If you’ve ever walked down the sidewalk and thought to yourself, “I wonder if I can eat that!” this walking tour of Judkins Park is for you!

FREE WALKING TOUR!

Join urban forager JT and the Colman Neighborhood Community Harvest as we find wild and edible food in the south end of the Central District.

This is your chance to move beyond picking a few blackberries and to learn about the many other tasty plants you probably pass by every day.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 9: 6:30 PM

We meet up at 6:30 for light snacks (and some wild food!) at 733 25th Ave S (the cross street is Dearborn). The walking tour will start promptly at 7:00.

Rain or Shine! Contact Knox at [email protected] for more information.

As part of King County Metro’s Squire Park In Motion program, Carla Saulter (AKA Bus Chick) will give a free workshop August 6 at the Central Area Motivation Program building near 18th and Columbia. On her blog, Saulter writes about her adventures as a transit-taking parent, and her workshop promises lots of advice for the transit-curious and transit-inept.

From the SDOT Blog:

This Saturday Bus Chick teams up with Metro Transit to provide a free workshop on how to make riding the bus a great travel option for families. This is part of Metro’s In Motion program for the Squire Park neighborhood, but the workshop is open to anyone.

Parents and kids can learn about how to know where the bus is going, when it will arrive, how to keep kids entertained, what to carry with you and other helpful things to know when riding the bus.

And yes, wise guys, the event is kid-friendly. In fact, there will healthy snacks, free family transit guides for all and door prizes (zoo passes) for the first 10 families to arrive. And yes, of course you can get there by bus.

Event details:
When: Saturday, August 6, 10 – 11:30 AM
Where: Central Area Motivation Program, 722 18th Ave (served by routes 2, 3, or 4)

After parting ways with the Queen Team, based out of Cappy’s Boxing Gym, the Queen of the Ring is getting settled into her new training headquarters at Tacoma Boxing Club. Queen Underwood, on a mission to win women’s boxing gold at the 2012 Olympics, has launched a new website and started her own Twitter account.

Though she is spending more time training in Tacoma and around the country, you can meet Underwood at the Last Supper Club down in Pioneer Square August 5. The Garfield alumna will be raising money for the new Queen Underwood Foundation.

More info, from the Facebook event:

Queen is back in Seattle after training with Freddie Roach, professional boxing’s most respected trainer (27 world titles) and will be speaking at a WOMEN OF INSPIRATION NIGHT WITH THE SEATTLE STORM along with Maj Margaret Witt, Jeanne Higgins, founder of girls on the Run Puget Sound, and other special guest.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 5:00pm-9:00pm
LOCATION: Key Arena, Champions Room,

If you are not fortunate enough to have a ticket to mix and mingle with Queen Underwood at this event, Champion + NRG will be throwing a meet and greet and fundraiser for the newly forming Queen Underwood Foundation “Living Out the Dream” at Last Supper Club. Come get your picture taken with the Queen, and get to know this truly amazing and captivating athlete and philanthropist.

Guest will have private entry, free cover (donations for entry will be accepted and will go to the Queen Underwood Foundation) dedicated bar in which a portion of proceeds will go to benefit Queen Underwood’s newly forming foundation, A silent auction and raffle with gifts donated by Last Supper Club and other area businesses. (more information coming soon). I will update more as soon as we have more information, but SEATTLE let’s support excellence on so many levels!

Anybody else notice loud buzzing at the back of the old HSDC building at 18th and Madison? We’ve been kept awake for the past few nights but an extremely loud, irritating and intermittent buzzing noise – like an institutional alarm, or an overloaded circuit, or the halftime buzzer at a basketball game.

We hear it all the way from 22nd and Union. Can’t imagine what it’s like for folks living in the surrounding houses and condos…

Attention folks who like lunch, beer and children: Starting this weekend, children will be allowed into Twilight Exit (with supervision) Saturdays and Sundays until 5 p.m. From Twilight Exit’s Facebook page:

Ok, breeders. Starting this weekend you can bring your rug-rats in with you until 5pm (Sat & Sun only). Just a few rules…all children must be accompanied by an adult, no children in lounge, no Justin Bieber shirts, and for the safety of staff and other patrons all kids must muzzled and leashed at all times. Also before you start complaining about this, remember, you were a kid once too.

When we talked to Steve Mollmann, owner of Twilight Exit (a CDN advertiser), in December, he mentioned that they were working to allow children during weekend lunch. However, the Washington Liquor Control Board required some changes that needed to be ironed out.

A recent addition, closing off part of the entrance to the bar.

In order to allow children, there can only be 10 feet of entrance between the bar and the seating area, said Mollmann. So they installed a new barrier blocking part of the space.

“I don’t know why we didn’t do that before,” said Mollmann. “It adds more seating. They also will need to set up a rope line to separate the seating area from the shuffleboard table because, for some reason, that’s a rule.

Mollmann said allowing kids, at least for lunch, has been a common request at the Twilight. But the big push for the changes came from his home. He has a four-month-old child now, and he wants to be able to bring his kid with him without breaking the law.

League of Women Voters Seattle-King County Forum tonight

http://seattlelwv.org/node/1094

What questions are you going to ask at tonight’s forum?  We’ll open the floor to questions from the audience after we hear from pro & con sides on Seattle Referendum 1 & King County Proposition 1, and from candidates in Seattle City Council Positions 1 and 9 races 

7 to 9:30 PM,  Seattle First Baptist Church, 1111 Harvard Ave, Seattle

Agenda

• 7:00 PM: King County Proposition No. 1
• 7:30 PM: Seattle Referendum No. 1
• 8:00 – 8:15: break
• 8:15 – 9:30: Seattle City Council Candidates in a forum regarding the viaduct replacement.

August Primary Issues Forum

Thursday, Aug. 4
Social Hour: 6:30 to 7:00 PM
Forum: 7:00 to 9:30 PM

Please join us for our Forum in anticipation of the Primary on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011. We have a rousing evening planned, with a brief discussion of the King County funding structure, why the Veteran’s Levy came about in 2005, and why the County is asking the voters to continue it for another six years in Proposition No. 1. Next we’ll have a rousing discussion of the “Viaduct Replacement Issue” appearing as Referendum 1 on Seattle voters’ ballots. We will cap off the evening with a discussion of Referendum 1 and surrounding issues with the candidates for the two Seattle races appearing on the ballot: Positions No. 1 and 9 on the City Council.

Agenda

• 7:00 PM: King County Proposition No. 1
• 7:30 PM: Seattle Referendum No. 1
• 8:00 – 8:15: break
• 8:15 – 9:30: Seattle City Council Candidates in a forum regarding the viaduct replacement.

The League of Women Voters of Seattle-King County

What questions are you going to ask at tonight’s forum?

We’ll open the floor to questions from the audience after we hear from pro & con sides on Seattle Referendum 1 & King County Proposition 1, and from candidates in Seattle City Council Positions 1 and 9 races.

A piece of Central District history was uncovered Tuesday afternoon after being buried under decades of change.  The storefront at 18th Avenue and East Union had a building permit issued for renovation in mid-July, but from outside appearances it seemed not much was going on. That all changed on Tuesday.  

“And as we peeled the layers off, all of a sudden we saw the sign,” said Michael Cozzi, who co-owns the building with his wife, Karen Moskowitz. 

“Thirty-odd people screeched to a halt out there, and pulled over,” said Cozzi. “One guy said, ‘I used to get my candy from there in the 60’s’. I said, ‘What was your favorite candy?’ ‘Red licorice, a penny a stick.’” 

Old advertisement revealed. Photo by @LizWas

Painted directly onto the building, the sign advertises “Regan’s Grocery and Chinese Food Center” in red and blue letters. “Pickup” and “Delivery” are offered, and the food is advertised as “Hot” and “Fresh.”

Cozzi, a musician and music producer, and Moskowitz, a photographer, purchased the building in March of 2010 after losing their artists work space on 12th Avenue between Pike and Pine in Capitol Hill.  

“That whole area kind of got Belltown-ized,” Cozzi said.  “We were there for 20 years.”   As the area was transformed with condos and new restaurants, rents tripled, said Cozzi, and artists left the area.  For Cozzi and Moskowitz, they didn’t have to go far to find a place where they wanted to settle.  The building on 18th Avenue already housed Tougo Coffee, Gallery 1412, and New City Theater, and for Cozzi and Moskowitz it had the potential to replace the art hub they had to leave behind on Capitol Hill. 

“It was of an age that if someone didn’t do something with it…it was going to be torn down. If a developer had gotten this they probably would have torn it down…but we were early enough to be able to renovate, and it made sense,” he explained.

What sparked this project, said Cozzi, was the discovery of historic pictures of the building during the feasibility study and property research.

“They have these pictures from 1937…we got one of this building and it looked so great.  So we’re kind of just going back to that.  It’s supposed to be a modern version of that.”

As he told me this, Cozzi was sitting in his new recording studio, which was a hair salon until a few months ago. Cozzi is a songwriter, lead guitarist, and producer of Sky Cries Mary, a globally recognized Seattle-based band that formed in the late 1980’s. The band regrouped in 2004 after five years apart.  His recording studio in the 1412 18th Avenue building will be used for his own musical projects, as well as available for other artists to rent on a project oriented basis.

