Seattle – Page 33 – Willem's Planet

August 11, 2019August 11, 2019

Sunday/ Amazon’s Block 20 & Block 21 buildings

My Sunday afternoon walk in the Denny Triangle was thwarted a little by a rain shower. I did get a few pictures of the newest Amazon buildings that are almost completed, though.

The brown building with 8 storeys is **Amazon Block 20**, seen from the corner of 8th Ave and Blanchard.

This water feature is on the other side of the Block 20 building, on 7th Avenue. It was designed by local sculptor Gerry Tsutakawa and is part of the public plaza there.

Here is **Amazon Block 21** (2200 7th Ave), seen from the corner of 7th Ave and Blanchard St. It is part of Amazon’s expanding headquarters. The office tower on the left is 24 stories tall, and the building in the foreground 8 stories. The oval building in the back is the **McKenzie Apartments** building, 40 stories tall. It was completed last year, and has 450 apartments.

August 11, 2019August 12, 2019

Saturday/ two have gotten the axe

We are getting new disabled accessible ramps on the pavements here at Republican Street and 16th Avenue .. but at the price of two big trees that have been taken out.

Two big trees have been taken out on the corner area of Republican Street and 16th Avenue: one right on the corner and one further back.

This picture is from Monday Aug 12. The tree’s roots were just too big and too close to the surface for the city workers to save it, so it had to be taken out.

August 4, 2019August 4, 2019

Sunday/ warm and sunny

We got up to 89°F/ 32°C today.
So: toasty, and about as warm as we get here in the city.
(Ten years ago on July 29, 2009, though, Seattle saw a high of 103°F/ 39.5°C, but so far, we have been spared from a repeat of that).

Here’s the corner of Pine and 12th Ave, under blue sunny skies. The crow artwork has been there for some 4 years, but the blueberry snack bar ad is new.

August 2, 2019August 2, 2019

Friday/ the Blue Angels are here

It is the peak of summer festivities here in the Pacific Northwest, and the start of Seafair Weekend. Highlights are the Blue Angels airshow, and the hydroplane race on Lake Washington.

Here is my quickie iPhone picture of the Blue Angels as they tore through the sky above Seattle today. They are very, very— ear-splittingly— LOUD!

The six Blue Angels flying in a delta formation today. The Angels are McDonnell Douglas-made **F/A-18 Hornets**: twin-engine, supersonic, all-weather, carrier-capable, multirole combat jets. They were first used in combat (bombing raids) in Libya, in 1986.

August 2, 2019

Thursday/ more tennis

I have run out to the tennis at Seattle Tennis Club every day this week to watch the tennis there.
It’s a great way to enjoy the sunny weather.

Here is the little jetty on the shore of Lake Washington by the Seattle Tennis Club. Hobie Cats (like the one with the yellow, white and orange sail) were wildly popular in Plettenberg Bay in South Africa back in the day when my family went there in summer, and they probably still are.

These are yellow and pink coneflowers (Rudbeckia), also called black-eyed Susans, basking in the sun by the tennis courts.

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019

Monday/ action at the Seattle Tennis Club

The Washington State Open tennis tournament started at the Seattle Tennis Club today⁠— for the week, and I went out today to go and take a look. The facility is not even 2 miles from my house, but I have never been there. All other times of the year it is members only and very exclusive.

It was $30,000 to join the Club in 2015 (a figure almost certainly higher by now), plus annual dues. The wait list time is said to be 8 years or so. Rumor has it that Bill Gates wanted to become a member, but now has to wait his turn, as well.

The Seattle Tennis Club on the shore of Lake Washington. That’s the city of Bellevue in the distance. There are 19 tennis courts on the roughly 8 acres of real estate. As it turned out, the guy in red is the No 5 seed in the Men’s Open section, and I watched him play a match just a little later.

A little bit of history, from a banner put up on one of the fences. The first tournament here, was held in 1890, only 13 years after London hosted its first Wimbledon tennis tournament in 1877.

The Washington State Open logo, done in flowers and greenery.

Here’s No 5 seed Riley Smith (22 yrs old, from Long Beach, California). He’s 6’7″ tall, and makes full use of it to smack his serves down into the opposite court. Bam!

His opponent was Jesse Schouten from Mill Creek WA (north of Seattle). Shouten is a good player, but lost in straight sets against Smith.

July 28, 2019July 28, 2019

Sunday/ a few ‘very fine’ people, marching

I encountered a small group of ‘very fine’* Trump supporters on Broadway today, flanked by a large contingent of police officers (to protect them from a much larger group of protesters, I suppose).

From where I was standing, a much larger group of people followed along on the opposite sidewalk, all the time yelling loudly ‘FASCISTS, GO HOME! FASCISTS, GO HOME!

