Buried in the midst of my Pride photos: my 12,000th photo uploaded to Flickr. Yeesh!
Another 8,000-some shots and I’ll have as many pictures on Flickr as I have tracks in iTunes.
Photowhore and musicwhore, that’s me!
So last night, about 5:30pm, as I’m working in Aperture, the power dies. Odd. Just us? Nope, the hallway lights were out too, so it was at least our whole building. I had to drop off the rent check anyway, so I grabbed it and wandered over to the manger’s office. On the way, I peeked in the front door of one of the other buildings and saw that their hallway lights were on, so it looked like it was just our building that had lost power.
When I got to the office, the on-site manager was trying to get a call in to City Light to let them know, but couldn’t get a chance, as her phone kept ringing with calls from people across the complex. These buildings are so old that they’re apparently wired semi-randomly across two city circuits, so while our entire building was out, the other buildings were half-out — one had power in the halls but not in the apartments, the one with the manager’s office had power in the office, but none in the halls, and so on. Prairie and I had actually run into this a couple years back in our original apartment here, when we lost power in half of our apartment. Weird stuff.
In any case, since they were calling City Light to figure out what was going on, I wandered back to the apartment and puttered around for a bit. I cleaned off my desk, went through my desk drawers and filled a garbage bag with old crap that I don’t need to move. Since the apartment was starting to get pretty muggy (no power means no fans), I wandered out to the pool to take a dip and cool off while waiting for the power to come back. After a while, though I was nicely waterlogged, nothing else had changed, so I got out and went to ask the managers if they had any word. “The only word you’ll get is when the power comes on,” they told me. “Is City Light even around?” I asked. “Around here? Naah. I think they’re poking around down in Lake City somewhere.” Great. Not encouraging.
Since the day was getting on, and Prairie normally e-mails me to let me know when she’s leaving work, I figured it’d be a good idea to let her know what was going on. I originally planned on walking down to the Panera at the Northgate Mall to use their WiFi, but then remembered that there was a Starbucks in the QFC a few blocks closer. I walked down there and stood outside to see if I could pick up a signal on my iPod, but while I couldn’t see one for Starbucks, there was an open network called ‘ampm’. Really? I tried to connect, but the signal was too weak. Curious, I went across the street to the AM/PM gas station, tried again…and connected! So, I sat my butt down underneath their sign, e-mailed Prairie, sent Ping.fm a note to update Twitter, LJ, and all other such things, and marveled at AM/PM having free open-access WiFi. Just in case you need to check your e-mail while you’re filling your tank, I guess. Weird. Weird, but very appreciated. On the walk home, I got caught in a thundershower — I’d been hearing occasional rumbles echoing across the sky, but just happened to be out when the rain started coming down. Big ol’ fat raindrops, too, so I as soaked as when I got out of the pool by the time I got home.
When Prairie came home, there still wasn’t power. We dug out our flashlights so they’d be ready when the evening got too dark to see and headed out to eat at Claire’s Pantry in Lake City (short review: good food, hit-and-miss service). When we got home, there were four City Light trucks in various places around our house, with at least one parked next to an open manhole cover, so it was obvious that they still hadn’t figured out what was going on. So, we lit a bunch of candles, each grabbed a book and a piece of chocolate fudge cake that we’d picked up on the way home, and had a very nice evening of dessert and reading by candlelight, listening as the thunder rolled across the sky from time to time. A bit before eleven, we decided it was time to crash. I put my book down, grabbed a flashlight, leaned over, blew out a candle…and the fan next to me spun up, the refrigerator motor kicked in, and the light in the office turned on. Just in time for bed!
What’s fascinating me is that the thunderstorm that started yesterday afternoon is still going on. I had to get up to use the restroom about forty minutes ago, and when I laid back down, there was a good sized thunderclap. A few moments later, I caught a flash of light through my eyelids, and just a few seconds later, another thunderclap hit — this one loud enough to wake Prairie up, too. She went back to sleep, but when the third thunderclap hit a few moments later, I realized that I was a bit too awake to get back to sleep (growing up in Anchorage, thunderstorms are a very rare event, so I get pretty exited by them). So here I am — it’s 6:15 in the morning, and I’m awake and blogging. Rain’s coming down outside the window, and the thunder is still coming in every couple minutes. Pretty cool.
I just hope I can get a nap before I head off to work this afternoon. 
