In the recent Slog coverage of Crave's lost lease, neighbor jrrrl makes a suggestion for the displaced eatery:

Move to 15th. Can we please put a looong piece of masking tape along the middle of 14th ave? Yuppies stay on that side, hipsters stay on this side. Gays get to use both sides due to a grandfather clause, but only if they're still flaming. We will trade you Boom Noodle for the Canterbury.

I'm curious -- which team are you on? I usually (mistakenly) assume everybody is just like me. That would make you all disgusting, money grubbing, sell-out yuppies. Let's do a quick show of hands.

First, apologies. I'm sure a lot of you who come to CHS for news and information about Capitol Hill could care very little about the business and journalism end of things. Indulge me. This, in the end, is about Capitol Hill and quality news and information in your community.

If anybody is wondering about the information gathering process behind Fisher Broadcasting's attempt to build a network of Seattle neighborhood news sites, here is an example of what KOMO's effort looks like.

At 12:58 PM Wednesday, CHS posted this reminder about this weekend's Capitol Hill design charrette. It wasn't an extraordinary post but in typical CHS form, I've attended two meetings about this event and will be there Saturday to cover and participate in it. The post was one of seven (counting this one) we published during the day. Here is the original article about the Saturday event we linked to from the reminder.

Meanwhile capitolhill.komonews.com had not been updated since Tuesday.

Then, at 4:39 PM, CHS got a very interesting visitor. An employee on the Fisher Broadcasting corporate network (IP: 208.73.29.10) came to our homepage. Here is that visitor's activity log (Thanks getclicky.com! BTW, I named this IP address 'Carson from KVI' last summer after a producer I was working with for an appearance on Fisher's talk radio station)

At 4:55 PM, this visitor clicked on the link to CHS's design charrette post.

At 4:56 PM, he or she downloaded a PDF about the event that CHS received from the organizers.

Guess what happened nine minutes later.

At 5:05 PM, KOMO's Capitol Hill site posted this, its first and only post of the day:

You don't have to be furious. That's my job. But I wouldn't mind if you joined me in disappointment. We work hard at collecting useful community news and information here at CHS and everybody who participates in the site is a big part of that. There is room for a rich community of Capitol Hill sites producing original work. To see that work siphoned away in a few minutes of clicking, cutting and pasting is painful. To know how much effort Fisher is making to sell advertising on this kind of content -- that's where the fury comes from.

But if you're still not feeling it, what if I tell you this? Wednesday was not the first time Fisher has done this. I sent an e-mail documenting similar actions by employees on Fisher Broadcasting's corporate network to executive producer Kevin Cotlove on August 24th. Cotlove assured me that KOMO takes such accusations seriously.

So do I. I hope you will, too.

For another example of Fisher Broadcasting's recent activities, check out this article on Central District News.

Here's a step by step for posting to this site via e-mail -- works on any device including, of course, the iPhone.

1) Log into the site and go to the Your Page tab

2) Look for the 'edit your profile' link next to your username.

3) Click the edit link and scroll to the bottom section -- Posting by email. Enter the e-mail address you will be mailing from and a simple code you can remember (but nobody else can guess --) in the "Send emails to" box. In this example, let's say we entered 'test98aq'

4) Choose whether you want the e-mail posts to go live automatically or you can store them in draft mode to publish later.

5) Save the profile updates and add the neighborlogs.com address to your contacts for the e-mail account you will be sending from. In the above example, the address would be post+jseattle.test98aq@neighborlogs.com

6) Compose your mail. Subject line will become the post headline. Adding one of the post categories -- About CHS, Community, News, etc., Crime, or Food & Drink --  in parentheses will file the...

Seattle Times
Originally uploaded by kriskiedis20

The Seattle Times today announced a community news partnership with CHS Capitol Hill Seattle and 3 other less important neighborhood news sites in Seattle, the West Seattle Blog, MyBallard and The Rainier Valley Post.

