Category: Seattle

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Wednesday/ toasty weather

We had 85 °F (29.5 °C) here in the city today— very warm for early June.
Cooler weather is moving in from the coast, though.

A little artwork across from the sports bar Rookies in Columbia City, where we had our beers tonight. I had to look up who Lindy West. She is a Seattle-born writer, comedian and activist, perhaps best known for her essay collection ‘Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman’ (2016).  She advocates for women to ignore the unrealistic burdens that society can place on them (criticizing their bodies, their appearances, and telling them what to do).
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Sunday/ stay away from crowds

Well. Surprise (or not): crowds of people are still trouble, even with Covid-19 now receding in many communities.

There was a large crowd on Alki Beach on Saturday night (there was a meetup invite on TikTok). It did not take long for fights to break out, and a drunk man was seen brandishing a weapon. No one was hurt too seriously, though.
‘All parties declined medical attention and declined to participate in an investigation’, noted a report on the Seattle Police Dept. blotter website.

Alki Beach at sunset on Saturday night, at about 9 pm. The beach was closed soon after, and beachgoers were told to leave the area. [Picture from Seattle Police Dept. Blotter website]
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Friday/ a walk along Pine Street

Four weeks had gone by, and this morning it was again time for my little rental car to go back to Hertz, on 8th Avenue in downtown Seattle.
The pictures are from my walk back, along Pine Street, and up to Capitol Hill.

The construction of the Washington State Convention Center expansion can probably pick up its pace, now that the weather is better. Hopefully most of the workers have been vaccinated. The Paramount Theater bill board says ‘May you rest in power -George Floyd- May 25th 2020’.
Today in ‘Model 3 spotting’: a matt black one. The matt black is not paint, but an after-market film wrapped onto the car (cost: about $5,000). This car has chrome trim on the door handles & windows. (Looks like the owner put some black on the door handles). The 2021 Model 3’s have ‘chrome delete’ trim (black trim, no chrome).
The stainless steel cladding on the convention center extension’s east side is coming along. Hopefully, its shine will not be tarnished by the Pacific Northwest weather.
There is new artwork on the Sugar Hill bar’s wall on East Pine Street: a Black Lives Matter organizer’s check list, of sorts. (Cute little doggie at the corner of the building).
The Porter apartment building at 1630 Boylston Avenue was built in 1917. Its style is called ‘Vernacular’: architecture characterized by the use of local materials & knowledge, usually without the supervision of architects (source: Wikipedia). The brick building has an open center bay and terra cotta lintels on the main windows.
The oak trees by Seattle Central College on Broadway have their new leaves. On the left, across the street, is 1812 Broadway, a new 7-story, 133-unit apartment building.
A streetcar on the First Hill line, at the end-of-the-line stop called Broadway & Denny. These are Czech-made, model name Inekon121-Trio. This car has a battery, for ‘off-wire’ operation (a section of the First Hill line has no overhead electrical cables). 
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Sunday/ halfway there

I went down to Denny Way and Stewart St to check up on the construction there, this afternoon.
I counted 22 floor slabs for the two apartment towers at 1200 Stewart St. That is just about half of the 45 storeys they will each have at their completion.

The two apartment towers at 1200 Stewart Street sit on a three-story podium. Red Tesla Model 3 on the street below. Nice car :). The tower on the right is 2014 Fairview Avenue, another apartment tower.
Here’s a closer look at the 2014 Fairview Avenue building with the Denny Substation behind me. It will have 42 storeys, and by my count this is it. Its construction has topped out.
Here’s a view after I had walked up along the Denny Way overpass over Interstate 5, from the elevation provided by Bellevue Avenue. It’s amazing that those two towers on the left will still get built up with another 20 floors. Added together, these new buildings will add 3,000 new apartments along Denny Way.
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Wednesday/ beers & grub at The Elysian

Yay! We made it back into The Elysian tonight, for the first time in some 15 months. (We had ordered take-out meals from it several times during this period, though).

Ordering beers and food is done by each individual, using a smartphone. The diner zaps the QR code on the card with the phone’s camera (card visible in the middle of the table), pick items from the menu, and pay for it on the phone by credit card, tip included. The wait staff shows up with the items a little bit later.

