Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, which was Seattle’s first world’s fair held on what is now the grounds of the University of Washington. A whole site has been set up to commemorate the centennial, and to bring news of upcoming events that are going to be held to celebrate it. Crosscut points out that very little film of the exposition exists, but a newsreel about the fair can be found at the A-Y-P site, and footage of a Viking boat landing on Norway Day.

The Seattle Channel is putting together a documentary on the fair, to be finished next year. So we’ll have to keep our eyes open for that.

Driving on snowy and icy roads is bad news even here in the Nevada valleys where I live, where everything is flat. In Seattle, which is built almost entirely on hills, it can be an out-of-control ride, without knowing where you’re going to stop or what (or who!) you’re going to hit. Central District News has a “ski map” of all the streets in their neighborhood and how steep they are, showing that there is basically no safe place to drive on the hill. Their advice is to just stay home, and if you have to go anywhere take a bus. Probably the best advice when roads are icy, no matter where you live. In Seattle, extra smart.

Seattlest: Frozen Custard Is Here, and It Is Good.

Genuine frozen custard is one of those foods that everyone should try at least once. We used to compare it to an artisanal variation on Dairy Queen’s soft-serve, but that’s a better description of Cold Stone Creamery. Frozen custard is more substantial, though similarly soft. Its butterfat and egg allow it to deliver rich, textured flavor, not quite as vivid as gelato or sorbetto but just as deep.

Looks like Peak’s is definitely going to have to be on my list of places to visit.

One idea I had kicked around when I started placeblogging was to grow one site into a whole network of sites. Because placeblogs are at their best when they’re about one town, or even one neighborhood in a town, it would make sense to create several different blogs for several different neighborhoods. I thought if Around Carson really took off, natural extensions would be Around Reno and Around Tahoe. That never happened.

But the folks at MyBallard (Next Door Media) have really made it work. Cory Bergman started last December with one site, MyBallard, a placeblog/news site about what’s going on in Ballard. It was successful, so they recruited people in other neighborhoods around north Seattle and set up several sister sites. PhinneyWood, Fremont Universe, Magnolia Voice, and Queen Anne View have all come online in 2008, all following the same philosphy, and even the same page design, as MyBallard.

So now they have an interlocked network of five placeblogs, each one doing awesome coverage of their respective neighborhoods, but able to do more together than any of them could do separate. It’s a real model for the future of towns and cities on the web, and a logical next step for the newspaper companies that are finding their old businesses dragging them down into the mud these days. Of course, MyBallard is having issues being identified as a “real” news source, applying several times to be included in Google News and being rejected each time. But I think it’s fantastic what the Bergmans are doing, and maybe into 2009 they’ll expand even more, pulling more neighborhoods and more writers into their sphere. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on their progress.

Photo from SeattleOutdoorArt.com

The Smarter Neighbors blog introduces us to a wonderful site, SeattleOutdoorArt.com. This site attempts to catalog and photograph all the outdoor art installations that can be found in Seattle. The idea of course is to encourage you to get out and see them in person, but it also lets you visit virtually if you can’t get out there. It’s a great directory to get a sense of just how much art is there scattered around the city. Right now they’re up to 400 pieces, with more on the way!

I enjoy reading Vintage Seattle, but sometimes it’s really depressing. Because every now and then Cliffe will go take pictures of a house that is due to be struck down by the wrecking ball, usually in service of building condos or expanding a hospital. Today he brings us not one but two fantastic little turn-of-the-century homes that are not long for this world. They’re due to be razed for a new addition to the Swedish/Cherry Hill medical campus on 18th Avenue at Cherry.

I guess this stings extra because of the place I work now, which is housed in an old residence just like this that was converted into office space. Carson City is full of places like that, old houses that through adaptive reuse have been repurposed into doctor’s offices, dentists, accountants, lawyers, engineers, and various other professional offices. I’m hoping that Seattle in general has a committment to keeping old houses around and giving them new life, and the ones that Cliffe brings to our attention just had the bad luck of being in the wrong place, next door to the wrong hospital. But it still hurts to see any old house torn down like this.

Flickr photo by litlnemo

The Beacon Hill Blog is starting to point out cool Christmas displays around their neighborhood; their first post is up now, and they promise there will be more to come. Although I have to say, I won’t be impressed until I see a display as cool as the one we have here in Nevada.

Another great Seattle blog is VintageSeattle.org. Nearly every day Cliffe brings us fantastic historic photos of Seattle, mixed in with profiles of old houses around town that have either been lovingly taken care of, or have fallen into bad repair. Today he’s finishing up a four part series (1, 2, 3, 4) looking at the construction of the Space Needle back in 1961-62. This is another one that I’m subscribed to and follow every post.

A new blog I found recently is the Seattle History Examiner, by Benjamin Lukoff. He’s had a couple of good posts recently, like a notice about how the courtyard of the Pacific Science Center might be radically changed soon, or a look at a forgotten spring in Ravenna Park. I’m subscribed to the blog, and I look forward to more good stuff.

Ben also writes for Crosscut, and can be found on Flickr.

Paul Dorpat’s Then and Now article this week is titled From the Central School’s tower, a view of Seattle’s future.It’s a look north from the tower of Seattle’s Central School, around the year 1887. The school burned in 1888. The picture looks north with Lake Union in the distance, and small houses scattered all over the eastern slopes of Denny Hill. It’s a portrait of a young Seattle that still rolled with the ups and downs of the landscape, before any regrade business started. In the fifty years that followed man became master of the topography and flattened much of what can be seen in this picture, and  then in the 1960s the scar of I-5 dug deep into the earth right under what were the foundations of the Central School at Madison and 7th. Jean Sherrard’s “now” image is 80 percent freeway, with a few tall towers off in the distance and not a peek of lake Union anywhere to be seen.

I’ve been reading Paul Dorpat’s stuff for several years now. I started with his books, then found his weekly column online, and now I regularly keep up with his website. He used to trek all over Seattle himself to take the “now” shots, but now that he’s getting on in years he’s teamed up with Jean Sherrard to do all the hard work while he stays in his Wallingford home writing. But through his books and the photos he’s shared, I feel like I know Seattle’s history nearly as well as any native.