Get out: Weekend starting 9/21

As the summer seems to be driving towards a close, there are thankfully some indoor activities around Columbia City this weekend, so you don't have to stand out in the 60 degree showers.

• Tonight, BOLD (Birth On Labor Day) Seattle "presents a theatrical event to benefit Mother-Friendly maternal care."  7:30 pm, doors open at 7:00 at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center (3515 S Alaska St).  Tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets, $15
• Columbia City Gallery started it's second annual Juried Exhibition this past wednesday, and this weekend is the judging!  Entitled "Heat", opening night festivities will be held Saturday from 5 – 8 pm. The Awards Ceremony will take place at 6:30. This event is free - read more about it on their website.
• Don't even want to leave the house?  Vote for your favorite neighborhood street fund project!  By going to this city website and choosing the sector of the city you live in (below S. Day st for us CC'ers) you can see all the proposed projects, costs, pictures, even descriptions.  Vote by September 27th!
• Instead of streets, maybe you're a bicycling fan.  In that case, the "Seattle Climate Action Now" group (SeaCAN), made up of over seventy community partners including Bike Works, Cascade Bicycle Club, the Bicycle Alliance, the Bikery and Tutta Bella Restaurant, is holding a bicycle event this Saturday, from 9am to 1pm at Bike Works (3709 S Ferdinand).  The mayor will be presenting at 10am, and after you'll be able to learn about
• Maintenance
• Bike Safety
• Bike & touring maps

Enjoy the indoors this weekend here in Columbia City.

A diversion into real estate

The crime statistics generated a few different responses, and I intend to dig into those some more.  Unfortunately my computer just recently went to the recycling center in the sky, so blogging is a bit difficult at the moment.

I did want to point out a couple of interesting articles that have floated past me recently though, all related to real estate in our neck of the woods.

First off, according to the good folks over at NWMLS (via Redfin), we are the lucky ones who live in South Seattle:

While the entire city’s closed sales are still at 8.40% increase in median price over August 2006, South Seattle leads the pack in growth, at 27.23% over August 2006. The number of closed sales in the area are way down, but what’s selling is obviously higher priced than a year ago.

27%.  Wow.  Maybe it's because we're soon to be only 18 minutes away from Westlake station?

What seems to be even more impressive is that we're seeing that 27% increase in value despite some trashy yards that seem to inflict Rainier Valley more then others:

Overall, the department issued almost 2,500 citations and notices of violations between January 2006 and the end of this July -- many for the same properties.

An analysis of weed and junk violation data from the 19 months preceding Aug. 1 showed that West Seattle residents were cited 419 times for deviating from city standards -- by far the most of any Seattle neighborhood as defined by Metro King County.

But that neighborhood is also the largest, according to county definitions. If neighborhood size is taken out of the equation, a smaller portion of Rainier Valley had the highest density of violations with 95, followed by Columbia City with 87 and Rainier Beach with 55. Greenwood came in fourth with only 38, and the Central District neighborhoods, including First Hill, Madrona and Madison Park, together rated fifth with 267.

Messy yards perhaps, but maybe that just makes the houses without the messy yards that much more valuable!

Is Columbia City Really That Crime Ridden?

I was reading the most recent Columbia City Wiki Newsletter (always available here) and it had a link to an anti-columbia city rant - check it out over on the subaru forums.  Basically, some guy complaining that he'll never come back to Columbia City because his car got rifled through while he was eating at La Medusa and he had a GPS stolen.  He didn't stop there though:

And I wouldn't be writing this if Columbia City wasn't trying to market itself as the next Ballard. Columbia City is NOT Ballard, Fremont or Wallingford. It is a high crime neighborhood with a few pockets of gentrification.

So this got me to thinking - is Columbia City really that much more crime ridden then Ballard, Freemont, and Wallingford?

Since I'm all in a SPD kind of mood because of the excellent picnic happening tomorrow, I thought I'd dig through the Seattle Police Department's crime statistics for January through to May of 2007 (the latest for which data is available).

The statistics are organized by federal Census tract (map here).  I grabbed as much data as I could, but I've generated the pretty graphs for just three stats - non residential burglary, theft (which is what our friend "DOHC Outback" suffered), and auto theft.  I then ran the numbers for five different regions, composed of the following census tracts:

• Ballard, census tracts 30, 31, 32, 33, 47
• Columbia City, census tracts 101, 102, 103
• Freemont, census tracts 34, 35, 48, 49
• Wallingford, census tracts 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 54

Let's see how we stack up!  First, for non residential burglaries:

It would seem that, in fact, Columbia City is really where you want to be.  Aside from a spike in January, Columbia City is consistently lower then the other three neighborhoods.  Indeed, Wallingford has consistently more non residential burglaries then Columbia City does.

For theft:

Again, Columbia City is down at the bottom of the charts.  This time Freemont is giving us a run for our money, but still, on average across the five months, I'd take Columbia City over any other neighborhood.

And finally auto theft:

What do you know, Columbia City is once again bottom of the heap!

So "DOHC Outback", I agree with you - Columbia City is NOT Ballard, Fremont [sic], or Wallingford.  It's in fact quite a bit safer then all three of them when it comes to different forms of theft.

Get Out: Weekend Starting 9/14

Looking for something to do this weekend in Columbia City?  Have I got a list for you!

• Public Art Work Party.  On Saturday, from 1 to 4, you'll have a chance to do some mysterious art works around the neighborhood.  Who knows more?  Abbey Norris knows more.
• The Seattle Police Department South Precinct is having it's picnic this weekend.  On Saturday, September 15th from 1 to 4, the precinct at 3001 S Myrtle invites everybody to come on down and enjoy some dancing, music, food, magic, balloons and raffles.  And of course, the highlight according to the captain - you get to meet the SWAT team, and perhaps chat with some of our neighborhood detectives.
• Last bicycle Sunday of the year!  This sunday, Lake Washington Boulevard will be cordoned off from Mt Baker beach all the way down to Seward Park for your running & dog walking & bicycling pleasure.  Last one before next May, get out there and enjoy the 40% chance of rain with a high of 65 degrees!
• SuperBad gets held over for a week at the cinema.  Why?  I hear it's...bad.

That's it for this week!

Columbia City Cinema at it again

Let me say that I like Columbia City Cinema.  It's a great little movie house, and I love the fact that it's local to our hood.  I hate going downtown to see movies in mini malls, as parking is expensive, the tickets are expensive, and often the ambiance is of smelly teenager.

But Columbia City Cinema is different.  It's small, local, they take requests of what movies to try and get, they (finally) have a decent website, they have a good sense of humor, and they recognize that the people of Columbia City deserve better then a faceless megaopolis with a pimply teenager at the door.

A couple of interesting developments recently from Columbia City Cinema:

Liquor Licenses

They have had to re-apply for their liquor license.  They got a liquor license a while ago (I didn't even know, how tragic!) but then it was revoked.  It turns out that the liquor control board had some complaints, saying that it was too hard to check ID's of people drinking in the movie theatre, and too hard to know if drinks were being passed to minors due to the lack of lighting. 

Silly nonsense in the Captain's opinion, I love the idea of having a beer with my movies.  I even suggested that I'd be willing to have a little booth at the back of the theatre that remains lit for the folks who drink.  You could even call it the "lit" booth - Get lit in a well lit area while watching a movie!

But instead they're applying for the general seating area they have across from the concession stand.  Good for parties you know.

Expansion

Secondly, the following just came across their email list:

Your local neighborhood cinema is on a roll. We've needed more screens since we opened so we can play more first run films and do more than keep our head above water. The first floor is now vacant and we're finally going to go for it. We have to.Two new screens. No money to do it. No banks who like movies. So we're going to have to do it ourselves--again. We need to raise $250,000 in three stages. Wanna be a hero? Wanna have a statue in your honor? We're looking for a volunteer, entirely devoid of sense, who wants to be a fundraising coordinator. Job would be part time, hopefully for about two months, would be compensated, and would involve targeting and calling on community-minded prospective investors and lenders and hosting investor meetings and cinema tours. Must be somewhat savvy. If you're not doing anything, and community action and helping the cinema are your idea of a good time, then get in touch right away. We need you.

