Arts, Local Events

Beacon Boogie brings art, music, and fun on 10/29

The first Beacon Boogie will celebrate food, art, and music on the Hill on October 29. Five bands will perform in five different North Beacon venues for five dollars (free for kids 12 and under). All of the venues are on Beacon Avenue South within a half block of South Hanford Street.

The festivities begin with pizza and the jazz of Trio Zazou at Bar del Corso from 5-7 p.m. Then from 7-10, the music moves to four other venues:

Quetzalcoatl Gallery will also host a community Day of the Dead altar, and a reception for a photography exhibition by Almendra Sandoval.

The Beacon Boogie is sponsored by the Beacon Hill Merchants Association.

Here’s a video of Beacon Boogie performer Greg Ruby:

Read on to see more videos and a clickable map of the event’s venues.
Continue reading Beacon Boogie brings art, music, and fun on 10/29 →

Food and Drink

El Quetzal applies for expanded liquor license

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Another liquor license application was recently filed for a Beacon Hill business. El Quetzal, the Mexican restaurant at 3209 Beacon Ave. S., filed an “Added/Change of class/In lieu” application for a license of the type “Spirits/beer/wine restaurant service bar; off-premises sale of wine.” This is an application for an additional liquor license class beyond their current license. The off-premises license would allow the restaurant to sell wine by the unopened bottle for off-premises consumption.

The applicants are listed as Juan Jose Montiel, Elena Sarmiento, Juan Jose Montiel Cardova, and Elena Sarmiento Ruiz. The license number is 405543. As usual, if you wish to make any comments on this application, whether positive or negative, e-mail customerservice@liq.wa.gov.

The brightly colored El Quetzal. Photo by Wendi.
Life on the Hill

ROCKiT space says: “Thanks for the apples!”

Betty Jean Williamson from ROCKiT space writes:

ROCKiT space would like to recognize the generous efforts of our neighbors and partners City Fruit and Jose Rizal Park Orchard for picking and delivering 300 pounds of apples to Garden House! These little beauties will be pressed into cider at the Beacon Hill Harvest Fair October 22. The cider will be shared with neighbors who attend the event. Folks should bring clean jars or containers to take some home!

The Harvest Fair will run from 2-9 p.m. on October 22 at the Garden House, 2336 15th Ave. S. Stay tuned for more information later this week!

Food and Drink, News

La Esperanza de Seattle applies for new liquor license

According to the State Liquor Control Board, La Esperanza de Seattle at 2505 Beacon Ave. S. has made a new application for a liquor license of the type Grocery Store – Beer/Wine. This appears to be the same as a license application we wrote about last May; it is not uncommon for notifications to be re-announced with a new date if certain changes had to be made to the application.

The applicants are La Esperanza de Seattle GP, Geovanni Santacruz, and Omar Santacruz. The license number is 407963. If you wish to make any comments on this application, whether positive or negative, e-mail customerservice@liq.wa.gov.

Health and Safety, Meetings

Neighbors attempt to reduce impact of alcohol on Beacon Hill

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As usual, the 10/4 North Beacon Hill Council meeting was jam-packed with a variety of topics. The majority of the meeting was dedicated to efforts to organize an Alcohol Impact Area (AIA) in North Beacon Hill. North Beacon Hill neighbors are attempting to organize an AIA to increase public safety. To learn more, visit their Facebook page at Beacon AIAI.

AIA supporters believe that implementing an Alcohol Impact Area in Beacon Hill will increase public safety and lower costs to taxpayers by decreasing the need for first responders (Seattle Police Department, Seattle Fire Department, etc) called to assist those incapacitated by alcohol. A first step to implement an AIA is to report all incidents of public inebriation and collecting/taking photographs of all alcohol related litter (especially cans/bottles of restricted brands).

Per the WA State Liquor Control Board: “The purpose of an Alcohol Impact Area is for local authorities to have a process to mitigate problems with chronic public inebriation or illegal activities linked to the sale or consumption of alcohol within a geographic area of their city, town or county, but not the entire jurisdiction. An Alcohol Impact Area is designated by geographical boundaries as defined in Washington Administrative Code Chapter 314-12.”

