Hideous Belltown: July 2015

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Your Sunday Squirrel

Well, high summer is here and most squirrels are on vacation. I didn't realize this, but my scholarly squirrel book that I got for Christmas tells me that August and February are the two leanest months for squirrels. So even though they're not on vacation, they're conserving their energy and hanging out in their trees with occasional trips to the ground to try to remember where they buried all those peanuts I gave them. This fellow is from a few weeks ago. He was pretty hungry.

The Seafair Torchlight Parade

Sure, it was cold. It was rainy, and there were more than a few weirdoes in the crowd, but the parade occurred. Here are some shots:

It began like so many things - with cops.

There's Felix Hernandez, so close you could PUNCH him. But why would anybody want to do that? As you can see, he got all dressed up for his grand marshaling.

There's Robinson Cano. Didn't the Mariners have a game last night? Did these guys skip out on that?

Here's Dow Constantine. What kind of name is "Dow?" It's more like a sound than a name.

My favorite float of the night and perhaps ever. It's a pickle.

Orca balloon...

Alaska Airlines balloon...

Giant potato...

On the corner of 4th & Blanchard, I was surrounded by all these skeevy people. At one point, a nearby lady with kids asked a couple of the guys if they wouldn't say the word "motherfucker" so much. They said they'd try and then started saying it even more. There were also these bummy guys from the senior low-income building on 3rd panhandling everybody in the area. And this one drunk woman kept running into the street to high-five marchers and tell them that she was a viking because her mom was Norwegian. She kept hugging me and telling me that she was a viking. I decided to move down the block when all of these elements combined. This is the last picture I took. It's Army guys with all the state flags. They were just kind of standing there for a long time. The pacing was not very good. When there weren't two-block gaps, people were standing around.

I usually hang out till the dragon passes, then leave. This year, I left early. This is a picture of the dragon on TV. So at least I got a shot of the dragon. Hooray for me.

So OK, even if the weather had been warm and non-rainy, it still would have been kind of a bummer of a parade. Well, I hope next year will be better.

I Went out Rowing and This Is What I Looked Like

Stacey found out that if you have a library card, you can take out a rowboat from the Center for Wooden Boats for a free hour - otherwise, it's $30 per - and that's what we did. I rowed. The strangler gloves are to thwart blisters. But we weren't out long enough for anything like that to happen. We got about halfway down the lake, turned around and then got buzzed by a very low seaplane. It was momentarily alarming. Anyhow, we had a maritime adventure and didn't die.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Your Sunday Squirrel

OK, I realize that this is a blurrel. But it is pretty interesting to look at on account of parts of this fellow being in focus. I'm not saying that it's a portrait for the ages, but it does feature some in-focus feet. I went to Denny Park this morning hoping for some meaningful shots and this is the best of the bunch. Yeah, so the others are way worse.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Your Sunday Squirrel

I met this fellow yesterday. I offered him a perfectly good peanut, but he was more interested in sniffing the crack in the path. Squirrels are weird sometimes.

Speaking of Losing a Parking Lot...

This is what's happening on 3rd, between Battery & Wall:

There used to be buildings on this lot. Remember Exotica Imports? It was a record store. Remember record stores? Anyhow, the one-story building stood at the corner of 3rd & Battery, but was knocked down around 10 years ago. It has been a parking lot ever since, but the mowing down of trees seems to indicate that they're getting ready to build something. Let's hope it's not ugly!

They Built a Very Large Thing Yesterday

And it's just a block away:

OK, so there's going to be one less parking lot in Belltown. They're building something big at 2nd & Virginia. It's a little bit of a mystery why, since they're no doubt going to be condos or high-end apartments. But the thing is that the Sound and Queen Anne views for most of the units will be blocked by other buildings. Oh well, I guess they know what they're doing!

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Your Sunday Squirrel

This guy looks like he's about to start throwing some heavy squirrel-punches. But no, he was pretty friendly. I met him yesterday morning. He was playing with a stick. You don't really think that squirrels play; only that they behave erratically all the time. But no, they do. After a peanut or two, he went back to playing with his stick.