Tag Archives: red apple

Red Apple celebrates lottery success with free cake

Photo by Wendi Dunlap.
The Hilltop Red Apple Market on Beacon Avenue South will host a customer appreciation celebration tomorrow, September 20, at 11 a.m. to celebrate being named as the Washington’s Lottery Seattle-area Retailer of the Year. There will be free cake for Red Apple customers, along with lottery promotions. Lottery representatives will present the store with a plaque and a $500 check.

The Red Apple has a high volume of lottery ticket sales, and has sold a lot of winning tickets. Last year, the store sold 14 winning tickets worth $1,000 or more.

Egg hunts this Saturday

Red Apple window art for Easter Egg Hunt

This coming Saturday, April 3rd, the Hilltop Red Apple is having their “1st Annual” Easter Egg Hunt at 9am. Stop by the store at Beacon and Lander across from the light rail station or call 206-323-1325 for more details.

An hour later, Jefferson Community Center and Van Asselt Community Center are hosting “Spring” Egg Hunts at 10am Saturday morning:

Bring a basket or a bag to gather up goodies at our Spring Egg Hunt! All children 10 years of age and younger are welcomed to the hunt. Come rain or shine! A pancake breakfast will follow the egg hunt. The cost is $1 per person or $5 per family.

Jefferson Community Center is located at 3801 Beacon Ave S and Van Asselt Community Center is located at 2820 S Myrtle St.

A photographic look back at 2009 on Beacon Hill

During the last year, many of you have contributed amazing photos to the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr. The photos you see here today were chosen from the nearly 700 photos that were taken and posted in the photo pool during 2009. Some were chosen because of their photographic beauty; others, because they captured newsworthy moments on the Hill. Some of these we’ve published before, and some we haven’t.

We would like to thank all of our wonderful Beacon Hill photographers for posting photos to the pool and their generosity in allowing us to share them with you. We hope you enjoy this look back at 2009. Happy New Year!

A foggy morning at Beacon Hill Playfield in January. Photo by Bridget Christian.
Enjoying the horsie ride at the Red Apple. Photo by melissajonas.
Keeping cool in a Beacon Hill condo pool, late July. Photo by Bridget Christian.
A door opened in the July heat at Kusina Filipina. Photo by l0st2.
Waiting to try the new light rail train on opening weekend at Beacon Hill Station. Photo by Jason.
Continue reading A photographic look back at 2009 on Beacon Hill

Beacon Bits: Grocery stores, town halls, and a song

A new Grocery Outlet is coming to nearby SoDo. Photo by Jason.
A new Grocery Outlet is coming to nearby SoDo. Photo by Jason.
The Grocery Outlet just off Rainier Avenue, next to the Mount Baker train station, didn’t survive long enough to see the station open. It closed last year, its business hampered by ongoing station construction right in front of its parking lot.

Fans of Grocery Outlet shopping will soon have another nearby option, however, with a new store opening in the former state liquor store site on Fourth Avenue South in SoDo. The new site is not as convenient to pedestrians as the old one, however; the nearest Link station, instead of being right next door, is about a half-mile walk around a huge block and part of the Metro bus base.

* * *

Mayor-elect McGinn is hosting three town halls this week to hear your thoughts and ideas about the future of the city. Two of the town halls are reasonably close to us here on Beacon Hill.

These are the locations:

Northgate Community Center, 10510 5th Avenue Northeast
7:00 pm, Monday, November 30

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, 104 17th Avenue South
7:00 pm, Tuesday, December 1

Paul Robeson Performing Arts Center At Rainier Beach High School, 8815 Seward Park Avenue South
7:00 pm, Wednesday, December 2

* * *

Beacon Hill’s Helladope had KEXP’s song of the day last Monday with “Just So You Know.”

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Did you deep-fry your Thanksgiving turkey? Still wondering what to do with all that excess cooking oil? Red Apple has joined with Standard Biodiesel to collect your used turkey fryer oil. Standard will donate money to Children’s Hospital for each gallon collected. Please contact the store before bringing in your oil; instructions are in the link above.
Thanks to the P-I’s Big Blog!

Open post: Ideas for coping with the heat

A real frosty pitcher of beer. While the ice just waters down the beer and the extreme cold kills the taste, it looks rather inviting nonetheless. Photo by Ubi Desperare Nescio.
A real frosty pitcher of beer. While the ice just waters down the beer and the extreme cold kills the taste, it looks rather inviting nonetheless. Photo by Ubi Desperare Nescio.
The heat is getting to our computer equipment, even. Wendi’s monitor is flickering on and off (mostly off), my little cheap netbook has locked up several times, and the oppressive heat doesn’t make the prospect of sitting with the laptop terribly attractive either.

