Category: Seattle

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Wednesday/ clear and cold ☀️

There is one more cold morning in store for us— 25°F/ −4°C expected here in the city.
There might be rain and snow on Thursday afternoon.

Here’s 5.12 pm today, looking west from the intersection at 14th Avenue East and Thomas Street.
Sunset is now at 5.30 pm.
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Thursday/ snow report ❄️

There were 2 more inches of snow this morning (most of yesterday’s had melted by last night).
I know it’s not a lot of snow compared to the Midwest or the Northeast, but even so, I went out and took a few pictures. Snow on the ground is not something I ever had while living in South Africa!

 

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Wednesday/ more snow 🌨

There were 2 inches of snow on the ground by 8:30 a.m. here on Capitol Hill this morning—just enough to prompt the city to send out an alert that my garbage pickup has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

Looking at these projections, this week’s garbage pickup may have to be postponed to next week.
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Tuesday/ all those Teslas in Seattle ⚡

Tesla is famously owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who was once admired by liberals for helping to popularize the electric vehicle. But in the last few years — in particular since he purchased the social media platform Twitter (now X) in October 2022 — Musk has become something of a villain among the left. He’s often expressed conservative views and backed Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid last year.

And that’s put some Tesla owners in the Seattle area, where most people tend to vote Democrat, in an awkward position, especially since the car is so closely associated with Musk himself.

Even so, it doesn’t seem to have hurt Tesla ownership rates here — or if it has, it’s too soon to be reflected in the data. And there’s been a significant increase in Tesla households in the Seattle market over the past few years. For example, in Nielsen surveys conducted from December 2020 to April 2022, only around 22,400 Seattle-area households owned a Tesla.
(My note: by the end of 2024 that number had increased threefold, to 66,700).
– Seattle Times columnist Gene Balk

‘You can tell South Africa they can have Elon Musk back‘, quipped my neighbor, after I had told him of my recent trip to South Africa.’
Yeah, I know. Some days I think he can have my car back’, said I.
(.. but thinking afterwards:  I really did not buy my Tesla because I was an Elon Musk fan. It’s an electric vehicle— with zero emissions, as a reminder— and a lot of fun to drive. So why should I not drive it?)

What is meant by overrepresented?
From the report in the Seattle Times:
In the Seattle market area, a projected 311,000 households had at least one Subaru. That pencils out to 16.8% of the 1.86 million households that had at least one vehicle. The nationwide Subaru ownership rate was just 7.8% of households.
A projected 66,700 Seattle-area households had at least one Tesla, which represented 3.6% of local households. The national average was only 1.6%.
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Saturday/ freezing rain 🧊

There was a little bit of thunder at noon today, followed by a spell of freezing rain.
An hour or two later, there was blue sky. Today’s high was 40°F (4°C).
There might be a dusting of snow on the ground tomorrow here in the city, say the meteorologists.

The view from my window at 12.19 pm today.
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Wednesday/ Happy Lunar New Year 🐍

Happy Lunar New Year— the Year of the Snake.
It sounds a little ominous, but I guess every year cannot be the Year of the Dragon.

The public art installation at the corner of Madison Street and 14th Avenue here on Capitol Hill is complete. (The installation is not specifically related to the Lunar New Year. The artist is Seattle resident Ben Zamora.)
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Sunday ☀️

I made it to Volunteer Park today, all bundled up.
It felt colder than the 42 °F (5 °C) reported on my phone’s weather app.

Volunteer Park with its Victorian-style greenhouse structure in the distance, modeled on London’s Crystal Palace.
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Friday afternoon/ east, west, home best 🏡

The world traveler is home.