It's an exciting project for CHS to be part of and a recognition of the hard work and good technology behind this site. I'm also especially proud to have CHS prove itself in an environment still very much stuck on the idea that there is one authority on a news site. Yes, a small handful of main contributors and I do a large part of the heavy lifting here but our open, truly community driven format adds an amazing level of extra information gathering, reporting and, my favorite, serendipity to the mix. It's brave of the Seattle Times to work with us in this project. Of course, if they really want to get ready for the future, it's a must. The new partnership will also mean more attention and support for the rest of the Seattle Neighborlogs sites...

Any time you get responses like this in your OTHER category, you had better ask yourself some serious neighborhood blogger questions. Like, why was I born?

o You make it sound like a large house is the uber evolution of a CH resident. That's bullshit. In a condo. It's my THIRD home purchase, and I don't ever intend to live in low-density, environment-killing single-family homes. This question sucks.

o Nice apartment, west of Broadway, liquid enough to buy a home in cash but think it's a poor investment given research and economic projections.

o what is it with you and east of 15th?

o east of 15th, far from "quiet" and nothing to do with my home purchasing desires

o I don't understand the question

Here's the thing about Question 5 in CHS Census 2009 -- well, wait. Before I start defending myself and the question, let's look at the results:

So, um, the most common response category was 2.0 -- Nicer apartment between Broadway and 15th. Mildly interesting I guess. But was it worth this kind of criticism?

Those questions sucked by anon
... the "residential trajectory" question is total BS. You make it sound like a large house is the uber evolution of a CH resident. That's bullshit. I'm in a condo. It's my third home purchase, and I don't ever intend to live in low-density, environment-killing single-family homes. The way that question is written, you make it sound like the only reason anybody would ever want to live in a condo is because they can't afford to live in a single family home east of 15th. This sort of bias pisses me off and undermines the validity of any survey that attempts to be census-like.

Worth it? I'm a stubborn bastard. As much as the purpose of the census -- and this site -- is to learn about Capitol Hill and the people that live here, it is also about doing that study in interesting and new ways. I was dedicated to finding a few places to more tightly integrate the survey into the fabric of the site. So question #5 was born as a connective thread to a post that had run on CHS and left me wondering what would happen if we dug further into the topic. Here's the original article -- Phases of Capitol Hill Residency (CHR).

So, my excuse is the experience I am trying to build on CHS -- everything is connected. You can take your assumptions about my values and beliefs and file them away. Have your say about the importance of density or sustainability or unicorns. But keep your mind open to the possiblity that there is more to every situation. Focus on what you want to say, not tearing things apart. I know that at the heart of the matter, some of you wanted this survey to be more and question 5 (and a few others) limited its success. There can be more surveys in the future.

You can check out the complete CHS Census 2009 review here and a write-up on the directional question set here.

Don't do many CHS web traffic posts these days -- things keep growing, story is good. But while we're doing a few About CHS posts like this one (re)introducing Maps, I wanted to point out a milestone that I'm extremely proud of. CHS has now reached 1,000 subsribers on its RSS feed.

That's a lot of geeks

You'll note a few ups and downs along the way. The big dips are screwups at feed provider Feedburner -- but CHS takes credit for all the peaks!

The RSS milestone is important to me as a proxy for our success with the kinds of neighbors who are the most connected, most engaged with the site on a long term basis. Some sites bemoan their RSS audience as disconnected and a phantom presence but I've found that making all of our content (including our advertising, of course) available to the RSS audience results in participation over the long haul. Want to join the crowd -- you can add our feed here.

Meanwhile, if you are curious about how many visitors are coming to the web, CHS makes its usage statistics publicly...

Capitolhillseattle.com has buttons. And they're kind of fun. They feature the EmilyP-designed crow. I usually have a pocketful and like to hand them out on the random occasion when I run into somebody who follows the site. It's an inefficient distribution system, to be sure.