The WA State Liquor Control Board evaluated AIAs in 2009. Results are here. One interesting conclusion: people living in Alcohol Impact Areas reported that they were happier!

“Overall, in comparison to the results of the 2006 survey, people living within the Alcohol Impact Areas are now more positive as evidenced by the following:
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  • 26% of people rate the overall quality of life in their neighborhood as excellent (20% in 2006)

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  • 60% of people say they notice chronic public inebriates in the neighborhood (69% in 2006)
  • 18% of people say that drug activity has increased (24% in 2006)
  • But, 28% of people say that crime has increased (23% in 2006)”

(Source: Seattle Alcohol Impact Area Evaluation Executive Summary, 2009.)

City of Seattle studies did not inquire whether residents within AIAs enjoyed a higher quality of life, but did discover:

“…A decrease in offenses related to chronic public inebriation: Adult Liquor Violations, Parks Exclusions, and Criminal Trespass. In addition, the sobering unit van also saw a 9% decrease in pick-ups over the same pre-mandatory AIA and post-mandatory AIA periods of time.” (Source: June 2008 Report on Mandatory Compliance Efforts in the Seattle Alcohol Impact Area.)

Department of Neighborhoods Program Manager Pamela Banks attended Tuesday’s meeting and cautioned that North Beacon Hill would face an uphill battle to implement an AIA. Resources and staff are currently stretched very thin in Seattle and the AIA process is difficult.

Other options to reduce public inebriation and increase public safety were discussed, including asking neighborhood businesses to voluntarily participate in a “Good Neighbor” agreement limiting sales of banned beverages and requesting increased enforcement of existing laws.

Beacon AIAI supporters hope to engage the community in efforts to make Beacon Hill safer. For more information, visit their Facebook page or email beaconaiai@gmail.com.

Local Events

Rainier Valley Co-Op Preschool Fall Festival, Rizal Park apple harvest are this Saturday

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The Rainier Valley Co-Op Preschool is holding their annual Fall Festival this Saturday, October 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The festival will be held in the 1700 block of Forest Street, in front of Beacon Lutheran Church.

The family event will include a block party, a dj dance party, live music by Eli Rosenblatt, bike parades on the hour, hot dogs, a bake sale, games for kids, a recycled toy shop, a treasure hunt in the sandbox, face painting, and more!

Neighbors of all ages are welcome to have fun and help support the preschool. Bring your bicycle if you want to be part of the bike parades.

Neighbors are invited to help with the apple harvest from Dr. Jose Rizal Park. Photo by Alessio Maffeis via Creative Commons.
Another fall activity will be taking place a bit further north on the hill at the same time (10 a.m. on October 8), where neighbors are invited to help harvest apples from the orchard at Dr. Jose Rizal Park. Most of the apples will become cider for the Beacon Hill Harvest Festival later this month, but some apples will also be available for your own baking. Craig Thompson writes:

Please come down to harvest the second crop of apples (tiny, tiny one last year, this year is much bigger); these apples are destined for the City Fruit apple press at the Oct. 22 Beacon Hill Harvest Festival, but there should be enough for your baking needs.

Now, these apples may have some bugs, but last year the winesaps I picked were still good for a significant pie.

We’ll have three fruit basket pickers (whatever they’re really called), plus some orchard ladders. We’ll also have all the containers necessary to hold the apples and transport them over to the Garden House, where the cider destined will cool in the basement until the Harvest Festival.

Forecast says it should be pretty nice in the late morning, too! So please take a wee bit to pick some fruit and, also, to check out the park. It’s really pretty magnificent now, and it will only get better!

Clean and Green, Getting Around, News, Recreation, Urban Planning

Greenway signs sprout on 17th and 18th Avenues

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New wayfinding sign on the 17th/18th Avenue South Greenway, on 17th Avenue just south of South Forest Street. Photo by Wendi.
New signs appeared along 17th and 18th Avenues South recently, the first visible step toward the new Beacon Hill Greenway, part of a planned network of neighborhood greenways on Beacon Hill. The signs direct cyclists to neighborhood locations such as Jefferson Park and Beacon Hill Station via the greenway route.

