May 20
j-lon commented on Slog Super Poll: Who Should Be Mayor?.
I still support McGinn. Seven reasons here: http://www.jawjawjaw.com/2013/05/17/seve…
May 17
j-lon commented on Regarding the Singles House.
The second time I came to visit Seattle in the summer of 1991, I went right by that house on the bus as they were filming that movie. I moved here in 1992, right before it came out. Most of the people I knew didn't think it was a great movie at the time--just a little bit of light fun, with some good music scenes, but otherwise a pretty diluted picture of what was going wrong.
As I was new to Seattle, I missed many of the cameos from local folks. But when I watched it on TV again in the last 5 years or so, I recognized a lot more people.
The scene where Jeremy Piven is the checker in the drug store is a personal favorite ("You know what, we're throwin' down tonight over on Aloha Street.")
That neighborhood in Capitol Hill that's north of the 15th Ave QFC was already a nice neighborhood in 1992. But it wasn't nearly as nice as it is now. There was still a lot of shared rental housing back there (which subsequently got gentrified back into single family housing during the dot.com boom). So there still were a lot more 20 something people in shared houses throwing down on Aloha Street in this
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As I was new to Seattle, I missed many of the cameos from local folks. But when I watched it on TV again in the last 5 years or so, I recognized a lot more people.
The scene where Jeremy Piven is the checker in the drug store is a personal favorite ("You know what, we're throwin' down tonight over on Aloha Street.")
That neighborhood in Capitol Hill that's north of the 15th Ave QFC was already a nice neighborhood in 1992. But it wasn't nearly as nice as it is now. There was still a lot of shared rental housing back there (which subsequently got gentrified back into single family housing during the dot.com boom). So there still were a lot more 20 something people in shared houses throwing down on Aloha Street in this
Apr 24
j-lon commented on What I'm Using Instead of Google Reader.
Fwiw, the Stranger rss feed often does not update properly in Old Reader.
Apr 11
j-lon commented on Latest Fundraising Reports Reveal That Nobody Wants to Be Mayor.
Everyone is waiting for the decision on the Sonics to come down next week. If that goes Seattle's way, I suspect McGinn's fundraising and poll numbers will steadily improve.
Apr 10
j-lon commented on NYC Marches Toward the Unavoidable Future of Microliving.
Um, density of Manhattan: 66,000 people per square mile.
Density of Seattle: 7,000 people per square mile.
Not even in the same cognitive ballpark. Why don't we try getting as dense as San Francisco (14,000 people per square mile) before we start looking to NYC for solutions to problems we don't even have yet and probably never will.
Density of Seattle: 7,000 people per square mile.
Not even in the same cognitive ballpark. Why don't we try getting as dense as San Francisco (14,000 people per square mile) before we start looking to NYC for solutions to problems we don't even have yet and probably never will.
Mar 25
j-lon commented on Guns, They Keep Your Family Safe.
I heard about this story on the TV news last night. Sounds pretty messed up. Adult brother and sister and their kids lived with the father. Adult brother and sister were constantly getting into loud violent fights. Dad was the peacemaker. Cops were constantly being called to the house to deal with the adult brother and sister (the ones who got shot).
Everyone was shocked the dad did this. Very out of character, apparently. Sounds like he just snapped and couldn't see any other way of stopping this bad situation, other than killing them. When he called 911, he asked them to send the police to the house to kill him.
I agree that this is a horrible story made worse by guns. That being said, from what I understood from the news story, I doubt that a background check would have changed the outcome here, because the dad would probably not have presented as a problem.
So unless the history of violent disputes between the adult kids could have somehow been used as a legal justification for removing the guns from the home (or you had an outright ban on guns in the home), this outcome is probably not going to be prevented unless there's an outright ban (which I seriously doubt I'll see in my lifetime).
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Everyone was shocked the dad did this. Very out of character, apparently. Sounds like he just snapped and couldn't see any other way of stopping this bad situation, other than killing them. When he called 911, he asked them to send the police to the house to kill him.