*Trump’s characterization of the Charlottesville white nationalist protesters, made when he talked to the press on Aug. 15, 2017.

The little group of ‘very fine’ Trump supporters were all of 7 or 8 people. That’s the yellow Gadsden flag with the rattlesnake on, and the words ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ (so are you all snakes?). Two Trumpsters carried Stars & Stripes flags, and two had Trump flags.

July 28, 2019July 31, 2019

Saturday/ the new apartments at Cap.Hill train station

The construction crews are making good progress on the three new apartment buildings by the Capitol Hill train station.

The three new buildings called A, B and C, from a draft proposal that I found online. The buildings are 7 stories tall and will offer a total of some new 350 apartments. I believe the assumption is that these apartment dwellers will NOT own cars. They have trains and buses (and Uber drivers) on their doorstep to take them anywhere in the city, after all.

The view from Denny Way, looking northeast. This is as tall as the new apartment buildings will go. The open space between the A building (left edge of the picture) and the B buildings (right) will be a public plaza.

This is a late afternoon picture, looking north on 10th Avenue with the B buildings on the left. The homeowners on the right are getting some shade from the warm sun in summer, but they have lost a lot of sunlight that they used to have in winter!

July 22, 2019July 23, 2019

Monday/ tree roots making trouble

The sidewalk on the left is the one that I always take to walk to the grocery store, and there is a really bad tree root bump in it.

One of the city’s transportation crews has dug into the soil today. An arborist will advise if the trees can survive, once the troublesome roots had been taken out. I hope the trees will be OK! I guess I will soon find out.

This is on Republican Street, between 16th & 17th Avenue.

July 21, 2019July 21, 2019

Sunday walkabout

The walkways around the Denny Substation opened yesterday, and I went to take a look today.

The view at the top of the walkway at **Denny Substation**. This is at a 2nd floor elevation, and close to the corner of Denny Way & Stewart St.

One can now stand under the **‘Transforest’** artwork and, um, learn to appreciate it a little more!

Here’s a view from Stewart Street towards the Space Needle. The site in the middle of the picture is under construction (**1200 Stewart St**), and this current view will change dramatically over the next 18 months or so. Two 45-story towers on a 3-story podium will be constructed with some 1,050 apartments and retail space. (Whoah). The new building partially fitted with its glass windows is **1120 Denny Way**: a complex of two 41-story apartments buildings. Upon completion, it will be the largest apartment building in the city’s history with 1,179 apartments.

The construction of the new ‘**Building Cure**‘ for Seattle Children’s Research Hospital is about to be completed. I love the mirror finish on the lettering. This is on Terry Avenue.

Also by the Building Cure are these colorful sidewalk chairs that can swivel.

A giant astronaut in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel, promoting an exhibit of the 1969 moon landing in Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

July 18, 2019July 19, 2019

Thursday/ ten years of light rail in Seattle

Today marks ten years since the opening of the Seattle light rail transit system. I was one of the 45,000 riders that boarded the light rail train for the first time, on July 18, 2009.

The initial line ran from downtown to Tukwila International Boulevard (close to Seattle-Tacoma airport). Four more stops have opened since then (Seattle-Tacoma airport & Angle Lake to the south, Capitol Hill and University of Washington to the north). The next extension of three more stops to the north, will open in 2021.

I made a run to the downtown station today, to buy this 10-year anniversary transit card. There’s the train in the background. There are currently 62 train cars in the system. They are made by a train car manufacturer called Kinkisharyo, in Osaka, Japan.

July 14, 2019July 14, 2019

Sunday/ jumped on a bike

I went bicycling with my friends on today, and tried out an electric-assist bicycle for the first time.

The bicycle has three gears, and performed very well. As far as I could tell, the electric assist from the battery is always-on (so no way to turn it off).
On even grades, the electric assist feels a little like cheating! – but it does come in very handy on long uphill climbs.

I’m ready! I found this bike a few blocks away from my friends’ house, with the help of Uber’s app, scanned its QR code with my phone, unlocked it, and it was ready to go. JUMP is Uber’s bike-share service that competes with Lime, the other bike rental player in Seattle.

Here’s Lake Washington, during a quick stop in Seward Park. It was a beautiful day (75°F/ 24°C) with sun and puffy white clouds.

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019

Friday/ we had a little earthquake

Newspaper front page after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

I woke up to a shaking house at 3 a.m. this morning.
The shaking went on for only a few seconds, but I was sure it was an earthquake. It turned out there was a magnitude 3.5 quake, and the one I experienced must have been the 4.6 quake that followed just two minutes later.

The epicenter of the quake is about 26 miles from my house. No real damage or injuries in the Puget Sound area or from elsewhere, were reported.

