Crap economy, snowpocalypse, and now earthquakes. Is this really the right time to be moving to Seattle?

But at least now we can get up-to-the-minute updates on if the Viaduct has collapsed yet.

One of my favorite Seattle blogs, now that I’ve been following the blog scene up there for a couple of months, is the West Seattle Blog. They been providing in-depth coverage of the changes coming to the West Seattle water taxi, and they have a big post about what’s coming up. There will be a new dock, a new boat, year round service, and possibly expanded shuttle service to get people from their house to the ferry dock.

West Seattle Blog has also been right on top of the fire that ocurred at the Alki Homestead Restaurant a few days ago, with an inital post that updated constantly as news came in, and a follow-up post from this morning.

WSB is a great example of what a placeblog should be like, at least when it comes to news coverage. And now that I’m also following them on Twitter, it seems like they’re constantly updating, sending out tweets at a rate rivaling some of the people that are supposedly “top users”. I wish I could make Around Carson half as great as WSB.

I’ve found a fantastic collection of black and white photos of Seattle, by photographer Stephen Cysewski. The collection is called “Wandering In Seattle.” Some of the photos go back to the 80s, or even the 70s. But there are also some from just the last year or two. Taken together they probably number in the hundreds. But they’re all fantastic, and they show a real eye for the city and its people.

They’re split up into several collections, such as Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, the Waterfront, and some of the surrounding neighborhoods. There’s even a companion Wandering In Seattle blog. It’s definitely worth looking through all of them. Looking at these pictures makes me ache to be a better photographer.

Hat tip to SeattleScape.

Here’s a good way to drum up more work in a down economy. An out-of-work architect went down to the Ballard Sunday farmers market, and set up a booth that said “Architecture 5¢“. And for a nickel he would chat with anybody who came by, about any topic he knew of, and give out whatever advice he could. The idea being, of course, that hopefully some of the people he chatted with would take his business card home, and give him a call to do some real work for real money later on. An interesting hook, and one that definitely drew some attention.

In SeattleScape, See Seattle by water, daily

I remember … thinking how cool it would be if Seattleites saw our myriad bodies of water as thoroughfares rather than impediments to travel.

Sure, a lot of people here row or kayak on weekends and others do obnoxious things with jetskis in the summer, but what if we could actually use the water here as a means to get to work or to run otherwise tedious errands?

A series of passenger-only ferry routes are scheduled to come online over the next few years, starting with year-round service to West Seattle. It’s caled a water taxi, even though the routes are fixed and scheduled. it used to be, before the trains and the roads, that boats were the only way to get around Puget Sound. Now you have very little choice, aside from hopping on a ferry or buying your own boat. There needs to be a middle ground, and the water taxis are a good start.

Paul Dorpat today brings us an in-depth look at the history of snow in Seattle, going all the way back to the “Big Snow” of 1880 (pictured), and even further back than that. He’s been working on this essay since Christmas Eve, and it shows. In this opus in seven parts he attempts to document every large snowstorm Seattle has enjoyed over its 157 years, while also indulging in several digressions about Thanksgiving turkeys and cherry pie. Just read it. It will make sense.

Vintage Seattle had a couple of pictures of the Pacific Science Center last week. Parts of the courtyard have found their way to the “endangered” list. Although it sounds like the trademark arches will remain, other parts of the courtyard, including the pools, the walkways, and the concrete fountains, may be torn out soon.

“This Land of Ours: The State of Washington.” A 1950 travel film about Washington.

Photo by Flickr user bazcat

Photo from Flickr user vision63

Most people that advocate tearing down the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and leaving it torn down, point to one example as why that’s the best thing to do: the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. The Embarcadero was a big ugly concrete wall that ran along part of San Francisco’s waterfront, a double-decker monster that almost looks like it was forged from the same blueprint as the Viaduct. After the structure was damaged in the 1989 earthquake, the city made the decision to tear the freeway down and replace it with a wide boulevard. Now the city’s waterfront is opened up, with no barrier separating it from downtown.

Sounds a lot like what the proponent of the “surface” option for the Viaduct are talking about, with all the same benefits. That’s why the comparison is brought up so much, like again this week in James F. Vesely’s opinion column, and at the Seattle Transit Blog. But one thing they always overlook, or fail to point out, is that the Embarcadero was a turkey not only because it was so ugly, but because it didn’t go anywhere. It was part of an aborted plan in the 1950s to criss-cross the city with freeways, a plan that was killed shortly after construction started. This plan would have had three major freeways cutting through downtown, and the Embarcadero was supposed to have connected the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate all the way along the waterfront. This never happened. The Freeway Revolt made sure that project was cancelled, but not before concrete had been poured on a one-mile section of the road. When the rest of the freeway was killed, the builders just built a couple of ramps and dumped traffic off the Embarcadero and onto city streets, effectively creating a dead end freeway.

For the next 30 years this freeway to nowhere existed, useful only to a handful of people. Through the 80s proposals were put forth to demolish it just because it wasn’t needed, but that handful was very vocal, so it wasn’t until after the earthquake, and the costs of repairing it versus demolishing it were weighed, that a decision could be made.

The difference between that and the Viaduct is that the Embarcadero only moved cars from one part of downtown to the other. One commenter called it an on-ramp for the Bay Bridge. The Viaduct moves cars through town, cars that have no intention of having anything to do with downtown. So it’s a lazy comparison, one that’s easy to make an emotional argument out of (“Look how much prettier San Francisco is now!”). But Highway 99 is a bypass, a road that removes through traffic from the city and puts it somewhere out of the way. Bypasses are important in keeping traffic moving. In a lot of towns in the West, these bypasses can be on the outskirts and go around town. Carson City is finally building its bypass after 50 years of planning, and it skirts around downtown far to the east. Seattle doesn’t have that luxury, because of the water and the hills, so the bypass has to go over town. And Seattle, like most major cities, needs two bypasses to effectively funnel all the traffic. Removing one of them can’t be an option.