October 2025

For a second time in 3 months a break in at Alki Coffee/Ben & Jerry's shop on Alki Beach resulted in the loss of their cash drawer and safe. It happened this morning around 4am.

Co-Owner Jonathan Stebbins said, "It appears that they somehow jimmied the sliding doors in the front to enter which set off the alarms so they were in and out pretty quick. Unfortunately due to the multiple break-ins that have occured we are going to be changing how we do things at the shop and will no longer be accepting cash as a form of payment and will carry no cash on premises going forward. 

While it is incredibly frustrating and sad that this keeps happening not just to us, but to other small businesses along Alki, we plan to keep working with our neighbors and the community to make Alki a safer place for local businesses to thrive and where people can gather, connect, and enjoy this special neighborhood together."

The Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA), which manages ports in Seattle and Tacoma, released its Weekly Volumes & Metrics Report on October 13, 2025, showing a sixteenth consecutive week of depressed year-over-year metrics for the week ending October 3rd.

While weekly metrics showed mixed results compared to the prior week, all metrics continue to be down year over year. This sustained decline is largely attributed to the unseasonably early peak shipping season, which saw shippers move cargo in advance of anticipated tariffs. The year-over-year comparison for this reporting period uses the September 2024 weekly average as a benchmark.

Key Decline Metrics

Our landlady, Mrs. Javier, owned two houses on Taft Avenue in Manila–our house, her  house and an adjacent lot, which was little more than 500 sq. meters of hard packed dirt with one tall cerisa tree. Our house was two stories, so we could peer into her compound and her lot from our bedroom window.

Information from Seattle Police Blotter

Seattle police officers arrested five suspects, ages 38-65, during an Organized Retail Theft operation in Westwood Village Wednesday.

On the afternoon of Oct. 8, patrol officers and detectives in the General Investigations Unit (GIU) conducted an operation at a retail store in the 2600 block of Southwest Barton Street, which suffers a significant amount of theft.

Detectives teamed up with loss prevention employees to identify and apprehend suspects they caught stealing. Ultimately, five suspects were arrested for shoplifting.

One of the suspects had an additional misdemeanor theft warrant and a felony warrant for narcotics. Officers placed another suspect, who was with one of the arrestees, into custody for a robbery warrant. Police booked him into SCORE jail.  

Police booked three suspects into the King County Jail.

The Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA), encompassing the harbors of Seattle and Tacoma, reported improvements across all key weekly metrics compared to the prior week, yet overall activity remains depressed when measured against volumes recorded in September 2024.

In its weekly report for the period ending September 26, 2025, the NWSA highlighted that while the momentum was positive week-over-week, the year-over-year differential shows the Alliance is processing fewer containers and transactions than it did in the same period last year.

Key Year-Over-Year Differentials Highlighted

The largest differential was recorded in International Import Containers. For the week ending September 26, 2025, 15,460 containers were imported. This figure was down 8.7% compared to the September 2024 weekly average of 16,936 containers.

Other significant metrics also showed shortfalls compared to the previous year’s monthly average: