Seattle has a lot of skaters, but not a lot of skate parks. Those of you who have been following the news know that since the shutdowns of the skateparks at the Seattle Center and in Ballard, there is no public skatepark in the city of Seattle. There are some privately owned parks in suburbs, but in a city this size where many people skate, it seems silly to me that we don’t have a public park.

Recently I was in Santa Monica, California, one of the most important locales in skateboarding’s history. While no one knows exactly where skateboarding first begin, all contemporary skaters owe at least some debt to the skaters from that area who revolutionized the sport in the 1970′s, transforming it from a novelty activity into a legitimate sport. Ironically, this iconic skatetown didn’t get a public park until 2005, but The Cove is the very model of what a skatepark should be like and after spending two afternoons there, I became convinced that if more people could see what a well run skate park is like, more people would understand why it’s worth the money and effort to build one.
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It’s not really news, anymore, that there were several Black Hawk helicopters circling downtown and SoDo this afternoon. But I was lucky enough to snap a quick photo as they zoomed overhead. A routine trip to the doctor’s office has never before been so exciting for me.

The copter pilots were trying to get familiar with the local geography in preparation for the opening ceremony of this Sunday’s NFC Championship game. [kiro7]

I’VE GOT PLAYOFF FEVER, BABY!

But enough about that. Which do you prefer: Black Hawk helicopters or Blue Angels buzzing downtown?

mini-Pearl [mcphee]

This morning’s Morning Edition featured two stories that confirmed for the NPR-listening world the stereotype of Seattleites as the sort of literate people who avoid the elements by sequestering themselves inside to settle down with a book from the library or DVD rented from an independently-owned video store. ¹

Early in the hour, rockstar of the librarian world Nancy Pearl was a guest on the program, providing listeners with a list of her favorite books for a rainy day [npr] in honor of our near achievement of a citywide precipitation record.

A few minutes of sleep later, and I reawoke to hear Wendy Kaufman talking about the challenges facing video stores in the face of competition from Netflix and big chains. Lo and behold, their case study of success was our beloved Scarecrow Video. [npr]. It was a neat story that provided a quick primer on the store’s history and reminded me that I really need to take a trip up to the U-District to find a DVD that I’ve been unable to find anywhere else in town.

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1. Sure, this isn’t the only stereotype. But we can’t all always be retreating into the great outdoors to enjoy the weather on its own terms, can we? Some of us need to keep up our “most literate city” credibility.

Last week, “j” and “k” abandoned their condo on the shore of Elliott Bay, which also meant calling it quits for Uptown Seattle. Along with the 2.3 mile move across town to the higher grounds of Capitol Hill, they fired up a brand new weblog to match their change of address. Keep up with their adventures in the new ‘hood at capitolhillseattle.blogspot.com.

Despite the hectic pace of city life and setting up a new homestead, J was able to fit in a Metroblogging Interview. The following conversation took place by e-mail between 18 and 19 January:

Josh: How are you coping with the change in address? Any altitude sickness?

J: Re: the address, we usually write those kinds of things down. No issues with altitude but K has some attitude problems lately. We’re sure it will pass. And J has a bad case of yuppieitis also known as moderate boredom. This is urban suburbia — fewer reasons to get drunk outside of your own home. Though the Canterbury does have shufflepuck.
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When August Wilson died last October, the world lost a great writer–there’s very little argument about that. It’s just fortunate for us that he managed to finish the last play in his 20th Century Cycle, “Radio Golf,” before he died.

The play begins previews at The Rep tonight, and will be playing through February 18th. It’s replacing the Neil Simon play “Rewrites,” which was originally announced for this season. It “focuses on a pair of real estate entrepreneurs who must decide whether to raze history or build upon it, while a mysterious, seemingly ancient man prods them to define who they are and what they stand for.”
The 20th Century Cycle details 100 years worth of the African-American experience; almost all of the plays are set in Wilson’s hometown.

It’s also fortunate for us that Kenny Leon is around to direct this play. He was a friend of Wilson’s, and spent time sitting on the writer’s porch in Capitol Hill discussing and refining the script. This will be the first staging of the play in its final form, thanks to Wilson’s habit of revising after watching rehearsals. It will also, sadly, be the first pre-Broadway opening that he won’t be there for. At no point will we be able to crane our necks around, searching the audience for a familiar tweed jacket. But the way that Wilson told stories is still there in his work, and it will be good to see the last play realized.

Last Sunday morning, I was standing in line in a jetway, waiting to board a plane for Minneapolis. Two tired, dejected looking Redskins fans were standing in front of me, still wearing their regalia. They carried a piece of stained, water-logged poster board that once had read: GO SKINS.

You who call yourself fans: would you fly across the country to see the Seahawks in a playoff game?