Pride yesterday was a lot of fun. Every other year I’ve gone, I’ve shot from the sidelines, doing my best to get an overview of the entire parade and all the different groups. This year, I decided to try something different. A few weeks ago at the Mercury, 
dizzy88 recognized me from my Flickr account and suggested I ride along with the Goth Pride float and shoot for them this year. It sounded like a good plan to me, and definitely a different vantage point than I’d had before, so I decided to take that approach.
Prairie needed a day of rest, so she stayed home while I grabbed a bus downtown in the morning. Since the Goth Pride float was towards the end of the parade, I spent some time wandering up and down the staging area, grabbing shots of the various groups as they got ready to go. Once people near our group started moving, I hopped on board the truck, and rode the parade route from there, shooting the crowds to either side of the truck as we made our way along. Much fun, especially as the brakes on the truck were “either on or off,” so any acceleration or deceleration had a tendency to throw us all stumbling from one end of the truck bed to the other. No injuries, but a lot of laughs!
I’m a bit behind in my picture processing right now (I haven’t even gone through what I shot on Memorial Day yet), but I’m hoping to get to my shots later on this week sometime. In the meantime, midnytetragedy has posted her shots, and I’m sure other people will be posting theirs before too long.
It’s official — Prairie and I have a new apartment! We’d been keeping an eye on Craigslist over the past few months as I got closer to graduation, looking for places in the Kent/Des Moines area that fit what we were looking for: two or three bedrooms, two bathrooms, reserved parking, washer and dryer, and if at all possible, a pool (we’ve gotten quite spoiled by having a pool available here during the summer months). By Friday, we had a list of four places we wanted to check out, and we headed off to see how they compared to their on-paper representations.
(I was quite proud of myself for getting us all organized: on Thursday, I’d called the places, set up appointments at each, printed out their Craigslist listings, Google Maps directions from each to the next in order, and a little sheet of questions we wanted to be sure to ask, and stapled them all together into individual packets. As anyone who knows me can attest, this is not normal behavior for me!)
The first apartment was nice, but not quite as close as we wanted; the second apartment had gorgeous grounds, but the 2-bedrooms were too small, the 3-bedrooms too expensive, and it was right off a street that was pretty seedy (think Aurora in Seattle, or Mt. View in Anchorage) and didn’t feel safe; the fourth had a gorgeous view of the Kent valley and was a huge 2-bedroom layout that would have been our pick if we hadn’t already been through the third.
The third place ended up hitting all our “gotta have it” qualifications (3 bed, 2 bath, nice layout, washer/dryer in unit, assigned parking space), our “would be nice if” qualifications (third floor corner apartment available, fireplace, deck, good storage, swimming pool in the complex, right on the bus lines), plus a bunch of other goodies that sold us (nice location next to a golf course and park with lots of bike paths to go walking/skating/riding on, right next to the Green River, about five minute drive from Prairie’s workplace and my future school, exercise room, indoor racquetball court, and a decent neighborhood). Plus, they had fresh-baked cookies still warm from the oven for us! It’s pretty hard to say no to fresh-baked cookies. Ingenious!
After looking at all four choices, we had lunch, then went back to our favorite and put in our application. They called back yesterday to confirm that we were approved, so Prairie will be running over there during her lunch break today to drop off the security deposit and get the final details (official address so I can initiate the moving process with Speakeasy, the actual move-in date, and so on).
One interesting side effect is that this means that after seven years, I’ll be moving out of Seattle. Admittedly, not very far out of Seattle — the Kent-to-Downtown-Seattle drive is only a few minutes longer than the Northgate-to-Downtown-Seattle drive — but still, I’ll no longer have a Seattle address. Something of a milestone there.
More details of the move and all will be posted as things progress, but we should be all moved over in roughly three weeks or so.
…is perfectly legal. Not that this should be a big surprise, but after the City of Seattle settled a lawsuit with a photographer last year to the tune of $8,000, the Seattle Police Department is clarifying its policies.
The Seattle Police Department this week plans to issue a new policy clarifying when bystanders are within their rights to observe and document officer conduct and when they’re interfering with officers’ law enforcement duties, a department official told the City Council’s Public Safety Committee during a briefing Tuesday.
The new policy clearly reminds officers that bystanders have a right to watch or film officers making an arrest, as long as they don’t interfere or threaten their safety….
