Category: Seattle

I don’t have a motorcycle, but I have friends that do!  So I went along for a bike ride out to Carnation, WA (pop. 1,786 from 2010 census).  To get there, we took State Route 520 across Lake Washington, and then turned south on State Route 202 where it ends in Redmond.   Another 10 or 15 miles, and a left on NE Ames Lake Road got us to the city of Carnation*.   Any connection to the Carnation Evaporated Milk cans my mom used to bake with? I wondered (modern version of the can below).   Why sure .. in fact, Carnation refers to a nearby research farm which had been operated by the Carnation Milk Products Company.   The farm supplied the whole area with dairy products and was later bought by the giant food company Nestlé.

*In the USA even small towns use the term ‘city’ to describe themselves.   Settled in 1865, Carnation was officially incorporated in 1912, as Tolt (still the name of its main street).  The name was changed to Carnation in 1917, back to Tolt in 1928, and finally back to Carnation again on October 29, 1951.

 

 

Two of my basement windows have been boarded up until now, and here is what one new window and its frame look like.   There is a rectangular window well outside which makes it possible to have a window that is sunk halfway below ground level.    My trusty contractors are doing the installation.  I am way too clumsy to tackle such a project.   The one pane can slide open to the side, so that I can squirm out of the basement.   (Of course I hope I never have to!).  The other milestone is that the large batik that I bought in Cape Town some years ago, is finally hanging on the wall where I intended it to be.   Yay!  I had to have loops for the curtain rods sewn onto it, and my contractors had to help me put the brackets in with a tall ladder.

It was a perfect day on Sunday for a parade and here are just a few of my pictures of the beautiful people and bright colors.  From the top : Macy’s Department Store marchers (the store is actually in the background, this is Seattle downtown on 4th Ave), Amazon, Expedia (the inflatable float needs a little help!), Microsoft, Group Health, Alaska Airlines, Starbucks Coffee (always generous with coffee packets thrown at the crowds), PricewaterhouseCoopers (the red, orange, yellow from the firm’s new brand logo’s colors), Chipotle Mexican Grill, AM1090 Progressive Talk Radio and ..  I’m not sure who the marchers in the final picture are.

So were there any risque paraders?  Well, yes : a group of cyclists with nothing but body paint on! made an appearance.  They were perfectly legal, but I knew my readers would not be interested in pictures of those! <big grin>.   (The cyclists more commonly make their appearance in Seattle’s annual Solstice Parade, held on the weekend closest to the summer solstice).

Monday night and Tuesday’s pictures.

Blue sky at the corner of Fifth and Pike with the monorail train just arriving (the monorail train runs from the Space Needle to downtown, was built for the World Fair in Seattle in 1962 and is just a tourist attraction at this point!).     Gas is now at/ over $4.00/ gal at most places here, these prices from the gas station nearest to my house*.    Seattlegasprices.com reports that the best anyone can do in the city is $3.87/ gal, which would save me $1.96 on a full tank of gas (but cost me gas and time to get there!).   Check out the fancy new parking permit stickers the city is issuing .. yes, residents of Capitol Hill need permits (they’re free) to park in their own neighborhood, since we have too many cars here.

*The US senate just voted ‘NO’ on a proposal that the $2 billion annual tax subsidy to the oil companies be rescinded.  But we all know that this is a drop in the bucket anyway, and that cheap gas will not come back.  So drive less! or get an electric car!, is what I think.   The chart (click to enlarge) shows the average American consumer spends a whopping $725 per month on transportation.

And the meal is lamb and eggplant curry stew over couscous from the Elysian Pub from Tuesday night.  It was delicious.

Monday was rainy again, and that makes bright colors like the umbrella from a passer-by near my house, and a poster jump out.    It feels cold to me, brr!, coming from the climate in Hong Kong that is already warm and humid.    We’re at 190 days and counting to reach 70 °F (21.1 °C).  The last time that happened was Nov 3 last year with a record-high-for-the-calendar of 74°F.

The cloudy and rainy winter weather here in Seattle still lets up only now and then, and then I feel I have to run out and take pictures of the blue sky and buildings that reflect it.  I took the first two pictures in the Virginia St/ 9th Ave area on Thursday.      The Tutta Bella pizza restaurant is in Columbia City on the south in Seattle and is where we had some wood-fired pizza on Friday night.   We saw on the oven thermometer that it is a singeing 750 ºF (400 ºC) inside.   At that temperature it takes only 90 seconds to bake the pizza!    I fly to Tokyo’s Narita airport tomorrow directly from Seattle, and then to Hong Kong.    There is a few hours between the connecting flights, and I should have time to check out the stores at the airport.

