One woman was arrested after an afternoon bar robbery near 22nd Ave S and Jackson November 29. According to the police report, three women in their early 20s walked in the bar around 3 p.m., and one of them asked if she could buy a shot for $1. The bartender told her the shot costs $6, then turned his attention to another patron.

While his back was turned, the patron saw the women grab two bottles of liquor and run out of the store. The bartender chased them outside and confronted them. One suspect took the bottles from her purse and gave them to her two companions, who both fled. The suspect then allegedly kicked the bartender in the shins twice, cutting his hand in the process.

The victim was able to snap a photo of the suspect with his phone and called the police. Officers found the suspect at a nearby deli. The suspect had a 12 and a half inch knife in her purse, which she said was for self-defense. She was arrested on investigation of robbery.

Support Local & Handmade this holiday Season!!  All Women,  All Local & Fair-Trade,  All for You!

25 Swag Bags will be given out to the first 25 guests!!!!  Door Prizes Every Hour!  FREE ADMISSION!

Saturday, December 11,  2010 from 9:30am to 3:30pm @ the Central Area Senior Center.

This is a locally organized “pop-up shop” for a wonderfully diverse group of designers & artisans from the CD, Capitol Hill, First Hill, Columbia City, Beacon Hill, Skyway, & West Seattle.  All locally handcrafted or fair-trade goods!

Celebrate the season in style and meet our ten exquisite designers and artisans!  Gifts include accessories, fine nibbles, jewelry, inspiration, natural skincare and the Diva Connection secondhand and vintage store.  See our shops on our Facebook Page.

Walk or Bike to the event, but if you have to drive there will be plenty of parking available.  Hope to see you there!

Central Area Senior Center 500 – 30 Ave S., Seattle, 98144 (30th Ave S. & King St.)

 Find us on Facebook  by following this link  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=137381102971777&ref=nf

Contact: [email protected] for more info

As part of work on a new budget for 2011/2012, Seattle school officials are considering lightening the load on a crowded Garfield High School by shifting some students across the city. This and a slate of other proposals are outlined here by the Seattle Times:

To ease overcrowding at Garfield High, administrators are looking at opening a new program at Ingraham High aimed at attracting some of the gifted students who otherwise would be assigned to Garfield.

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The proposed new program would be modeled after one at Interlake High School in Bellevue, where students finish the rigorous International Baccalaureate program by the end of their junior year, then do internships or take college classes as seniors.

With the shift to neighborhood based school assignment, Garfield has faced complaints of overcrowded classrooms this year. CDN has reported that currently all APP Students are guaranteed an assignment to Garfield if they choose to go there.  Garfield’s current enrollment is about 1780 and approximately 455 are APP students, while the capacity of the school is about 1680.

One beneficiary of the Kraus grant was a proposal to get more use out of the shelterhouse in Madrona Park through community programming in a partnership with the Garfield Community Center (as well as adding an indoor toilet for the winter months). 

The first step of that proposal starts tomorrow (Friday) with Story Time for kids 5 and under from 9:30-10:30am. There will also be coloring sheets and toys for children to play with.

Organizer Karin Richard is still looking for volunteers to read stories each week, as well as a clean area rug or carpet remnant to donate for the floor of the shelterhouse. 

Stay tuned for more on the indoor toilet and other shelterhouse activities coming, including a sewing class starting in January.

Brass Letter, originally uploaded by BlinkingCharlie.

Nothing tells a story better than a great photograph. And there are a lot of stories to tell in the Central District. To share more of these stories with you — and help us tell them better — CDN is embracing a neighborhood community asset: the friendly neighborhood Central District (Seattle) Flickr pool .

Neighbor Kimberley writes:

i’d love it if you wanted to post something about this :)

feel free to reuse any photos from it w/permission of the photographer too

http://www.flickr.com/groups/880585@N25/

We’ll go you one better, Kimberley. We’re also making the pool a part of the site. On the homepage, you’ll now find a badge showing the latest additions to the pool. We plan to be part of — and utilize — the pool per the Flickr community guidelines. If we choose something of yours — like the great picture of an icy reminder of last week’s cold from BlinkingCharlie — and you’d rather we not, just let us know at [email protected] and we’ll replace it immediately. We’re also not above paying for your work! Let us know if you’re interested in taking on photo assignments for the neighborhood. We hope the pool becomes a useful and entertaining way to share images of the neighborhood and showcase the work of some of the best photographers — and the rest of us.