If you’re not lucky enough to have air conditioning, or if you’re getting a bit stir-crazy being trapped at home by your A/C, what are some places to head to, easily accessible from the hill, where you can hang out for a bit in a cooler atmosphere?

The Beacon Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library has air conditioning. Seventeen branches do. (I’m so sorry, Columbia City — sounds like your A/C-less branch might even be closed today!)

Wandering around inside Red Apple is refreshing, particularly near meats and in the frozen food aisle, lazily pondering which frozen fudge bar or ice cream sandwich would be best, but mostly chilling in the flood of cold air while standing there with the freezer door open.

Last night, we wanted to get out and get a meal somewhere cool with good food and drinks. I recalled the Collins Pub is just a half-block from the Pioneer Square tunnel station. A few blocks walk and we were in the elevator at Beacon Hill station. Once on the platform, it was a very pleasant temperature. A few minutes later, the air conditioned train stopped and we made our way to the Pioneer Square station and then up, out of the 3rd & Yesler entrance. Downhill and around the corner of the Smith Tower and we were at the comfortably cool Collins Pub. (I had a burger, impulsively with Field Roast instead of beef, with fries and tartar sauce. The burger was good, and the fries great. Wendi had a polenta dish with zucchini, broccoli, and a rustic tomato sauce. The polenta was good. The tomato sauce was a bit acid-y, and the broccoli was a surprise — Wendi hates broccoli. Luckily, I love it. Collins Pub offers a good selection of interesting craft beers. I had a pint of 21st Amendment‘s “Hell or High Watermelon Wheat” — surprisingly tasty and refreshing — and one of Ninkasi‘s “Radiant Summer Pale”, which grew on me the lower it got in the glass.)

What we’d like to know is: Where are you going and what are you doing to beat the heat?

Zipcar abandons Beacon Hill; suggests we walk to Judkins Park instead

Zipcar is zipping away from Beacon Hill. Photo by Andrew Currie.
Zipcar is zipping away from Beacon Hill. Photo by Andrew Currie.
Some months ago, Erica C. Barnett of The Stranger noted concerns that Zipcar, the company that consumed the much-loved Flexcar, would slash service in Seattle as they have already done in LA and San Diego.

There was reason to be concerned. Beacon Hill is about to lose its only Zipcar site on top of the hill, as well as the nearby site at 29th and Columbian Way. Zipcar members recently received this email:

“The Zipcar location at Beacon Ave S/Lander St is being closed December 31, 2008, but have no fear — there’s a Zipcar located just down the street at S Charles St/Hiawatha Place.”

Just down the street? That’s a long walk for Beaconians, roughly 1.4 miles. See the map below, in which doomed Zipcar sites are marked in red, and the remaining site at Charles and Hiawatha is marked in green:


View Larger Map

Zipcar’s website currently does not mention that these sites are going away, so some folks might have planned Zipcar memberships as Christmas gifts, only to find that their local Zipcar will be gone after New Year’s Eve.

This change seems extremely short-sighted, given the forthcoming opening of the Beacon Hill light rail station across the street from the Beacon/Lander Zipcar (which is currently in the Red Apple parking lot), and the Columbia City light rail station a block or two away from the Columbian/29th Zipcar. The locations would seem to be ideal for use in conjunction with transit.

You can tell Zipcar what you think by writing their Seattle General Manager, Carla Archambault, at Zipcar, 380 Union Street, Seattle, WA 98101; phoning 206-323-3539, or faxing 206-682-1657. The email address they give is company-wide (not just Seattle) so it may not be useful, but it is info@zipcar.com.

A Beacon Hill autumn in pictures

We’ve seen a lot of great photos of Beacon Hill lately. Here are some interesting autumnal views of the Hill. (Most of these, but not all, are from the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr, which welcomes your Beacon Hill photos!)

Photo by Matthew Rutledge.
Equality sculpture in Sturgus Park. Photo by Matthew Rutledge.
Mushrooms near Cheasty. Photo by Mahalie Stackpole.
Mushrooms near Cheasty. Photo by Mahalie Stackpole.

Several more cool photos, after the jump!
Continue reading A Beacon Hill autumn in pictures