Tag Archives: e olive way

King of the Hill: Back on the job and fully stocked with love for E Olive Way

Posted on by
4

(Image: CHS)

 

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍 

 

(Image: Google)

By Domenic Strazzabosco

A year and a half after undergoing emergency brain surgery, Aklilu “Abe” Abraham — the owner of King of the Hill Market on E Olive Way — is back on the job and endlessly thankful for the neighborhood’s emotional and financial support throughout his surgery and recovery.

In many ways, it feels like he can’t show his appreciation to the people and businesses around him enough.

“I’m really thankful to be around the Hill. And I didn’t know until I was sick,” Abraham, who is often referred to as “The King,” said.

In September 2023, Abraham became ill and was rushed to the hospital, where a CAT scan revealed that he had bleeding in his skull that was putting pressure on his brain. A week after he had surgery, a fundraiser was launched to raise money to help pay for the excessive medical bills he was set to accrue. It was largely supported by repeat customers, neighbors, and former residents of Capitol Hill. Over $30,000 was raised.

Aside from donations, the comments on the fundraiser revealed just how beloved The King was to the neighborhood’s residents. They go something like this: “The neighborhood isn’t the same without you;” “Abe is the true king of the hill. He always makes everyone’s day;” and “Abe is such an important part of our community. Sending our best to him and to his family.”

Looking back, he describes the store, customers and neighborhood like a piece of gold he didn’t realize he had. Continue reading →

The Doctor’s Office marks five years on Capitol Hill — ‘It’s going to be one of the best bars in the world’

Posted on by
1

Capitol Hill’s The Doctor’s Office is more than just a bar. It is a testament to resilience, passion, and the power of community. Opened just four weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, this intimate 12-seat bar has defied the odds, earning international acclaim and becoming a part of the neighborhood.

As the bar marks five years of business on Capitol Hill, its prescription for success has been anything but ordinary.

The story of The Doctor’s Office begins with a literal fall from grace. Owner and founder Dr. Matthew Powell was inspecting the vents for the hood system on the roof of the building when disaster struck.

“You ever do that thing where you’re going downstairs and there’s like, ‘Oh, there’s one more step,’ a split second before you would have sworn there is one more step? Just make that the edge of a roof,” Doc Powell recalls. “For the life of me, I could not tell you why my brain was like, ‘There is one more step,’ and I just stepped out into nothing, right onto the pavement.”

The fall shattered his foot, requiring two surgeries and 10 hours of operating time. “Fortunately, the specialist for that fracture happens to be at Harborview, like the best specialist in the nation, if not the world,” he says. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill pot shop The Reef making plans to reopen but needs major repairs to its 99-year-old building after smash and grab

Posted on by
12

(Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Destruction from last week’s smash and grab break-in at Capitol Hill’s The Reef pot shop is bad enough that the street remains closed to cars near the badly damaged storefront three days later. But the store’s ownership is making plans to get back to selling cannabis.

“We’re planning a grand re-opening party,” David Olivas, director of operations for The Reef stores tells CHS after a weekend of securing inventory and trying to sort out what steps come next after the city issued an emergency order limiting access to the building following Friday morning’s break-in in which a group of thieves used a car to ram the storefront, partially ripping open the 99-year-old masonry building.

Police are looking for the suspects and two SUVs reported leaving the scene and likely involved with another smash and grab in SoDo only 30 minutes after Friday’s early morning heist attempt on Capitol Hill. Continue reading →

Another smash and grab burglary crash leaves Capitol Hill’s The Reef pot shop storefront crumbled

Posted on by
33

(Image: CHS)

Capitol Hill pot shop The Reef was targeted again overnight in an early Friday morning smash and grab burglary as a team of thieves tried to use a car to crash open the shop’s front door, leaving behind a wrecked and heavily damaged storefront.

The attempted heist is the latest in an ongoing wave of similar ripoffs targeting Seattle’s cannabis industry and businesses with ATMs across the city and one of multiple break-ins in recent years targeting the E Olive Way at Denny store. Friday’s collision to the Capitol Hill store was the most damaging yet. Continue reading →

A sad goodbye *and* a happy hello, former KJ’s bar to open under new owner in 2025

Posted on by
4
A large platter of nachos on the bar at KJ's

(Image: KJ’s)

As CHS tabulates the annual count of happy hellos and sad goodbyes in Capitol Hill food and drink, there are always situations like KJ’s.

The E Olive Way watering hole that was pretty much a perfect, dark space to nurse a 1st quarter bloody mary and destroy a mountain of nachos around halftime closed to end 2024. KJ’s is gone. But the bar will live on.

“We’ve sold the bar to a loyal patron and great friend,” KJ’s ownership said about the closure.

