Your tin can lantern might look like this. Photo by Elin B.SEEDarts is hosting the South Seattle Solstice: Festival of Lights at 4:30 pm on December 21. Participants, carrying lit luminaria, will walk from the Rainier Valley Cultural Center in Columbia City to Hillman City, with an event at the end of the walk to “celebrate community on the darkest day of the year, with light, music and refreshments.”
Don’t have a lantern to carry? Fear not. This Saturday is a free lantern-making workshop to prepare for the solstice event. Bring a large tin can that has been filled with water and frozen solid. (Rumor has it, it’s going to be cold this weekend. The freezing part might be easy.) The workshop is open to all ages, and it’s from 10:00 am – 1:00 pm at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 South Alaska Street.
For more information about this event, contact Abbey Norris, Public Art Manager, norris@seedseattle.org, (206) 760-4289.
The full City Council has approved the streetcar expansion plan. This could be useful to us on Beacon Hill, as we’ll be easily able to transfer from light rail to lines such as the line to Capitol Hill from the International District. The light rail will eventually go to Capitol Hill, too, but the streetcar will be done sooner. (But if it’s not going to be faster than the bus, I won’t be happy. Dedicated lane, please.) — Seattle Transit Blog
On December 6th at approximately 11:30 P.M., multiple units from the South Precinct responded to a large disturbance involving over 150 juveniles at a event in the 7000 Block of 32 Avenue South. … A short time later, officers responded to Harborview Medical Center where a gunshot victim had been taken. The victim stated he had been shot in the 4600 block of S. Othello and gave a suspect vehicle description of a white American car. Officers responded to 4600 S. Othello and located shell casings as well as damage to a residence and the victim’s vehicle.
Here’s another house with some holiday lights, in the 5400 block of Beacon Avenue South. Know of any decorated houses? Email us so we can feature them here!
I think they need more lights on the upper part of the house. Imagine this house with lights around the roofline.
And here’s the updated version of our map of decorated houses. Scroll up and you’ll see the location of yesterday’s house:
Construction on the Beacon Hill Station site in mid-November. Photo by Jason.Sound Transit is applying for an extension to the technical noise variance for construction of the Beacon Hill station and light rail tunnels. The current variance, which has been in place since March 2003, expires on December 31. It establishes overnight noise limits for the construction process, and allows the construction to continue around the clock, seven days a week. Sound Transit would like to extend it until June 30, without any other modifications.
An information meeting about the variance extension is on Tuesday, December 16, 6:00 – 8:00 pm at the Beacon Hill Library, 2821 Beacon Avenue South.
When I was very young, the local newspapers used to host a Christmas light contest each year. People would decorate their houses in amazing ways, and the newspapers would publish the list of competitors. My parents would then drive us around to see the decorated houses.
Then came 1973, and the oil shortages. Suddenly it was irresponsible to have holiday lights. The contests went away, and the city because a lot less festive. It was years before we started seeing a ton of lights again. And I missed the light shows of my early childhood.
Now, we’re back to the 1973 state of things in many ways. It’s not “green” to waste that much energy. But I still enjoy the lights anyway, at least for a few weeks each year in Seattle’s terribly dark winters. They brighten up our evenings and make the darkness easier to bear.
We’ll be featuring Beacon Hill homes with lights and decoration periodically until Christmas. Do you have some cool decorations? How about your neighbors? Please write and tell us, so we can post a picture.
Our first featured home is on the 1500 block of South Atlantic Street. (See the map at the bottom of this post.) Tons of lights, a countdown clock to Christmas, and Santa in a helicopter!
Notice the countdown clock above the door.I love how colorful this one is.A very cheery house and front yard.
Here’s a map to help you find the house. We’ll add other holiday houses to the map over the next few weeks.
At sunset today (just after 4:00 pm — gah) I had the good fortune to be at the 12th Avenue S Viewpoint park, armed with a camera. Here’s some of what I saw:
“The Seattle Police Department is pleased to announce the arrest of the suspect in the September 11th, 2008 murder that occurred at 12:52 A.M. near the I-5 and I-90 interchange. Suspect Van Hoa Truong, a 53-year-old male, was arrested by Seattle Police SWAT team officers in the City of Renton on December 4th at approximately 6:15 P.M. Suspect Truong was subsequently booked into the King County Jail for Investigation of Homicide and narcotics violations.”
The city will tear up your street, and hopefully fix it back up again. We know we've used this picture before, but we like it. Image courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives. Saturday, December 6, at 9:00 am, Seattle Department of Transportation crews will repair sections of 15th Avenue South, Rainier Avenue South, and Beacon Avenue South where the pavement was excavated for work on underground utilities. There will be flaggers to direct traffic. Lanes are scheduled to reopen by 3:30 pm.
Areas affected will be:
the 3000 block of 15th Avenue South (between Stevens and Winthrop*)
the 5100 block of Rainier Avenue South (at 39th Avenue South)
Rainier Avenue South at Medley Court south of South Austin Street
the 3000 and 3400 blocks of Beacon Avenue South (between Stevens and Hanford, and between Hinds and Spokane)
Need more information? Contact Eric Stewart at 206-255-2349.
*The city press release said the 3200 block, but the block bounded by Stevens and Winthrop is the 3000 block.
Here’s a map of the Beacon Hill locations affected:
Sign on the wall inside Spoons Urban Apparel. Photo by Wendi, in the Beacon Hill Blog Photo Pool.We’ve got a lot of stuff going on at the Beacon Hill Blog these days, and I wanted to post a quick reminder of the various features you can use and some of the ways you can be part of the community.
The Beacon Hill Blog photo pool at Flickr is an ever-growing collection of Beacon Hill photos. Have you taken a photo of the Hill? If you add it to the pool, we might feature it in the blog.
The events calendar shows upcoming events that we’ve posted about in the blog. Is your upcoming event not listed? Send us the info so we can add it!
If you’re a Twitter user, you can follow our Twitter feed. It includes announcements of our posts, as well as other comments and some behind-the-scenes info.
The mailing lists are the original inspiration for this site. The Beacon Hill neighborhood list began in 1999 with a small group of neighbors and now has more than 325 members who get neighborhood-related discussions and announcements in their email boxes. The list does not mirror the content of the blog; sometimes you see the same things in both places, but often it differs. The list tends to be more conversational, and less newsy. If this sounds like your type of thing, join us! You can also join a very low-volume announcements-only list if you prefer.
Thanks for being part of the blog community so far! We’d love to hear your comments and feedback.
