Bourbon Bar Night and Beacon Hill resident discount at Culinary Communion

Bourbon photo by Tom Parrott.
Bourbon photo by Tom Parrott.
Culinary Communion is hosting a Bourbon Bar Night tomorrow, Friday, February 6 from 9:00 -11:00 pm. Here’s what they tell us:

“After our Bourbon Tasting class, we’ll open up to the public and have our first bar night serving bourbon elixirs from $8 each and wine by glass for $5. We’ll offer a sampling of appetizers, as well.”

They would also like to announce a Beacon Hill Resident discount for their hands-on cooking classes. To get the 10% discount, use promo code BHN10 when calling the office to register for a class. The Culinary Communion house is located at 2524 Beacon Avenue South, and their phone number is 206-284-8687.

The Swinery’s supposed shortcuts

Rebekah Denn at Devouring sEATtle follows up on her previous article about the surprise and sudden shutdown of fledgling cured meat emporium The Swinery. Getting the story from the Seattle and King County Public Health department, it sounds like a series of straight-ahead permitting problems, for both the sale and previous production of the meats. A hearing is set for today.

Additionally, the article has attracted plenty of anonymous grousing about proprietor Gabriel Claycamp and Culinary Communion. Take appropriate anonymous-internet-commenter precautions when reading.

Check out the article hosted by the P-I.

Zipcar wants to be friends

Photo by John Manoogian III.
Photo by John Manoogian III.
Zipcar, who jilted Beacon Hill recently, will be making two announcements today: one, a car sharing partnership with the City of Seattle, and the other, the grand opening of a new storefront-type office at 380 Union Street downtown. We’re told there will be an open house from 9:00 – 5:00, where you can join Zipcar for no annual fee, win driving credit and swag, and eat Zipcar’s free snacks.

However, there is no indication yet that Zipcar will be serving Beacon Hill again, so it’s unclear where Beaconians would actually be using the driving credit. Seems like a good opportunity to tell them what you think about the abandonment of the Hill, while eating their free food. Score!

Edited to add: The partnership with the City of Seattle is apparently free Zipcar for city employees.

Beacon Bits: Transit, tiles, eagles, and an Eagle sports legend

This eagle's in the Arboretum, but maybe one will visit the Hill. Photo by Steve Voght.
This eagle's in the Arboretum, but maybe one will visit the Hill. Photo by Steve Voght.

Broadstripe cable TV & internet provider files for bankruptcy protection

Broadstripe (formerly Millennium Digital Media), cable television, internet, and telephone provider for a large portion of Beacon Hill, the entire Central Area, and parts of Capitol Hill and Queen Anne (inside the dashed red lines), has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The City of Seattle Office of Cable Communications notes:

The local Broadstripe office confirmed the filing and will send us formal notification. We will meet with them as soon as is feasible. Broadstripe also confirmed its commitment to continue providing service to Seattle customers with no interruptions during the financial restructuring. We will monitor customer calls to the Cable Office to confirm that service does not suffer.

This action was apparently taken back at the beginning of January, according to the city website.

I wonder if this might light a fire under the development of a municipal cable or fiber deployment like Tacoma has with their Click! Network. A city task force concluded in 2005 that “in order to remain competitive, Seattle needs fiber-optic lines to the home.” As of last spring, the city was still looking for a partner to help build and run such a system.

Local restaurant health inspection results posted online

The King County health department restaurant inspectors recently made a tour through North Beacon Hill, visiting some of our favorite establishments. No one failed an inspection, though a few restaurants did have some violation points. Most violations were relatively minor. Curious? Click through to the results for Galaxie/Victrola, Chinatown Café (in the Red Apple), El Centro de la Raza, El Quetzal, Beacon Pub, Kimball Elementary School (no violation points at all!), and Kusina Filipina.

This page lists the food establishments in the 98144 area code. As you can see by browsing through them, most restaurants have a few points against them, so don’t take the presence of a few points as an indication you shouldn’t eat in a particular restaurant.

When we visited London recently, we noticed the “Scores on the Doors” program, in which restaurants had stickers in their front windows touting their recent inspection results. This would be a great idea here, wouldn’t it?

Seattle Times: What Mid-Beacon Hill?

The Seattle Times posted a “Neighborhood of the Week” article about South Beacon Hill, touting its affordability, diversity, closeness to Georgetown and Columbia City, and mentioning places like Lockmore and Cleveland High School — hey, wait a minute! Those locations are about as Mid-Beacon as you get. Apparently, to the Times, anything south of Jefferson Park is South Beacon Hill. Folks who live there, particularly in Lockmore, do you think of where you live as South Beacon?