June 2014

The South Park Bridge was dedicated in an official ceremony on June 29 with dignitaries and fireworks, plus thousands of neighbors on hand for a Grand Opening Party. Traffic will take to the new span at 6 am Monday June 30 some four years, to the day that the former bridge closed and was later demolished.

The new bridge will carry 20,000 vehicles and nearly 3000 heavy duty trucks each day, transporting 10 million tons of freight each year, including aerospace parts for Boeing facilities located nearby.

The celebration included live music, local vendors, a beer garden a community parade and fireworks off the top of the opened bridge before the two halves were joined and people could cross.

They were led by King County Executive Dow Constantine his wife and child in a stroller.

By Ed Shepherd
SPORTS CORRESPONDENT

West Seattle dug itself into a big hole after having led early, 1-0, against South Highline National and just could not quite hit themselves out of it in a 6-5 loss to South Highline National during Little League All Stars Intermediate baseball action at the Pac West Fields in Burien Saturday.

These players ages 11-13 and between the Majors All Stars level and the Juniors level of 13-14 year olds played another game like the majority of the regular season ones against South Highline National--close.
"That's a good team. We've gone back-and-forth with them all season," said West Seattle Intermediate All Stars Manager, Mark Douglas.

Indeed.

Aside from a 10-run rule loss to National early in the season, that only served to lead the way to improvement for the next two games. The games after that blowout during the season were much closer -- a loss by one run one game and a win by two in the other meeting before this one.

By Ed Shepherd
SPORTS CORRESPONDENT

West Seattle 10-11 Little League All Star Gabe Palmer knew what he needed to do with the bat, and, did it.
But, afterward, asked about his hits that helped his team overcome a 2-0 deficit late in the game for an 8-3 opening round tournament win over South Highline National at Pac West Fields Saturday, Palmer directed the attention to his pitcher, Nathaniel Ardales.

"I did good, but the credit goes to our pitcher, Nat," said Palmer. "He did it."

Ardales pitched great, after some early rumblings in the game throwing the baseball.

In the first inning, Ardales walked two batters and allowed an RBI single and that meant a 1-0 National lead. And, in the second inning for National, three singles meant another run would cross the plate.
So West Seattle was down, 2-0, after two innings completed and Ardales' shaky start could have made him question himself. But, no.

"I shook it off and moved on," said Ardales.

To get the 65th celebration of Seafair really moving, the Seafair Pirates made their annual invasion of Alki Beach on June 28, amid a crowd of thousands. Many onlookers were in pirate garb themselves as the invaders embarked from their landing craft, cannons booming to the delight of their fans.

Mayor Ed Murray, the entire Seafair court and the Hi-Yu court were on the beach to greet them. Miss Seafair, Emily Rio Barber was met by Captain Kidd and given a kiss on the hand and a special commemorative medallion.

Warm 106.9's Mark Christopher was the Emcee for the event on the shoreline and the pirates were read a proclamation and the keys to the city were turned over to them. Mayor Murry quipped, "Have a good week I'm looking forward to a little time off!"

The annual Seafair Celebration extends from June 15 through early August.

Seafair Festival Kick Off
Sunday, June 15 | Westlake Park | 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle Marathon & 1/2 Marathon - A Seafair Signature Event
Saturday, June 21 | Seattle Center | 7 a.m

Seafair Pirates Landing
Saturday, June 28 | Alki Beach | 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.

information from WSGT

The West Seattle Garden Tour celebrates the Art of Gardening’s 20th Anniversary this year. Our milestone garden tour, showcasing nine spectacular NW residential gardens in West Seattle, will take place on Sunday, July 20th 2014 from 9:00am to 5:00pm

2014 WSGT Guest Lecturer

The WSGT is pleased to present Susie Egan as our 2014 Guest Lecturer. Susie will speak to our garden enthusiasts at 12:00pm, July 20th at the Kenney Retirement Center in West Seattle.