So, starting this afternoon, we're making the CHS crow buttons available for pick-up. For free. No purchase necessary. Stop by CHS sponsor Emerson Salon and ask, nicely, for the CHS crow button jar. Take a button -- one per person, pretty please -- and put it on and sport the CHS crow wherever on the Hill you go. It's like getting the Happy Meal toy without having to buy the Happy Meal.

Emerson Salon is located at 909 E. Pike and is open despite the ice and snow.

Earlier this month, neighbor bridget made a proposal:

As i was reading through the comments on the CHS playlist and "music to walk to on capitol hill" threads, i realized that people have good taste in music here!

i propose we have a capitol hill mix CD trade (or mix tape trade, if you're that old school). here is how it will work:

comment here if you would like to receive a mix CD made by one of your fellow hill neighbors, in return for a CD you make for them.

Let's make it happen.

1. Plan for a February meetup to facilitate the trades and get everybody together for a drink. RSVP and help select a date here. Be good to see you even if you don't want to be part of the music trade.
2. If you're in for the CD trade end of things, leave a comment on this post.
   
3. Don't know what the cut-off date will be. I'll update for that later. Bridget, if you are out there, I'll work with you on matching people up. I vote for random!
   
4. Let's go with standard CD format so discs play on anything and the endeavor is more like...

Radio Point, you've been nothing good to me. Surrounded by controversy and border disputes with our neighbors in the Central District, Radio Point is becoming more trouble than it's worth.

Radio Point, the tan triangle of confusion

From neighbor Dotty who knows a thing or three about these things:

as anyone who has lived near them knows, the towers are TV, and if you live near them you can't get KCTS both sound and picture (maybe this will change with digital?) and you get KUOW (radio) in your braces.  So no to Radio Towers.  TV Point or TV Towers or TV Towers Point would work fine.

They're not even radio towers. Very disappointed. Still, you're part of the family. We're housing a jar of crow buttons within your confines at CHS sponsor Central Cinema. Now we just need to come up with your new name.

CHS is giving away free capitolhillseattle.com crow buttons. All you need to do is swing by CHS sponsor Emerson Salon on Tuesday or Wednesday (or any day they're open). 909 E. Pike St. next to Via Tribulani if you're looking for it.

Mocking me that I can't fly and have to trudge around in the snow Originally uploaded by ERIK98122

Much of the most interesting neighborhood news and information on this neighborhood news and information site comes from you in the comments on CHS posts. To highlight some of the best points, ideas, questions, etc. from the site, we're going to start this weekly round-up of the best CHS comments. Here is what we found this week.

The 11th/Pine development project inspired a lot of feedback and good questions to consider at this Wednesday's design review meeting. This question raised by CapHillMax is an important one -- is there anything to do from a design standpoint to reduce the tension between the area's existing nightlife and future residents of the building?Meanwhile, we also learned something about sidewalk design and construction and heard from neighborhood activist Dennis Saxman:

Hmmm... by CapHillMax
So while we are talking about preservation, does anyone not see the folly of plopping a residential building right on a street that is full of bars, late-night restaurants and clubs?

I'm not NIMBY, it's just one of the things that makes Pike/Pine a great neighborhood is the nightlife. And infilling with really dense residential developments such as this, plus the one that is being built right above the Cuff's outdoor patio, plus the new condo across from the Satellite Lounge, the new building abutting the Elysian's outdoor patio, etc. etc. to me does not make much sense. It would be better to have a 1/2 block buffer or so, before putting in a ton of residential. Residents will inevitably complain about the noise, the city will simply take it out on the bars.

Maybe I worry to much. Who knows. This just bothers me.

This would only be considered preservation in George Orwell's 1984 by Dennis Saxman
You notice that in one place they talk about preserving the character structure, and then in another place (the drawings), they describe it as "existing character facade shown in foreground to remain."

 The ordinance, on its face, allows development "to a scale that is compatible with the established development pattern." That language is not found in either the Neighborhood Plan or the Design Guidelines.