Here’s the Bruce Lee graffiti-mural on Olive Way I walk by every time I go to the hairdresser.  |   This Chevy Volt was parked on the street nearby.   There’s still long waiting lists for them at dealers across the country.   Check it out at http://www.chevrolet.com/vehicles/2011/volt/overview.   |    And then I stumbled across a plaque marking the ‘Center of Seattle’.  Hmm.  It’s at Thomas and Minor Ave N.   But why would this be the center of the city?   Google Earth says Seattle is ‘located’ at 47°36′35″N 122°19′59″W .. a little different from what the plaque says.   |    The STOP sign with the earth mover sticker is right there as well.    |   And how about the Smart car with the bike rack (a rarer sight than a Chevy Volt?) .. spotted Tue night outside the Elysian Alehouse where we had a beer and dinner to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday.

.. because I learned Sunday night from my neighbor that his house is for sale.    He had a U-haul in the back alley to cart some stuff away.  The two dogs and the kitty kat that likes to sit on my fence (as in the picture) will go elsewhere while the house is staged (aww).    Sure enough, this Monday morning the realtor planted the sign with a photographer in tow.    We know that a house further down in our street sold at the end of this March for within 5% of what it was bought for in 2007 (see graph from Zillow.com*).    So the zillow website, usually pretty accurate in its estimates, underestimated that house’s value by some 20% compared to what it sold for recently.    So who knows?  Since the combination of the house sold, its seller and its buyer is unique every time, time will tell if my neighbor can get a good price for his house as well.

*Zillow.com is a Seattle-based website started in 2007 that collects and displays sales prices and estimated valuations of homes throughout the USA.   I edited out the price estimates on the right side of the graph since I just wanted to show the trend lines.

This tree is on 16th Ave in Capitol Hill not far from my house and stands out on the street with its riot of blossoms.    Bulbs like daffodils are also popular in my neighborhood.

I was finally well enough today to venture out of the house, so I took my car for its Washington State-mandated emission test in South Seattle.  It passed again, ’96 model that it is, notwithstanding.     This white, red and blue sign of Franz Family Bakeries is close by on 6th Avenue South.  (They have been around since 1906).    I had the car window open and the wonderful smell of freshly-baked bread was in the air, and so I had to pull over and take a picture.

It’s time for taxes and I checked in with my tax adviser close to the corner of 11th Ave and Pine St today, and took these pictures afterward.   (Found a $39 parking ticket on my windshield when I got to my car even though I overstayed my paid time only by 15 mins.  I guess the City needs dollars$$ for the budget!).    I don’t know the name or year of construction of the white building, but it houses the Velo Bike Store.  It has empty spaces and is looking for more tenants.   (BTW the Seattle Bicycle Expo is next weekend).  The 12th and Pine corner of the brick building across from it is always plastered with posters, and I collected a few with my phone camera.  Two of them are very political since 1. the 8th anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion is coming up and 2. Washington State has not yet legalized same-sex marriage (but the State does have an “everything-but-marriage” bill of rights which was signed into law in 2009, and which survived a referendum challenge in November of that year).

This picture was taken on the corner of Denny Way and Fairview Ave today.  The blue skies are reflected on the Olive 8 luxury hotel and condo tower downtown in the middle of the picture.    The olive8.com website reports that floors 19 to 27 is sold out and that 15 units were sold since the start of the year albeit at a reduction of up to 40% below pre-sale prices in 2007. (Yikes).    Elsewhere, in Bloomberg Businessweek – it is reported that Seattle is at the top of the list of cities in the country where apartment rental rates have dropped (see below).

From Bloomberg Business Week article Feb 11, 2010 re: cities with the biggest drops in apartment rental rates –

No. 1: Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, Wash.

Average monthly rent: $1,023
Annual drop: -13.8%
Q4 2009 drop: -3.5%

The Seattle area, home to companies that include Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Amazon, saw rent plummet as the unemployment rate rose to 9% (133,300 people) in December, from 6% a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The vacancy rate in 2009 was 6.4%, up from 5% in 2008.