CHS touched base with the newest entrepreneur to join E Olive Way’s nightlife scene but the industry veteran said he’s not quite ready to talk about his plans. Expect a re-opening by spring — and most of the KJ’s vibe to continue. Continue reading →

Laurel, now open for coffee, beauty, and light on E Olive Way

Posted on by
4
A picture of workers preparing the new Laurel cafe and bar for opening

The crew readying the 500 square feet for its daytime start (Image: Laurel)

Seattle is a big city and sometimes it takes a really long time to open something new here — even one of the tiniest joints on Capitol Hill.

After a year of planning, paperwork, and elbow grease, Laurel has opened for daytime hours along E Olive Way. You can stop in for daily 9a-2p coffee service starting Friday. Its nighttime hours will follow.

Little Laurel might be the most personal of Kate Opatz’s food and drink ventures. CHS reported here last summer on the light, beauty, daytime coffee, neighborhood investors, love for a lost friend, and mom behind the project transforming the former home of Crumble & Flake Pâtisserie. Continue reading →

With planned seven-story development inching forward, old Olive Way Improvement Company building faces demolition ‘under emergency conditions’

Posted on by
24

(Image: CHS)

With reporting by Domenic Strazzabosco

Failing masonry appears ready to rip apart Seattle’s web of public reviews, permits, and financing windows to move a major Capitol Hill development project forward at the corner of Denny and E Olive Way.

City permit paperwork shows demolition approval moving forward “under emergency conditions” on the more than 100 year old, historic — but not landmarks protected — property once home to Capitol Hill classics Holy Smoke, Coffee Messiah, and In the Bowl. The facade of the 1917-era unreinforced masonry building is falling off, according to the filings, expediting the long awaited demolition of the old structures.

Filings show a traffic control plan, right of way impact plan, and haul route map being submitted for approval.

A plan for developing a seven-story, 106-unit mixed-use apartment building at the corner awaits but any work on construction is still a long, long ways off.

The project has yet to begin the public review process and will then need to await the alignment of economic trends and financing windows that has left many Capitol Hill projects on the back-burner.

The property’s developer has declined to comment on the situation and also directed the contractor being brought on to handle the demolition not to speak with CHS about the project. Continue reading →

SPD investigates double stabbing in Capitol Hill Halloween nightlife fight

Posted on by
1

Two people were reported stabbed in an altercation early Friday morning amid remaining Capitol Hill Halloween nightlife crowds.

Seattle Police were called to E John at Bellevue just north of E Olive Way around 2:25 AM to a report of a man stabbed in the neck and upper body in a fight outside a nearby bar.

As officers arrived and called Seattle Fire to the scene to assist the injured man, police were called to a second victim reported stabbed in the neck and in need of assistance outside E Olive Way bar Revolver.

Seattle Fire reports it transported a 36-year-old man in stable condition to Harborview and a 30-year-old man was taken to the hospital by a private ambulance from outside the E Olive Way bar.

Seattle Police reported the second victim was highly intoxicated and uncooperative with police and medics.

Police were looking for a suspect described only as a heavyset black male wearing all black.

There were no reported arrests.

 

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍 

 

Next for shuttered Capitol Hill Gaybucks? New E Olive Way home for All the Best pet supply store

Posted on by
24

(Image: All the Best Pet Care)

The former Capitol Hill “Gaybucks” shuttered by the coffee giant in 2022 as part of a ripple of shutdowns over what it said were public safety concerns amid an ongoing labor battle will have new life as a shopping stop for the neighborhood’s fur baby families.

All the Best Pet Care has announced it is moving into the 4,000-square-foot commercial building that has stood on E Olive Way and served as a home to a string of restaurants and big chains like Boston Market and Starbucks since 1937.

Lake City Way-born All the Best is marking its third store in the Central Seattle area with the opening joining its longtime Madison Park shop and a new store in the Midtown Square development in the Central District.

“We know that something as simple as a change of diet can bring about huge improvements in the lives of our fur kids, and we want to share that knowledge with our community,” All The Best co-CEO Jim Castleberry said in the announcement. Continue reading →

Pedestrian hit by driver at E Olive Way intersection where SDOT has been promising ‘Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons’ crosswalk for months

Posted on by
20

“Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons” pedestrian crossing system

A pedestrian crossing E Olive Way at Harvard Ave was injured and taken to the hospital after being hit by a driver Friday night.

The crossing is notoriously dangerous and the Seattle Department of Transportation has said it is planning a crosswalk and safety improvements at the intersection.

Friday, Seattle Police and Seattle Fire were called to the area just before 11:30 PM to reports that a pedestrian was down at the crossing.

Seattle Fire tells CHS the patient was reported as a 33-year-old man who was transported to the hospital in stable condition.

There were conflicting reports about whether the driver and the vehicle involved in the crash remained at the scene but police had a description and license plate number of the black Alfa Romeo seen striking the man. Continue reading →