Interesting times!  I guess you've got to spend money to make money!

CarSharing gets more expensive

One of the reasons that Columbia City is such a great neighborhood is, of course, the fact that it's very walkable.  The Admiral and I live about a ten to fifteen minute walk away from the main strip on Rainier and I love that walk - great houses along the way, nice views of the water and Seattle, and you get great food and drinks at the end of it!

One of the benefits of living in a walkable neighborhood is that perhaps you don't have to actually own a car (or a second car).  If you can walk everywhere you need to go, you'll only need a car for that odd trip.  Flexcar started up as a solution specifically geared towards this need - becoming a member means you can use their cars when you need them for those specific errands that just require a car every now and then.

And Flexcar has a couple of cars throughout Columbia City, including 2 hybrids, 2 sedans, and even a pickup truck!

 

Recently though, the state Department of Revenue decided that users of FlexCar will need to start paying the rental car tax, which is an extra hefty 9.7 percent, bringing the total tax burden for a FlexCar trip to 18.6 percent.  Check out the Seattle PI article about this.

This doesn't really make sense to the Captain at all.  I can understand why the government thinks this makes sense, but FlexCar is really positioning itself not as a car rental company but as a small trips and miscellaneous company.  Perhaps the distinction isn't bright, but it's there.  Adding extra tax burdens to those might just price people out of FlexCar entirely - is it cheaper to just buy a beater car now?

There's already a petition online against this, sign it here if you're interested.

Get Out: Weekend Starting 9/7

I've been a bit remiss in not posting this more regularly every week.  But here we go with another installment of interesting things to do in and around Columbia City this weekend.

• First friday of the month means it's Beatwalk tonight!  Remember kids, it's $5, or free if you're actually a kid, not just one at heart.  Check here for who is playing where - $5 will let you see them all (and eat way too much during the evening as well, inevitably).
• Special treat just this month - the Columbia City Gallery will be holding their annual alley sale from 4-8pm, and Theater Simple will treat us to a special experience called "Park Bench" - billed as a 'wholly unpredictable, mobile hyper-personalized theatrical experience."
• And if you'd rather sing then listen, wait for October, when our own Bakery will be hosting an open mic nite during Beatwalk.  Yes, you can not only get good food, great drinks, and awesome music, you can also get discovered...
• It's another in the series of Bicycle Saturdays.  Get out there on the boulevard while you can - the season is winding to a close!
• Go on, be your bad self - go see SuperBad at the Columbia City Cinema.
• On sunday, check out the Othello Parks Concert Series, from 2-6 pm @ Othello Park (4351 Othello St, between MLK and Rainier Ave S).  Admission is free for all ages.

Get out there and enjoy the sunny, 72 degree weather all weekend long!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!

We all know about the farmer's market, right?  It's great - they setup every Wednesday in the parking lot behind the Bank of America building.  They run from 3 to 7.

Well this week only, they have a little something extra planned.

It's the Zucchini 500!  From 3 to 6 pm, today only, kids of all ages can make and race their very own vegetable vehicle!  The market will bring the zucchinis and car parts, you have to bring yourself and your amazing automotive ideas.

I'm hoping to discover the next form of bio energy.  Given the size of the zucchinis in our own back yard, we should be able to power our car until the next growing season.

Get your local streets fixed

You know those holes the city has been digging up in the streets all along Alaska street right next to the flower pots?  It turns out the utilities were installing gas shut off valves.  Yep, there were none before.

Thank goodness nobody ever had a gas leak - it would have involved shutting the gas off for the entire neighborhood all at once until the leak was resolved.

The admiral went out and met Mandel Scott today, a city inspector who was looking at the patch jobs on the street that the utilities left behind.  And no surprises, he agreed they weren't up to snuff (how could he not as his car bounced around driving over each one).  Next step: he'll recommend the utilities come out and redo the street patch.  Even better, he gave the admiral his card so that if they take too long or the street gets too horrible in the mean time, we can call him up so we "don't get lost in the bureaucracy".

Mandel's great.  Keep fightin' for the good cause of Columbia City Mandel.  Now can you go talk to those guys over at DPD about customer service?