Greenways are residential streets that are designed to be safe neighborhood connections for bicyclists and pedestrians, while still allowing automobile access using traffic calming measures. (City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw has posted a FAQ with more information about neighborhood greenways on her website.)

Seattle’s greenways have recently seen a lot of press, including articles in The Seattle Times, Publicola, Seattle Bike Blog, and The Atlantic Cities.

For more information on bicycle and pedestrian strategies on Beacon Hill, see the Beacon Hill Family Bicycle and Pedestrian Circulation Plan, a ten-year plan put together by Beacon B.I.K.E.S. and ALTA Planning + Design. (See also the appendix.)

Recreation

Golf Course renovation project seeks your input

Seattle Parks and Recreation invites all interested neighbors to participate in a public meeting October 13 at 7 p.m. at Jefferson Community Center to discuss the Jefferson Park Golf Course renovation project. The design team and Parks staff will present design options for the $7,000,000+ project, which will include a new clubhouse and banquet room, expansion of the driving range to add a second deck, a new electric cart barn, improvements to pathways, and possible parking expansion and landscaping renovations.

Bassetti Architects have been hired to lead the design team. The design phase of the project is scheduled to continue until next spring, with construction planned for May 2012-April 2013. For more information about the renovations project, see the project page at the Seattle Parks website.

Jefferson Community Center is located at 3801 Beacon Ave. S.

Golf balls on the grass at the Jefferson Park driving range. Photo by binarymillenium in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
Crime

Pick-ax burglar interrupted ransacking Mid-Beacon home

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By Jill Blocker, KOMO News (Beacon Hill Blog news partners)

A woman with poor eyesight wasn’t able to immediately see if anything was taken from her home in a burglary Friday, but the window smashed in with a pick ax was hard to miss.

Police said a burglar broke into a home in the 5200 block of Columbia Drive S. in Beacon Hill by taking a pick ax and smashing open the bedroom window. The burglar than ransacked the bedroom and office, strewing belongings across the floor.

Two people, including the woman, came home during the burglary and saw the person run out the back door.

The sight-impaired woman told police she did not immediately notice any missing belongings.

Local Events

New Buddhist center hosts open house Saturday

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A new Zen Buddhist residential practice center, Dai Bai Zan Cho Bo Zen Ji, has opened on South Horton Street in the Golf Court apartment building. To mark the center’s arrival in the neighborhood, the group is holding an Open House this Saturday, October 8, from 1-3:30 p.m. at the center, 1733 S. Horton St. All neighbors are invited.

Genjo Marinello, the group’s abbot, sent us a bit about the history of the the Chobo-Ji group:

“We are a Zen Meditation group that got started with the Seattle Zen Center in the early 70’s sponsored by the then UW Art History Professor Dr. Glenn Webb. Our founding abbot, Genki Takabayashi Roshi, was invited by Dr. Webb to become the resident teacher from Japan in 1979. The group that formed around his teaching in 1983 became the current temple called DaiBaiZan ChoBoZen Temple or Chobo-Ji for short. It means ‘The Listening to the Dharma Zen Temple on Great Plum Mountain.’ Genki Roshi retired in 1997 and in 1999, Genjo Marinello Osho became the second abbot. In 2008 Genjo Osho became one of only a handful of American’s to receive full Dharma transmission in a Japanese line of Rinzai Zen Buddhism.

“For the last dozen years the group has held meditation in a triplex on Capitol Hill. Two years ago the apartment building called ‘Golf Court’ between Lafayette Ave. S. and Alamo Pl. S. was purchased by the group to be the site of its new Residential Practice Center, where people will be able to live in a city setting and strongly practice Zen Buddhism. The new Meditation Hall has been completed and the house on Capital Hill sold. There are meditation periods open to the public daily at this new site. Anyone is welcome to attend—doors open 30 minutes before each scheduled meditation period. There is a $5 introduction to our practice each Thursday from 7:30-8:30 p.m.”

This carving in the new Chobo-ji space combines a Northwest Native salmon motif with a Yin-Yang symbol. Photo courtesy of Genjo Marinello.