A group of teenagers have been working very hard this summer rehearsing for the first local production of Bobos, an award-winning “urban opera” about youth living in Seattle.

From the city press release:

The story line involves Alfred, played by 15-year-old JK Lewis. Alfred’s parents give him Bobos (cheap, bargain basement knockoffs) for his thirteenth birthday.  No one understands his dilemma, and so it’s out into the streets where he is promptly tortured by the entire neighborhood including the Autobots, a local gang led by Brick, played by Jayson Lowe.  Gerald, an undercover cop posing as a homeless man, played by Otieno Terry, tries to help and things turn ugly.  Alfred is tempted to take the wrong path.  Other characters engaged in this dilemma are Phyllis, the mother of the community, played by Michaelyn Thomas and Chelsea Muskelly.  Heleina Gartrell and Kianna Lewis play Doris, the dorky friend of Alfred’s family.

Check out the video above which has a snippet of the kids performing at the Umojafest parade two weeks ago.

The show started yesterday at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center (17th & Yesler) and runs through this Sunday, August 23rd:

• 1pm Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
• 7pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
• 6pm Sunday

Tickets are a very reasonable $4-$12, and are available before the shows at Langston Hughes, or online at brownpapertickets.com

Please come out for the Annual Aki Kurose Middle School cleanup to help beautify the grounds for the new school year! We begin on August 22nd at 9 am and will finish around 1pm.
Questions? email [email protected]
Any gardening tools, gloves or equipment would be much appreciated

Our beloved 68-pound male black lab, Cole, went missing on 8/14 from MLK and Lane. He was last spotted around 9pm at 29th and Jackson. He is wearing a blue collar. He is friendly, but based on reports is now very scared/skittish, and is difficult to catch. Please call me immediately, no matter if it’s the middle of the night, at 215-500-0521. Please also try to approach him and get hold of his collar/put him on a leash. He may respond to his name, or food offerings… he also likes anything that squeeks. We miss him terribly and want him home safely as soon as possible. THANK YOU for your support.

Last month we told you about the lengthy treks that Swedish/Providence employees are taking to find parking. Now the residential parking zone (RPZ) has expanded again to include the 700 block of 21st and the two blocks of E. Columbia from 20th to 22nd.

Check out the difference, starting with the before pic of the 2000 block of E. Columbia:

Now that the new parking signs have gone up, it’s totally empty:

And as you might expect, many of the parkers have just moved north to the 800 block of 22nd where there’s not any signs. If you’re in one of those blocks and want to be added to the RPZ, you just need to get approval of 60% of the neighbors on your block and then follow the instructions here to complete the process:http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/parking/parkingrpz_how. You’ll then get two free stickers to put on your vehicles and leave the commuters to find a new unmarked block.

The long-neglected amphitheater at Blanche Lavizzo park is suddenly getting a lot of use. The festive live music of this past Saturday is transitioning to the civic excitement of a city council land use meeting today, as Councilmember Sally Clark brings her Planning, Land Use, & Neighborhoods committee out to discuss changes to the city’s development policies for Midrise and Highrise zones.

And as dan.nolte told us last week, your bonus for attending is free ice cream (* purchased by Sally Clark’s personal fund).

There’s some disagreement as to whether this was the proper location for such a meeting since we don’t really have any midrise or highrise zoning in the neighborhood. But it’s still a good chance to get out and hear what the council is planning for dense developments around the city. And if you’ve got something to say about local development, I’m sure they’ll take public comments too.

Ice Cream starts at 5pm, and the real meeting will go from 5:30 to 6:30.

Blanche Lavizzo Park is in the valley behind the Odessa Brown health care center, just southwest of 22nd & Yesler.

It’s probably sitting on your kitchen counter or in that growing pile of unopened mail in your office. But it’s time to get to it and put your primary ballot in the mail.

You’re probably thinking “it’s just a primary election”. But it’s your only chance to make sure you’ll have two good options to choose from in each local race in November. And they are important races like Mayor, City Council, and for the school board.

Don’t have a stamp? There’s a handy ballot drop-off at the Neighborhood Service Center in the Promenade shopping center at 2301 S. Jackson. And the drop-off is on the outside, so you should be able to do it at any hour.

Here’s some links to our and other’s election coverage to help you make up your mind:

• Mayoral Hopeful Tours Central District Businesses
• Profile of Mayoral Candidate Wyking Garrett
• School Board Candidate Forum
• Seattle Times Covers School Board Race
• Primary Election Tools & Endorsements Open Thread
• CD & Capitol Hill Election Forum
• Citywide election coverage on Seattle Post Globe

A Seattle City Light (SCL) truck has been moving from fixture to fixture along E Union Street for the last few workdays. I stopped to say Thanks! and learned that they’re changing light bulbs, checking voltage and wiring. One worker said that if a light is still dark or strobing after these maintenance checks, we should report it to SCL (with pole number and nearest address) as the entire fixture needs to be changed. I’m delighted to see this as it’s taken so long lately to get reported lights out checked and fixed. Better lighting is a Good Thing.

In the last couple of years Seattle has become home to a unique population of indie neighborhood news sites. Capitol Hill Seattle and West Seattle Blog were the first (and still probably the best), and we think our October 2007 launch makes us #4, after Blogging Georgetown. And since then, we’ve used our Neighborlogs platform to create a network of a dozen different sites in neighborhoods across Seattle.

They’ve all been growing wildly in traffic and attention. This site alone clocked a record 156,000 page views in July, and our Neighborlogs network had 79,000 unique visitors. That kind of traffic tends to get attention, and the big corporate media outlets have taken notice. The Seattle PI (owned by the Hearst corp) launched their first neighborhood blog last month on Queen Anne, and today KOMO TV launched a series of neighborhood sites citywide, including one here in the CD.

The new competition validates the long hours we’ve spent building this platform. The attempt to duplicate our features is especially flattering. But unlike these centrally-driven groups, we actually live in the communities we cover. We hear when sirens go flying down 23rd Ave, get out and go to neighborhood meetings, and discover local news when we’re just out walking around with the Newshound. And we’ll probably understand that a south Seattle shooting and a SODO gas leak aren’t actually in the Central District. (Update: those posts were removed from their front page after we pointed them out)

TV has a long history of regurgitating stories they find elsewhere, often without attribution. And so far, it looks like the online efforts will be no different. But we’ll still be here with detailed, timely, original coverage of the things that are important to our neighborhood.

And remember that advertising is what keeps your favorite indie site in business. Anyone can advertise on CDNews, and reach thousands of people right near them, for as low as $2.50 a day. So if you happen to notice that your favorite business is not an advertiser, or see a local business advertising on a corporate site, be sure and ask them to support CDNews the next time you’re in their shop.

The area around CDNews World HQ had been marvelously free of dumped household goods for years. But in the last few weeks we’ve seen a number of abandoned couches suddenly appear on the parking strips.

What surprised us the most was how easy it was to get them cleaned up. All of the parking strips between the sidewalk and the street is city property, and Seattle Public Utilities takes ownership of cleaning up anything that’s dumped there.

Just call SPU’s illegal dumping line at 206-684-7587 and they’ll send a crew out to pick up any dumped items. In our recent experience, they’ve been out there to clean things up within three or four days.

The CD Scanner is back in action, covering all of the excitement of Seattle’s East Precinct: