November 2012

It was a bold move. Buy a movie theater and remake the heart of the City of Des Moines. Tom Lin and partner Isaiah Dummer bought the Des Moines Theater from the estate of the former owner last December and immediately had big plans to make it a centerpiece.

But those plans, first put on hold, are now memories. The 10,000 sq. ft plus facility on Marine View Drive has retail space in addition to the movie house. The plan was to lease out that space and use it to pay the debt on the loan. But they hit some snags. They cleaned out what proved to be a space jam packed with old equipment, cleaned up the retail spaces and theater and got it prepared for development. "The theater is ready to go now," said Lin.

But theaters today are in a state of change with so many options for entertainment. It would have meant making it ready for both film and stage use, bringing in new projection equipment, theatrical lighting, building dressing rooms and more.

press release:

King County Metro Transit reminds riders buses will be operating on reduced schedules over the Thanksgiving holiday and during several holiday periods through January – including a full week of reduced service at the end of December.

On Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 22, Metro will operate a Sunday schedule. On Friday, Nov. 23, Metro will operate reduced weekday service, which offers more service than on weekends, but somewhat less service than on normal weekdays.

Using a limited schedule over holiday periods from November through January is estimated to save Metro about $1 million each year. These are planned reductions for holiday periods when Metro has historically seen a reduction in the number of weekday riders – estimated to be 15 percent or more systemwide.

Details are posted on Metro’s holiday and reduced service page.

Sunday schedules will be in effect on the following holidays:

• Thursday, Nov. 22 – Thanksgiving
• Tuesday, Dec. 25 – Christmas
• Tuesday, Jan. 1 – New Year’s Day

The reduced weekday schedule will be in effect on:

It’s the holidays, and along with the gifts, in-laws and over-eating common to this time of year, many homes transition into festive mode with wreaths, bells, lights and the scents of the season emanating from heavily-perfumed pine cones and candles galore.

The Seattle Fire Department sent out a reminder on candles safety during the season, including statistics that in 2010, “candle fires caused 90 deaths, 820 injuries and $370 million in property damage (nationwide) according to the National Fire Protection Association.”

SFD said December is the “peak time” of the year for home candle fires, illustrated (a bit earlier than the peak) by a West Seattle house fire on Nov. 18 on the 9400 block of 7th Ave S.W. In that case, a candle was left burning unattended in a bedroom and caught nearby combustibles on fire, causing $70,000 in damages. Luckily, no one was injured.

The Seattle Fire Department’s Public Education Unit offers these basic rules to follow:
• Always keep burning candles within sight.
• Extinguish all candles when leaving the room of before going to sleep.

By Katy Wilkens, MS, RD

It’s so cold and wet here that sweet potatoes won’t grow in my Pacific Northwest garden. So I have to buy them. But they are so great in fall menus, I don’t mind.

Sweet potatoes are high in vitamins A and C, potassium, complex carbohydrates, fiber and protein, and are kind to your heart and kidneys. The darker colored sweet potatoes, sometimes called yams, are even higher in vitamin A.

In the United States we tend to pair them with sweet flavors like brown sugar, cinnamon and maple syrup, but around the world they are served in savory dishes, with flavors like lime juice, chilies, garlic and rosemary.

Try these recipes and you may look differently at sweet potatoes.

Rich’s sweet potatoes and black rice

My husband created this wonderful recipe, one of our fall favorites.

3 cups black rice

3 cups water

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup chopped onion

2-3 cups cubed sweet potatoes

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Freshly ground black pepper

BLRB Architects out of Tacoma have been given the nod to design the new elementary school slated for the Genesee Hill site in 2015 and, assuming voters pass the Building Excellence school levy in February to fund it, they want the West Seattle community closely involved in the $38 million process.

That was the theme of a Nov. 19 presentation by BLRB and Seattle Public Schools held at Schmitz Park Elementary for those who braved the torrential downpours to learn more about plans for the new school.

The new school at Genesee Hill is part of Seattle School’s BEX IV (Building Excellence) Levy proposal. The district hopes to move Schmitz Park Elementary students and staff to the new building, and then continue to use the Schmitz building for yet-to-be-determined elementary purposes.

