Reports trickle in of restored internet, restored phone, restored television. The old credit card slips can be put away. Keep your cash. Capitol Hill still stands. Thanks to Kate K. for sharing a great picture with an even greater caption.
“Cumulonimbus over Capitol Hill that just won’t quit” — @kateseventy8 via Twitter
See something others should know about? Email CHS or call/txt (206) 399-5959. You can view recent CHS Crime coverage here.
Police booked the 16-year-old into the King County Youth Service Center for unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of stolen property and a warrant. They also booked an 18-year-old suspect for a felony warrant. Officers released a third 19-year-old member of the group after identifying him.
“Fraser at the helm of the roaster” — Victrola Coffee Roasters
For the second year in a row, Capitol Hill will be the coffee playground to attendees of one of the largest coffee conventions in the country, happening just off the Hill in the Washington State Convention Center.
Thousands of coffee professionals started gathering this week for the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s expo. Four days of lectures, demonstrations, and competitions officially kicks off Thursday.
The opening day concludes with a block party just outside Melrose Market from 7 to 10 PM. Thursday night’s event is open to the public, as is the latte art competition inside the E Pike Victrola. Local baristas are encouraged to compete and their local customers are encouraged to go cheer them on. Organizers tell CHS the block party will include a beer garden, food trucks, and of course, plenty of coffee.
Typically, the SCAA event travels to different city each year. The return to Seattle and the convention center coincides with the recent nearby arrival of the Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room. Starbucks is this year’s official event host and says it is eager to show off its new showy operation on Capitol Hill.
But Starbucks won’t be the only roaster for attendees to check out within walking distance of the convention center. Capitol Hill is home to the densest cluster of coffee roasters in the city, which includes Victrola, Caffe Vita, Espresso Vivace, and Stumptown. Eastlake is also home to roasters for Kalani Organic Coffee and Monkee Tree Coffee.
According to permit information obtained by CHS, there are 30 coffee roasters within the city limits where green coffee beans are heated until they’re brown and aromatic. Continue reading
Thousands of customers appear to be offline and without cable service across Capitol Hill — and perhaps beyond — Thursday morning.
Service provider Comcast hasn’t publicly announced the details of the disruption but the company’s sites are detailing an outage expected to last until 1 PM. However, at least one business customer in the neighborhood said that a customer representative told his company to expect the outage to possibly last through the day.
CHS has heard from people who work from home and businesses served by Comcast reporting no service across the Pike/Pine area and eastern Capitol Hill as well as reports from Seattle above the Montlake Cut. Some business point of sale systems that depend on connectivity are also down around the area.
A Comcast representative tells us the company will provide more details on the situation to CHS soon. UPDATE: The Comcast rep says he can’t yet say when service will be restored but did provide some details on what has happened.
He tells CHS “a fiber optic line located in the Madison Park area” was damaged around 8:45 AM but “the cause of the damage is still unknown.” UPDATE: The issue was instead traced to damage caused by construction work in South Lake Union.
“We have technicians on the scene and are assessing the full extent of the damage as well as the number of customers who are potentially impacted by the outage,” the spokesperson said.
Comcast can’t yet provide an estimate on when service will be restored.
@jseattle Comcast told us out until 5pm. Dude. Seriously? We’re trying to run a business and are sending 34 ppl home.
— Brian Rauschenbach (@rauschenbach) April 9, 2015
UPDATE: As the outage drags on, things have gotten political. Here’s a tweet from earlier today sent by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant:
Enough w/ @comcast price gouging, monopoly and outages! We need #MuncipalBroadband and compensation 4 lost business. http://t.co/swW9BBFoE8
— Kshama Sawant (@cmkshama) April 9, 2015
Capitol Hill-headquartered The Stranger apparently were able to jury rig enough of a connection for Ansel Herz to weigh in on the Comcast failure:
Too bad there isn’t another option, like, a non-corporate-overlord Internet provider that we could do more than bitch about! Except there could be.Upgrade Seattle, a group advocating for a city-run gigabit Internet network, sent me this statement: “Our condolences on the death of your Internet. This is why we need a strong, accountable municipal Internet service throughout Seattle.” Over to you, Mayor Ed Murray.
(Image: Comcast via Twitter)
(Image: CHS)
Meanwhile, Comcast has posted this picture (on the right) showing some of the repair work reportedly underway — “Splicing fiber in SLU to restore service to Madison Park and surrounding neighborhoods.”
Out and about, we found the CenturyLink technician (left) hooking up a new customer on Capitol Hill. He said he’s been passing out more cards than usual today.
We’re late to remind — and it might seem obvious — but if you’re phone service is provided by Comcast, you also won’t be able to make 911 calls during the outage.
UPDATE 3:50 PM: We’re getting word of service being restored to areas of the Hill including around Volunteer Park.
UPDATE 4:10 PM: The Seattle Times says an estimated 33,000 customers have been affected by the outage.
UPDATE 5:45 PM: Comcast says most customers are back online and the last few thousand should be restored within the hour.
Mudede (Image: Josh Kelety)
With rents in Seattle still through the roof and Capitol Hill in a state of frenzied construction, Charles Mudede, film critic and writer for The Stranger, has brought together After Seattle, an exhibition of multi-media art documenting and acknowledging the period of intense transition Seattle is currently facing.
Mudede, who moved to Seattle in 1989, has seen Seattle in numerous states of existence, from the effects of “white-flight” on Seattle’s inner city during the 80s to the Microsoft boom of the 90s and the eventual suburban housing bubble collapse in 2008. But he says that the “frenetic” economic activity of the Amazon era represents and even greater shift due to the sudden massive concentration of capital within the city, and the resulting warping face of the city he once knew.
“This particular boom hit me forcefully,” said Mudede. “this is new and it’s going to have consequences.”