It also emphasizes that police can’t simply seize someone’s camera for video evidence without cause or court order and suggests alternative means of negotiating with the witness.
(via Seattlest)
About a week and a half ago, six teams of people with dance in their souls — if not their soles — gathered together for a battle royale at Dance Off 2007.
If you were there, you know the pure awesomeness of the spectacle. If you weren’t there (foolish mortal), then at least I can offer this photographic record of the event.
Truly, such fleetfooted feats (feets?) shall never grace a stage again.
Until next year, of course.
Reprinted in full from the Slog because it freaked me out: You think the Minnesota bridge was bad?
So you know how all those news stories about the Minneapolis bridge collapse have highlighted the fact that the bridge received a ranking of just 50 percent on a federal scale of 1 to 100, making it “structurally deficient”?
The central portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct was ranked on the same scale. Its score: Nine percent. And if that doesn’t make you want to stay away from the viaduct until they tear the damn thing down, perhaps knowing that the National Bridge Inventory (which provided the Minnesota number) considers it “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action,” will. (Fun bonus fact: The 520 bridge across Lake Washington received a rating of 44.8 percent, just meeting the “minimum tolerable limit to be left in place as is.”)
Gah. Freaky. I didn’t like the viaduct before all this stuff. I’m even less fond of it now. Just tear the fool thing down (and don’t rebuild it, and don’t dig some stupid tunnel…as long as we’re going to have to move to surface streets eventually no matter what happens to the viaduct, we might as well just stick with that option and do it right).
Can’t keep all the various options or points of view on Seattle’s ongoing “what do we do about the Viaduct” battle straight? Here’s a handy-dandy guide to the various species involved, thanks to SLOG reader ‘Golob’.
On March 13, vote NO and NO. Seattle citizens have been offered two unacceptable options for replacing the Viaduct: a hideous elevated structure that will be taller than the existing one and 50% - 200% wider, or a late-breaking, financially questionable “tunnel lite” option. Seattle can do better, and telling leaders neither on this non-binding advisory ballot makes that point clear. Vote NO and NO.
This is an all-mail election. The last day to postmark your ballot is Tuesday, March 13. King County will be mailing ballots to voters starting on Wednesday, February 21. There are two separate questions on this advisory ballot. Vote NO and NO.
(via Metroblogging Seattle)
Nice rant on Metroblogging Seattle yesterday regarding the ongoing, neverending mess of a fight between Greg “Big Dig Seattle” Nickels, Christine “Viaduct? Vhy not a duck?” Gregoire, and the people of Seattle who just want this all over with…
But let me tell you anyway what I think, because damn it, I’m a Seattleite and I’m going to give you my opinion because I demand to be heard.
- Tear the goddamned viaduct down.
- Do all the multimodal work you should have done decades ago to hook the working port and industrial areas into rail and road.
- Make Alaskan Way into something like the Embarcadeo — with the Benson streetcar running down the middle of the boulevard, parking lots replaced with public parks, and a no-new-construction zone on the waterfront keeping Martin Selig and those other condo-building town destroyers from ripping down all that historic architecture.
- Lean on the state to fix traffic flow on southbound I-5 so I can get to the airport. You know, like MOVE THE DAMN 520 ONRAMP TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD SO WE CAN STOP THIS DAMN MERCER WEAVE CRAP. Or fixing it so there’s MORE THAN ONE TRAVEL LANE THROUGH DOWNTOWN. The state can do this, and it will be CHEAPER than the $15 billion the tunnel’s now going to cost because Tim “when I was a third-grader I never learned how to carry a one” Ceis didn’t know that CONCRETE ISN’T BROUGHT TO CONTRACTORS BY THE MAGIC BUILDING MATERIALS FAIRY WHEN THEY LEAVE A PIECE OF BRICK UNDER THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT.
Looks like Dan Savage agrees.
Given that I think the Viaduct is ugly and intrusive enough as it is, and don’t really want to see a bigger one (good summary here, and that it seems like Seattle getting its own version of the Big Dig (and, apparently, a more dangerous version) seems pretty stupid, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for just getting rid of the Viaduct and moving everything onto the street. Sure, not easy, and will take some serious rearranging. But from what I’ve been reading, it sure seems to be cheaper, safer, and a lot more visually attractive once all’s said and done. Besides, as many have pointed out, that’s the option we’re going to have no matter what during Viaduct removal, rebuilding, or tunnel digging — so why not just commit to it as a permanent measure and do it right?