Will restaurants like The Elysian go back to physical menus in say, 6 months or so? Time will tell. One would assume that they do take orders from patrons that do not have even one smart phone in the group, to place an order with. (Aliens from Mars?).

Cheers! Three amigos at The Elysian. My beer is an Elysian Superfuzz Blood Orange Pale Ale (6.4% ABV). Indoor dining in King County is allowed at 50% capacity, but it seemed to me that not even 25% of the seats were occupied.
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Monday/ around South Lake Union

Here are pictures from Sunday, from my walk around South Lake Union.

Out of the big hole that there once had been, a big building is rising. I was snapping the Washington State Convention Center’s expansion, seen here from the corner of Howell St and 9th Ave, when this Tesla Model 3 drove into my picture.
Walking by Spruce Street School‘s brick building on Virgina Avenue, on the way to South Lake Union. The private school educates kids from kindergarten, through fifth grade ($28,650 per year per student).
Here’s the Cornish College of the Arts (brown building), getting squeezed by new 44-storey glass-and-steel apartment towers on two sides, but still holding its own. The building was designed by architect Sonke Englehart Sonnichsen in the traditional Norwegian style. Constructed in 1915, it was used for Seattle’s Norwegian cultural and fraternal organizations until 1948. It hosted the City Beat disco club from 1974, which became Boren Street Disco. In the late 80’s it became the home of The Timberline: a country western & mainly gay dance club, renowned for its 25c beers, free peanuts (with shells thrown on the floor), Wednesday lube wrestling tournaments, country line dancing, and its Sunday Tea Dance. Sadly, the Timberline closed in 2003. (Information from seattlebars.org).
A sign at the corner of Denny Way and Fairview Avenue. There is construction all around, and it will go on for at least two more years.
Here is the 2014 Fairview Avenue apartment tower, a 42-story structure with its languid ‘S’ corner line, offering 437 apartment units and retail space at ground level. It’s a far cry from the little Denny Square strip mall and dry-cleaning joint that had been demolished to make room for it.
I spliced together two pictures to catch all of the S E A T T L E   T I M E S lettering. This used to be a 3-story building, occupied by the Seattle Times newspaper from 1931 to 2011. All that remains is the façade. Two office towers (16-story and 18-story) are to be constructed here, but the work has not yet started in earnest.
A cluster of parking instructions. You have to pay, and the assumption is that you have a smartphone to do it with. There are no parking meters! Better to just catch public transport, or your Uber or Lyft ride right here.
Here’s another brick building with a long history. Now called Amazon Van Vorst (it’s at 426 Terry Ave N), it was built in 1909 for the Club Stables, and had room for 250 horses. The building was then a furniture outlet, a transfer & storage facility, and from 1941-74, it housed the C. B. Van Vorst mattress factory. Then it sat empty for two decades, before it was declared a City of Seattle Landmark. (Information from HistoryLink).
Here’s the minimalist lobby of the Moxy Seattle Downtown budget hotel. ‘Nice to See You’ says the floormat, and ‘There is Nowhere to Go but Everywhere’, proclaims the artwork on the wall. (Well. Maybe in 2023, but not just yet).
All right. Finally I arrive at my intended destination, the new-ish building called Google Valley, the tech giant’s new Seattle offices, on the shore of Lake Union.
The view from Terry Avenue. Look for a reflection of the Space Needle in one of the window panes, and for a white image of The Bugdroid, also called Andy, the mascot of the Google Android smartphone operating system.
The entire lobby wall of the Helm apartment complex in the same building is decked out with traffic mirrors.
And another one, put to real use to see oncoming traffic on Mercer Ave, at a construction site. (And put to use by me for a selfie picture).
Making my way back now to where I parked my car, and walking by the Tesla dealership on Westlake Avenue. This all-black Model Y is getting a trickle charge from a regular 110 V wall outlet. It’s only getting 3 or 4 miles per hour added to its battery, but that’s OK. It might be all it needs for the test drives it is used for by potential buyers.
Once upon a time some 15 years ago, I had Firestone tires put on my Toyota Camry in this old Firestone Auto Supply and Service Building from 1929. The 2-story building’s outer walls, with their distinctive Art Deco style, are kept, but not much else. A 15-story office building will be constructed on the inside.
Here’s the courtyard between the Amazon Houdini North and Houdini South buildings. There’s an Amazon Go store tucked into the corner (the store where you check in with your Amazon app, walk around and put what you want in your basket, and walk out the door. You still pay 🙂 – the store knows what you had taken.
Looking up, in the courtyard.
The Houdini buildings are located on the site of the 1929 Troy Laundry Building. The brick façade of the old building is still there, showcasing a few items in the entrance lobby off Fairview Ave North.
A peek into a ground floor meeting room from the lobby. I guess those chairs around the table are waiting patiently for squabbling, animated humans to come back. A Zoom meeting is a poor substitute for a rowdy in-the-flesh conference room meeting, no?
Nice turquoise colors on the outdoor seating area for El Grito Taqueria. Hopefully the restaurants and eateries can hang on for just a little longer.
And here are the two apartment towers at 1120 Denny Way (41 stories each) that are now nearing completion. It is the city’s largest-ever apartment building, with a total of 1,179 apartments.
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Friday/ State Route 20 now open

SR 20 is the northernmost route across the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington State.

 

State Route 20, commonly referred to as the North Cascades Highway, opened for traffic on Wednesday.

Crews removing the last stretches of remaining snow on the road surface. [Pictures tweeted on Tuesday by WSDOT East @WSDOT_East on Twitter]. 

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Thursday/ the Xanadu 2.0 palace

Huis,
Paleis,
Pondok,
Varkhok.
(‘House, Palace, Cottage, Pigsty’).
– Afrikaans children’s rhyme, used to determine the ‘elegance’ of the house that your family lived in. Point to the top button of your shirt, and say ‘House’; the next button down is ‘Palace’; the next one down is ‘Cottage’, and so on, until you reach the bottom button. (Start again with ‘House’ if your shirt has more than four buttons). The bottom button says what your house is.

Now that the Gateses are divorcing, commentators are wondering what will happen to their sprawling $130 million estate on the shore of Lake Washington.  Back in the mid-90’s when construction started, it was dubbed Xanadu 2.0.  Xanadu is a reference to the lavish property that belongs to the tycoon character in the 1941 film ‘Citizen Kane’. The 2.0 refers to a next version iteration, such as Windows 3.0.

An intern was allowed to blog about the property in 2007, here. (Quote: ‘Going down Bill’s driveway is like arriving at Jurassic Park’).

Melinda Gates has reportedly bought a property of $1.2 million here in Capitol Hill, just three weeks ago. The reporter called it a ‘cottage’.

The Gates family home, on the banks of Seattle’s Lake Washington, in a photo from 2001. The floorspace comes to 66,000 sq ft and nowadays, racks up a yearly property tax bill of more than US$1 million. [Credit: Dan Callister/Newsmakers, via Getty Images]
I did a Google Earth flyover of the Lake Washington shoreline, and here is what an aerial view looks like today (middle of the picture). The trees and shrubs have gotten much bigger — obscuring the property from curious eyes, peering at it from Lake Washington, even more.
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Tuesday/ tennis at Woodland Park

The Tuesday & Thursday social tennis sessions for spring / summer at the lower Woodland Park tennis courts, has started.
I was the only one of the 12 in our group playing that wore a mask on the court, and it did not bother me one bit.
It’s impossible to consistently stay 6 feet away from your doubles partner, and we brush by the others as we change sides, or courts. Why be careless, now that I am so close to get my second shot of the vaccine?

There was blue skies and a high of 61 °F (16 °C) this afternoon. This is lower Woodland Park by Green Lake in its namesake neighborhood, with the soccer field on the left, with a dirt track around it, and several little league baseball diamonds to the right. The tennis courts are behind me. The shadows are getting longer, but this is only 6.18 pm. Sunset is still more than two hours away, at 8.26 pm.
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Saturday/ another rental car

I found a great deal on a rental car for four weeks, and went down to Hertz on 8th Ave to go pick it up.  I hope to get my new car early in June. These pictures are from my walk down to Hertz on Friday.