He maintains the show won’t try to predict with absolute certainty what will come out of Seattle’s current throes of evolution. “I just wanted to do a show that didn’t say what exactly, where all this would lead, but just to recognize that it has to go somewhere.”
The show opens at 12th Ave’s Hedreen Gallery on Thursday night, and will run for one month. Featured artists include Tendai Maraie from the experimental hip hop group Shabazz Palaces, Seattle civil engineer Cary Moon, photographer Virginia Wilcox, and musician and Beatles descendant Sean Ono Lennon. The works range from photography of strangers around Capitol Hill to a film bombarding the viewer with data about the various ways Seattle is changing. Continue reading
It’s a weekend of art and coffee around Capitol Hill as the monthly art walk returns and thousands of caffeine peddlers descent on Seattle for a massive coffee convention.
(Image: King County)
As usual, you’ll find a full roster for Thursday’s April edition of the Capitol Hill Art Walk at capitolhillartwalk.com. Make time to include these two stops in your itinerary:
Capitol Hill Art Invasion
A cabal of over 30 artists take over Capitol Hill house for a one night art show.
On the corner of 12th and E. John Street, a classic house awaits demolition to make way for the construction of yet another high density apartment building. During the past decade, the house provided local artists, theater professionals and other small businesses with affordable studio and office space.
After Seattle
The reason why I call this exhibit After Seattle is that there is a point when a sharp increase in our city’s buildings, human activity, and economic volume will change it into something we could never foresee.
Due Process
CHS told you here about the project to give maligned Pike/Pine gentrifiers, bros, and Woo! girls their Due Process through art.
Thursday night also brings the Specialty Coffee Association of America Block Party to Capitol Hill:
Join a couple thousand of your fellow attendees for great socializing, music, a beer garden and the Thursday Night Latte Art Throwdown at Victrola Coffee Roasters! Area restaurants and food vendors will be selling adult beverages (to guests 21+), sample food and small bites.
Happy birthday, Ghost Gallery
Also this weekend, Northwest Film Forum hosts the annual ByDesign architecture and design film festival, the Moisture Festival brings IMPulse Circus Collective to the Broadway Performance Hall and the lovely little Ghost Gallery celebrates five years at E Denny Way and Summit.
For more things to do on and around Capitol Hill, check out the CHS Calendar. It’s open to community updates if you have an event you want to share. Continue reading
Irish, left, and Glenn (Images: Jeanny Rhee for CHS)
By Jeanny Rhee — UW News Lab/Special for CHS
With thousands of coffee pros arriving in Seattle this week for the Specialty Coffee Association of America 2015 expo, leave it to CHS to tell you about Capitol Hill tea.
Remedy Teas is now under the ownership of Christopher Glenn and Rich Irish, who have grand plans for continuing and expanding the tea house with health and sustainability in mind.
And, by “now,” we mean “as of last August.” Glenn and Irish said they weren’t in a hurry to make a big deal about the change.
“Some people will blast big signs of new ownership because they’re trying to change the business’ perception to customers,” Irish said. “Remedy Teas is a very solid brand in the community and we didn’t want to broadcast it.” Continue reading
(Image: Kate Clark via Flickr)
We all contribute to it, but most people never want to think about trash until it becomes a totally unavoidable problem. Some would say the dumpsters around Pike/Pine have reached that tipping point.
As part of their mission to foster a more livable urban neighborhood, the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict will use $10,000 from a city grant to develop solutions to make the neighborhood’s dumpsters less of a nuisance.
Finding a way to get the dumpsters out of the public right of way will be near the top of the to-do list.
“You can’t permanently store garbage receptacles in the right of way,” said EcoDistrict director Joel Sisolak. “But the challenge is if you don’t put them in the right of way, where can you put them?” Continue reading
(Image: CHS)
One day, thinking robots will deeply challenge our notion of what constitutes a living thing. Thinking buildings that completely sustain themselves may do the same and E Madison’s Bullitt Center is evidently leading the way.
Billed as the greenest commercial building in the world, the Bullitt Center was recently awarded the Living Building Certification. It’s the first office building to get the designation, considered the most rigorous sustainability certification in the world. CHS wrote about the Bullitt’s nomination last year. We were also there when it opened to much applause and greater expectations in April 2013.
The Living Building certification is awarded to buildings that essentially operate as living organisms — one that is self-sufficent for water and energy and actively promotes the health of its occupants and surrounding environment.
Solar panels atop the 15th and Madison building produce an excess amount of energy sold back to Seattle City Light, human waste is composted, graywater is treated onsite, and the estimated 1,000 different building materials and products used to build the center are devoid of hundreds of typical toxic chemicals.
Running it all is the building’s “brain,” which automatically adjusts systems to optimize for the for the time of day, time of year, the number of people in the building, CO2 levels, and weather.
“We think of this building as a living thing,” said Bullitt spokesperson Brad Kahn. Continue reading
(Images: The Madrona Company)
CHS has covered quite a few design reviews. Which means we’ve seen quite a lot of frustrated citizenry. The relationship between the design review board volunteers and the community members who come out to speak up on a neighborhood project was, perhaps, summed up best by this quote from a 2010 review of the Broadway building that is today known as The Lyric.
“You’re complaining in the wrong format.”
The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development is seeking to change that relationship with an effort to change the review program.
The overhaul has three stated goals:
We imagine any of you who have attended a review might have a bit to say about those. Unsurprisingly, there’s a survey. More on the design review improvements, below.
First, you can check out the design review process as it stands today with a session Wednesday night that could be the final step for a project to change the empty lot used as a community garden at MLK and Union into a “a 4-story structure containing 41 apartment units above 6,091 sq. ft. of commercial space.” Continue reading
