Any neighbor can post on this site. While only the best stuff gets promoted to the CHS Homepage, everything appears on the CHS Posts page.

Why contribute a great post to Capitol Hill Seattle?

1. We've had more than 10k people participate in the site in the last 30 days so it's a good way to get the word out to people who care about Capitol Hill.
2. It's easy. Just create an account and go to our Create Page.
3. It's an opportunity to share what you think and promote the stuff you like best about Capitol Hill.
4. We spread the wealth.

If you're willing to jump in with both feet, consider joining the CHS Revenue Sharing Program. We're open to all -- young journalists in training, struggling writers, folks looking to have their lattes subsidized by the Internet, etc. The more your posts are read, the more you make. The more you make, the better you feel. So make CHS posts with, um, every meal.

If you are interested in joining:

1. Sign up for a CHS account and make at least three posts
2. Send us a mail with your CHS username and any other...

Tuesday night, I was living the neighborhood blogger dream. I was covering a celebration that will be remembered in this city for a very long time -- and it was all happening in the heart of the neighborhood I write about every day. I broadcasted pictures. I captured video. And I was worried the entire night.

I wasn't freaked out by the raucous crowd or even worried that the Shell station's gas pumps still seemed to be operational. I was worried that my journalism was going to turn into evidence.

Obama famous

Obamanonymous

What would have happened had Obama Day not been so joyous? What if the crowd had done what crowds have been known to do and turned angry and destructive? For every person dancing in the streets, there was a phone cam screen glowing somewhere in the nearby crowd. And there I was taking pictures of everything and everybody.

What this neighborhood blogger wanted that night and every time I am out taking pictures of my neighbors is a way to record but let you all be. Give me technology in every...

I see cruiser bikes all over Capitol Hill.  The problem is that they're never actually moving.  Instead they are locked up (and usually rusting away) or clogging up apartment building bike rooms.  Unless your entire life is isolated to a few north-south streets, our hilly 'hood is less-than-ideal for cruising around in a steel tank with limited gearing.  So why are there so many cruisers clogging up prime bike parking real estate?  Do all of those California transplants drag their beach bikes with them when they move?  Or are cruisers one of those impulse buys that "seemed like a good idea at the time"? 

p.s. J, just a thought, but how about adding some questions to the census to empirically test this.  e.g., "What kind of bike do you own?" and "How often do you ride your bike?"

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.

One of my favorite things about working on this site is taking geek technology and using it in the neighborhood. The best tools bust out of the tech blogs and nerd sites and become useful. With that as intro, here's your invitation to follow me on Twitter.

Many (most?) of you dear neighbors are already Twitter savvy. You are geeks. The rest of you -- yes, the same ones who decided to join Facebook to friend this blog and are still wondering why -- should take the leap too.

Here's how I use Twitter and why you might be interested:

• I promote my favorite CHS posts there. Probably less interesting for you because you sit there and refresh our homepage all day. But useful for others perhaps.
• I tweet valuable information that doesn't always make it into a post on the site.
• I ask questions, gather feedback and talk about what I'm working on.
• I watch everybody else's Twitter actions to find out what is happening around Capitol Hill.

So please consider adding me to your Twitter club and I'll surely add you -- it's a great way...

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

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.

You may have noticed a few small changes roll onto the site today. The biggest is the return of a quality rating feature for you to show your approval -- or disapproval -- of posts and comments. Gone are the stars that drove me a little nuts.

In their place, welcome the thumbs. The goal of either icon set is to give you the opportunity to influence the experience on this site in yet another way. For now, we'll be able to do simple things like feature the most highly-rated content. This kind of system sets us up to be able to do other, much bigger things like display highly rated content more prominently (and the inverse -- reduce the prominence of low-rated experiences.) The difference between stars and thumbs -- I'm hoping -- is helping balance the 1-star impulse. It's easy to dole out a 1-star rating -- it's the most obvious choice if you don't think something is of high enough quality. But the range of stars for positive ratings is a fuzzier choice. Hoping that the thumbs bring a more clear, binary framework...

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.

We haven't posted one of these -- as somebody, in classic fashion once described 'About CHS' posts -- self-important blog posts in awhile. So let's get it out of our system:

• Green thumbs: You may have noticed that we've replaced the old thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating tool on articles and comments with only a 'Recommend this' thumbs-up. Why? It was too easy for one person to make a drive-by negative impact by clicking the thumbs-down just because they disagreed. There was an increase in these acts of shallow commentary recently convincing us that it was time for a change. As for making it too easy to show approval, well, can't say this appears to be a problem in the cool, cruel world. Anything we can do to tip the scales of positivity seems healthy, no?
• Twitter Ads: Now we're just showing off. We've introduced a cool new ad format here on CHS that we think makes a lot of sense. Our new Twitter Ad template showcases a local business's social media message making an ad that's dynamic and, hopefully, interesting...

Sorry for the late delivery -- a few issues with the behind-the-scenes Google Reader > Yahoo Pipes > FeedJournal system that produces the paper for us. Have a good week.