Loews Cineplex had been running this coupon for $5 movies all month, so I was thinking that it was probably safe at this late date to go try it out at the Woodinville location. Surely by now, they would have seen a bajillion coupons, I thought, but evidently not.

The moment I entered the theatre, my friend sidled up to me, and elbowed me in the ribs. “Just be glad I got here first!” she muttered to me, as we entered through the lobby.

It turned out that when she showed up at the ticket booth, the booth attendant (a young man not hired to think) had read the coupon (“Present this coupon along with $5…”) and interpreted it as permission to charge her $11 for a $6 ticket. You can rest assured that she re-educated him very quickly and efficiently. Indeed, by the time I arrived, he was looking quite subdued.

Back in the day, the boyfriend and I lived on Belmont, just a few blocks away from Capitol Hill’s Coffee Messiah cafe. We tend to be early risers and on Saturday mornings I used to walk over after the Messiah opened at 7:00 (or was it 8:00?) to pick up two americanos with soy and a vegan breakfast treat. I remember with special fondness cross-shaped gingerbread cookies, sprinkled with powdered sugar, hot out of the oven. But about a year and a half ago we moved further away and stopped visiting as frequently, limiting ourselves to the occasional emergency coffee walk-by.

This past Saturday we went to a later yoga class and when we got done at noon we were quite hungry. On the spur of the moment we decided to stop at Coffee Messiah for brunch. A hand written note on the door warned that they were only taking cash payment (Bad Sign #1), but after rifling through our pockets we determined that we had enough money between us to eat. We started looking over the menu, but the barrista told us they might be out of some things because they were having “food issues” (Bad Sign #2). We discussed our options with the cook and ended up ordering tofu scramble, S.O.S., and a side of biscuits and gravy. (Like I said, we were really hungry after all that yoga.) Meanwhile, the barrista was engaged in a whispered conversation with a friend, clearly about difficulties the shop was having (Bad Sign #3). Despite the pervasive air of impending doom, our food was delicious and we ate every bite before waddling home.

Not too surprisingly, we learned on Monday that Coffee Messiah has closed its doors, apparently for good. It had been obvious that they were struggling for quite a while — I date the start of their decline from the day that the PeeWee Herman doll disappeared from the large crucifix behind the counter — so I can’t say that this comes as much of a surprise.

Whatever you might say about Coffee Messiah, it sure wasn’t Starbucks. It served as a home away from home for some of Capitol Hill’s freakier residents, but its barristas could also make a mean cup of coffee when they wanted to. I’m hesitant to interpret this closing as a sign of anything more than inept management, but it still saddens me to see the place gone.

• In a boon for commercial car washes, 2,000 pounds of human waste spilled onto I-5 yesterday when a tractor-trailer rig stopped suddenly to avoid a collision with another stopped vehicle, forcing cars to drive through the muck during their afternoon commute [p-i]. On the bright side, the Dave Matthews Band wasn’t even slightly responsible this time around [mtv]

• You know how funny it is when you play Grand Theft Auto and cut people up with a sword? Yeah, substantially less amusing when it happens in real life. In a move that might bolster Ballard’s Nordic cred, last night the police shut down several streets in the neighborhood in their pursuit of a sword-wielding assaulter [k5]. Did anyone else know that people were still using swords as weapons? Both the assaulter and assaultee survived the attack and apprehension (respectively), unlike the last time the police engaged in a high profile faced off with a sword carrier [ets].

Today Joe pointed out [lj] some possible developments in the smoke-free indoor air environment Seattleites have come to know and love (or know and hate, depending) over the past month. At least three bills are making their way through the corridors of power in Olympia to modify the statewide smoking ban:

House Bill 2502 [wa] would do two things. First, it provides what looks to me like a big loophole for businesses to get out of the ban. Proprietors who demonstrate a ten percent decline in gross revenues would be able to get a waiver. What the bill fails to explain is the standards by which this decrease would be judged or if the losses even need to be directly attributable to the smoking ban. While this would allow hookah bars and cigar shops to continue to exist, it also seems like any bar that happened to be closed for a few extra days between 9 December and 9 January would easily be able to allow patrons to smoke. A second provision would require that the fines could only be imposed by Health Department officials who directly observe a violation. Furthermore, to issue a fine, this hypothetical health department employee who works nights and hangs out at clubs would need to have clear and convincing evidence that the business owner or designated 23 employee has made no attempt to comply with the law.

House Bill [wa] would redefine “place of employment” to exclude buildings or parts of a building where religious ceremonies are conducted when smoking is part of the ritual. Whether the religious communities are scoping out bars for services remains unclear.

Senate Bill 6667 [wa] would allow smokers to stay closer to the bars and restaurants while they smoked, reducing the twenty-five foot rule to a more modest ten feet.
For now these are all floating around in committees; so who knows if they’ll go anywhere or how the language will turn out. Just something to keep in mind the next time you’re enjoying (or suffering through) a smokefree night out.