August 2012

Julian Weller and Kair Hirayami, both 21, can often be seen busking on Sundays at the Ballard Farmers Market. Weller mostly plays the ukulele (because it is fun and easy to carry around) and Hirayami plays the clarinet, though together they know how to play an armory of instruments.

Weller is entering his senior year at the Walla Walla University, where he majors in Creative Writing. He said he wants to be a writer, possibly for children's books or for radio, but wants to keep music as a serious hobby.

He said he first fell in love with the idea of busking after watching the movie, "Once," a modern day musical featuring a busker who falls in love with an immigrant. The two actors performed the songs in the movie themselves and had actually fallen in love on set.

Hirayami, also entering his senior year, is a music education major. As his studies would suggest, he wants to make a career out of music, teaching it to high school students.

Yoga nuts has will have a new place to gather next week in the Ballard Blocks building on 15th St NW and Leary Ave NW. It’s called CorePower Yoga.

CorePower Yoga is part of a larger chain of yoga studios (the company prefers the term “network”) with over 60 studios all over the States. The company itself is based out of Colorado.

The Ballard location isn’t your typical tiny, hole-in-the-wall, simple square room. It takes up a solid 6,250 sq ft of space and has three separate studios, two locker rooms (one boys, one girls) and a spacious front desk/lobby area. When the Ballard News-Tribune went to check the space out last week, while the group was still putting their finishing touches on, it promised to have an appealing, trendy look with fresh carpeting, wave-like designs on the windows and some of the fanciest, coziest locker rooms one could ask for, replete with separate, personal shower stalls for all.

The studios are about what you would expect from a yoga place: large rooms with hardwood floors that you can roll out your mats on and mirrors on all the walls used to help align posture (or for gazing at yourself).

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and the Office of Sustainability and Environment recently announced a pilot program “to strengthen equal access to local and health foods.”

The program doubles the value of SNAP EBT card (today’s food stamp equivalent) purchases when made at seven farmers markets in Seattle, including the West Seattle market open on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. For every $10 an EBT cardholder spends at a farmer’s market, they automatically get an additional $10 to spend.

“Everyone in Seattle deserves access to healthy, fresh, affordable food,” Seattle Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith said in a statement. “Fresh Bucks increases the purchasing power of low-income Seattle residents while introducing new customers to the small and mid-size farmers who sell at our farmers markets.”

Aug. 31- Sept. 1, Fri. & Sat., 10am-4pm, Duwamish Longhouse Native Market & Jumble Days, a bit of everything: arts & crafts, estate, rummage sale and food. $15 per display table.

Free display table to enrolled Duwamish members.

Free admission/parking for shoppers. Duwamish Longhouse, 4705 W Marginal Way SW, Seattle, WA 98106.

www.duwamishtribe.org.

RSVP tables at 206.431.1582.

The Seattle Department of Transportation has announced that the combination westbound on-/off-ramp to the Spokane Street Viaduct will open to motorists Friday morning, August 31, no later than 6 a.m.

This is the only westbound ramp to the Viaduct in SODO. Motorists will recall the previous ramp located on 4th Ave. South that this replaces and the on-ramp previously located on Spokane just west of First Avenue S. Both were demolished to make way for a widened Spokane Street Viaduct, now doubled in width.

The Spokane Street Viaduct Widening Project, now nearing completion provides motorists, transit and freight traffic with wider shoulders, a new eastbound off-ramp at Fourth Avenue (which opened two years ago), a seismically strengthened structure, and a rebuilt lower S Spokane Street roadway below the Viaduct with curbs, a concrete roadway and sidewalks (combined with a bike path on the north side).

Not yet done is the repaving of the eastbound off-ramp at First Avenue S, along with the intersection of First and South Spokane. The off-ramp is closed and will likely remain closed until the end of September.

The new Highline School District Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield toured White Center Heights, Mount View, and Shorewood Elementary schools Thursday morning, Aug. 30, the first day of school. The Highline School Board voted Feb. 29 to hire Dr. Enfield as the district’s superintendent, contingent on a completed contract and background check, which she of course passed.

It was a Leap Year moment on two fronts, as Enfield plans to leap ahead with the good news of improved test scores in the district. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) just released those scores.

The Missing Link, the incomplete section of the Burke-Gilman Trail running between Fred Meyer and the Ballard Locks, will continue to be missing for a while longer.

This week, the city of Seattle Hearing Examiner ruled in favor of the Ballard Business Appellants, who expressed safety concerns about a trail going through the driveways of Ballard's main core of industry. The design must now go back to the Seattle Department of Transportation for a full Environmental Impact Statement. This is the third time the Missing Link has gone before the Hearing Examiner.

In a press release sent out by Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel Co., Warren Aakervik of Ballard Oil stated further study is needed.

"The City must study these issues and prove it can safely build a recreational trail through the heart of the maritime and industrial industry in Ballard without putting people’s lives at risk,” he said.

Meanwhile, in another press release, Chuck Ayers of Cascade Bicycle Club expressed an opposing view.

West Seattle company Sleepers in Seattle – selling sleeper and leather sofas to the masses – has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s fastest growing entrepreneurial ventures. Inc.’s website shows Sleepers is ranked 2453 out of 5000 companies that made the list. They have experienced a three-year growth of 99 percent with revenue of $1.3 million in 2008 jumping to $2.6 million in 2011.

The West Seattle Herald chronicled the Alcabes family business’s significant growth in 2011.

Press release from Sleepers in Seattle
Sleepers In Seattle, a leading retailer of sleeper sofas and leather and fabric sofas, was recently recognized for its outstanding economic growth and performance by Inc. Magazine. Eric Schurenberg, Editor in Chief of Inc. Magazine recently announced that Sleepers In Seattle had made the prestigious 2012 Inc. 500|5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Traditionally, many junior high and high school students have seen the prospect of going to science classes as a dim one: a gauntlet of numbers, formulas and memorization.

University of Washington professors and researchers Elham Kazemi and Jessica Thompson are continuing their work and teaming up with Cascade Middle School and Evergreen high schools teachers, administrators and students to buck that trend, thanks to a $450,000 grant from Washington STEM, a non-profit dedicated to “advancing innovation, equity, and excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education in Washington state.”

Thompson said they are jumping in on “great things going on in these schools already … trying to capitalize on that and understand what is going on and help the work move forward.”

Coinciding with the ongoing Drive Hammered, Get Nailed extra DUI patrols, law enforcement and community members in South King County are banding together Saturday, Sept. 1 to canvass bars in South King County, including SeaTac, Burien, Tukwila, Kent, Renton, Auburn and Federal Way to alert patrons to the extra DUI patrols and options to make it home safely.

Approximately two-dozen officers, deputies and troopers are expected to participate.