P.S. The Nisqually earthquake of 2001 near Olympia was several orders of magnitude stronger, at 6.8. It damaged the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the dome of the State Capitol building in Olympia, and Starbucks headquarters in Seattle.

Map and information from U.S. Geological Survey

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019

Thursday/ a double rainbow

Here’s a beautiful double rainbow, that we saw on Wednesday night from my friends’ house in the Mt Baker neighborhood.

P.S. Yes, it’s not your imagination, there really is a second one above the first!

A double rainbow is seen when sunlight is reflected and refracted into its different wavelengths twice (in the suspended drops in the atmosphere). So the observer sees two different reflections, coming from different angles.

July 7, 2019July 7, 2019

Sunday, sans sun

It was a gray Sunday, with a little rain, here in the city today.
I did run out to go check on the Alaskan Way Viaduct’s gradual disappearance (on-going demolition), and the new buildings under construction nearby.

Looking south from the upper deck at Pike Place Market. No Mt Rainier in the distance, just low clouds.

Looking north. There’s the Norwegian Bliss at the Bell Street Cruise Terminal (Pier 66), just getting ready to set sail for a round trip to Skagway, Alaska. It will be back early next Sunday morning.

The neon sign at Pike Place Market is almost as iconic as the Space Needle. It has been there much longer (since 1935), and was designed by architect Andrew Willatsen.

Nearby is The Emerald, a 40-story, 265-unit condominium high-rise. The mural artwork is for outdoor store Fjällräven (Swedish for arctic fox), around the corner. (Scientists recently published an article that tells of a female arctic fox that had trekked an astonishing 2,700 miles from Norway to Canada, across arctic ice, in just 21 days).

And how is the new Rainier Square Tower on 5th Avenue progressing? I believe it still has 15 to 20 floors to go before topping out.

I always walk by this building on the way back from Pike Place Market and even though it now sells discount clothing, it has a storied history. It was built in 1940 as a major West coast store for the F. W. Woolworth Company. These the waning days of Art Deco architecture, but the building still has many Art Deco traits. The terracotta and lighter cream colors go together nicely, and I love the styling of the clock with its horizontal ‘wing’ accents.

July 2, 2019

Tuesday/ a little rain

We had light rain for most of the day here in the city – a welcome change in the weather, given the dry conditions around Western Washington.
July is the driest month of the year, though*. So we may not see a whole lot more rain, soon.

*July average rainfall is 0.9 in., compared to 6.1 in. for December.

Current drought conditions in Washington State. The city of Seattle falls in the ‘D2- Severe Drought’ area on the map. So far there is no large wildfires burning in in the State – always an elevated risk when conditions are dry. [Source: https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/washington].

June 30, 2019June 30, 2019

Sunday/ Happy Pride!

Happy Pride! My friends and I checked in on the Seattle Pride Parade today, and here are a few pictures.

Here comes the **Amazon** contingent. (Very convenient that ‘Amazon’ has 7 letters that exactly match the number of colors in the gay rainbow flag!).

I loved the ‘pink unicorn’ walking with the **Walmart** delegation.

Drug manufacturer **Gilead**. The giant blue pill in the truck is the miracle HIV prevention pill called Truvada, that have already saved countless lives all over the world. Only thing is: in the United States a month’s supply cost health insurers a fortune (almost $2,000). Gilead generated global Truvada sales of nearly $3 billion last year, of which about $2.6 billion came from the United States. In Gilead’s defense: they have spent some $6 billion on HIV/AIDS research since 2000.

Yay! for **University of Washington Medicine**, and their beautiful big rainbow flags.

June 28, 2019June 28, 2019

Friday/ on tennis tournament duty

I helped out as a volunteer at the Seattle Classic tennis tournament today.
The tournament is sanctioned by the Gay & Lesbian Tennis Alliance (GLTA). The GLTA is an international body that oversees an impressive worldwide circuit of tennis tournaments (check out the table below).

The tournaments do not have prize money to speak of, but it is a great way of encouraging the LGBT community to participate in the wonderful sport of tennis (of which I am a lifelong fan).

Doubles play in progress today on one of the six outdoor courts at the Lloyd Nordstrom Tennis Center at the University of Washington. The speck at the top left is a float plane.

There are six indoor courts as well. The different divisions for different skill levels: Open, A, B, C and D. Some tournaments add draws for over-35 or over-45 players.

