The Seattle Parks Department is moving ahead with a plan to replace the Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool. In these days of social distancing they can’t hold the community meetings for input that would normally be a part of the Seattle Process. So they have posted a survey to their website to gather the opinions of neighbors.  (Follow the instructions to the “Online Open House.”) It can be quick, with just a few questions to answer, or you can take your time filling up the open comment boxes. This is our community center, so Wallingford needs to weigh …

Happening now, on Meridian Ave. Hopefully, coming soon to a street near you!

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Lids over freeways have become rather the norm around Seattle. The 520 bridge lid on Mercer Island is quite long and a shorter one is being built in the Montlake neighborhood. The Washington Department of Transportation has endorsed the idea of lids over I-5 and a study is currently underway studying a lid that would stretch from Denny Way to Madison St. We should be getting the report soon, but so far we have word that a lid is technically feasible, from an engineering standpoint. Several community meetings have been held on what should be located on that lid, with …

I remember about ten years back, a local vigilante group took it upon themselves to keep all the telephone poles along 45th Street free and clear of advertising. There was some considerable pushback from arts organizations that were relying on pole-based postering to get the word out about their musical or theatrical event (and, as this was right about the time that I had started Wallyhood, I can add “their blog” to that list.)

Over time, though, the vigilantes got tired of their fight, the poster pasters won out over the pole polishers, and for better or for worse, poles …

My favorite weekend unwinding is to hop on my bike and pedal somewhere I haven’t. I’m not a distance rider, I favor cotton to lycra, and my pedals have strapless toe cages rather than clip-ins. I don’t go for speed, but I also try not to shy away from a hill. I prefer small side streets to wide avenues, and my general strategy is that when I come to a cross-roads I’ve been to recently, I try to take whichever turn I didn’t the last time.

This approach has taken given me a good picture of the neighborhoods north of …

It was a strange day today: torrential rain in the morning battered the petals off the fruit blossoms in the morning, and then by mid-day, it was a clear blue sky. The wind came back for a visit, though, knocking down a tree at 40th and Eastern, which in turn took out power for most of Wallingford.

The initial outage map covered most of Wallingford into Green Lake, but people began reporting power coming back on over the next few hours. Just after 9:00 PM, the last bits seemed to clear up, and it seems they have everything restored as …

The new building going up on the corner of 45th and 1st, across from Dick’s, went up in flames early this morning, starting around 6 am. Jeff Garfield, owner of Bedrooms and More, shared  this photo of the blaze:

Fire trucks were still on the scene as of late afternoon, and the interior was a dripping, soggy mess.

According the Fire Department, the cause of the blaze is “still under investigation”. The building has been under active construction during the lockdown, from what I’ve seen, but there’s considerable graffiti visible on the upper floors, though, suggesting that people have been …