Departure at Munich International Airport.
We were bused out to the Airbus 350-900 sitting on the tarmac, so that we could clamber aboard with the stairs. Let me just stipulate that the guys wearing t-shirts may create the impression that we had summer weather out there. We did not— it was freezing!
A last look at the fuselage before I step into the warm airplane.
Making the turn onto the runway for take-off.
Halfway into the 10-hour flight, and we are over the north of the giant slab of ice called Greenland.
Somewhere over Canada, with about two hours to go to Seattle.
Arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. 
We were international arrivals, and so we walked across the skybridge to the baggage claim and passport control, which is where I stopped to take this picture.
Our flight waited a little bit for our luggage, and then found it on the baggage claim carousel next to ours, for the flight from Frankfurt that arrived about the same time as ours. Then it was on to the Global Entry kiosk for me. There the was no line, and it took literally a few seconds for the face-recognition system to greenlight my entry into the United States. This way out, said an official, and that was it. So no passport stamp needed, no passport, no nothing. (Registering for Global Entry does cost $120 for a five-year membership.) 
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Tuesday/ rain ☔

It has rained all day in Rain City.
It will rain on and off all week here, in the run-up to winter solstice.

Here’s an artificial intelligence (AI) generated image that I generated with Apple’s Playground application. I selected a day-time image of the Space Needle that I had on my phone, and added a text instruction ‘Space Needle in the rain’.
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Monday/ holiday cheers🎄

The five amigos went to the Irish pub called The Chieftain on 12th Avenue for a beer and a bite tonight, but found it closed for the night.
We ended up right next door, at the German beer hall-and-restaurant Rhein Haus Seattle, where we found this cheerful Christmas tree.

Here comes the selfie! Cheers! Gary, Willem, Steve, Ken and Bryan. Thanks to Bryan for taking the picture.
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Friday/ rainy and dark ☔

Happy Friday the Thirteenth.
It was rainy and dark all day outside (but not quite as dark as in the forest from The Nutcracker in the picture below).

From the Seattle Times:
A ballerina from Pacific Northwest Ballet performs “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” on Wednesday evening at McCaw Hall in Seattle. [Photo by Kevin Clark / The Seattle Times]
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Wednesday 🌇

Sunset is now at 4.21 pm.

Looking out west from my usual perch on the corner of 14th Avenue East and Thomas Street. This is 4 pm, on the nose. The sun made a brief appearance before the clouds obscured it again. Its setting appears further to the south on the horizon this time of year (to the left, outside of the picture frame). 
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Tuesday/ a lot of gray 🌥

The rainy weather has stopped, and the forecast for the next week or so can be described as ‘morning fog, and partly sunny the rest of the day’.
The lows will be mid- to high 30s (3 °C) and the highs 46°F (8 °C) or so.

Looking south along 19th Avenue East by Stevens Elementary School, just as the light was fading today.
(Stevens Elementary School was on a list of schools to be closed, but Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Brent Jones announced just yesterday that he and the school board will no longer pursue school closures and consolidations to solve the Seattle school district’s multi-million dollar budget shortfall.)
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Tuesday/ going home 🛫

The time came to bid Beantown goodbye on Tuesday afternoon, and fly back to the Pacific Northwest.
There was a rainstorm with strong winds as we made our final approach into SeaTac Airport, which made for a rough landing, but once we started taxiing on the runway, everything was OK.

Pictures:
Looking up while waiting for my Uber driver on Main Street across from the MIT campus in Cambridge; in Uber car in the Ted Williams Tunnel again; at the gate at Boston Logan airport (dry and calm); arriving at the gate at Seattle-Tacoma airport (wet and stormy); restaurant PF Chang’s dragon at Seattle-Tacoma airport’s North Terminal.

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Friday/ arrival into Boston 🛬

It was a direct flight to Boston, just over 5 hours of flying.

At Boston Logan airport, the Silver Line bus took me to South Station on the MTBA’s* Red Line. I went four stops to Central Station, close enough to walk to my hotel.

*Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority

Departing for Boston from Seattle-Tacoma airport’s North Terminal.
A little bit of New England coastline— a minute or two before touchdown at Boston’s Logan international airport. That’s a water tower in the middle of the picture, and in the far right in the shallow waters are five barriers called The Five Sisters.
On the Sliver Line bus now (using Google Maps to make sure I go more or less in the right direction!). We are 1. on Interstate 90, the interstate highway that runs across the northern United States and into Seattle, 2. in the Ted Williams Tunnel running under the waterway called Boston Main Channel in Boston harbor.
The Ted Williams Tunnel (TWT) was the first major link constructed as part of Boston’s Big Dig. When the TWT opened in 1995 it was only available to authorized commercial traffic. Later, non-commercial traffic was allowed to access the tunnel on weekends and holidays. In 2003, with the substantial completion of the I-90 portion of the Big Dig, the tunnel was opened to all traffic at all times.
[Source: Wikipedia]
Inside the Sliver Line bus, in the Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor.
At South Station. Here comes the Red Line train. These trains have been running a long, long time. The downtown portions of what are now the Green, Orange, Blue, and Red line tunnels and rails were all in service by 1912.
The sun sets early, as it does in Seattle: at 4.20 pm here. There was just enough light left for me to walk to the hotel from Central station. This cute hole-in-the-wall place is on River Street in Cambridge.
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Wednesday/ mushrooms 🍄

Herewith the 2024 fall edition of the mushrooms in my yard.

These are in the grass in the front yard: the Scotch bonnet (Marasmius oreades), also known as the fairy ring mushroom or fairy ring champignon.
The bright red fly agarics (Amanita muscaria) are not so plentiful this year. About six inches across, this one.
The squirrels like to nibble on the cap, but not much more than that.
I believe these are brown fly agarics (Amanita regalis).

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Sunday/ a little architecture 🏙

I took the No 8 bus to Westlake Avenue and walked from there to the Amazon Spheres, and back up to Capitol Hill.

It’s cold and gray outside, but summery and light inside the Spheres. I am on Lenora Street, looking towards the northeast.
This art installation off Westlake Avenue is called Kilroy Star and was put up by commercial real estate agency Kilroy Realty in June. (The colors in the star cycle continuously through reds, greens and blues).
If my research on the mathematics of polyhedrons is accurate, this is a Kepler-Poinsot polyhedron. This one is called a small stellated dodecahedron. It consists of twelve pyramids with pentagonal bases that are mounted on the faces of a regular dodecahedron.
The Seattle architect Louis Svarz (1886-1976) designed this building on Lenora Street for the Puget Sound Notion Company, a wholesaler of notions (sewing accessories).
Its construction was completed in 1930. Today the building belongs to Cornish College of the Arts. (The 1914 date in the window is the founding year of the Cornish College).
The Omni South Lake Union (also known as 1120 Denny Way) with its two 41-story towers boasts 827 apartments and 272 hotel rooms. It opened in May 2022. s
The balconies on the Denny Way side offers a list of historical events and their dates.
I’ve made my way up Denny Way to the junction with Stewart Street. In the distance is REN Seattle, a high-rise apartment tower at 1400 Fairview Avenue.
To my right is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment towers that are still under construction after six whole years (construction started in 2018).
Here is the 1200 Stewart Street apartment complex. The construction of the towers is complete but it seems that there is still a lot of finishing work on the inside and outside that remains. If I can believe what I read on Redditt, there are plans afoot to suspend a repurposed Boeing 747 fuselage above the residential project’s galleria as a centerpiece and a symbol of industrial innovation— on view as a sensational artifact for both pedestrians at street level and for residents in their dwellings overhead. Hmm.
Here’s a closer look at one of the posters in the window.
On May 10, 1968 The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed two shows at the Fillmore East in New York City, with support from Sly & the Family Stone and the Joshua Light Show.
(Jimi Hendrix is James Marshall “Jimi” Hendrix, an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is widely regarded as the greatest guitarist in the history of popular music and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. He was born in Seattle on Nov. 27, 1942 and died tragically young at the age of 27 in September 1970 – from Wikipedia).
I’ve now made my way across I-5 on the Denny Way overpass, and I always turn around on Melrose Avenue, to take a picture of the Space Needle wedged between the towers of 1120 Denny Way.
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Saturday/ squares ⬜

Here’s a sneak preview of the public art installation at the junction of 14th Avenue and Madison Street on Capitol Hill.
(Is it a time machine? Can I enter the big square and emerge four years into the future at the far end?).

Even though it’s only 5:20 pm in the picture, night has already cast its inky blacks.