Monthly Archives: May 2011

News, Transportation

SR 99 to Narrow to Two Lanes Each Way at SoDo

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Image courtesy WSDOT

On May 16, after a weekend closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, SR 99 will narrow from three lanes to two each way, northbound and southbound, between the West Seattle Bridge and the stadium district. For about a third of the distance northbound, from the bridge to where South Lander would be, there will also be a bus-only lane.

West Seattle Blog commenters smell impending disaster, but since the lane closure is supposed to last until 2013 (“and possibly longer,” adds WSDOT), there will be plenty of time for drivers to explore alternatives. The new speed limit for the section will be 35 mph, instead of 50.

Mike Lindblom reports in the Seattle Times on Metro’s gearing-up for construction-fed ridership, though rush-hour buses have already been filling up in advance of the lane closures:

Last year, King County Metro Transit added 31 trips to its 21 Express, 56 Express and 121 routes serving southwest neighborhoods via the viaduct, and ridership is up 11 percent, said spokeswoman Linda Thielke.

Metro is studying plans for more trips on the 54 and 120 routes this fall, she said. Quicker RapidRide service to West Seattle, Aurora Avenue North and Ballard remains a year or more away.

For its part, WSDOT notes that “$125 million in alternative routes, transit service and traveler information” has been invested to help mitigate the impact of the lane closures. This construction on the southern end of the Viaduct replacement project is not supposed to be contingent upon construction of the central part, which has yet to reach the final stage in the environmental review process.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Fleet Foxes’ New Album $3.99 at Amazon

That’s right, your mp3 download of Helplessness Blues is just $3.99 at Amazon, god willing and the cloud don’t fail. Honestly, I don’t know why you’re still reading, it’s a Daily Deal and time’s a-wastin’. Oh, you want the link. While you’re there, bandwagonneers, you can pick up the self-titled first album for $5.00. For tour info, visit the Fleet Foxes site.

News, Sports

NFL Draft Recap: Seahawks Get Bigger, Smarter

John Moffitt
"An intelligent player"

Pundit grades for the NFL draft are out, and the national football media has about as much love for the Seahawks draft picks as the official Libyan media has for NATO.

What say you, Clifton Brown of The Sporting News? D! ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr? D+! FOX Sports’ Adam Caplan? D!

Seahawks drafters Pete Carroll and John Schneider get low marks for failing to pick a quarterback and for the crime of “reaching,” draft parlance for picking a player who most teams thought would go later in the draft.

Yet, in the rainy sky of morning, it’s plain that the Seahawks followed a clear strategy: Get bigger, and get smarter. Let’s chat about it, shall we? We’ll start with size.

Take cornerback, where the Seahawks’ primary starters were both 5-foot-11. The Hawks took Stanford’s Richard Sherman, who’s 6-foot-3, and 6-foot-1, 210-pound Byron Maxwell of Clemson.

Or wide receiver, where the Seahawks made their biggest “reach” of the draft, taking Georgia’s Kris Durham. Durham wasn’t among the 329 draft-eligible players invited to the NFL’s Scouting Combine–but he is 6-foot-5, a head taller than most of Seahawks receivers.

The Seahawks’ top two picks, offensive linemen James Carpenter and John Moffitt, aren’t necessarily larger than their roster counterparts, but they represent a dedication to building the team around the largest position group.

And these dudes are sharp! Moffitt touted himself on a conference call with reporters as “an intelligent player.” Sherman lasted six years at Stanford, so you know he’s smart. Durham was First-Team Academic All-American and won UGA’s Scholar-Athlete award. ESPN’s scouting report lauded Wright as a “well spoken and valued representative for the program.”

Ironically, the Hawks draft smart guys and get near-failing grades. What’s going on here is that the graders were looking for a research paper and the Seahawks turned in a first-person narrative. They didn’t draft based on the pure numbers, they drafted based on their own biases, their belief that bigger and smarter will help win games. For the sake of all throw-able objects in the vicinity of my television, let’s hope they’re right.