One of the goals of Phase Two of neighborhood planning for the Pike/Pine was to "preserve, to the extent possible, the neighborhood's built environment of auto-row architecture." One of the Visions of the Plan for 2014 was " "The historic 'auto-row' architecture and other historic buildings ... that give the neighborhood character and preserve important parts of Seattle's twentieth century history." One of the key strategies was " To sustain the character of the Pike/Pine neighborhood by development of Design Guidelines and Design Review process to preserve 'character' buildings ...." As part of this strategy, one item listed was to establish a Community Heritage District that would provide preservation incentives and design review for the rehabilitation and remodeling of existing structures." It also proposed to establish an inclusive Community Heritage Design Review Board.

The Design Guidelines listed, as a high priority, "[preservation] of the physical and social character of the corridor." While they expressed a preference for adaptive re-use of existing buildings, they also encouraged new structures that reflect the architectural heritage of the neighborhood. Throughout the guidelines is an emphasis on buildings that are compatible and consistent with the existing architectural character.

Unfortunately, these goals have come to naught. Chiefly because a handful of powerful individuals in the neighborhood who prefer the individualistic, vain buildings built according to the futuristic fantasies of Le Corbusier and his imitators - fantasies that have been discredited for decades.

The National Historic Preservation Act defines preservation as including: "identification, evaluation, recordation,documentation, curation,acquisition,protection,management,rehabilitation,restoration, stabilization, maintenance, research, interpretation, conservation, and education and training regarding the foregoing activities, or any combination of the foregoing activities. At least one definition of conservation in most dictionaries is "the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state."

As I have stated before, I do not believe the new ordinance will accomplish any of these things.

For anyone who wants to amend the design guidelines or a neighborhood plan, there are established procedures for doing so. I don't see that any of them were followed. This is just plain wrong.

RE: How about the sidewalks? by Brian
I did concrete, mostly sidewalks and curb & gutter, for five years or so. It's possible to do some kind of independent sidewalk design but especially when the construction is in an established area, it requires a TON of cooperation from whatever body is governing the area.

A couple years ago the city of Olympia made a big PR event out of one of our projects, it was really cool. They hired us to put in a new compact permeable concrete, it retains most of the natural drainage by allowing rain water to pass through rather than direct it to a storm drain, and hired an artist to work with us while we placed the concrete. She was charged with directing all the aesthetic aspects while we did the actual work. It worked out really well for us because we were relieved of all responsibility if anyone complained about the art.

I think Seattle is a different story. Their standards are constantly changing and if you don't meet whatever that standard happens to be at the time, your company has to pay to remove and redo the work. Why do you think the city has it's own concrete crew... companies charge the city more because they're so nutty. The company I worked for started the sidewalks in Fremont and just cut our losses and gave the concrete work to the general contractor rather than messing with the city trying to do art.

A little long, I know

Our check-in with 15th Ave's Victrola Coffee (now owned by Whidbey Coffee Co.) prompted this response from user --. 

Whidbey Island Is Not Local by --
Local is an overused term that is really meaningless. My definition only allows for something being one county away.

Based on all of the arguments on this blog against 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, Whidbey Island does not qualify as local. 

But if it has to be within two counties, Starbucks qualifies as local.

We learned a random -- but useful -- macaroni and cheese tip from Uncle Vinny:

Random food comment...  by Uncle Vinny
Has anyone had the mac 'n' cheese at the Rosebud? I've had it a couple of times lately, and I'm thinking about going back tonight. They use gouda for the cheese, I think. Only $4 during happy hour... YUMTASTIC, give it a try.

And we're in no position to argue with normajean about a potential nickname for this part of Capitol Hill:

thumpers by normajean
I live at the corner of 15th and Pine and will always refer to this areas as Thumpers.

.

I'd like to take a moment to let you all know that we are extremely protective of our community at CHS and will go to great lengths to protect it. Our terms of service clearly spell out that anybody disrupting the flow of communication on the site is violating the agreement and will not be allowed to participate in the site.

On this list of disruptions that are disruptive to the community of CHS is falsely describing your relationship to the area. If you live in another city, welcome to Capitol Hill Seattle. If you come here to play a game, goodbye.