NOT my rental car! .. an all-black Tesla Model 3 parked on the street. Looks like a 2020 model, with the chrome door handles and trim. The 2021 model has ‘chrome delete’ trim (black door handles, black trim). This car has no front license plate, possibly because the owner feels it would spoil the car’s sleek look. Washington State law DOES REQUIRE a front plate, so the driver risks getting ticketed.
The beautiful orange daisies are out, catching the little bit of rain that fell on the last day of April. This April turned out to be one of the driest ones on record:  only 1.03 in (26 mm) whereas the average is 2.7 in (68 mm).
Here comes the powder blue Seattle street car, plying the tracks along Broadway.
Lots of green frames in the Pine Building at 400 East Pine. It was built in 1914 and renovated in 1985.
The rain washed away the dirt on the crosswalk on  the corner of Melrose & Pine St. The new construction on the right, at 1208 Pine St, is an 8-story, 71-unit apartment building with office and retail.
Construction continues on the Washington State Convention Center expansion. The Seattle Tattoo Emporium is conveniently nearby, so attendees can swing by for a mountain lion tattoo, or any other that they might want!
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Tuesday/ closed and blacked out

Here’s the QFC grocery store on 15th Ave, that had closed its doors for the last time on Saturday.
The store’s owners, the Kroger Co. based in Cincinnati, Ohio, says it was not profitable enough. The $4-per-hour hazard pay to grocery workers, mandated by the City of Seattle, ‘had forced their hand to close it’.

I like that little solar panel for the surveillance system in the parking lot. I should put four or five of those on my garage roof — to charge the battery of my up-and-coming electric car with.
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Monday/ walking up along Pine Street

I took my rental car back this morning. The plan is to go carless for a week or so, and then get another one. There is still a good number of weeks to go before I get my new car.

It was a pleasant day, and I could walk up, up along Pine Street to get to the other side of Interstate 5, and to Capitol Hill where my house is.
It’s about 30 mins of walking with no stopping, but I took my time, and took some pictures as I went.

This is the Hertz rental car center on the 6th floor of a garage on 8th Ave in downtown. There’s the counter in the distance where I had dropped my car’s keys. These are basically all the cars they have; the five floors below are eerily empty. (Hard to know if all the floors had been filled with cars pre-pandemic, though). There’s definitely a shortage of rental cars right now, with people starting to travel again. In places like Hawaii, the fee for a small sedan is $195/ day. That is crazy, and 4 times or 5 times the ‘normal’ rate.
I like the signage in the elevator lobby. I was tempted to stop at every floor to see what 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 looked like, and what colors, then thought, no! just go all the way down.
The upscale Grand Hyatt hotel on Pine Street is still closed. Many years ago, I had cocktails with friends in the lobby bar. One of them was from Houston, and he could not stop talking about his Continental Airlines frequent flyer miles. (Continental Airlines is no more. It merged with United Airlines in 2010).
Corner of Pine St & 9th Ave, looking northeast. Dough Zone dumpling house Chinese restaurant on the right, Washington State Convention Center expansion construction zone on the left. That’s the No 10 bus from Capitol Hill, coming into downtown.
The Paramount Theater is still shuttered as well, of course. 
‘Justice for Daunte Wright’ says the sign, the 20-yr-old African-American man that was fatally shot on Apr. 11 by police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop & attempted arrest for an outstanding arrest warrant, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
The US Treasury Department was “taking steps to resume efforts” to put the abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill (left of the picture), but nothing new has been announced of late.
Ticket booths at the main entrance of the Paramount Theater. The theater has 2,807 seats for the performing arts, and opened in March 1928 as the Seattle Theatre.
Looking back at the Washington State Convention Center expansion, from the Pine Street overpass over Interstate 5. Maybe there is a little money left in the budget to also fix up that rusty lamp post on the far right.
The Baltic Room nightclub & bar with its art deco ironwork is still boarded up, but not permanently closed, as far as I can tell.
This space at 300 East Pine St houses attorney’s offices now, but some 15 years ago it was called The Chapel, a fancy wine & cocktail bar, filled with beautiful people on a Friday night, and a place for which one would dress up a little (in a city that had made grunge bands and grunge wear famous).
The artwork on the alley side of the Sugar Hill eatery & bar at 400 East Pine has been there for a while, but is holding up. Sugar Hill bills itself as a ‘loungey, vinyl-fueled eatery/ bar for craft cocktails, Thai street food & late-night DJs’.
I had left Pine St, and made my way to the new apartment buildings on Broadway by the Capitol Hill light rail station. This is the brand new plaza on the inside. I love the pastel colors of the art installation, with the brighter yellow & orange in there as well. I really hope it stays like this for a while: clean and graffiti-free.
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Wednesday/ July weather, in April

