Capitol Hill Snapshot 02 - Thomas Street P-Patch from David Albright on Vimeo .

I followed Justins suggestion this time and went with a community garden, the Thomas Street P-Patch (although I realized after the fact that I didn't shoot much of the actual garden...).

And if you missed it last week, the first one was Cal Anderson park.

Are you interested in:

• Living lightly on the earth.

• Knowing and working cooperatively with your neighbors.

• Reducing your household chores (cooking, cleaning, yardwork).

• Sharing resources (woodshop, bikeshop, art space, kids play area).

If you’re looking for an alternative to how you live, attend this informational

session on cohousing – community oriented, cooperatively managed, but

independently owned housing.

Who: Open to renters and homeowners, children welcome

Where: Seattle University Admissions & Alumni Building

842 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA

When: Sunday, Oct 18, 2009 2-4pm

Cost: FREE but RVSP required

RSVP: http://cohousing.eventbrite.com

If you're planning to head out to a bar on the Hill on Saturday night, here's a great chance to help educate the community about the importance of approving R-71. Volunteers will be meeting at 10:00 p.m. at a location to be announced and going out to the local bars to do some quick and easy outreach. Since you're already going out any way, make your way over to Washington Families Standing Together and RSVP to help with outreach! You can also check out their page with tips on how to be an outreach superstar!

If you want to learn more visit GayCapHill.com

Howdy neighbors!

The CHCC Events Team is meeting this Thursday at Pagliacci Pizza (next to Emerald City Smoothie, Gruv, Hardware Salon, I Love Wasabi, etc.) at 5pm.  Please come join us and help us put together some awesome events for the coming months!

Your CHCC Events Team

Committees get a lot of flack, especially in the city that's the home of "Seattle Process".  However, in all the committees that I've been in (and maybe I've been lucky), a committee is just a group of like-minded/interested people doing the initial brainstorming and heavy lifting on the subject of their choice. My favorite examples are our friendly neighborhood open space committees: Unpaving Paradise and People's Parking Lot.  Both have had tremendous successes, and both are small groups of like-minded people leading the way for the greater whole - committees at their finest.

I say all this because the main subject of the next Capitol Hill Community Council meeting will be (you guessed it,) committees.  We already have a few (including the aforementioned Unpaving Paradise), but because of growing interest in time-intensive topics (public policy/development, creation of neighborhood emergency plans, community event planning), we need to make a few more.  Join us at the Cal Anderson Shelterhouse...

Special weekend bonus edition. Best enjoyed with 50% off Valentine's chocolate.

• Don't forget, I5 through downtown is going to be a mess for a long time. You can keep track of WSDOT's project updates here. Returning to the Hill from the north is a terrible crawl so avoid or take the express lanes if you can when heading southbound. The surface exits aren't handling the extra pressure very well but it's better than sitting in the I5 parking lot. This accident didn't help today's traffic, either.
• What would happen if there was a toll on 520 starting next January and I90 remained toll-less?
• Do you Twitter yet? You should. I, um, tweet here.
• Galactic Boutique is going out of business. The indie retailer is hosting a goodbye party on Feb. 21 just short of its third birthday.
• Depression-proof. Oddfellows + baking = economic stimulus. They're hiring a baker. You'll be rich.
• Seadevi at Capitol Hill Triangle keeps a good one for her own blog -- good call! Anchovies & Olives opening delayed until April.
• Benefits on the...

We wandered through 17th Ave's block party tonight. They did it up right with live music, dancing, and, of course, kids riding bikes in the car-free streets. Is your neighborhood planning a block party? Tuesday night, you all have a good excuse -- it's the national Night Out for Safety and the city waives its fees for street closures. More about that here.

If you think Sound Transit should do more to keep the empty storefronts in the light rail station construction zone from becoming a dead zone in the middle of Capitol Hill, sign this petition to support the Capitol Hill Community Council proposal to utilize some of the space for community events and meetings. It will take you about 23.7215 seconds to complete.

No coincidence that we're talking about empty storefronts and the feeling that there is an increase in panhandling on Broadway. The core of Broadway is undergoing a massive, potentially very damaging change. And I'm not talking about the digging that we're about to go through for eight years -- that's how you build a tunnel. I'll take it.

Instead, the damage appears to already be starting from the creeping decay of the buildings emptied in the light rail construction zone. We're only a few weeks in -- some of those buildings will simply be fenced off and sit there, empty, for a year before being demolished. That's a long period of chain-link ringed decay.

It's not going to be easy to stave this decay off. But the Capitol Hill Community Council has made a proposal to work with Sound Transit on using some of the buildings in the area for community gatherings and events. The Council (yeah, I'm an officer) is proposing to hold a council meeting and a community event in the former US Bank building as a way to test out...

Recently, we wrote about a good excuse to have a party in the street with your neighbors -- Choose your own Capitol Hill block party. Neighbor Jeanine is picking up the thread and spreading the word about a street party in her 'hood:

Here's the short version: bring something to grill and a something to share. Meet your neighbors.

Where are other "Night Out" block parties going down on the hill?

To help answer her question, we've created the Capitol Hill block parties -- 2008 community map.

If you're planning a neighborhood party as part of Night Out or any other time this summer, add a pushpin. Just click the link View Larger Map to get started.

Seattle's Night Out Against Crime is Tuesday, August 5th. The coolest part about it: City waives its fee for street closures so neighbors can throw block parties and hang out together.

Now, neighbors in places like Fancy Pants Capitol Hill do a good job taking advantage of this opportunity (we thought our own block must be the best party until we saw PONY RIDES at another block's party). But other parts of the Hill don't always get something organized. This summer, let's try to change that.

Step up for your area of the Hill and sound off in the comments if you want to help organize something on your block. City makes it easy to register here. Only rules are you can't close arterials and you can't close intersections. The rest -- including pony rides -- is up to you.

We don't have a gay channel on CHS -- we're organized around geography. Besides, we wouldn't want to try to compete with Bill W.'s creation which is undergoing a makeover just in time for Pride. Gay Seattle Blogspot is now SeattleGayScene.com. Bill W. says the transition is till in process and is all about design and brand. The site mission remains the same -- as Bill W. puts it, delivering "the real meat of everything that's happening." With all the buzz around Pride Week, consider the new unveiling your online component.

I took a walk past the house and the trees weren't mine, but it did give me the opportunity to talk with the owner and let him know about my trees being stolen. He said he would move his so they might avoid a similar fate as mine. He was really cool, he actually gave me one of his trees so I could start over on my collection. It made my day! Karma is real.

• Fill out the form below or here to tell us about your June 14th sale.
• We'll compile a list and (hopefully!) create a map to let everybody know where to shop.
• We'll also see what everybody thinks about raising some money for a local non-profit. Watch for a post on this shortly.
• Clean out your closets.
• Have a fun sale, meet your neighbors, take pictures.
  

• First, Capitol Hill Times prints this ode to Andrew Taylor, the mayor of Miller Park.
  "There is a buzz to being involved," he said. "You meet many different people, and things are always changing. Watching Miller Park evolve has been quite gratifying. It's always been an interesting neighborhood. I haven't found anywhere better."
  
  
• Second, for those of you more inclined to tilt at windmills, meet Dennis Saxman and his monkeywrench. The development plans for Pine Street are on hold thanks in part to Saxman's legal maneuvering. The Slog writer hints -- and many of the comments do the opposite of hinting -- that this is a case of activism gone awry and that the only thing worse than the building that was planned is no building at all. But hard to be too sad about a delay for this particular project. Forget all that hand wringing -- Saxman shows that one person can still have a say in the process.