Category — Odds and Ends

SaferFremont.blogspot.com writes about the Fremont neighborhood’s efforts to improve traffic safety and reduce crime.

Hmmm…I think I know who is stealing those VW beetles.

One of the hardest things for a neighborhood to convey to the city how a proposed development would fit into the neighborhood. Architects are able to convey their vision of this in early design review by showing professionally produced mock-ups of the development as it would fit into the neighborhood. And if you’ve ever seen one of these mock-ups, you know they always look really good.

Now, consider what the neighbors produce - they talk about the neighborhood and what the development will mean to the area - but generally have a hard time showing what it will look like.

However, there is one new tool called Photosynth that could be used to tie photos of a property together to show just how dynamic the location is.

I went ahead and took photos of a property on the corner of 86th and 35th to show what stitching photos together can produce. In this case you can slide along two sides of a building at a variety of different angles.

Think about the cool uses of this, you could show the entire grove of trees at Ingraham High, or all four crossings at a dangerous intersection.

I’m going to add some more of these photos of different projects over the next few days, and if you add any, feel free to let me know.

I guess I should probably put an out-of-blog message up the next time I take some time off from the blog.

So what did I miss?

I swear a candidate could put up a serious challenge to Mayor Nickels by promising to build sidewalks in Seattle. Here’s a great article in the PI about how convoluted the current process is.

Trees killed on the Burke Gilman, how messed up is that?

How’s this for the mayor standing up to his public pronouncements about tree preservation, city lawyers actually prevented the mayor’s statements on tree preservation from being used in Maple Leaf’s challenge to the Waldo Woods development. So, we now know how much his thoughts on trees are worth.

And on the topic of trees, isn’t funny that whenever a tree comes down someone says not to worry because it’s being replaced by 2-3 trees. With the fact that Seattle’s tree canopy has diminished from 40 percent to 18 percent since 1970, you’ve just got to ask, where exactly are those replacement trees being planted?

And, Fort Lawton redevelopment hearings took place this week - I was actually shocked to see the Thursday forum being broadcast live on the Seattle Channel - isn’t the Seattle Channel supposed to focus on giving work to minor Seattle TV celebs, and not on actually showing city meetings?

You’d be surprised how cool an older adobe in New Mexico can be. Nice thick walls, verandas and shady courtyards help keep you cool in summer…

(photos from ohjoy.org)

Or I could see myself in this pool…

Kudos to the Save the Trees team, you’ve done a great job of working the system to make sure things are done according to the system.

Next step - August 25th for a temporary injunction.

You can get the entire update over at Save the Trees about Seattle School District’s decision to cut down Ingraham High trees, and the temporary restraining order Save the Trees filed that will be heard at 3pm today.

Breaking News – Press Advisory

The Seattle School District has just informed Keith Scully, the attorney for Save the Trees, that they will not halt their decision to cut down the trees at Ingraham High School while the environmental issues are being reviewed by the King County Superior Court. A hearing has been set for Sept 2, 2008 but the Seattle School District intends to ignore it and proceed with cutting down the trees this Friday, August 15, 2008.

Keith Scully will be filing a request for a temporary restraining order before the King County Superior Court at 516 Third Ave in Seattle before the Ex Parte division at 11:30 this morning

You can check at the front desk for the location of the hearing.

The Seattle School Board obviously decided last night in their special executive session to ignore the unresolved legal issues and also the position of Mayor Nickels, the Seattle City Council, many Seattle citizens and neighbors opposing cutting down the trees at Ingraham. The School District is opposing letting this issue be resolved on its merits through a court of law and has decided instead to use the chain saw to just get its way.

A friend gave me a heads up about ‘The Blog Readability Test’, a site that analyzes your blog and then grades it according to what level of education is required to understand your blog.

Here’s what the site had to say about Smarter Neighbors - ‘Oy! perhaps I need to start putting that grammar checking option to use more often.’ 

But let’s see - how did some other local blogs around the area do?

WestSeattleBlog.com

MyBallard.com

Rainier Valley Post

CHS Capitol Hill

The Southlake

HugeAssCity

And last but not least, the smartest neighborhood blogs in town.
Pinehurst Community Seattle

Blogging Georgetown

Movie Reviews

Here it is, your visual guide to bagging your own groceries. 

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels Bagging Groceries

I always thought this would be a funny way to tackle taggers.

Kind of cool photos from MOHAI, makes you think what would Seattle be like now without I-5. Or if the I-5 had instead been a rail corridor.

These freeway opponents lost their fight - but you’ve got to give them points for protesting stylishly.

I moved into the city of Seattle back in 1994 - and was paying $400 a month (but it was alot for me at first because I was making about $18k-$20k a year when I moved in) for a first floor studio+ unit up on Queen Anne. Features included:

• Heat, but no air conditioning
• Sink, but no dishwasher
• Laundry room downstairs
• It did have a real refrigerator
• Limited underground garage parking - but it was an extra cost
• Easy access to Seattle Center and bus routes 
• Electricity not included - but sewer/water/heat were

What were you paying when you moved to Seattle? 

(Here’s a photo of my old apartment building).  

Do you think the city will hold a competition soliciting designs for the reusable city-issued bags they’ll be handing out at the end of the year? I really hope so, because here’s my submission.

(Wanna have fun and design your own bag - you can make your own over at CafePress).

Dan’s tour of Medfield, MA is over, welcome back to Seatown! 

And just in time too, we need Hugeasscity to keep protecting us from architectural critiques like this one that The Stranger keeps publishing.

It’s always good to see a developer follow-up with a public response to questions and make themselves available to meet with anyone who has questions. (FYI - I’m not commenting on this particular topic - just how it’s being handled). And it’s great for folks in West Seattle that they have a publication which encourages neighborhood discussion.

Hey, I just want to say I’m chill with the car free Sundays. Streets are closed in cities all over the world for events, markets, etc… - when I lived in Tokyo my favorite memories are from those days when the city closed down blocks of roads to traffic and merchants set up shop all over the place.  (Note to readers - $4 polo shirts that you buy on the street don’t hold up so well to washing, drying, and even just wearing for an entire day)  

I don’t even think of this as some kind of heavy handed decision by the city (because it seems like they are trying to create something fun), it just seemed like…well…a surprise.

And I think that some of the outcry you see is a response to the city’s somewhat preachy way of announcing new things - where it’s hard to tell the difference between when they’re really trying to do something fun, or if they’re just being patronizing. 

So, since I don’t live near any of these car free Sundays, and it’d be kind of weird to drive there, the only way this impacts me is that I’ve got a few questions. 

• None of the car free Sundays are in North Seattle? Could this be because the mayor doesn’t really know that there is a good chunk of Seattle that actually exists north of the UW, or is this because North Seattle might have fought this tooth and nail?
• With the cars gone, will Critical Mass show up to chase off the pedestrians?
• If the car free neighborhoods had known about this sooner, could have planned for some kind of cool block parties those days - and applied for Neighborhood Matching Funds to help pay for it?
• And what if it rains?

Hopefully notes are being taken here, so that if it works it can be extended out further next year (Maybe even shutting down I5? We could party on the ship canal express lanes!)