The Sonics — who used to be the Seattle Sonics until Seattle voters passed Initiative 91, “which prohibited the city from using tax dollars to subsidize a pro team unless the subsidy generates a certain profit for the city,” and are now searching for another city to house them — want to build a $530 million dollar arena…and they want taxpayers to pony up for $300 million of it.
The Sonics can kiss off, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve always been flabbergasted at the amount of money poured into professional sports, and especially the amount of money thrown at professional athletes. It just makes my head hurt when those people in charge of such things then ask that the public — many of whom couldn’t give two figs for professional sports in general, let alone any particular team — essentially be required to pay to support them.
You want $300 million of my tax dollars? Put it towards education. Put it towards actually doing something to improve transit in Seattle, instead of half-assing your way through a series of stopgap measures, or instead of bickering about what to do for so long (or stubbornly insisting on ridiculous, expensive, impractical options, like the [thankfully, now dead] tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct) that nothing ever gets done. Put the money towards something — or anything — that would actually benefit everyone, not just those who get their rocks off by watching other people play a game.
At about 3:30 Saturday morning, as the rave at Capitol Hill Arts Center (CHAC) was winding down, the young people who lived at 2112 East Republican Street scanned the dance floor for people they could invite to their afterparty. They made a habit of welcoming strangers—it’s how they had all met one another in the first place. They had almost finished with the invitations when Jeremy Martin, 26, spotted a hulking, solitary figure.
“Go ask him,” Jeremy said to his best friend, Anthony Moulton.
Another person who lived at the home, 24-year-old Jesiah Martin (no relation to Jeremy), remembers having seen the man that night—conspicuous not just for his 6’5” 280-pound frame but for the fact that he wasn’t dressed up or dancing. “He was by himself mostly, fly on the wall style,” said Jesiah.
Anthony, who is disarmingly goofy in the way of most in their group, approached the man and said, “Do you know the difference between Scotch and beer?” Most at the party were drinking beer, but Anthony handed the man a flask full of Macallan. The man took a swig and grimaced. But he liked it. He even smiled, leading Anthony to say, “Hey, what are you doing after this? We have half a keg at our place…”
And that is how Kyle Huff came to visit the house on East Republican Street.
I’ve mentioned before that The Stranger has been consistently doing the best reporting on the Capitol Hill shooting. They continue with this feature story on the events of the night.
All but the shotgun were recovered from Aaron Kyle Huff’s truck after the massacre on Capitol Hill; the shotgun is one similar to the one Huff used during the shooting. Not pictured is Huff’s semi-automatic handgun, also used in the attack.
All legal to own.
For God’s sake, why?!?
NRA members and “right to bear arms” wingnuts, feel free to brand me as a gun-control nut. I’m fine with that.
There is NO good reason why this sort of weaponry (specifically, the assault rifle and pistol-grip pump action shotgun…obviously, it’s a bit hard to get worked up over a baseball bat, and while I personally find a two foot machete pretty damn creepy, it’s nowhere near the same league as the guns) needs to be openly available to the general public. You want to hunt? Fine, hunt. Buy a hunting rifle and go slaughter as many deer as you want. But this kind of stuff?
Seattle Chief of Police Gil Kerlikowske has it right:
As many as 30 people were in the house when the man approached, draped in bandoliers of ammunition and armed with a handgun and a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun — a weapon Kerlikowske pointedly said was “not for hunting purposes, but for hunting people.”
What actually happened was bad enough. It makes me ill to consider what could have happened if a police officer hadn’t been in the area and on the scene after only five minutes of shooting.
So sad and terrifying.
Word came out this week that Seattle’s Northgate Mall was finally going to be getting an upgrade, part of which is going to involve demolishing the Medical Office Building and the Northgate Theatre that have long stood empty and unused.
Since I had some time to kill yesterday, I wandered down to the Northgate Mall and spent some time wandering around the old buildings. I was able to shoot my way around about three quarters of the soon-to-be-demolished buildings before mall security took noticed and asked me to stop. To their credit, the guy that spoke to me was very polite, just letting me know that the mall didn’t allow photography on mall property, and told me that I’d be welcome to take photographs from the street if I wished.
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