From the National Weather Service Seattle @NWSSeattle on Twitter:
Average high temp. in Seattle, April 15-21, 2021: 75.7 °F (24.3 °C)
Normal average high temp in Seattle, July 11-17: 75.7 °F (24.3 °C)

Our little Indian summer has come to a close today (temperatures will drop back to the 60s tomorrow), which is a good thing.
It’s way too early on the calendar to have mid-70s highs.
Firefighters from the Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources have responded to 91 wildfires this last week.

These red tulips seem to like the warm weather. Red tulips are given when love or romance is involved, much like red roses are. I found them on 17th Ave. here on Capitol Hill.
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Thursday/ a sunset stroll

We had 75 °F (24 °C) in the city today, a record high for the day on the calendar. I made it out of the house just as the sun was setting at 8 pm for a walk around the block.

Here’s the view from 14th Ave & Thomas St, looking west towards the Space Needle with the sun below the peaks of the Olympic Mountains.
We’re losing one of the neighborhood’s grocery stores on April 24: the QFC on 15th Ave. It is owned by Kroger Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kroger is the United States’ largest supermarket by revenue, and they cited the $4-per-hour hazard pay surcharge for grocery store workers (that the King County Council had enacted), as the reason to close the store. Capitalism at its finest?
Nice to see that the outdoors space at the Rione XIII restaurant on 15th Ave has a number of customers. Here in King County indoor dining is now allowed at 50%. Three counties in Washington State were moved back to Phase 2 (25% for restaurants) just this week, due to their increase in Covid-19 case counts.
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Wednesday/ at Harborview Medical Center

At 7.45 am, I joined the social-distanced line of a dozen of so, outside the nondescript little building at the back of Harborview Medical Center— thankful that I was wearing my padded jacket (47 °F/ 8 °C).

By 8.00 am I was in the door. Hey, you and I have the same birthday, said the young woman that checked me in. I filled out a form with a few questions, and then went to one of the 5 stations with a nurse, for my shot. (I got Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, not Moderna’s).

Three weeks to tick by, and then I can get the second shot. It feels good to have the first one.

The Facilities & Engineering building on Terrace Ave (on the right) is where the Harborview hospital’s vaccination clinic is run out of. I had just exited down the stairs.
One of the hospital’s delivery gates. I’m making my way back to the big parking garage overlooking I-% and downtown Seattle.
I love the Art Deco detail on the buildings. The construction was completed around 1931.
The entrance off Eighth Avenue. Harborview Medical Center is the only level 1 trauma center* for Washington State. *Capable of providing complete, life-saving care for the most seriously ill or injured patients, through rehabilitation.
The roof of the parking garage off Eighth Avenue, across from the entrance to the hospital. Last year in November I thought the PEACE letters was for the holidays, but looks like it has became a permanent installation (and why not). That’s Columbia Center (cpl. 1985) and Seattle Municipal Tower (1990) in the back.
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Tuesday/ a stroll to Pike & Pine

