Beginning this year, Seattle Public Utilities will commence work on the Ship Canal Water Quality Project. The project will involve construction of a tunnel from Ballard to Wallingford with the ultimate goal of preventing sewage overflows into Puget Sound. While tunneling has yet to begin, the first step of the project, in our neighborhood, was taken late last year with the installation of a temporary and hard-to-find art exhibit at the Wallingford end of the tunnel. More on that later.

Over in Ballard near 24th Ave NW and Shilshole Ave NW, some work actually began in 2018 to prepare to …

Lincoln High School will host an Open House and Information Night for prospective students for the 2020-2021 school year on Thursday, January 16 at 7:00 p.m.  The evening will start with a brief presentation in the Lincoln Auditorium from 7 to 7:45 p.m. 

From 7:50 to 8:10 OR 8:15 to 8:35 attendees will an opportunity to learn more about the various after school programs/clubs, athletics, and other organizations that enrich the life of Lynx students at a mixer in the gym OR go on a self-guided tour of the building and visit the various academic departments at Lincoln (math, science, …

Once again this year, I’m rounding up the top ten stories from the past year ordered, as always, by unique page views. No single story walked away with the top spot by racking up tens of thousands of views; all the top posts received a few thousand views which is typical of a post on this site. Excluded are forum posts created by you, the readers. These can sometimes garner two or three thousand views, but while I’ve always limited the top ten list to actual articles, this year the forums have been unavailable for the past few months while …

I just learned from Kimberly Christensen that the neighborhood has a tradition of wassailing to bless the apple trees.  It appears to have been working well as the trees continue to produce fruit for City Harvest.  This Saturday you can join in the wassailing and add to next year’s harvest.  The details from Kimberly follow:

Wallingford’s own Sound and Fury Morris Dancers invite you to Meridian Park on Saturday, January 11, to Wassail the apple trees.

Wassailing is an English tradition in which a community’s apple trees are blessed through singing, dancing and the scaring away of malevolent spirits. Wassails …

I frequently see people in the neighborhood that are clearly in need of assistance, but calling the police feels like a disproportionate response. There is no crime occurring and no immediate threat is present. For example, a few mornings ago there was a man moving erratically and moaning  in the crosswalk by QFC on Wallingford Ave.  He was clearly in need of aid, and standing in the middle of Wallingford Ave in the dark wearing black clothes.   Very little good was going to come from this situation without external intervention.  I tried to talk with him and get him out …

A Friend of Wallyhood emailed us photos of a van fire that happened near the Wallingford Playfield earlier today. If you heard the Fire Department responding around that time, now you know what was up.

The fire took place around 11 am. No one appeared to be in or even around the van at the time of the fire, so there were no injuries. It may, of course, be a stolen and abandoned vehicle, but it appeared to be in pretty good shape (pre-fire, anyway). So maybe someone will be returning to it to get a nasty surprise. SFD left …