.
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Tuesday/ sunset 🌇

I have a lot to learn when it comes to using my phone’s camera.
There is a plenitude of settings and defaults to choose from, and once the picture is taken, all kinds of adjustments can be made to the image that was captured.

Sunset was at 7.47 pm tonight.
I captured this image in Apple’s RAW format, which saves it as a .DNG (digital negative) image, size ’48 MP’ or 6048×8064 ‘pixels’. 
(Note: These are quad-pixels, really the equivalent of 12 MP when compared to my Canon digital camera).
I cropped the image to 9:16 in Adobe Photoshop, and reduced the pixel count to 1350×2400 to upload it to this blog.
It’s a perennial dilemma: how much processing to allow the camera (photo app software) to do by default, and how much to leave standard (‘RAW’) to keep all options open for manual adjustments before the picture is sent or posted somewhere?
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Friday/ beers at Chuck’s 🍻

Happy Friday.
The five amigos got together at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for a beer and a bite to eat from the food truck outside.

I’m in line inside to procure a beverage from the 50 or so listed on the screens by the counter. The non-alcohol Bitburger pilsner they had last time was not listed tonight, and I got the ‘Ladd & Lass : *Fresh Hop* West Coast IPA’ instead, even though it has 6.5% alc/vol.
It was Friday night after all, so why not have a *real* beer? 
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Saturday/ a spectacular night sky 🔭

Summer is officially over.
The fall equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere is at Sun, Sep 22, 2024, 5:43 AM Pacific Time.

Here’s a gorgeous aurora borealis picture taken near Near Magnuson Park, Seattle around midnight or in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
[Posted by NWS Seattle @NWSSeattle at 1.35 am on Tuesday. I reduced the pixel size of the original picture]
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Thursday/ a walk in the city 🏙

I had business downtown and missed the No 10 bus on the way back.
Oh well, I thought, it’s such a beautiful day— let’s just walk back up to Capitol Hill.

Top to bottom:
The monorail station at Westlake Center.
The Summit Convention Center, the addition to the original Seattle Convention Center. (The Arch + Summit Convention Centers hosted 160 events in 2023, up from 114 in 2022, but still came in with an operating loss of $23 million for 2023).
Fall leaves at East Pike Street and Boren Avenue.
The Starbucks Roastery at East Pike Street and Melrose Avenue.
The pooch is wearing booties.
Beer truck from Ninkasi Brewing Company in Eugene, Oregon.
Korean Restaurant on Denny Way. (And now you know how to write Korean Restaurant in Korean!).
Hey! And here’s the Google Street View car at work. Maybe an image of me will make it onto the next update for Capitol Hill. 😆

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Sunday/ electrify your ride⚡

Three amigos went to the Electrify Expo 2024 here in Seattle today: an electric vehicle festival that visits different cities to showcase EVs of all kinds.

Visitors to the expo could look at, and drive, electric cars and trucks, and ride e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and e-skateboards.

This Ford F-150 Lightning Platinum starts at $85,000. Range is 300 mile-range and horsepower is 580.
The 2025 BMW iX (it’s an SUV; ignore the camera angle), offers up to 324 miles per charge and up to 610 horsepower.
It’s going to gobble up $100,000 of your cash.
I believe this is a 2025 BMW i4 M50. I could not find this outrageous deep turquoise(?) color on the BMW website, though.  MSRP starts at about $70,000.
BMW X4 Sports Activity Coupe.
2024 Tesla Model Y Performance in quicksilver. Starts at $52,000; range is 279 miles and the electric motors put out 455 horsepower.
We’ve seen the Tesla Cybertruck before, but today we got to clamber into it and see what it’s like inside. The frunk (front trunk 😁 ) is open.
The Cybertruck Foundation Series All-Wheel Drive starts at $94,000. The tires on this beast are 33.5″ in diameter.
A view from the inside. The windshield is enormous, of course, as is the glass roof. The steering wheel and rear-view mirror are smaller than I guess I had expected them to be.
Here’s another Cybertruck, displayed by an enthusiastic private owner. (She owns this Cybertruck with its custom rainbow metallic wrap, a Tesla Model S Plaid, and a Tesla Model 3 Performance). She loves the truck’s steer-by-wire and its tight turning radius.
E-motorbike offering by BMW, the BMW CE 02. It goes about 55 miles on a full charge, and costs around $8,000.
Check out this Honda Motocompacto E-Scooter. This folding scooter weighs all of 42 pounds and can fit into the back of a conventional hatchback.
It tops out at 15 mph, with a 12-mile range, and riders over 265 pounds need not apply. Cost: about $1,000.
A souped up Tesla Model 3. I’m not sure what’s going on in the frunk!
Whoah— three Cybertrucks coming in from their test drives. The wait for a Cybertruck test drive was more than 2 hours. We were in line to take a Tesla Model X for a spin, but there was a little confusion and we ended up hopping into a Model S Plaid instead.
Lucid Air at the back (512 miles range), then left to right Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model S, Tesla Model Y.
Inside the Model S Plaid for a test drive.
(No, we did not do anything crazy such as trying out ludicrous mode*— just a little circuit around University Village. We had a Tesla representative in the passenger seat. He is actually a Tesla service technician at the Bellevue service center).
*A performance mode on Tesla vehicles that increases peak torque by about 60%, catapulting the car forward from 0 to 60 miles per hour in as little as 2.5 seconds.
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Saturday/ here comes the bus 🚍

King County Metro’s latest ‘rapid ride’ bus route opened today: the RapidRide G Line along Madison Street.

