While I've still got a few more years (thank goodness!) before my little ones reach their teen years, I'm somewhat daunted by the prospect of--what my mother often described as-- living with aliens under my roof. As a teen, I had to agree, only I thought I was the normal one and she was the alien. Knowing what I've put poor mom through during that time, I'd say I've got my work cut out for me! It's true that not all…
We were peddling up Wallingford Ave the other day, dragging our tow of delicious Essential Bakery dumpster-diver bread when we noticed this beauty towering over the sidewalk. The beauty we're referring to is the the piece of art, not the artist, Marvin Oliver, standing next to it (who's not bad-looking, mind you, but not as stunning as his work). The piece is suggestive of an oil drill, perhaps, pulling power and myth from the earth. The images on the side, we…
Let's say the economy is in the dumps. Let's say further that the real estate market has led the charge into said dumps. Now let's say that your job depends on real estate and development because you're, say, an architect. Suddenly, there's not so much architecting going on. What do you do? Well, if you're our friend and Wallingford resident Nicole Winn, you start making really, really good sandwiches. As a Senior Associate at Weber Thompson, one of Seattle's top architectural…
Its not very often that something new comes to a neighborhood and you immediately know it will stand the test of the time and become an iconic part of the streetscape. Last summer the Wallingford Boys & Girls Club gave us that when they constructed a community courtyard and commissioned Seattle glass artist Rodman Miller and metal artist Mimi Riley to build a fence along 45th St. Mimi, came up with the concept of 'storybook stream side". Out of her vision…
Every since Petosa Accordions (313 NE 45th St) shrank its footprint from the whole east side of its block on 45th to just a third of its size, we've been wondering what will fill the space. First came Puffin Glass on the corner, and just this weekend we spotted this sign in the remaining store front between Petosa's remaining frontage and Kate's Pub. Between Jae Hun Kim Tae Kwon Do across from Bartell's, the Modern Martial Arts Academy by 45th and…
Recently, we came across a giant puffball mushroom (Calvatia Gigantea), a tasty edible, growing here in Wallingford, over by Eastern and 42nd. Well, we were pretty sure it was a giant puffball, and not the deadly amanita, with which is occasionally confused, but just to make sure, we snapped a picture with our iPhone and sent it off to our friend Matt. Matt's response was as succinct as it was wise: "Never identify mushrooms via MMS". True dat. Perhaps we'd be…
(This Saturday, the Hash House Harriers, a group of "drinkers with a running problem", held their annual Red Dress Run, culminating in Gas Works Parks. Veteran Harrier and Wallyhood writer Patrick Shaw went along the job.) I sneaked out of the house with my red dress tucked up under my tee-shirt - my wife didn’t think that the new neighbors should see me sporting a spaghetti strap dress and running shoes this early in their tenure here in Wallingford! The Red…