Short Run will host its third annual festival of Seattle small press publishers and writers at Washington Hall this November, organizers announced this week.

The festival schedule will include dances, readings, animation, workshops and more. Local artists and writers will be able to sign up to be part of the festival starting in the spring.

From Short Run:

We’re proud to announce the 3rd annual Short Run festival will be held on Saturday, November 30th at the historical Washington Hall in the Central District neighborhood of Seattle. Applications will open in the Spring, and will be announced at shortrun.org, as well as on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Short Run was founded in 2011 to celebrate Seattle’s lauded small press community, and we’re excited to bring you the grandest festival yet. Short Run 2013 will feature 120 artists of comics, art books, zines and literary works focusing on regional artists, limited editions, and handmade books. This year, the festival is held on “Small Business Saturday,” a nationwide campaign to support buying local goods. Continue reading →

An apparent workplace shooting last week at a Seattle Parks facility near Green Lake sent the entire Parks system into lockdown as police searched for suspect Carolyn “Zoom” Piksa.

This afternoon, the Parks Department is closing community centers and other facilities across the city for a couple hours to give employees an opportunity to meet and talk about the incident that left a fellow Parks employee with serious injuries.

From Seattle Parks:

Seattle Parks and Recreation will close all recreational facilities March 13 from 12:30 to 2:30 so that Parks employees can meet with their leaders and talk to Parks management about the shooting that took place at Parks’ Densmore Ave. N facility on Friday, March 8.

This meeting will give the recreation staff time with their management team and with counselors. Affected facilities are community centers, pools, environmental learning centers and the Amy Yee Tennis Center.

Among its educational and employment programs, 17th and Jackson’s Casa Latina helps immigrants find day labor employment that pays and treats workers fairly.

People who need to hire someone to lend them a hand can go through Casa Latina to find dependable workers. Workers can find jobs and utilize the organization’s programs and (new and improved) facilities to look for work and education opportunities.

Now, the day labor hiring process is even easier with Casa Latina’s new online form. Details:

Casa Latina is proud to announce that you can now hire a worker anytime of day with just a few clicks. Now planning that next project is quick and painless! Simply decide the day and time you will need a worker and let Casa Latina know without ever leaving your computer. Scheduling is easy and instant as well as reliable.  You’ll receive a confirmation call from Casa Latina the next business day. We hope you will give Online Scheduling a try and see how easy taking on your spring projects can be! Casa Latina asks that you hire a worker online at least 48 hours prior and that you provide a description of every category of labor requested.

(Image: Seattle Academy)

There’s another academic institution making plans for expansion just off 12th and Madison. But unlike Seattle University’s planned 2 acre and change expansion by 2028, private school Seattle Academy plans only a 28,000 square-foot facility housing math, science, arts and technology classrooms.

The Daily Journal of Commerce reported (subscription) on the solidification of the school’s plans and the necessary launch of a capital campaign to pay for the $15 million building before its targeted spring 2014 start of construction.

The building is planned for space already owned by the middle school on the southeast edge of its campus.

More on recent private school changes at our sister site CHS.

Where bike commuters live, according to BikeScore

As you sit at Cal Anderson Park watching people on bikes stream down E Pine Street while two teams of bike polo players do battle in the former tennis court, you might think Capitol Hill is something of a hub for bicycling in the city.

But as a percentage of the population, residents in the Central District are more likely to commute to work by bike than on Capitol Hill, and the CD has one of the highest rates of bike commuting south of the Ship Canal.

The Seattle Times published an interactive map recently displaying bike-to-work rates according to neighborhood. The Central District comes in at 4.37 percent*, barely higher than North Beacon Hill, but far lower than the 9.46 percent in the North University District area (the highest in the city). Only South Lake Union and Eastlake had higher bike commute rates among neighborhoods south of the Ship Canal.

For more detail, I posted a map last spring on Seattle Bike Blog showing BikeScore’s bike commuter map (see attached). While the Times map attempts to organize the data by neighborhood segment, the BikeScore map hows more of a block-by-block heat map of cycling popularity. And the CD is covered in green. Continue reading →

The intertwined worlds of design, architecture and sustainability are ready to welcome to the Bullitt Center to the planet. You can be part of the Earth Day party to celebrate its arrival.

As anybody who has walked down E Madison over the past 18 months has noted, the super-green Bullitt didn’t drop from the sky like an alien ship. Construction is still wrapping up on the solar panel-crowned project — even as it hosted its first major event Friday night with architecture and design periodical ARCADE filling the building’s second floor with a party marking the release of its spring edition.

The just-released details of the Bullitt’s big party in April are below. Expect dignitaries galore to be on hand in a Seattle mayoral election year and with the project’s planetary-wide profile. Continue reading →