Its promise is to have the most frequent transit service in the region for riders in Seattle’s Capitol Hill, First Hill, Central District and Madison Valley neighborhoods.

The bus comes every 6 minutes for most of the day, except on Sunday.

The line runs along Madison Street between Martin Luther King Jr. Way and First Avenue, and turns on 1st Avenue to go back to Madison Street.
Here we stand on Madison and 13th, with the bus bound for downtown.
From the Seattle Times online: The New Flyer model XDE60 buses, which cost $1.3 million each, are the first in Seattle to have a left-side door, allowing passengers to board from four stations, between Eighth and 13th avenues, in a center median island that allows the bus to stop without being held up by drivers turning right or pedestrians in a crosswalk.
Inside the bus. I can see myself on the little monitor by the door on the left side. It’s tap to pay, inside the bus (Orca card readers at the doors), or outside before boarding, at the bus stop. There is still a cash pay point at the front of the bus for travelers with no Orca cards.
Android users can add their Orca cards to their Google wallets, and use their phones to pay, but we cannot yet add Orca cards to our iPhone wallets.
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Monday/ the Lynnwood Link🚆

Here are my pictures of a ride today on the new northbound extension of the  Sound Transit light rail system to downtown Lynnwood.

Here it is: the $3 billion extension from Northgate to Lynnwood with four new stations, 16 years in the making.
Voters approved it with along with Obama’s election in 2008; planning was done from 2010-2016, design from 2016-2019, and construction from 2019-2024.
The 1 Line extension hugs 8½ miles of Interstate 5 and crosses over it north of the Mountlake terrace station. A fifth station will open in 2026 at NE 130th Street.
[Map from Sound Transit website]
Northbound and approaching the existing Northgate station here. Interstate 5 traffic on the left. Much of the extension is elevated compared to Interstate 5, though, due to the uneven terrain there.
Here is the view from the elevated rail and platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. There is a large parking garage at the back (not visible here), a parking lot on the left, and the canopies and bus stops of the Lynnwood Transit Center. Buses can be taken from here to Everett in the north, or to either of the ferry terminals at Edmonds and Mukilteo.
Glass mural artwork on the boarding platform at the Lynnwood City Center station. The artist is Preston Singletary. The art was inspired by his Tlingit heritage and family, and influenced by his father’s recent death.
Here’s the train at the Lynnwood City Center station, with the parking garage at the back of it.
One of two identical sculptures called “Shift” down on the grounds below. The artist is Claudia Fitch and are a nod to the lamps from Lynnwood’s Interurban trolley system, which operated from 1910 to 1939.
Here is Claudia Fitch’s “City Hummingbird” and “Kitchen Window Curtain” at Lynnwood City Center Station, to honor the history of neon road signs that once lined Highway 99 as well as the nature Pacific Northwesterners see in their own backyards.
[Description of artwork and text from Seattle Times]
Getting ready for the 30-minute ride back to Capitol Hill train station. The overhead graphic of the 2 Line (blue) and 1 Line (green) shows that more stations will open in the near future. Stations have numeric identifiers as well, which should make it easier for foreign language speakers and visitors to find the stations that they need to use.
A peek into the future, looking at a little section of rail north of Lynnwood City Center station that has already been constructed. The next push north is scheduled for 2037 with stops at West Alderwood near the mall, Ash Way, Mariner, Highway 99 in South Everett (possibly) and Southwest Everett Industrial Center near Paine Field. Two final stations at Evergreen Way and downtown Everett are aimed for 2041, depending on funding.
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Friday/ rain ☔

Happy Friday.
There was steady rain here in the city today (about 0.5″), and there will be more this weekend.
It was all of 58°F (14°C) as I headed out for a quick walk after dinner.

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Monday/ floatplanes 🌅

Here’s a beautiful view from this morning, of the south end of Lake Union.
I took the picture from the seventh floor of a building off Fairview Avenue North.

At about 8.15 am this morning, there was a line of five float planes getting ready to take off (four are in the picture), and one that had just come in. 
Those taking off could be heading the San Juan Islands, or even to Vancouver Island or British Columbia’s Inside Passage.
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Thursday/ hazy skies 😟

Here is tonight’s sunset, seen from Capitol Hill’s 14th Avenue at Thomas Street.
That’s a layer of smoke out there, from the wildfires east of the Cascades, and also from those burning in Oregon and California.

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Monday/ a little bit of rain ☔

This is the driest day on the calendar for our region*— but there was a little bit of steady rain around the city this morning.

*When looking at daily averages for 79 years of records at the Seattle-Tacoma airport weather station.

The tennis courts/ pickleball courts at Mount Baker Park this morning.
And hey! look at the neon-powder blue paint lines that the city put on for pickleball.
[Thanks for Steve K. for the photo]