Category: Seattle

On Sunday I took the bus downtown to Pike Place market.  (Yes, the sellers still throw the dead fish to each other at the fish market, PETA)*.   At the little park to the north, I had to do the obligatory peek over the edge onto our infamous Alaska Way Viaduct.  It’s no longer deemed safe, and especially vulnerable to earthquakes.  And just this Tuesday there is yet another referendum to gauge support for its replacement with a tunnel – for which construction has already started (tunnel nay-sayers want a new viaduct).   Also check out the Google street view picture.

*In 2009, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) heard that the American Veterinary Medical Association asked some Pike Place Market fish throwers to be the opening act for their convention at the Seattle convention center, and sent them a protest letter.

Next, I made my way down to Pioneer Square and discovered the Hartford Building, an excellent example of Art Deco style, built in 1929.   And I only discovered after I got home that Smith Tower has an observation deck!  Aw.  Now I’ll have to go back.   It opened in 1914, was the fourth tallest building in the world in its heyday, and remained the tallest building west of the Mississippi River for almost 50 years.   The black Columbia Tower looming behind it is now the tallest building in the city.

What to do if you have a BIG birthday coming up, and almost everyone (including me!) will be away from Seattle on that day?   Why, you jump at it and celebrate it early, which is what a few friends and I did Friday night.   Check out the wild king salmon with fresh dill and lemon, just off from the grill – and the birthday cake.   The cake was from Borrachini’s, a historic Italian bakery on Rainier Avenue –  chocolate with raspberry filling and white Bavarian icing.  Very, very good.   The picture is made out of rice paper and food coloring, so you simply you gobble it up with the cake !

It was nice to be home for a change during the annual ‘Seattle Night Out’ in my neighborhood !  The streets in a group of blocks are closed, and the residents get together right there in the street with food and something to drink and get to meet each other.   The event is promoted by the Seattle Police Department.

I found the crime statistics map on the Seattle Police Dept’s website.  (I live just outside the darkest green area to the east of the city.  Hey – more humans, more crime.  That’s just a fact of life).  The 911 incident map is dotted with symbols that show what trouble humans make for each other.  Serious ones  :  DRIVING WHILE UNDER INFLUENCE (DUI), FIRE, CASUALTY (NON CRIMINAL/TRAFFIC) – MAN DOWN, SICK PERSONS, INJURED, DOA) and less serious ones such as REPORT SUSPICIOUS PERSON, MISCHIEF/ NUISANCE COMPLAINTS, FIGHT DISTURBANCE, PROPERTY DESTRUCTION, SHOPLIFTING, BURGLARY – RESIDENTIAL, UNOCCUPIED.

I stopped by the Starbucks Center today in the SoDo (south of downtown) neighborhood, part of the industrial district.  The world headquarters for Starbucks, it is the largest building by floor space in Seattle, with over 1,800,000 sq ft (167,000 m2).   It is also both the largest and oldest building in the country with a national green certification.    I checked out the washers and dryers on offer at Sears next door, and I liked the LG models (hmm .. are the cherry red models on sale because of the color, or because of other shortcomings?).     The Amazon truck is on Madison Avenue on the way home.   (Odd to see DVDs on the short list with bread, milk and eggs!).    Finally, the quote on the lamp post by my gym is from JFK’s inaugural speech in 1960 — a statement sorely tested this weekend with the on-going talks in Washington DC about the debt-ceiling and the debt and what expenditures to cut.

Here is the inside of the Elysian Bewery on Capitol Hill (photos from their website), where Bryan, Gary and I go many Friday nights.    Tonight I had a Hydra Hefeweisen (wheat beer) and a Golden Boot (lager).   The other empty glasses in front of me were not mine! : )

The first two pictures are mine.  (I found the other two online).   They are of the entrance to the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park a few blocks from my house.   Those are Bactrian camels (two humps) found in Mongolia and China, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.     We have had blue sky and tranquility out here the last few days .. unlike the massive dust storm that enveloped Phoenix AZ early Tuesday night, or the Orlando FL media storm after the acquittal of Casey Anthony, a mom accused of murdering her 2 yr old daughter in 2008.   (A guilty verdict was widely anticipated in the media and on cable news programs that made reporting of the case their main focus).    The acquittal is also compared to that of the OJ Simpson case from 1995.    That one was in the news not too long after I started working in the USA, and I remember that we all ran down to the cafeteria to see the OJ Simpson case’s verdict.

The USA is 235 years old.  (Or 235 years young, compared to Europe and the East).    Here are a few local Fourth of July fireworks pictures (brought to you from my television!).  A barge on Lake Union, just north of downtown is used as the staging area.  The TV cameras and on-lookers are in Gas Works Park, just about 2 miles from my house as the crow flies, so I could hear the booms as those big ones that fill up the sky were exploding.

Back in 2010, this fireworks display was in jeopardy after the slumping economy and the collapse of Washington Mutual Bank brought an end to the sponsorship of the city’s only remaining July 4 fireworks show.    But Microsoft and Starbucks each kicked in a reported $125,000 to get to the $500,000 needed to put on the display. 

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 : )