Tom Bates, managing principal at BLRB, laid out his firm’s outreach goals:

Burien Deputy Mayor Rose Clark abruptly recessed Monday night’s City Council meeting after three lawmakers, usually in the minority, began pushing through legislation by taking advantage of the absence of two majority council members.

Mayor Brian Bennett and former mayor Joan McGilton had excused absences from the meeting. They often vote on the same side as Clark and Councilmember Gerald Robison.

However, as the meeting was winding down, Councilmember Jack Block Jr. moved that North Highline be removed from Burien’s proposed annexation area. North Highline voters overwhelmingly rejected Burien’s proposal to be annexed into the city at the Nov. 6 election.
The motion was approved when Block, along with council members Lucy Krakowiak and Bob Edgar, voted in favor. Clark and Robison voted against.

Krakowiak and Edgar did not offer comments before the vote.

Block said Burien’s annexation proposal had “torn the community apart.

“It is time to bring the community back together,” Block declared.

Clark, Robison, Bennett and McGilton had voted to put annexation before North Highline voters. Block, Krakowiak and Edgar opposed it.

Update, Nov. 20, 10:00 a.m.:

The fire at Shilshole Bay Marina was a small electrical fire coming from the instrument panel of a sailboat, according to SFD Spokesman Kyle Moore.

The fire was put out by the occupant by the time Seattle Fire arrived. Responders inspected the vessel with a thermal imaging camera and did not find that the fire extended into the boat. No one suffered any injuries.

Original story:
At 8:23 p.m., the Seattle Fire Department responded to a boat fire at Shilshole Bay Marina, according to the SFD real-time 911 response. So far, there have been three dispatches to the scene. We'll let you know if we find anything else out.

The "Small Business Saturday" campaign, established nationally in 2010, focuses on social networking to get traffic into small businesses between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two of the busiest shopping days of the year. Numerous communities around the country are promoting Saturday, Nov. 24, as an opportunity for holiday shoppers to buy from their local mom & pop stores, the day after many hit the malls.

Discover Burien is promoting this with their "Buy it in BURIEN" campaign. Visit the Discovert Burien Facebook page. Near the top of the page, click on the orange tag emblem in the "Buy it in BURIEN" box to see which Burien businesses are involved.

Gina Bourdage, Exec. Dir., Discover Burien, encourages small businesses in Burien to contact her to participate.

Discover Burien
427 SW 152nd Street
Burien, WA 98166
Phone: 206-433-2882
Email: executivedirector@discoverburien.com

Say hello to the new Hollywood -- Ballard High School.

Four productions by students in the BHS Video Production Program were winners of Fresh Film Northwest at the Portland Art Museum last Saturday, Nov. 17.

Students/filmmakers competing could only be ages 13 to 19 and from Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Every winning entry from Washington involved Ballard High School students.

The BHS winners were the documentaries "Deep Down" (by Isaiah Hoban-Halvorsen, Kaila Lafferty and Oona Lowe) and "My Little Brony" (by Vann Fulfs, Taylor Martin and Bryan Quandt). A short drama also won, "Dream House" (by Ariahna Ghormley, Ana Krafchick & Louis Weissman).

Editor's Note: For privacy reasons, the names used in this article are not real names. However, they are the names which these people are known within the medical cannabis community.

Undoubtedly, there are a lot of questions raised by the passing of I-502, the marijuana legalization initiative. But for one Ballard native, the new liberties present an opportunity to raise money for Seattle families in need who have autistic children.

At a two-story space rented in SoDo, Nov. 16-18, over three-hundred people bustled through table-lined corridors. Presenters shared tutorials on major topics in the medical cannabis industry such as growing medical cannabis, tincture-making and glass blowing. The “School of Dank” was underway.

The Ballard native in question, who goes by "Jinx Proof" in the medical cannabis industry (and for this article), went to Ingraham High School and stayed in Ballard after graduation. He established the True Blue Tattoo shop with his neighbor from the infamous "Gob Shop." When more space opened up, Proof started selling glass pipes.