Date	Tournament	Location	Surface
June	Alegria Open	Rotterdam, Netherlands	Clay
June	Seattle Classic	Seattle, WA-USA	Indoor and Outdoor Hard
July	Prague Friendly Tennis Open	Prague, Czech Republic	Red Clay
July	San Diego Open	San Diego, CA-USA	Hard
July	Liberty Open	New York, NY-USA	Outdoor Hard
July	Eurogames	Rome, Italy	TBD
July	Hanse Cup Hamburg	Hamburg, Germany	Clay
July	The Philadelphia Open	Philadelphia, PA-USA	Hard court
July	Madrid Tennis Open (Masters)	Madrid, Spain	Green set (outdoor) and clay (covered)
Aug	Chillli Tennis Open (Masters)	Katowice, Poland	Clay
Aug	VIP (Vancouver International Pride)	Vancouver, BC, Canada	Hard Court
Aug	Second City Tennis Classic	Chicago, IL-USA	Indoor Hard
Aug	Ad-OUT Cologne	Cologne, Germany	Clay
Aug	Paris Summer Cup	Paris, France	Clay
Aug	Zurich Rainbow Open	Zurich, Switzerland	Red Clay
Aug	Barcelona Open (Masters)	Barcelona, Spain	Clay
Aug	New Hope Open	New Hope, PA-USA	Hard Court/Clay
Aug	Tallinn Colour Games	Tallinn, Estonia	Hard Court/Carpet
Aug	Montréal Coupe de la Reine	Montréal, Québec, Canada	Indoor Hard
Aug	The Peach International	Atlanta, GA-USA	Hard
Aug	Rose City Open	Beaverton, OR-USA	Hard
Sept	IGO-Italian Gay Open	Milan, Italy	Clay
Sept	Kiss My Ace-Manchester GLTA	Manchester, England	Grass
Sept	IndyTennis Classic	Indianapolis, IN-USA	Hard Court
Sept	Bali G-Slam	Bali, Indonesia	Hard Court
Sept	The Capital Classic	Washington, DC, DC-USA	Hard and Clay
Sept	WrocLove Cup	Wroclaw, Poland	Hard Court
Sept	Queen City Open	Cincinnati, OH-USA	Hard
Sept	VicTennis Hard Court Championships	Melbourne, Australia	Hard
Sept	Texas Open (Masters)	Dallas, TX-USA	Hard
Oct	Gran Canaria Open	Maspalomas, Gran Canaria	Clay
Oct	Out in Hong Kong Open	Hong Kong, Hong Kong	Artificial Grass
Oct	Peter Deacon Tournament	Sydney (Concord), NSW, Australia	Synthetic Grass
Oct	San Diego Doubles	San Diego, CA-USA	Hard Court
Oct	Tennis London International	London, England	Indoor Hard
Oct	Brilliant Games (Masters)	Antwerp, Belgium	Hard
Nov	HOUTEX	Houston, TX-USA	Hard Court
Nov	Sunshine Doubles Gran Canaria	Maspalomas, Gran Canaria	Clay
Nov	Segundo Abierto del Orgullo Argentino LGBT	Buenos Aires, Argentina	Clay/Hard Courts
Nov	Palm Springs Open	Rancho Mirage, CA-USA	Hard Court
Nov	Citrus Classic (Masters)	Tampa, FL-USA	Har-Tru Clay
Dec	Frankfurt Open	Maintal, Germany	Carpet
Dec	10th Bangkok Pride Tournament (Masters)	Bangkok, Thailand	Hard Court

Gay & Lesbian Tennis Alliance (GLTA) Tournaments 2019

June 23, 2019June 23, 2019

Sunday/ South Lake Union construction update

Some of the construction projects in South Lake Union are nearing their completion: the Nexus condominium tower, the Denny Substation and the Google office buildings. I took these pictures today.

Here is the 41-story **Nexus condominium tower** at 1200 Howell St, viewed from the south. The ‘cubes’ with their 8° offsets add a little interest to the building.

This is the fancy main gate and its door, of **Seattle City Light’s Denny Substation** (see the ‘LIGHT’ in big letters?). The walkways on the outer perimeter alongside the building are still closed to the public, though. The $210 million substation will be fully operational by year-end.

Hmm .. and check out the artwork that has now been installed: the 110 ft (33.5 m) tall ‘Frankenstein’ transmission tower (my name for it). Its official name is **Transforest**, and it was designed by Lead Pencil Studio.

There are no cranes on the Google building anymore – just scaffolding to complete the outside cladding. I’m looking west, and that’s Mercer Street on the left, onto which the construction crane had crashed on April 28. The cloud logo stands for **Google Cloud Platform**, a suite of cloud computing services. Google employees will start to move in later this summer.

June 21, 2019June 21, 2019

Friday/ summer solstice in the North

It’s the official start of summer here in the North today.
We have had mild temperatures (68°F/ 20°C) and not much rain in June, tracking at about 50% of the month’s average.
Sunset tonight was at its latest for the year, at 9.11 pm here in Seattle.