Reminder: Streets will be blocked off all over the neighborhood tomorrow night for the 31st Annual Seattle Night Out.

In reading the description from the official web site, I was a little surprised to see it billed primarily as an anti-crime event, goals declaring like “Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness” and “Send a message to criminals that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back”.

In my experience, it’s 99% about community building. Folks pull lawn chairs into the street, pile dishes onto the potluck table and just find out who lives nearby in casual conversation. I get that community-building is …

Muraltastic Wallingford is getting a new splash of color: the new Mack Urban development at 45th And Stone Way has hired Los Angeles street artist Bumblebee to create a piece for the wall that overlooks Walgreen’s, facing Stone Way.

Mack Urban’s VP of Development (and Wallingford resident) T.J. Lehman explained how the project came about:

We have offices in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, so I’m down in LA regularly. One day by happenstance I drove by a mural of a boy on his back launching a paper airplane (attached) and thought “Great God, who did that?” and we …

(This is a sponsored post, written by the Abel Pacheco for City Council campaign.)

Wallingford is a great place to live. I know this first hand – I’ve lived here since graduating from the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs. However, we need new leadership to tackle our neighborhood’s greatest challenges; confronting a broken development process, Waterway 20, Northlake Way safety, parking and cyclist concerns, and many more. This is why I’m running to represent our district on the Seattle City Council.

We need a leader who truly knows our community. I’m the only candidate running that is …

I haven’t scared the bejebus out of my mom in a while, so here’s a quick rundown on some prowling and crime reports that have come across my screen recently.

Over on Facebook, Michelle wrote:

Nic just caught a prowler in my neighbor’s garage on 1st ave NW […] Early to mid twenties, light brown wavy hair cut short on the sides and longer on top in “jersey douche” cut. Tanned, dark framed square eyeglasses, white T-shirt, black backpack and blue jeans. […]

It’s actually late for prowling. I’ve caught car thieves and neighbors have caught random rummagers but always …

Primary elections are coming up, with ballots due by this coming Tuesday, August 4th. Incredibly, there are 47 candidates running for city council alone (not in one district, but still), so maybe you need a hand getting your decisions all sorted out.

Thankfully, there are people wonkier than thou who have taken the time sift through the candidates and develop opinions they’d love you to share.

Here’s a quick rundown on some sources you may wish to reference:

Fences have been erected along 40th starting at Latona and continuing under I-5, which means the goats shall return!

They’ll be there shortly, munching on blackberries and other hard to remove invasive weeds.

Thankfully, the fence posts have been sunk into the ground this year, to avoid a second showing of the Goat Rodeo of 2013.

(Thanks for the tip, Madi!)…

In my Meridian House For Sale post, I lamented that I once had a photo of the vines at that house devouring an old car, but couldn’t find it. Thanks to Jim for finding this photo by Jim Flanagan on Flickr:

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