News, Politics

Dear Syria, Please Help Find Journalist Parvaz

A “Free Dorothy Parvaz” Facebook page has sprung up, in reponse to the Al Jazeera journalist’s disappearance inside Syria. Al Jazeera believes Parvaz, who flew to Damascus on Friday, may have been detained at the airport, as she never checked in following her flight. The Syrian government has been holding other journalists, some for weeks.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer readers will remember her as D. Parvaz, who enlivened a moribund People column with her evident disdain for its celebrity content, and then moved on to pen a “Popping Off” editorial that allowed her to share her insights into the Islamic world at a time when insight from American editorial pages was scarce.

The Seattlepi.com story on her disappearance notes her impact in these more serious matters:

Born in Iran, Parvaz’s connection to the Muslim world shaped her reporting while she was with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Shortly after 9/11, she wore the traditional Islamic clothing and wrote about Seattle’s reaction to her and her feelings; five years later, she traveled to Iran and issued a series of reports published in the newspaper.

In February 2005, after the People column went on rotation to other writers, I wrote her to say her touch was missed, and to congratulate her on the Popping Off promotion. She wrote back:

Here’s the thing: I’m not so fond of writing the People column…it takes much longer than you would think to find new ways to make fun of Paris Hilton (although Lord knows, she’s generous with providing ample material). So the column is on a rotation now, and rest assured, I’ll be back on it in a few months. In the meantime, I’m relieved to hear that you’ve like the Popping Off pieces. I’m having a ball writing those.

So, personally, Syria, from me to you: Things are crazy but be cool. You’re not going to see a fairer-minded journalist than D. Parvaz.

al jazeeradorothy parvazmissingsyria
Environment, Features, News

On SoDo’s Shifting Sands

Waterfront and tideflats from Beacon Hill, Seattle, ca. 1898; PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection, Museum of History & Industry, Seattle; All Rights Reserved; Image #1983.10.6049.4 (Photographer: Wilse, Anders Beer, 1865-1949)

Special to The SunBreak by Arne Christensen

I recently looked at Seattle Chronicle, a DVD reprint of local historian Paul Dorpat’s 1992 VHS “2-hour tour through Seatle’s first ninety years, 1851 to 1941,” to quote the front copy.

It’s him narrating a roughly chronological slideshow, for the most part, of pictures of the city as it was a long time ago–some early ’90s video footage of the same neighborhoods contrasted with photographs of them in, say, 1872, to illuminate how much things have changed. Dorpat’s narration is smooth and accomplished: he knows what he’s talking about, and he knows how to talk about it.

The video is, inevitably, a little slow despite the background music: Still, if you’re interested in the way Seattle (especially downtown) used to be, or if your job requires you to know how the city used to be, watching Dorpat’s video is a very good and pretty fast way to get acquainted with old Seattle without looking through old newspapers, city archives, or a stack of books on Seattle history.

Dorpat doesn’t mention earthquakes once, but in several pictures I noticed how watery the SoDo area was well into the 20th century. It’s already been emphasized how much of the waterfront along the Viaduct is fill that used to be tidal flats, and Seattle Chronicle clearly shows that. (Along with watching Dorpat’s video, you can read about the history of SoDo by buying the book on SoDo brought out just last year by Dan Raley, formerly of the Seattle P-I.)

The pictures of SoDo show that the area beneath Beacon Hill also used to be tideflats. It was filled in somewhat by the 1930s, but in that decade the Port of Seattle held it as vacant land, which is why it became the site of Seattle’s Hooverville village of over 500 down-and-outers who built little wood shacks right around where the two stadiums are today.

Now, think to yourself: If this had been firm, stable, readily buildable land, located very close to downtown, why had no one settled on it? Why was it an open space for hundreds of homeless people to live in their makeshift dwellings?

This is something worth noting if you live or work in SoDo: obviously, if your building rests on fill laid down over sand and muck and tidal flows, it’s not going to remain that stable in any kind of substantial earthquake.

Visual Arts

Glimpses: Seattle Weekends

On this dreary Monday morning, we take a few moments to dwell on the stunning weekend that we just experienced. In this edition of Glimpses slideshow, take a look at how the photographers of The SunBreak’s Flickr pool have captured the last few sunny days and have memorialized classic sunny weekends of the past. We’d love to see how you spent the weekend: join our reader-powered citywide photo album and share your best shots!

(featured image by Jon Madison)