One step might be to remove user accounts that violate this agreement. Another might be to ban specific IP addresses. Another might be to take legal action to stop the abuse. As CHS grows, the opportunities and impact of abusing its community grow. But our resources deepen, too. It is built to foster and sustain community. Please respect -- and enjoy -- CHS.

Justin (jseattle)
(206) 659-1919

We've played this park image on our old CHS banner for all it's worth. Wesa's pretty pic of Volunteer Park served us well.

In early October, we planned a contest to replace the park image CHS banner. And we quickly canceled it after being, um, educated that contests are not the best way to achieve good design. Better, the comment masses said, was to hire an honest-to-goodness designer and set her to work designing her little heart out.

We were skeptical. The typical design budget for the typical neighborhood blog is approximately $0.35. We're not your typical neighborhood blog so we were able to up that a bit. But, really, it was out of the goodness of her heart helped by her knowledge that pumping out a super-hot CHS banner design would make her famous that we were able to hire our first ever CHS Design Intern -- EmilyP!

One morning meeting at Fuel Coffee and a few e-mails later, EmilyP submitted five proposals. Here is the CHS feedback she received at the time so that you can a) enjoy our version of the creative...

According to this article, Neighbours may lose it's lease.  No official word on what the building would be used for if Neighbours loses.  I'm going to hazard a guess that potentially we may see mixed use condo/retail at this location within 3 years. 

We've added a simple upgrade that is pretty cool. We are now organizing comments from CHS registered users on their profile pages. So, if you want to see every witty comment I've ever left on this site, here's my comment history.

My profile page now has comments

It's cool to be able to see all of Final Answer's posts and comments in the same place and appreciate fully the contributions of CHS neighbors like Yancy who comment frequently.

While I'm at it, allow me to tout another cool CHS feature -- this one is not new but you may not have known about it. Did you know that you can view all CHS posts tagged with a location on our Posts Map page? It's an interesting way to see what parts of the Hill we've been writing about. We're working on a few ways to make it even cooler by allowing you to drill in on specific locations to see the CHS archive associated with the area.

CHS Posts Map

The mobile culture of Capitol Hill's apartment dwellers dominates this neighborhood and defines its look, feel and spirit.

The landowners might own a chunk of real estate in one of the most desirable areas of the city but they identify with the urban nomads. We need to celebrate our apartments. At CHS, celebration means deep, deliberate, minutiae-focused study.

In that light, we introduce the new CHS Reviews apartments section. It's an opportunity for apartment dwellers and the people who love them to recruit, discourage, critique and, yes, celebrate Capitol Hill's apartments. Got an opinion on the Charbern Apartments on Belmont? Let us know. Tell us about your love for the Whitworth. Sing the song of The Granada. Don't see your favorite apartment in the list? Add it here.

Let the celebration begin.

Poop on down to Eastlake to hear about assorted measures on the General Election ballot:

BALLOT MEASURE FORUM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7th, 2008 - 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. 
SEATTLE'S TOPS-SEWARD SCHOOL LIBRARY 
2500 FRANKLIN AVE E., SEATTLE WA 98102
 
Please join us for this annual event as we hear presentations from the opposing campaigns and debate the leading local and state ballot measures.   Each campaign will have two minutes for initial remarks, then there will be a series of questions submitted by the audience and read by the moderator, with each campaign having one minute to respond.  If there is time, the campaigns will have the opportunity to pose a question to one another.  

Tentative Agenda:

7:00  Eastlake Community Council annual elections meeting
7:15  Sound Transit Proposition 1
7:35  I-985 Transportation "Reduce Traffic Congestion"
7:55  Seattle Pike Place Market and Parks Levies
8:15  I-1000 Death With Dignity

For questions:  Matthew Stubbs, forum coordinator: 
matthew.stubbs@eastlakeseattle.org 
(206)-227-1356
117 East...