These pictures were all taken with my iPhone.     I’m still learning how to use it.  Today I discovered the zoom function is activated by brushing one’s finger across the bottom of the preview picture !  And my fat finger is in the way in the photo of Caffe Vita Coffeehouse’s neon sign.   (I had dinner earlier in the week next door at the gastropub* restaurant Quinn).    Neon signs and night scenes are tricky and the lighting has to be adjusted manually, something the phone camera cannot do.   But I had better luck with the Pilsner Urquell beer sign.   The two apartment buildings are on Denny Way.  I stayed for two years in the newer yellow and tan one when I first came to Seattle in 2000.     The Twice Sold Tales bookstore is just up the block from there.   And then on Broadway – as always when walking by – I checked on the progress of the construction of the Capitol Hill light rail train station.   There is a yellow-clad human figure on the left in the middle of the picture.

*term used in a review; I guess it means fancy pub food : )

The view from my front window upstairs early this morning : lots of sunshine but frost on the ground.    After some early snow in November we have been spared any more.  Today there is a massive snow-and-ice storm system moving over Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri (St Louis) and Illinois (Chicago) .. up to 20 inches expected in Chicago!   Of course Egypt is an even bigger story.   Friday when the religious services for the end of the week start is now seen by some as the big test for what the outcome of the protests will be.

Thursday was sunny but very cold, and today (Friday) is much the same.    The Space Needle picture is from across the barber where I had my hair cut (I’m looking west toward the mountains on the Olympics peninsula), the downtown picture from across Westlake Center (chess, anyone?) and the Olive 8 hotel-condominium tower is still waiting to be filled up.  ‘Recharge, reset, repriced’ said a billboard ad on a bus I saw a few days ago, but I think it’s still going to be a tough sell.   The chatter yesterday on CNBC was all about the real estate market which is still very weak with a lot of foreclosures expected for 2011.

The stout-hearted* little fellow in Pacific Place Mall is advertising the Nutcracker ballet that is in town.   I bought a shirt at Nordstrom and was shocked to pay $9 for parking in the garage downstairs (that should teach me not to spend 2 hrs at the mall !).    The parking garage is in trouble financially, since its use fell by 18% over the last 5 years.   So : will hiking parking prices help?  A tough call.

*Google’s translation of the Afrikaans word kordaat which I struggled to translate to English

The other picture is from Broadway’s new Panera Bread next to the Seattle Community College (I recommend their turkey and artichoke panini sandwich).   I bought some Sumi ink, brushes and paper at the Blick art store next to it – to try my hand at brush-writing in traditional Chinese.   Of course I will have to report how that goes.

It’s Christmas Day, but that doesn’t mean we all have to stay inside, right?  The streets were very quiet, but I still got some worthwhile pictures on my Capitol Hill walk.

1.  As far as I can tell the car is a Pontiac Silver Streak from 1948 or so;  2. The T-Rex is terrifying the humans, but it’s a tall tale at the Twice Sold Tales bookshop : there is no fossil evidence that dinosaurs and humans co-existed on earth; 3. Bottle-cap artwork at the construction site of the Capitol Hill Light Rail station (Jim Morrison of The Doors?);  4.  The digging for the station looks like it’s now 5 or 6 stories deep (see the faint yellow backhoes or scrapers far down?;  5.  Mr Squirrel was stealing bird seed.

Here’s a nice bit of artwork on a card that arrived in the mail to introduce Seattle residents to Umpqua bank.   Click it to enlarge it.  They got most of Seattle’s icons in : salmon, kayaking, sailing, a few Boeings, Pike Place Market, a woman holding an umbrella, the Pink Elephant carwash sign (see it?), the Space Needle (OF COURSE) – but how about a coffee bean or the Starbucks lady? Speaking of the Pink Elephant carwash sign – I need to go and buy myself a proper tripod for night photography for once and for all and go shoot the pink neon of the elephant next week when I have a little time.

I dialed into the China conference call again today and they all yelled ‘Merry Christmas! for the Americans on the call’ and giggled.

Here are some more Christmas decorations, these from homes in the North Beach/ Blue Ridge (Ballard) neighborhood last night where I had dinner at my friends Bill and Dave’s house.

Here is a picture of my house in Seattle (thanks for sending it, Bryan !).   The snow drifts on the roof is something I have not seen before with snow there.   I am sure the beautiful blue sky means the temperatures dropped to well below freezing at night time !