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A few more days of the CHS Pledge Drive. If you print it, share it. And consider adding your support.

Make a pledge to CHS today

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Hope you'll have time to swing by tonight between 5-7pm to have a drink and say hello. It's a chance to meet some of the people behind the site and let me know what you like and what you don't about CHS. The BottleNeck will also be featuring extra happy hour time.

And, of course, you can get an official CHS crow button. See you there?

Here's a little something to keep you entertained on a rainy Sunday. What will you do for the next 32?

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crow Originally uploaded by bitmask

Next Tuesday night, we'll be hosting the (mostly!) monthly CHS happy hour at the Bottleneck Lounge along with our pals from Central District News.

To add some balance, we thought it might be nice to try a CHS social that did not include alcohol. Novel!

Join CHS at a special edition of HEALEO and Phyzz Yoga's morning stretch sessions. For $9, you'll get a yoga class, a smoothie and CHS will be there to guarantee you aren't the least limber person in the room. Fun starts at 9 AM.

Congratulations to fellow neighborhood news site MyBallard. Tonight, MyB helped validate small-media local news by winning the Online News Association's Community Collaboration award. The other nominees? The Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald. Of course, flickr, Urbanspoon, Twitter and Yelp were not nominated. Nor CHS. Maybe next year. Now, enjoy your paper.

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CHS is built by you. Anybody can be part of the site to comment, publish articles, post pictures, create calendar events and more. You can participate with or without a CHS account -- you can leave a comment without joining the site, for example -- but being part of CHS gives you a lasting presence in your community news site and makes it easier for us to create an extremely open environment for everybody to be part of.

With all that as prelude, it's exciting to announced that we just zoomed through a fun milestone. Please meet CHS member #1000:

View Profile

Washington Ensemble Theater might not be the first type of neighbor you think of on Capitol Hill but the little theater (and Little Theater!) company is fitting from CHS's POV. Our ideal community is a mix of the people who live, work and play on the Hill. Some of us -- ahem, @jseattle -- identify deeply with the organizations they help drive. So, on CHS, your neighbor just might be a fringe theater group.

For a look at the other 999 members of CHS -- oops,...

We're still on the hunt for a printing partner to help cover the cost of taking the weekly CHS Paper edition up a level by printing and distributing a few copies. Spread the word. Hope you're having a lovely weekend.

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You may have noticed a new addition to the CHS crow banner:

Ragen and Associates, a Capitol Hill business located at 517 E. Pike St., is our first official CHS site sponsor. Thanks so much to the folks at R&A for supporting truly local journalism and community on Capitol Hill. You can learn more about Ragen and Associates' garden construction and garden maintenance services at http://www.ragenassociates.com/

Enjoy your weekend. Looking for something to do? Here are a few activities from the CHS events calendar:

• Miller Playfield Community Celebration
• Single Ladies Amateur Dance off at Century
• Friends of the Conservatory Fall Plant Sale

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A reminder that many of the cast of characters from CHS will be gathering Tuesday night at Poco Wine Bar for some happy hour fun. Happy hour prices are $2 off each glass and $8 off each bottle. CHS will be smuggling in a bottle of Arbor Mist to share.

We don't do the happy hours enough -- usually a lot of fun talking about everybody's life on the Hill and some of the fun connections that happen through the site. It's also a nice opportunity to thank a sponsor -- Poco has been a long-time supporter of the site.

CHS Happy Hour
Tuesday, 9/15 5-7p
Poco Wine Bar, 1408 E Pine St.

A sunny September day on Capitol Hill is not the best time to be in front of a laptop. But it's a fine, fine time to enjoy a printout of the latest CHS print edition. Have a good weekend.

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This week, we'll also be be making the CHS paper edition available at a few select offline locations. For those of you playing at home, enjoy the download and have a happy Labor Day.

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Here's the thing about the newspaper business they don't tell you -- shit's complicated. Our jury-rigged system of RSS, feeds, Yahoo! Pipes and PDF newspaper service FeedJournal conspired to knock CHS out of the production game for a few days. But we're back and, starting this Labor Day Weekend, you should see a few copies of the weekly CHS print edition showing up at CHS sponsor businesses and a few of your favorite coffee shops. In the meantime, here's last week's news in a print format. Just like the Seattle Times! Kidding! Really, Frank, it's cool. Just joking. You guys are great.

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In the beginning, CHS had a message board. And it was OK. But when we made the leap into the community driven world of Neighborlogs, we didn't bring the message board along. Does it make sense for a site where 'anybody can post' to have a board? We're about to find out.

Introducing the new CHS Forums

The new message boards give you yet another way to put CHS to use sharing ideas, news and information about Capitol Hill.

On CHS, you can:

• Post an article -- For higher effort, more crafted presentations of information
• Post a free event or classified listing -- For building a community calendar and trading post
• And, now, post a message board thread -- For wide open discussion, advice and brainstorming

The system is new so it's pretty simple right now. There is only one category -- the Open Forum -- for the time being but we're taking suggestions on how the system should be shaped. Please take a minute to give the forums a spin and let us know what you think.