I agree that this is a horrible story made worse by guns. That being said, from what I understood from the news story, I doubt that a background check would have changed the outcome here, because the dad would probably not have presented as a problem.
So unless the history of violent disputes between the adult kids could have somehow been used as a legal justification for removing the guns from the home (or you had an outright ban on guns in the home), this outcome is probably not going to be prevented unless there's an outright ban (which I seriously doubt I'll see in my lifetime).
Mar 21
j-lon commented on Conlin: Focus Housing for Poor in Cheaper South Seattle.
I think we should be trying to get more young hipsters (i.e., aPodment demographic) to live in the the South End while giving more working people the opportunity to live in affordable housing in SLU, etc.
We should have more of this sort of interchange. The original zoning and planning in Seattle mixed larger houses and smaller houses throughout most neighborhoods. This was not an accident. The goal was to keep people of differing economic strata living in close proximity, so they interact with each other.
To me, this remains a good idea, although the thread of it seems to have been lost at some point after WWII, when red-lining came in hard.
It's the same reason why I think it's a good idea not to concentrate all the homeless shelters in the same neighborhood.
That is why I don't see any contradiction between supporting more regs for aPodments while also thinking that we should be building affordable housing in SLU.
Without more regulation of aPodments, we'll just get a big concentration of them in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill.
If aPodments are limited, perhaps supply and demand will cause more people to look to the south and take a chance on living in Beacon Hill, Columbia City, Othello, etc. (especially after the light rail goes to Capitol Hill and the U-District).
The point of putting light rail down MLK in the South End wasn't to just recreate the same situation that was there before it was built. The stretch of MLK between Rainier and Columbian Way is already a loaded with subsidized housing and non-profits. Aside from St. Dames and a couple of other businesses, most of the commercial space is rented to social service type stuff. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is important, but if MLK is to really achieve some sort of transformational revitalization between Columbian and Othello, this public subsidized sort of development and use needs to be augmented by more market-rate housing (and the sort of retail that will service this sort of housing).
Wasn't thatthe whole point of tearing down Holly Park and attempting to replace it with a mixed income development?
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We should have more of this sort of interchange. The original zoning and planning in Seattle mixed larger houses and smaller houses throughout most neighborhoods. This was not an accident. The goal was to keep people of differing economic strata living in close proximity, so they interact with each other.
To me, this remains a good idea, although the thread of it seems to have been lost at some point after WWII, when red-lining came in hard.
It's the same reason why I think it's a good idea not to concentrate all the homeless shelters in the same neighborhood.
That is why I don't see any contradiction between supporting more regs for aPodments while also thinking that we should be building affordable housing in SLU.
Without more regulation of aPodments, we'll just get a big concentration of them in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill.
If aPodments are limited, perhaps supply and demand will cause more people to look to the south and take a chance on living in Beacon Hill, Columbia City, Othello, etc. (especially after the light rail goes to Capitol Hill and the U-District).
The point of putting light rail down MLK in the South End wasn't to just recreate the same situation that was there before it was built. The stretch of MLK between Rainier and Columbian Way is already a loaded with subsidized housing and non-profits. Aside from St. Dames and a couple of other businesses, most of the commercial space is rented to social service type stuff. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is important, but if MLK is to really achieve some sort of transformational revitalization between Columbian and Othello, this public subsidized sort of development and use needs to be augmented by more market-rate housing (and the sort of retail that will service this sort of housing).
Wasn't thatthe whole point of tearing down Holly Park and attempting to replace it with a mixed income development?
Feb 12
j-lon commented on The New Sandwich Joint on Beacon Hill.
So far, I've had the South China Sea, the El Centro de La Raza, and the Jefferson Park. All tasty sandwiches. A great addition to the Beacon Hill commercial strip!
Dec 1, 2012
j-lon commented on The Babies - "Baby".
Will they be doing this one too? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIL1GfBVx…
Nov 6, 2012
j-lon commented on Crush Them Back, Harder.
The only way we have any shot of crushing them back harder is to win today and win again 4 years from today.
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