About Susie:

Susan Egan is the owner of Cottage Lake Gardens, a private two-acre botanical garden and plant nursery located on Cottage Lake in Woodinville, Washington. In recent years Susie’s has been focusing on the study and propagation of native and woodland shade plants particularly trilliums, an endangered wildflower. She is currently working towards establishing a National Trillium Collection at Cottage Lake Gardens whose purpose will be to conserve, grow, propagate, and make available the many species of trilliums

Follow Susie online at:

www.cottagelakegardens.com
www.facebook.com/cottagelakegardens

UPDATE: 9:55am
The windows damaged at the restaurant overnight were dealt a more serious blow than first thought. It was more than just one window.

“The incident happened at 3:20AM, An hour later the Seattle Police showed up,” said restaurant owner Eduardo Morales.

They broke one window and cracked a second one and did at least $2000 damage. One of the windows was a themopane and will be more expensive to repair.

The damage should be repaired in the next couple of days by White Center Glass.

Original Post
During the early morning hours on Saturday, June 28, 2014, the Puerta Vallarta Mexican restaurant in the West Seattle Junction was damaged by a rock thrown through a front window. An eyewitness who was across the street noticed a man wearing a big red hoodie and a white bandana on his face throw the large rock at the window smashing it.

By Tim Clinton
SPORTS EDITOR

The good news for the Southwest Little League charter of White Center?

Its Intermediate team for 13 year olds and under scored two runs Friday, came close to scoring more, pounded out five hits and is within one win of the District 7 all-star championship game.

The bad news?

Southwest lost its tournament opener to South Highline National by a 15-2 score, and the game to win is the loser's bracket final of only a three-team tournament.

But the rebuilding Southwest program is on the young side, and hopes to fare better in the future.
For now, though, its was South Highline National of Normandy Park and Des Moines that dominated, taking a 10-0 lead by the end of the third inning on three runs in the first, five in the second and two in the third.
Southwest broke onto the scoreboard in the fourth.

Adam Hindle drew a one out walk and stole second to start off, but was thrown out trying to steal third.
That turned out to be important, as Keiondre Carter, Tobias Woodard, Ryan Pennington and Eamon Simmons all walked in order.

That scored one run, but two would have been added if Hindle was still aboard.

West Seattle resident, Shane Carew, was elected president of the Rotary Club of West Seattle, to serve for one year beginning July 1, 2014. He is an attorney in practice in West Seattle at Carew Law Office.

As president of the 62 member club, which received its charter from Rotary International in 1947, Carew is responsible for continuing West Seattle Rotary's efforts in fellowship and philanthropy. The club meets every Tuesday at noon at Salty's Seafood Restaurant on Alki.

"It is a great honor to be selected to represent the Rotary Club of West Seattle as Club President. This promises to be a very busy and exciting year for us. We have four major undertakings that are new or different.

We are picking up the responsibility for producing the West Seattle Grand Parade, which had been put on by the American Legion for the first 81 years of its existence.

We are taking full responsibility for the Pencil Me In For Kids program this year, to help provide West Seattle kids with basic school supplies at the beginning of the school year.

The annual fundraising Gala and auction for ArtsWest raised more than $160,000 according to the organizers.

Over the course of the past year in addition to the all the theater and art shows the organization adopted a new logo, website and ticketing system; invested in new computers, a new phone system, a level theatre floor, and state-of-the-art sound board; brightened their physical space; provided scholarships to area youth through theatre education program; and installed a new donor wall.

West Seattle Thriftway, Chubb Insurance Group, and Ventana Construction were the event sponsors.

Starting June 23, The Seattle Public Library’s summer of learning program “Zone In!” will feature a new focus on science, technology, engineering, art and math skills, thanks to funding by Google, The Seattle Public Library Foundation and U.S. Bank. The free program is designed to prevent summer setback among school-age children and teens; it runs through Sunday, Aug. 31.

This year, libraries will receive “science kits” donated by Google. Librarians will use the kits, which contain fun building materials, to help children practice their science and engineering skills in programs held at branch libraries and in the community.

“We're pleased to support the Library as they add STEM programming to their summer offerings. "said Darcy Nothnagle, Public Affairs Manager for Google’s Western region. “We hope this will be a high-impact program across the city through The Seattle Public Library.”