a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It was Wednesday, and so my friends and I went for a beer and a bite at one of our regular watering holes, The Chieftain.
Also: today marked the 50th anniversary of civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
It was a brisk 44°F/ 6 °C in the University District this morning at 10 am, where I was this morning. The storm we had on Sunday night was gone. It brought down a little hail at my house, and a thunderbolt so loud, and so close, that it rattled the windows and the glasses up in my kitchen cabinet.
March ended with a lovely, sunny spring day (60 °F/ 15 °C) here in the city of Seattle.
Happy St Patrick’s Day! Here in Seattle we had the annual 1K and 5K St Patrick’s Day Dash, ending at the Seattle Center. My mission for Saturday was to dash down to the Seattle Public Library’s Book Sale which was right there, as well.
I did pick up a few books at the huge book sale ($1 and $2 a book! Yay!) : a thick Archie Comics cartoon book; travel guides for Washington DC and Switzerland, and a few others.
Washington State Dept of Traffic recently tweeted a picture of State Route 20 at the Early Winter Spires. The road is closed for winter, but they will evaluate next week what needs to be done to start clearing the road. I compared their picture with mine, which I took on a road trip last year.
The nationwide toy store franchise Toys-R-Us is in trouble and is said to be closing or selling all of its stores soon. (Aw. I like Toys-R-Us). The company just has too much debt, and this dates back to before competition from Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart all took their toll.
So I made a run to the store here in the area today, and bought a giant box of special Only-at-Toys-R-Us Lego bricks, for myself, of course.(‘Age 5-99’ said the box, and I fall in that age range, see?).
It was a beautiful sunny, blue-sky day (61° F/ 16°C), and I hopped onto the Bremerton ferry, to go check out the marina there, and the Navy Museum. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap.
I walked by a new condo development here on Capitol Hill this afternoon, and wondered what was there before. It turns out there was a stately 1901 home there with triangles and bay windows – which will now become boxes and rectangles.
I saw ‘Black Panther’ (more about it later) in the IMAX theater here in the Pacific Science Center today.
The Pacific Science Center was designed by Minoru Yamasaki for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, and housed the United States Science Pavilion. It is located right by the city’s iconic Space Needle.
Yamasaki was born in Seattle in 1912, a second-generation immigrant. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1934, and became a very successful architect with his own firm in Seattle.
He was the architect of two prominent buildings in downtown Seattle: the IBM Building (1963) and Rainier Bank Tower (1977). His firm won the contract to design the St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project in 1953, but the project ended in disaster. It was a big setback for his firm and for his reputation.
This utility box from my walk on Sunday, reminded me of the 8½-foot mammoth tusk discovered right here in the city, in South Lake Union, in February 2014.
The water-logged tusk was put in a protective plaster cast, carefully removed from the soil and taken to the local Burke Museum of Natural History.
It belonged to a Columbian mammoth. These were the largest of the mammoths that roamed around in North America during the last Ice Age – as recently as 11,000 years ago. They reached 13 ft/ 4m in height at the shoulders, and weighed up to 22,000 lbs/ 10 tonnes.
These pictures are from my on Sunday afternoon walk-about to check out the construction projects in downtown and South Lake Union.
There is another dusting of snow on the ground tonight. The city of Seattle gets an inch (or more) of snow in February, in about 1 out of 4 years .. so looks like this would be one of those years.
Thu morning 2/22: My unofficial ‘snow gauge’ shows that an amount just shy of 1 ½ in of snow, fell on Wednesday night.
We had a little sleet and snow mix here in the city today – somewhat unusual for February – and the temperature only went up to 38 °F/ 3°C. There was bright sun with clear blue skies in the afternoon. I ventured out for a walk, but the icy wind made me turn around and go home after a few blocks.
‘The Wave’ is one of a few newly constructed buildings close by Century Link Field (football field) south of Seattle’s Pioneer Square district.
The Wave has a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The studios start at $1,500 a month, and the two-bedrooms can run up to $6,000 a month, depending on the floor space. The Amtrak station with trains south to Portland and north to Vancouver is right there by these buildings, as is the light rail station to Seatac airport and elsewhere in the city.
We spotted a Tesla Model 3 across the street while we were having a beer and a bite at Elysian Capitol Hill Brewery on Saturday night. It’s amazing how much smaller in size, just 11 inches in length can make a car look (185″ long vs. 196″ for the Model S). I liked the styling and the lines on the Model 3 a lot.
It’s still a number of weeks before it is officially spring here in the northern hemisphere, but my potted plants at the back of my house are already flowering.
The colors are very welcome – and I even spotted a hummingbird hovering at the yellow mahonia.
The Seattle Times report that the Amazon biospheres are finally ready. They will open on Monday for Amazon workers to use. The spheres are not open to the public. (Aw). The dead-of-winter days are so deprived of sunlight in Seattle, that is probably beneficial to go into the spheres just to catch some extra light, even if it is artificial.
The Amazon Go store here in downtown Seattle opened today to the public (required for entry: an Amazon account and a phone with the Amazon Go app). I still have to go and check it out.
The main store concept is that there are no check-out lines. There are hundreds of cameras in the ceiling, sensors on the shelves, and bluetooth beacons in the store, to track and update what is taken as the shopper goes through the store. As far as I can tell there are no physical carts that one pushes through the store (I don’t see any in pictures from inside the store). The shopper brings a carry bag/ shoulder bag to put items directly into. So this is smaller volume and higher-end grocery shopping than at say, one’s traditional grocery store.
There was a break in the rain today, and so I took the streetcar to the International District. I took a few pictures at Hing Hay Park, and browsed around in the Kinokuniya bookstore (Japanese).
By then another big band of rain clouds were passing over the city, though, and I got a little wet before I made it home.
I went marching again today (here is 2017), joining friends in the Seattle’s Women’s March (protesting the Trump Administration).
We were not as plentiful as last year’s 100,000+ marchers; the crowd size estimated to have been around 40,000. It was cold and rainy, and the weather might have been a factor. Some 300,000 people packed the streets in Chicago, and 120,000 in New York City. And in Austin and Dallas, Texas, the crowds were larger than last year.