My last day in London, July 7, just happened to be the same as the first day of the G8 Summit. Neither my day nor the Summit's went gone according to plan. My plan was to go to the Ravenscourt Park Station, get on the Underground and get off at the Russell Square Station. I was looking forward to a second visit to the British Museum since my first one was much too short.However, I slept in a bit and dilly dallied around taking a bath, doing my email, and typing the order of service for Sunday at the Rainier Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation: I'm going to be the jet lagged service leader at Evensong. When I finally got to the Ravenscourt Park Station, the gates were locked. There was a notice scribbled in crayon that the Underground was closed due to a "security alert" and advised people to take buses. So I went to the nearest bus stop and asked a man what buses I would need to take to get to Russell Square. "Madame, you cannot go to Russell Square this morning," he asserted. "That's in central London. There are bombs going off all over central London."
The motto of Geraldine's Counter, the latest arrival in Columbia City's business district transformation, is for customers to leave with a smile on their faces and a warm feeling in their tummies. Upon entering the light-filled space located on the corner of South Ferdinand Street and Rainier Avenue South the customer experiences a kind of deja vous. The space, designed by architects Arellano and Christofides, is at once familiar yet brand new. Walls are washed with soft chartreuse green and warm butter tones except for two in the L-shaped dining room which are made from original brick. The seating at the booths, tables, and a roomy red counter complete with spinning stools, is retro 1950s diner ramped-up to an ultra hip level. The whole place is Wi-Fi friendly, of course.
Beginning with a bang on Ray Tsway's gong, the 30th annual Chinatown-International District Summer Festival took over the International District on July 9-10, filling the streets with live entertainment, food vendors and community booths. Tsway, the owner of Bao-Yin Unity Gong, operated one of 120 booths stationed near Hing Hay Park for this year's Summer Festival. His opening gong ceremony, performed on the Verb Dragon Stage in the center of the park, led a lineup of 27 acts at the two-day event. The festival also featured a karaoke stage, a car show, inflatable Sumo wrestling, putt-putt golf and a children's entertainment corner.
Momentum: the more you win, the more difficult it becomes to stop.Unfortunately, even the best rides must eventually come to an end.Like a snowball careening down a mountainside, the Athletic Supply Magnolia Little League Senior Division team picked up wins as it rolled over the competition. The team, made up of 15- and 16-year-olds, remained undefeated until the very end of the season, finishing with a record 29-2, one of the best in Magnolia Little League Seniors history.Their only losses were the final two games of the season, losses which unfortunately stopped them just one game short of the district championship.
David Williams describes how Magnolia got its name in his new book, "The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle.""A 22-year-old Navy lieutenant, George Davidson, who visited the area in 1856 while leading a U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey trip, thought the trees blooming on the edge of the hill were magnolias," he explains.They weren't, and still aren't. The trees are madronas, and calling them magnolias is as accurate as - dare it be said? - comparing apples (of the rose family) and oranges (of the citrus family).
In the photograph, writer David Williams' right hand grasps a crow. His fingers gently but firmly wrap around the bird's legs. The scene gives the appearance of Williams holding a large black Popsicle - a Crowsicle. Observers might be tempted to ask: "This is science?"Science it is, though Williams and the crow are participating in the study for different reasons. He's there, along with University of Washington researcher John Withey, to study the birds.As Williams, a resident of the Green Lake neighborhood, explains: "Being social birds, crows gather in roosts to converse and share information. In the summer breeding season, the number may drop to as low as 300 because they stay and defend their nest territory instead of socializing."The remainder of the year can find more than 10,000 birds occupying the roost.The bird waits patiently while Williams points out what makes crows such successful urban birds.
Start your engines - or just polish your green-with-envy glasses - because the new Queen Anne Car Show is gearing up to set the neighborhood between Dexter and Lake Union a-hum on Aug. 6.More than 100 local and regional collector and classic cars will be rolling in for Seattle's only downtown car show. Fifteen "showcase" vehicles will be featured inside the core display area, with other vintage vehicles, muscle cars, hot rods, customs and exotics basking in (we can only hope) the sun along Valley Street and Eighth Avenue North. Those streets will be blocked off to facilitate undisturbed ogling of the automotive beauties.
Horrific news from London, and the cable channels stayed on it for hours. With the film clips constantly being replayed, and the talking heads scrambling for "news" bits, the scenario sucked the life out of any critical or compassionate thinking or feelings.And now, Sunday, the reporters are standing in gales waiting to bring minute-by-minute coverage of Hurricane Dennis. With the instant graphics and sound effects, these disasters become intense short stories. For 24 or 36 hours, all is focused on the narrow band of the story. I watch out of fascination, trying to make sense out of this aspect of our culture. Obviously it must make sense to the cable channel executives, for they would not be making these "short stories" if they were not vastly improving their financial bottom lines.
Metro, Sound Transit, monorails and streetcars, all consuming billions of our tax dollars. Can mass transit succeed in Seattle when the results range from a dismal failure to a qualified success in cities around the world?To find the answer, we have to look at mass transit and its competition.The commute to work statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation for metropolitan areas of more than one million people reveals that 76 percent of us drive alone to work, 12 percent car pool, 4.73 percent take public transportation and the balance walk, bike or work at home.This study includes New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston, all of which have public transportation systems. What makes us think that we will be any more successful in getting people out of their cars? The answer is that we may not unless we don't do something different.
Now that the warmer days of summer have finally visited the Northwest, it's nice to carry around a cooling, frozen treat to nibble on as you troll the sidewalks.Thoughts of Popsicles and ice cream bars always begin, for me, with childhood memories of my mother filling an ice-cube tray with Kool-Aid. She'd then insert a stick into each cube when it was still only half-frozen.Later, probably after she'd read one of her many mail-order catalogs, she found a rubber mold that she would fill with orange juice or some other healthy drink, and it would make four Popsicle-like bars at a time. I'm sure we didn't get store-bought Popsicles and ice cream bars until after we'd started school.
"We have met the enemy and he is us!"Those immortal - and all too true - words by the comic-strip swamp critter Pogo could be used to describe a bunch of goings-on in Washington state these days.Seattle monorail fiasco. The Mariners. The Sonics letting the Blazers steal coach Nate McMillan away (The Blazers!). Western Washington housing prices. The Joseph Edward Duncan III case.Of them all, perhaps the latter is the only one that could have been prevented. Duncan is the "sexual psychopath" who was arrested recently with the 8-year-old girl who is believed to be the only survivor of a multiple murder.
Some of the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas gets its unlikely start in a complex of buildings on Elliott Avenue West, where Greg Thompson Productions mounts a staggering number of music-revue shows and takes them on the road each year."Right now we have 11 shows out playing anywhere from four to 12 to 18 weeks, depending on their size," Thompson said of a schedule that typical includes roughly two dozen productions a year. Thompson Productions operates domestically, but it has also mounted shows in Europe; Japan; New Zealand; Branson, Mo.; and on Caribbean cruise ships.But there's more to the company than just sometimes-bawdy Vegas shows, stressed Greg, who lives with his singer wife, Sunny, in Lower Queen Anne. "People get the impression we produce those Las Vegas showgirl shows," he said. There's a certain irony there, according to Greg, because showgirl productions are only a small part of what the company does.For example, Thompson Productions is also responsible for the long-running "Dance on the Wind," an American Indian cultural show in Tillicum Village on Blake Island. The company is also involved in putting together a cultural-history show in Thailand, Greg added. "It's very elaborate, but it has nothing to do with showgirls."
Judging from the frequent applause, occasional boos, random groans and intermittent hisses that greeted the first batch of speakers, the large crowd at a July 5 public hearing over the monorail was divided fairly evenly between supporters and critics of the proposed transportation system.However, critics far outnumbered supporters among the initial 21 of 100 people who signed up to speak that Tuesday night at Ballard High School.Ironically, one of the critics was Dick Falkenbury, the former cab driver who came up with the monorail idea in the first place. Falkenbury has his own proposals to save the monorail (see sidebar), but others want to kill the project entirely.
Hang out with musketeers, mad Scots, ladies disguised as gentlemen and shipwrecked sailors on a magic island. That's right, the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival will make its return this weekend.Once again, Theater Schmeater, Wooden O, GreenStage, Young Shakespeare Workshop and Troupe du Jour are converging on Volunteer Park for a full weekend of entertainment. For even the most casual theatergoer, the weekend promises a lot of fun with the classics for audiences of all ages.
My last day in London, July 7, just happened to be the same as the first day of the G8 Summit. Neither my day nor the Summit's has gone according to plan. My plan was to go to the Ravenscourt Park station, get on the Underground and get off at the Russell Square station. I was looking forward to a second visit to the British Museum since my first one was much too short.However, I slept in a bit and dilly dallied around taking a bath, doing my e-mail and typing the order of service for Sunday at the Rainier Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation: I'm going to be the jet lagged service leader at Evensong. When I finally got to the Ravenscourt Park station, the gates were locked. There was a notice scribbled in crayon that the Underground was closed due to a "security alert" and advised people to take buses. So I went to the nearest bus stop and asked a man what buses I would need to take to get to Russell Square. "Madame, you cannot go to Russell Square this morning," he asserted. "That's in Central London. There are bombs going off all over Central London."