Walking home from work last night in the rain, I was surprised to see dozens of goats peeking out from a shelter in the grassy area between Plymouth Pillars Park and I-5. This morning, as I walked to work, they were still there. Great advertising for a business named Rent-A-Ruminant, LLC. If you are contemplating renting a goat (to keep your lawns looking trim or to chomp down on invasive blackberries), call 206-251-1051 or email [email protected].

Update: Seattlest explains that the goats are there to get rid of invasive vegetation

If August’s rain and ridiculousness have you a little down on Capitol Hill, you should read author Charles Johnson’s recent essay for Smithsonian Magazine.

My wife, Joan, born and raised on Chicago’s South Side in a sometimes violent housing project called Altgeld Gardens, and I happily raised our children here. They can truly call this place—accurately described as a “city of neighborhoods”—home. On Capitol Hill two years ago, our daughter, Elisheba, a conceptual artist, opened Faire Gallery/Café, which features jazz performances and the occasional play or open-mic poetry night as well as art shows and comedy performances by young local talent. Faire is where I hang out these days, conducting my classes and keeping appointments in a vibrant atmosphere—straights and gays, students and goths—that recalls the freewheeling creative vitality of Berkeley in the late 1960s.

For Seattle is, whatever else, a place where the young, single, iconoclastic and open-minded seem to thrive…

Ah, that’s nice. A few of you also had some nice things to say about Faire back when we reviewed it in May.

Young, single, iconoclastic and open-minded… hey, wait, that’s more than 3 words. Frankly, Johnson’s view of the Hill is darned romanticized. That part of the Hill exists — but only kind of. Instead, a lot of the energy powering the Hill comes from people I’d describe in less sexy, more practical terms. And, shock, a lot of them are not single. And, shock, a lot of them have kids. The people Johnson describes seem to churn through Capitol Hill on their way to becoming less sexy and then getting down to business.

But you know how that Smithsonian rag is — sex sells. Hot (open minded!), young, single iconoclasts it is, then.

Our friend Matt at Urbnlivn posted a link to a site poking fun at Cap Hill condos: Cheapshit Condos!

Dissing those triangle porches at the Braeburn? Loves it!

Today’s link fest has only one theme — Capitol Hill:

• The oldest house in the city is on Capitol Hill.
• DOT responds to Car Free towing: “We don’t want to create negative problem for the neighborhood, and that was an unfortunate consequence.”
• Daily Candy tells you where to find the height of sartorial treatment on Capitol Hill.
• Wet, crappy weather means death from above. That tree was aiming for you.
• Press release for creation of a Capitol Hill Barrio.
• We all missed Sounds Outside last weekend. Except for Capitol Hill Triangle.
• My hobbies increase. More about this soon.

Pike/Pine would surely scoff at the enthusiasm. But Fancy Pants & 15th Ave don’t get live KEXP-rock music every day. So we have an ongoing tradition of getting excited when Sonic Boom announces an in-store NOT in Ballard (sadly, we didn’t post about The Dutchess and The Duke performance a few weeks back). And, it’s always cool when the rugrats can rock n roll too — even with a performance as weird as the Tiny Vipers.

TINY VIPERS!
THURSDAY AUG 28TH!
7PM! CAPITOL HILL!
FREE! ALL-AGES!

I love this post over at Seattle’s Tribe.net page requesting a summary of Seattle in just three words.

So, I have to ask…

How would you describe the hill in just three words?

Play along! Three words only! :)

Here’s mine, um, it’s a little cheesy:

Community with spunk

More about the Car Free breakdown and a few other links of note this autumn-like August morning.

• A 14th Ave E. neighbor speaks out on the Car Free debacle: “How much cooler would the whole thing have been if someone had organized a street-wide garage sale, a group jam session, or a scooter rally. Now that would have been cool, and all of those events could have happened at the same time on the same street to great success.” FYI, the Capitol Hill Community Council talked to an organizer about this event way back in July but didn’t hear back from her until a week ago with a mass e-mail looking for volunteers.
• PDX blogger gets high and mighty about Capitol Hill’s yuppification by pointing squarely at Bimbo’s: “Its new location, sans the lucha libre stain-gassed windows and south-of-the-border brick-a-brak, could easily pass for a martini bar.”
• Blogging Georgetown notes upcoming neighborhood blog forum hosted by mainstream media blogger.
• The stories behind some of the neighborhood street art you’ve probably seen.
• And, in case you missed it, there was a scary home invasion robbery in Miller Park on Friday afternoon.

Was cooking up a post about today’s crappy rain and tried to hop over to KING 5’s Schoolnet Weather report for Stevens Elementary — and found, sadly, it’s no longer available. Boo.

Anyhow, Stevens’ replacement — the Husky Stadium station — says we got about .57 inches of rain today. If that’s accurate, it’s basically more rain in a single day than we typically get in the entire month of August (as measured a few miles south down at the airport). The table below is from a post I wrote last summer — 2 reasons why this summer feels extra crappy. Ignore the August 2007 data in the table because I was writing mid-month — we ended up at .73 inches in 2007, btw. But even without that, you can see that our Augusts are typically relatively dry.

So far in 2008, we’re already over an inch of rain and people are bitching because it certainly feels like summer is over. If you want to sound like an old-timer, tell them this ain’t nothing compared to 2004.

This rant from the Slog comment pool pretty much sums it up:

So is the Stranger (read ECB) going to do a followup of the “success” of the closed off street in Cap Hill today? Please make sure to point out all the happy people who had their vehicles towed in preparation for the fun and frivolity, only to have the entire event scrapped hours early, due to rain, lack of participation, lack of interest, and the general anger & annyonance expressed at the liberal freaks in charge of promoting said event. We’ll see if folks still have unbridled enthusiasm for the ridiculous idea, but geeee it really sounded like a swell idea when it was gushed about!

Capitol Hill’s installment of Car Free Day — the first in a series around the city of Seattle — was a joke. Here’s more coverage from the tv people.

The multiple punchlines:

• it rained
• they towed cars
• someone decided to ‘cancel’ the event

Note to someone — hard to cancel what you haven’t really done the work to make people care about. Curious to know more about this — due to rain, lack of participation, lack of interest, and the general anger & annyonance expressed at the liberal freaks in charge of promoting said event. Did it get ugly out there on 14th Ave E?

Made a few jokes here about the plan last week. But only assumed the event would be lame, not a disaster. Given the communication with the outside PR person who was, um, coordinating the, um, event, disaster isn’t huge surprise. Still, sad to see anti-environment nutjobs like the cranky old man from the Slog pile get their day. The Car Free idea is good. The Capitol Hill execution was half ass.

UPDATE: Neighbor foxpenn has a few photos from the day posted to the flickr pool including this one of an unlucky driver deciding to test out the car-free part of car-free day.

UPDATE 2: Yuck. We made Drudge.