The corner location, which most recently housed a yoga and dance studio, is being reworked to be Moskowitz’s photography studio.  Cozzi said it will be a “nice, daylit studio,” to be used for her photography business, and likely available to be rented by other photographers. 

The sudden appearance of the historic painted sign was in stark contrast to the most recent facade of the building, which was nondescript, with a lot of the character of the 1910 building covered up by various remodels over the decades. 

“It will be a lot more visible once we’ve done the place up,” Cozzi said of the building. 

Unfortunately, code regulations are going to require that the Regan’s Grocery sign be removed from the building because the paint contains lead. Additionally, Cozzi said the siding is too far rotted in most of the areas to save it all, though they are hoping to find a way to restore and keep at least part of it. On the left side of the wall he pointed out an older sign that had been partially painted over. At first glance it appears to say “room” and “lies”.

“I think that used to say ‘dark room supplies,'” he said, pointing out half of the letter ‘K’ barely visible next to “room.” Fitting advertisement for the exterior wall of his wife’s new photography studio.  

Ian Jones of Treebird Construction is General Contractor on the project. Parr Building LLC is listed as the building owner on the permit documents. New City Theater’s director is John Kazanjian. 

Saturday, August 6^th, 11:30 AM – Honoring The Legacy!!!

Mardi-Gras-Umoja Fest Parade Mural Honors the Past and Embraces the Future

Last spring, students from Madrona K-8 school in the Central District helped to design and paint a mural that honors the tradition of the summer Central Area Mardi Gras-Umoja Festparade.  The mural has been installed on the ‘Thompson’s Point of View’ building at 23

^rd and East Union. On Saturday, August 6^th, at 11:30 AM, the youth will be recognized at a ceremony prior to the Umoja Fest African American Heritage Parade.

The spirit of the Umoja Fest African Heritage Festival & Parade is one that spans more than five decades. A tradition since the 1940s, Seattle has hosted the annual African American community festival and parade as a celebration of the city’s ethnic diversity. Originally part of the International Festival, it was known over the years as the East Madison Mardi Gras and the Pacific Northwest Black Community Festival. It not only has been credited as the inspiration behind SEAFAIR (which emerged during the early 1950′s), but also continues to be held during Seafair’s annual summer activities.

The East Madison Mardi-Gras Festival and Parade

In the late 50s and early 60s, the East Madison-East Union Commercial Club proudly sponsored the East Madison Mardi Gras Festival and Parade. Before the Mardi Gras, the African American community participated in the International Festival, held in what was once known as Chinatown. Chinatown is currently referred to as the impact of the International Festival, the first neighborhood event to agree to hold its festivities as an integral part of the Seattle SEAFAIR celebration. Four different cultures combined to stage the event: Filipino, Black (then Negro), Chinese, and Japanese. Each selected their own Queen and her court of four princesses to reign over her community and ride in the Parade on that community’s float. In addition to riding in the Parade through Chinatown, the Festival Queens and their courts rode in the Capitol Hill Parades, Rainier Valley Parade, the University District Kiddies Parade and the SEAFAIR Grande Parade.

City officials estimated that nearly 200,000 people jammed their way into over-crowded Chinatown for the Second Annual International Festival. The wealthy and “out-of-other-side-of-towners” and community natives elbowed one another for a glimpse at the Chinese dragon dancers and the lovely Queens and their courts on their respective floats.

Long lines of people made their way through the streets from one food booth to another while others waited in lengthy lines to dine at the Chinatown restaurants. Asian dancers and style shows entertained for hours. As if that weren’t enough to put one into a frenzy, live bands such as Bob Marshall’s jazzed up the night while torch songs rang out dwarfing the whistles of the incoming trains.

One man was rumored to have said, “This festival had a flavor of the bootlegging days when Chinatown pulsated with Ragtime music and the wealthy slipped away from the usual boredom to swing and enjoy.”

The International Festival’s second year didn’t surpass its first because of the enormous turnout. The city had to break it up. This is when the four communities decided to put on their own festivals. From the move toward individual festivals, the East Madison/East Union Mardi Gras Festival was born.

With the end of Mardi Gras in the 60s, various business and community leaders, including Pacific Northwest Bell, Central Area Motivation Program and the Pacific Northwest Black Community Association would carry the torch. Since 1997, the Umoja Fest African Heritage Festival & Parade has preserved the festival spirit and continues to grow.

Changes to corner building and a look back at what was there before.  Can Anyone date this facade?