After years of decline, speculation, and tagging; and weeks of neighborhood wondering what’s next with that big backhoe out in front, demolition of the old Guild 45^th theaters has begun.  I went up to have a look this morning in the hope that I might catch the work crew in action to see if they would provide any clues as to what comes next for the site, but no one was around.  We at Wallyhood have long been curious about what comes next at the site.  I reached out to the contracting company with their banner on the front…

Here at Wallyhood, we (especially the relative newbies) have learned that there are certain topics that elicit visceral community reaction.  Bike lanes, for example.  Homeless encampments.  Local implementation of the urban village concept.  Outdoor cats, songbirds, and coyotes.  The recent and upcoming changes to the Green Lake outer loop seem to fall into this category.  For those of you who do not receive updates from the city directly, here is a summary with links.  Please feel free to vent in the comments, but be nice and remember, don’t shoot the messenger (replacements are hard to find).  Substantive insights and suggestions…

Continuing on with our Dog Days of Summer Series (a title I just made up)…today we reminisce about the storied old Food Giant that operated where the Wallingford QFC is currently located.  Someone posted a couple of old black and white pics of the previous incarnation over on Facebook, which led me to think back on the dingy but beloved Food Giant grocery store that served most of the neighborhood (and I say “most”, because remember?  We used to have a dingy old Safeway store in lower Wallingford on Stone Way across from the 7-11).

In 1996, the Seattle Times …

We are in the proverbial dog days of summer.  All of the other editors are away. They left me with the keys to the shop, thinking that it will be slow, and what harm could he possibly do?  Well, it is slow here in the post-Seafair void.  And it’s feeling like many of you are away on vacation too, maybe with the rest of the Wallyhood editors. So now I’m wondering: Gee, why didn’t I get invited?

But there does seem to be some simmering controversy related to the old Kids on 45^th location, which we recently noted was …

One of the area’s bigger summer benefit events, the Fred Hutch Obliteride, is taking place this coming weekend—Friday & Saturday, August 12^th-13^th—and will affect parts of Wallingford.  The fundraiser for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center includes just about all of Seattle’s favorite participatory activities:  walking/running, biking, and partying.  In the ten years of its existence, Obliteride has funded an impressive $36 million of research over ten years at Fred Hutch—so definitely a worthwhile and worthy activity to post on the calendar.

That’s all well and good, you might be thinking. Hooray for them.  But what about …

(Editor’s note:  Here’s another post by our resident wine maven, Jenn Shernoff)

What happened to The Bounty? It seems like just yesterday (a mere couple of months ago) we were promoting a launch and community event at the Bounty, and just like that it closed down and reopened. At the intersection of Stone Way and 45th, the reopened establishment is now Kdessert. The sudden shift in ownership took many locals by surprise, and the recent reopening is a welcome relief to the Wallingford community.

The new owner, Gina, said Kdessert will serve a variety of Asian style drinks and food. …

In East Wallingford, we are (mostly) accustomed to hearing a lot of typically urban sounds:  the ever-present roar of the Ship Canal Bridge; the booming clanks of garbage, recycling, and yard waste pickup; the metallic buzz of sawzall tools as thieves steal your catalytic converter.  But this morning, I heard some unfamiliar sounds. It was hammering, and what sounded like the “plink” of aluminum baseball bats at a high school game.  I live across the street from the John Stanford International School (JSIS), and there were two men installing equipment with a lot of wires and other gear.  Mostly, I…