We had 59°F (15°C) here in the city today, and I took a stroll down to Pike and Pine.
The little green space called Williams Park, by Safeway on 15th Ave, still have a few homeless campers. The little bit of grassiness there has taken a beating, but overall it is tidier and cleaner than it has been in months. The City of Seattle should find housing for these campers, though, and force them to move, if they have to. The city’s parks and green spaces cannot be used for homeless encampments.
That’s the Kaiser Permanente Capitol Hill Campus on the left (medical center).
‘BE PREPARED TO STOP’ says the street sign: not something America is willing to do anymore, regarding the pandemic. Last night 38,000 baseball fans crowded into a stadium in Arlington, Texas, for the season-opener game there. Easter Weekend traveler numbers at many airports were up 3- or 4- or 5-fold from this time last year. Meanwhile, hospitals & clinics still report 65,000 new cases every day, and 700+ deaths.
I like the lightning bolt by the entrance at Sunset Electric Apartments, and the ‘Healthcare Worker The Superhero’ artwork (I made up the title).
On the left edge of the picture is the cement block barricade & fencing around the East Precinct police station. It is supposed to come down soon, but I suspect they are going to wait for a verdict in the George Floyd case. All hell is going to break loose (by way of street protests) here in Seattle again, if a ‘not guilty’ on all counts is found for the defendant Derek Chauvin.
Towards the street corner the windows  are still boarded up, but hopefully those will come down in the months to come, as well.
The Black Lives Matter paintwork on East Pine Street made it through the winter months and still looks decent.
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Monday/ the Bulldogs lost

The Gonzaga Bulldogs lost in their bid to win the 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball title, 70-86. Congrats to the Baylor Bears.

I could not watch the end of the game and went for a quick walk. This is 8.00 pm on 15th Ave & Mercer St (sunset is now at 7.45 pm). The Canterbury Ale House sports bar on my right is still closed, which is surprising. (Bars can be open, with restrictions). The Olympia Pizza House with its outside seating (behind me, not shown in the picture), was noisy and had a good attendance.
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Wednesday/ fair weather & a ferry

We got to 61 °F (16 °C) here in the city today.
Late afternoon I braved the rush-hour traffic on I-5, to get to West Seattle for a little doubles tennis.

It’s now optional to play with a mask — outside or indoors (at Amy Yee Tennis Center). I decided to keep mine on until I get vaccinated.
The governor announced today, that here in Washington State, from April 15th on, everyone 16 & older will qualify for the vaccine.

I had a little time on my hands before the tennis, and stopped at the Fauntleroy ferry terminal to check out the action there. Here is the 5.15 pm ferry (the Issaquah), just departing for Vashon Island.
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Friday/ the Ellenbert apartments

The Ellenbert Apartments building at 915 East Harrison St on Capitol Hill. It was built in 1928 in the the Jacobethan style, during the neighborhood’s pre-Depression apartment building boom.
Architect Max A. Van House (1877-1966).

I have walked by the Ellenbert Apartments many times, on the way to Broadway market’s grocery store, and finally looked up its history today.

The architect is Max A. Van House, a Minnesota native (born in Moscow, MN). He spent time on Vashon Island as a youth, and picked up on-the-job experience by working for a variety of architectural firms, including a stint at one in Tacoma.

Invitation in the Seattle Times of Sept. 23, 1928 for viewing of the new Ellenbert apartments. Frigidaire refrigerators, hardwood floors, central heating by Ray fuel oil burner, Muralvox radio in every room. One block from the street car line. Downtown is 10 mins away. Sounds good to me!
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Monday/ the many meanings of corona

co·ro·na
/kəˈrōnə/

From the Latin word corona, mid-16th century, meaning ‘wreath, crown’.
Architecture: a circular chandelier in a church, or a part of a cornice having a broad vertical face.
Astronomy: the rarefied gaseous envelope of the sun and other stars.
Biology: the cup-shaped or trumpet-shaped outgrowth at the center of a daffodil or narcissus flower.
Medical: coronavirus is any of a family (Coronaviridae) of large single-stranded RNA viruses that have a lipid envelope studded with club-shaped spike proteins.
Physics: the glow around a conductor at high potential.
Smoking: a long, straight-sided cigar.

It was only 45 °F (7 °C) for my late-afternoon stroll around the block today, but hey, now there is an hour more of sunshine.

Daffodils (genus Narcissus) at the corner of 18th Avenue & Republican St. The cup-shaped structure at the center of the flower is called the corona. Yes, the term has come to have decidedly negative connotations, I guess. Maybe it’s best to just shrug it off. We even have apartment buildings in the city called Corona Apartments and Corona Lofts.