A view out to the soon to be removed Barrio streatery
Some of the dining habits and street seating setups of the pandemic may never go away but times have changed enough for one Capitol Hill restaurant to move on from its COVID-era “streatery” and restore an increasingly rare feature along 12th Ave — street parking.
“We are selling our Streatery!,” Barrio Mexican Kitchen and Agave Bar announced this week. “Thank you to our guests, team, and neighbors for making covid a bit more bearable by enjoying this streatery with us, but the time has come to move on.”
Get your offers in now for the 60-foot long x 8-foot wide patio that the restaurant installed during the years of restrictions and precautions under a city program put in place to regulate the proliferation of street patios that sprung forward during the pandemic. Continue reading →
Oppenheimer has been a cinema sensation with seven Academy Awards for its depiction of the physicist who helped develop the world’s first nuclear weapons. There are more — and more important — stories to tell. The first-ever film festival about nuclear power will stop in Seattle on April 12-14 at Capitol Hill’s Northwest Film Forum thanks to Jad Baaklini, a native of Beirut now residing in Seattle as director of communication at Epiphany Parish.
Baaklini became fascinated with the Hanford site in eastern Washington, learning about it after immigrating to the United States.
“I think people should just be aware of what’s around them,” Baaklini said. “Seattle can be in a little bubble especially if people are newcomers like me. I only moved here in 2018, and you know, you can live here your whole life not knowing the rest of Washington.”
After hearing about the International Uranium Film Festival, a Brazilian-based festival looking to stop in multiple locations in the U.S., he reached out to IUFF, pitched hosting to Northwest Film Forum, and connected the festival to its main sponsor, Physicians for Social Responsibility.
IUFF will show eight movies at the 12th Ave independent theater that will discuss nuclear issues from around the world, and include some panel discussions after a few of the films. Continue reading →
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE! Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
King County’s four-year-old, $200 million Judge Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center on 12th Ave will remain open through and beyond a promised 2025 deadline as officials pursue establishing “a network of diverse community care homes” in a quest to change how Seattle moves forward on youth detention and addressing its disproportionate impact on communities of color.
King County Executive Dow Constantine’s office is pursuing only three of six recommendations from an advisory council formed to examine the “future of secure juvenile detention” and what changes should be made at the relatively new youth jail facility at 12th and Alder. None of the recommendations currently being pursued by Constantine’s office, according to a final report from the advisory council, include a 2025 end of secure detention at the facility.
Black kids continue to be disproportionately detained in King County, making up about half of the population housed at the facility or on home detention.
The new youth jail opened in the winter of 2020 with 16-cell living halls designed to look like dorms but secured for incarceration with electronic locks and state of the art surveillance systems, new classrooms, and an expanded visitation areas where youth offenders can meet with family and lawyers. There is a Merit Hall where detained kids can earn TV time and officials repurposed an “interview room” as a video game room. And there are courtrooms where legal proceedings can be carried out.
“As we move toward zero youth detention, how we can repurpose space?” one official said at the time. “As our population decreases, we can move our secure perimeter.” Continue reading →
Dick Hedreen (Image: Yosef Kalinko/Seattle University)
A 12th Ave Seattle University parking lot could become a new art museum and the center of the school’s art holdings as property developer Dick Hedreen has announced he is gifting his family’s 200-piece, $300 million collection of paintings, pottery, photography, etchings, and sculptures to the Jesuit university on the southern edge of Capitol Hill.
The rare handover comes with a $25 million donation to begin the development of the Seattle University Museum of Art, “a teaching museum that will showcase centuries of art history and be a true learning extension of the classroom,” Seattle U says. Continue reading →
Investigators have identified the man found murdered in a 12th Ave alley as a 68-year-old man who lived unsheltered in the neighborhood.
Medical examiners say Paul Ewell died of “multiple sharp force injuries of the head” early on Saturday, February 10th. His body was discovered later that morning in the alley near 12th and Terrace by a passerby. Continue reading →
12th Ave is home to the city newest little free library as the Seattle Women’s Chorus headquarters has become a center of celebrating free expression with a banned book drive and Saturday’s performances of a Banned & Beloved concert at First Hill’s Town Hall:
Banning books is a nationwide issue. In just the first half of the 2022-23 school year, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned, an increase of 28 percent from the second half of the prior school year, the vast majority of which are written by or about LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color and centered on race, sexual orientation and gender, according to PEN America. Continue reading →
Two Capitol Hill and Central District chefs have made the list as semifinalists for the James Beard award for Best Chefs: Northwest and Pacific. The nominations alone are an honor and a good reminder you should stop by soon.
In the Central District, Kristi Brown of Communion has been honored as a best chef semifinalist. Continue reading →
What a difference a year makes. Capitol Hill’s coffee and cafe scene has gone from shrinkage to growth with the start of 2024. Fuel is rocking its new place in the Broadway streetscape, the reborn Bauhaus is born again, and Overcast has added its pulls to the Pike/Pine mix with a new space on 12th Ave.
At the top, the famed Vivace walk-up counter has new life as the books and coffee business family behind Fuel took over the caffeine bar with an end of 2023 neon-lit debut on Broadway.
CHS reported here on Fuel’s overhaul of the space below the Casa Del Ray apartments to be its fourth Seattle location and second on Capitol Hill as Vivace decided to end its decades of service at the counter over challenges around staffing and proximity to its Broadway Brix location. Continue reading →
12th Ave was closed to traffic as a Seattle Fire ladder crew responded to a fire on the third floor of a four-story apartment building Thursday afternoon.
Units were dispatched to the Olive St and 12th Ave, 2014-built building just before 3:30 PM to a report of light smoke coming from a vent. More crews were quickly called in as a fully involved fire was reported.
SPD closed 12th to traffic during the response on the west side of the street as Seattle Fire brought the blaze under control. The wall fire was reported out after about 30 minutes.
There were no reported injuries. Seattle Fire said the cause was under investigation.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE! Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
