Last fall, the Seattle City Council earmarked $430,000 to go towards a public safety project within the East Precinct. (Of that total, $30,000 was specified to fund Randy Nelson's position as a case manager for homeless youth.) It was a one-time pot of gold - any project funded through this money would require a new funding source for 2005 and beyond. However, owing to a state Supreme Court decision regarding the way the city pays for street lights, the city finds itself roughly $6 million in the whole for this year's budget. As a result, there is a freeze on new projects, including the $430,000.
Nestled on the corner of North 40th Street and Bagley Avenue North in Wallingford, Irwin's café and neighborhood bakery is a welcome departure from the many coffee chains that have flooded Seattle's neighborhoods. Unlike Starbucks, Irwin's doesn't boast national (or even citywide) brand recognition or slick promotional materials. Most of the café's customers hear about it through word-of-mouth or by driving by the handpainted signs in the storefront windows that announce new specials.
In a community that has seen its fair share of homeless people wandering the streets, many Beacon Hill residents say they are divided on the upcoming arrival of Tent City III at El Centro de la Raza on Sept. 6. The migrating homeless encampment is scheduled to stay on the community center's property at 2524 16th Ave. S.. for three months.Share/Wheel, the organization running Tent City, describes itself as an organization for homeless people run by homeless people. It is managed and democratically self-governed, and has drawn up a strict code of conduct for Tent City where sobriety and non-violence are concerned.
Welcome to the tiny Ukrainian village of Kulyenchikov, in the mid-1800s. Leon, an excitable young schoolteacher, is answering an ad to come and teach in the village. The first person Leon meets is Something-something Snetsky. Snetsky is the town sheep loser (he can't seem to keep track of them, so he's not a sheep herder) and can't recall his first name because he is under the same curse as all Kulyenchikov residents, that of stupidity.
It is hard to imagine a simple game of soccer can bridge the differences of immigrants and peoples of foreign ancestry from 31 countries to create goodwill and solidarity, but South End resident Jessica Breznau never doubted such a result. Driven by a vision of unity, Breznau created Seattle's All Nations Cup (formerly know as World Cup Seattle) and proceeded to peacefully break down racial and ethnic barriers between Seattlites one game at a time.
One day last spring an e-mail was sent to the principal of Rainier Valley's Dunlap Elementary School from a man inquiring about a Mrs. Arntz, his third-grade teacher at Dunlap way back in 1953. What had become of her, he wondered. While no one at the school knew anything about her, it was clear that Mrs. Arntz lived on in the memory of the man who had sent the e-mail. Eventually this 60-year-old former student, now living in Los Gatos, California, became known to me and my class as Mr. Herman.
Youth in an opera singer doesn't automatically equal a lack of skill.A case in point is the lively and professional production that members of Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program are currently giving Mozart's frolicsome "Così fan tutte" at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center.
Classical ballet flowered in Russia in such institutions as the Imperial School of Ballet. George Balanchine (born Georgi Balanchivadze) left Russia and brought his Imperial School training to America. He founded the School of American Ballet in 1934 and, through his choreography and teaching, forever changed the look of ballet in this country.
Thai names are long. Try saying Kanittha Pinichwicha, for example. It doesn't roll off your tongue, does it? A simple tip for starters: the h in Kanittha is silent.Kanittha Pinichwicha moved to America for love. "It's a cute story," she prefaces.
Magnolia native and 1980 Queen Anne High School graduate Whitney Mason has developed a passion for networking in her new job. She had to. A major in the Marine Corps Reserves, Mason returned to Magnolia last summer as a "Hometown Link" for an ambitious new program that helps Marines find jobs when they return to civilian life. Called "Marine for Life," the program is Internet-based, and it touts military experience as a selling point for prospective employers.
In the early 1980s a group of motivated South Seattlites came together and created a memorial park for Martin Luther King Jr. between South Walker and South Bayview Streets. The 4.3-acre former vacant lot earnestly took shape as a public gathering place in 1984 with an initial investment of $130,000 from a city grant. Now, 20 years later, the city is again poised to fund improvements within the park.
At bar-time, as the Broadway pubs empty out onto the street, Capitol Hill bookstore Twice Sold Tales is still open - it's open all night every Friday. And as things quiet down on Broadway, as the hoots and shouts fade, and the last straggling bar-goers teeter off together into side-streets and cabs, business at the bookshop is just picking up. Inside, old-time jazz plays over the speakers and the cats - there are six of them - slink about their business.
In between the raindrops, the daffodils have bloomed and the tulips are all budding. Spring has finally begun to make its glorious presence known in the North-west. And, of course, along with spring comes Easter.Easter preparations, as usual, began at least a couple of weeks before the holiday itself. Easter clothes must be selected, a lily plant must be picked up for your grandmother and eggs must be dyed.
For many Capitol Hill coffee house habitués, Bauhaus Books & Coffee, 301 E. Pine St. is the place to be.But not if you intend to play chess. Last month Bauhaus banished the game from its premises.Bad behavior, says Bauhaus.
In an autumnal tradition - nay, ritual - now well embarked on its second quarter-century, Greg Olson is preparing to launch the fall season of film noir at the Seattle Art Museum.Film noir was an exotic term when the first University of Washington class on it was offered 31 years ago - so exotic that the people who had made the classics of the form, in the 1940s and '50s, didn't even know they were doing so. The name, best translated as dark film, was retroactively applied by critics and historians to a cycle of bleak, doom-ridden yet often weirdly voluptuous American thrillers and melodramas that got up to speed in the late years of World War II ("Double Indemnity," "Laura," "Out of the Past") and reached apotheosis with "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Touch of Evil" in the mid-late '50s.
When her memory takes her there, it's almost too real: the burning in her throat, the potent chemical odor, her own muffled cry. But what Wanda Louie recalls most is her utter fear of going into that water in the first place.
The Pike-Pine area has an unusual new gallery at 1530 Melrose Avenue, right next to the Bauhaus coffee shop. All of the paintings in the Warren Knapp Gallery have been created by owner Warren Knapp, and when you visit you are very likely to be dealing with the artist himself.
Five violation notices filed in May against the Seattle Country Day School have been sustained in part, modified in part or rescinded, according to an Aug. 27 decision issued by the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD).The private school had addressed four of the violations in one form or another this summer, according to the school's land-use attorney, Melody McCutcheon.But the remaining and potentially most devastating violation - one that would have capped school enrollment at 247 students and limited staff to 33 - has been completely shot down.
"There are two forces strong enough to change the world," said Nik Blosser, president of Celilo Group Media, a publishing and consulting firm dedicated to sustainable busi-ness. "One is war, and the other is the marketplace."Blosser, founder of the Chinook Book, a "green" coupon book celebrating its fourth year in Seattle, chose the marketplace to implement change. A compilation of Seattle's sustainable businesses, the Chinook Book features coupons for restaurants, health products, home improvement alternatives, recreation and gardening.
Last Dec. 6, Scott Cummins left his Magnolia home and headed for the community center to meet a group of 20 Ballard High School students. They were to prepare boxes of goods to be shipped to Uganda, in East Africa. Most of the Ballard High student body headed to Tacoma that day to watch their football team play in the state championships.
