Bob Weiss in China: the story is told

Longtime Madison Park resident and former Sonics coach Bob Weiss has a starring role in a major book published earlier this month by Knopf.  Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jim Yardley, Brave Dragons tells the story of the eponymous professional basketball team in the Chinese province of Shanxi during the period after the team hired Weiss at its coach.The book gets a glowing review in today's New York Times Book Review, the reviewer...

Read More

Another weekend 520 closure

This weekend, beginning at 11 pm on Friday night and extending through 5 am on Monday morning, the SR-520 floating bridge will be closed.  All ramps and both directions of the main line of the State highway between Montlake Boulevard and Interstate 405 in Bellevue will be out of commission during the closure.  As usual, the section of 520 between Montlake Boulevard and I-5 will be open, along with the Montlake Boulevard exit.The work to...

Read More

Anti-520 group appeals for funds

Coincidental with the email notice from WSDOT regarding the upcoming weekend floating-bridge closure came this email yesterday from the Coalition for a Sustainable SR 520:"This summer, the state plans to start building the much bigger, wider 520 bridge. The planned oversized, wasteful, harmful expansion is not needed, now that tolls have made traffic flow freely.  Instead, the state needs a much cheaper safety retrofit of four lanes. 

The Coalition...

Read More

Fence-removal process moving forward

It's been over two months since the Parks Board voted overwhelmingly to take the fence down at Swingset Park (aka Madison Park North Beach); but the fence, of course, is still there--just as useful and lovely as it ever was.  So, we wondered, what's the hang up? It seems that it's taken a bit more time than anticipated to get the process underway, since the Board committed to allowing the neighborhood to give formal input on how the fence...

Read More

Tracking down an idle rumor

The case of the missing bus-stop shelterThis part of the story is absolutely true: for almost 40 years, bus riders (and others) benefited from a large wooden bus-stop shelter that sat at the south end of Madison Park Beach, along 43rd Avenue E.  In stages over the course of the past couple years, however, King County Metro took down the shelter---beginning with the roof---and finally trucked away the remnants late last summer. Now the shelter...

Read More

Home prices on the uptick in Madison Park

Beyond 'stabilized'?Those with a direct stake in the local real estate market (meaning those who own a home here and ever hope to sell it) can be forgiven for grasping at any piece of positive real estate news they may happen to stumble across.  For example, earlier this month a report in the Seattle Times noted that “prices have remained relatively stable over the past two years in close-in Seattle neighborhoods such as Queen Anne, Magnolia,...

Read More

Community newspapers bite the dust

but the Madison Park Times marches onWe were intrigued by a story we saw on KING-TV last month concerning the demise of a close-by neighborhood newspaper, The South Seattle Beacon. The twice-monthly publication, which had been around in one form or another for almost 100 years, covered Beacon Hill, Mount Baker and Rainier Beach.  It quit publishing in December. As it happens, The South Seattle Beacon was a similar-sized sister paper of...

Read More

January Police Blotter

Car break-ins down, home break-ins upWe spoke too soon last month about the abnormally low number of burglaries in the neighborhood.  In January there were six such incidents, at least three of which were forced entries. Probably the least impactful of these occurrences (though certainly one of the strangest) happened on January 7 on the 1600 block of 43rd Avenue E.  A woman reported to police that she had returned to her home that evening...

Read More

B of A ATM fire NOT arson

$150,000 in damage apparently accidentalIt turns out that what at first appeared to be an early-morning arson fire, burglary attempt, or political statement at the Madison Park Bank of America branch in November was probably something much more mundane.  The Seattle Fire Department reported last month that its arson investigator concluded that the cause of the fire was likely an ATM malfunction, possibly an electrical short in the cash machine's...

Read More

News for foodies

Belle Epicurean launches ProvisionsThey didn't quite get the doors open in time for the holiday rush, but Madison Park's newest (and, by self description, "Seattle's premier") patisserie did manage to inaugurate its specialty food and fine wine shop, Provisions, just in time for the New Year.  Occupying the eastern half of what was once the Island Video location (3109 E. Madison St.), Provisions is both a wine bar and purveyor...

Read More