Here is the short story:

• CHS is growing and on a good path to surviving as a component of the Capitol Hill community and a business
• CHS is happy to announce that former Capitol Hill Times editor Doug Schwartz is joining the site later this month
• CHS is happy to announce that we now have Larissa the amazing intern plugging away to make the site awesome
• CHS has the opportunity to make people like Doug and Larissa an even bigger part of the site
• To do this CHS needs your help

The CHS Pledge Drive runs Tuesday 5/5 to Monday 5/11.

Please consider supporting CHS today

• $250 and above -- thank you gift: Assign a CHS story. We write about whatever topic you give us
• $100 and above -- thank you gift: First 10 givers get CHS gift pack
• $25 and above -- thank you gift: Choose a date for your 'sponsor of the day' message on CHS
• Any amount -- thank you gift: Invitation to CHS thank you wine party

Make sure to add your e-mail in the pledge wizard so we can contact you about your gift and details of your CHS story assignments

Here is the long story:

Why should you support a for-profit Web site run by an ex-Microsoft employee with a neighborhood blogging start-up who lives in one of the wealthier ZIP codes in Seattle? CHS is and always will be an advertising supported business. It is not a nonprofit or a public utility. The site is organized and managed to provide community news and information as a business. Some of the articles, pictures and information is provided by contributors for free. Any contributor that wants can become part of the revenue sharing program and be compensated as fairly as possible for their work. So, many of the articles, pictures and much of the information on this site has a cost. To keep the business running, we sell advertisements to local businesses that either want to support the site, want to have their messages presented to a very focused, very local audience, or both.

This is how CHS will continue to grow. Today, depending on which data source you look at, more than 15,000 different people a month visit the site -- somewhere north of 1,000 every day.

That is a large enough audience to build a business on and, I hope, a testament to the quality experience this site provides to the people who live on and care about Capitol Hill. CHS currently makes about $1,100 per month in ad revenue. About 60% of that goes to site contributors. It is a long road to success.

But sometimes, there is opportunity to zoom ahead. I am happy to announce that a familiar Capitol Hill face is joining the team this month. Former Capitol Hill Times editor Doug Schwartz will begin contributing to CHS in mid-May. I'm happy to have him particpating at any level but I want to jumpstart things and be able to pay Doug and creative people like him to play an even bigger role in the site. We also have brought on an intern because, 1) we can use the help and 2) we hope to pass along some of the knowlege and fun of running a neighborhood news and information site. Given these changes, it is time for yet another CHS experiment.

We will continue telling the stories of Capitol Hill no matter if you give or not. But the media landscape is shifting and CHS has an opportunity to leap forward today. With your help, we can make a jump and bridge the period of growth to the level at which CHS is a fully sustainable business that can afford to bring in great people like Doug and adequately compensate them without pledge drives. We don't plan to do this every year -- in fact, it's very likely we'll never ask for something like this again (learned to never say never, however -- once said we'd never, ever ask for money like this but now look at us!). If this kind of pledge drive is required again and again, there are better ways to structure what we're doing and CHS will change. But this drive can help make sure we never get there.

In return for your support of the site, there are some gifts available to help repay your pledge. You can review those at the top of the post. The $250+ level gives you the ability to play editor and assign CHS to write about any Capitol Hill topic you want. Our gift pack for the first 10 givers at $100+ is made up of a few nice thank yous from CHS sponsors including Tidbit Bistro and Northwest Film Forum. Anybody who gives $25 or more can designate a date to have their sponsor message shown on the site. Plus, all givers will be invited to a special thank you wine party at Vino Verite later this summer. Please provide your e-mail address in the pledge form when giving so we can contact you about your gift (and only! about your gift). But the bigger trade, of course, comes from the continued dedication for CHS to cover Capitol Hill and build a place for people to share the Hill's news, information and stories.

We hope you'll consider giving today.

CHS Pledge Drive -- Tuesday 5/5 to Monday 5/11

Oh, and if you'd rather support us the old fashioned way, buy an ad and share your message with THOUSANDS.

Thank you!