Here’s a slideshow from the pool to inspire you.

CDN has learned new details about the armed robbery reported last week after three people arrived at Swedish Cherry Hill’s emergency room suffering from a pepper spray attack on a frozen, icy Seattle night.

 According to the Seattle Police report on the incident, a driver and two passengers were traveling on MLK, lost and looking for I-5 last Wednesday, the third straight night of freezing temperatures and icy conditions in the Seattle area. When they came to East Columbia, the driver told police they decided to turn east and then south on 29th. On the frozen side street, the vehicle immediately began to slide out of control before coming to a stop mid-block.

At that moment, according to accounts related to the police separately by the three victims, the vehicle was immediately surrounded by three people. The victims said a male wearing a black hooded sweatshirt walked up to the vehicle, pointed a black, semi-automatic pistol through the open window on the passenger side and demanded the passenger’s wallet and phone. Meanwhile, on the other side of the vehicle, another male started emptying a “large” can of pepper spray into the vehicle through the driver’s window and then began beating the can against the windows in an attempt to break them. At this point, the driver was able to drive away from the scene but not before all three occupants of the car had received a face-full of burning spray.

All three were treated for pepper spray exposure after they arrived at the emergency room about an hour later around 9 PM.

According to the report, the suspects were described only as two black males wearing dark clothing and a black female. A search for the suspects an hour after the victims said the crime occurred yielded nothing.

Our news partners at the Seattle Times have compiled maps that show the voting precinct breakdowns for three major statewide races decided this fall. There aren’t any huge surprises for the Central District but it is interesting to note where the pockets of support were strongest for the two initiatives in the mix — liquor privatization initiative 1100 and income tax initiative 1098. More telling is the sea of eastern opposition to 1098 which was defeated — and for Dino Rossi in the senate race. Rossi, of course, was also a loser. Is also a loser? Anyway. Here are the maps shared here by permission of the Times.

SENATE: Murray (52.36%)
 Seattle Times analysis 

INITIATIVE 1098 — income tax (No, 64.15%)
Seattle Times analysis 

INITIATIVE 1100 — liquor privatization (No, 53.43%)
Seattle Times Analysis

Seattle Community Court gives misdemeanor offenders opportunities to complete community service hours in lieu of jail time.  Participants ‘give back’ to the neighborhoods, often where their offenses occurred.  Today, you may see four Community Court participants in orange vests, under the leadership of AmeriCorps members Yonatan Aldort and Jeremy Ciarabellini, walking through the Central District picking up litter.  Please show them your appreciation, our goals are to help our participants, who often face multiple barriers; to restore themselves as they restore our communities.  

If you are the first generation of your family to graduate from a 4-year college or university, please take our short survey. We need your input to help understand how to best provide education and achievement for all families and kids.

And if you just need a little good news today, read some of the stories from folks who have already taken the survey.

http://www.educationvoters.org/1st-generation

League of Education Voters

EducationVoters.org

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday. That’s marketing. You spending your holiday gift money near home with business owners that live and work in your neighborhood? That’s smart. While it may not be the first choice people think of in the city for shopping, the Central District has plenty of unique gift giving opportunities that include the added benefit of keeping money in the community. We’ve included a picture of one of the area’s most successful retailers, Madrona’s Glassybaby. In the past, we’ve profiled other great CD places to shop like Immortal Dog and events like the Pratt Fine Arts annual holiday sale. But what are your Central District holiday shopping secrets? We’ll continue to update this post throughout December with holiday giving ideas and inspiration for shopping locally. You can help out by adding information about your favorite neighborhood shops or sales and deals you find. The more off the beaten path, the better. Happy (local) holidays.