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

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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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...

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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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.

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.

Seattle Times
Originally uploaded by kriskiedis20

The Seattle Times today announced a community news partnership with CHS Capitol Hill Seattle and 3 other less important neighborhood news sites in Seattle, the West Seattle Blog, MyBallard and The Rainier Valley Post.

It's an exciting project for CHS to be part of and a recognition of the hard work and good technology behind this site. I'm also especially proud to have CHS prove itself in an environment still very much stuck on the idea that there is one authority on a news site. Yes, a small handful of main contributors and I do a large part of the heavy lifting here but our open, truly community driven format adds an amazing level of extra information gathering, reporting and, my favorite, serendipity to the mix. It's brave of the Seattle Times to work with us in this project. Of course, if they really want to get ready for the future, it's a must. The new partnership will also mean more attention and support for the rest of the Seattle Neighborlogs sites...

We're experimenting with a new type of ad on the site -- probably hard to miss the large red box in the sidebar of CHS. Look right! Or there's a screen grab at the bottom of this post for you RSS types. The concept is pretty simple. We feature the latest Tweets from our sponsors in a message box on CHS pages. It's another way we connect the local businesses and organizations of Capitol Hill with the people who live here and love it.

We're still working on the concept -- for one, we plan to adjust the 'share of voice' to feature more sponsors if one happens to be especially chatty. The system could also be the foundation for sharing Tweets from all of the CHS community on the site.

Feel free to leave feedback on this thread or drop us a mail to let us know what you think. To advertise on the site, check out our self-serve ad wizard or call (206) 399-5959. All CHS sponsors will be included in the Recent Tweets box for now. We're also looking at the biz end of this feature to figure out best way to make it part of financially supporting our site.

For many of the best CHS posts, the coolest information and ideas don't come until after the article is already written or the photograph cropped and posted. Here is our weekly celebration of recent high quality CHS comments. Thanks for being part of the site.

First, we feature a comment that appeared on a different Capitol Hill blog.

Submitted by kevinseattle on Mon, 2009-08-24 11:42.

This blog SUCKS! No original content everything comes straight from CHS Blog! Take a look at this post from 3 DAYS EARLIER: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2009/08/21/georgetown-inte...

It raises some valid and well-argued points, no?

It's been awhile since we heard from Vlad but he weighed in last week, pushing back on the idea that the city should create 'buffer' zoning between residential and commercial development:

RE: Hmmm... by Vlad Cole

response to max:

I live at 11th and Pike specifically because I like being able to walk from my front door to a bar and stumble back home. I feel safer living on streets full of a diverse crowd of people who are merrymakers, restaurant-goers, and so on.

Mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods are more vibrant. The idea of specialized zones for commercial vs. residential is an old way of thinking about cities and one that Jane Jacobs effectively discredited almost 50 years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Ame

So fie on your idea of "buffer" zones between bars and homes. Fie on creating residential-only areas and commercial-only areas. And fie on the suggestion that people are going to move out because a neighborhood has an active nightlife. I moved *in* as a result of this area's active nightlife!

I do like Comrade Bunny's suggestion of better soundproofing mandates in neighborhoods that are well mixed. The sort of low-end soundproofing that is standard for quiet (read: boring!) suburban neighborhoods just doesn't protect the sanity of people who want to live in more happening 'hoods. The cost burden of better soundproofing will have to get paid for somehow (lower margins for developers or higher prices for renters/purchasers, or a little of both). It could also be achieved through simple disclosures. For example, an ambient decibel reading disclosure as part of the listing process.

While we're working together to make things better, this comment wonders aloud why Sound Transit isn't able to start working immediately in the Capitol Hill station construction area on Broadway:

Three months wasted by Eric
I am still wondering why they are letting the property sit for three months rather than starting to dig now. OK, perhaps they cannot dig towards downtown until they get the I-5 work finished, but could they not start digging towards the U District?

Our post about the City of Seattle's lack of innovation in making data and information available to the citizenry raised an interesting point regarding the openness of the system and the risk of corporate involvement in the public sector.

public data should be provided using open standards using Free Software whenever feasible by Phil Mocek
Given the influence of our monopolistic neighbor to the east, implementation of such a project would require extra vigilance to ensure that data are provided using open standards via a Web site that doesn't cater to bugs in Internet Explorer or require a bunch of proprietary plug-ins be installed in the user's browser. Microsoft would likely want to be involved, but regardless of any altruistic intentions they might have, I doubt their ability to focus on doing something in a manner best suited to creating a public good and not to trapping more computer users in their web of bad UI, network security as an afterthought, and forced upgrades

Mike with curls left this grumpy and creatively worded missive against filling the Cal Anderson fountain with bubbles:

.. ho, ho ...fuck vandalism by Mike with curls
Such stupid stuff is fun to middle schoolers, but it is high grade vandalism ... some fool painted the cone a few months back as well.

The water feature is the best in the city and the most compelling action in the park. Those who fuck it up are fools, stupid, wrecking a giant community project and need o spend a few nights in jail.

No truck for such antics, at all.

Love that park, play your sad-sill-juvenile soap jokes on friends in the shower.

Turns out, he has a point:

Not too funny, really by kayzel
Every time someone does something like this, the water feature's rather complex and sensitive filtering and draining mechanism is compromised, and considerable time and (taxpayer) money are spent to get it functioning again. With shrinking maintenance dollars, if this keeps up, Parks may shut the fountain down completely. Think about it. Surely there are other ways to enjoy the park.

And kazyel oughta know -- she's a member of the Cal Anderson Park Alliance. You going to argue with that?

Meanwhile, we heard from a happy new Cap Hill business owner:

Yea for Capitol Hill! by Leah
Thanks for the great mention. I am so excited to be relocating to Capitol Hill -- I think the energy of the area, paired with all of the wonderful existing businesses -- will be great for us and our customers. We are very excited to become part of the neighborhood!

Back to the grump, here's a not-so-favorable review of the big 500 Pine Party/marketing event that went down in the Havana parking lot last week:

bleh by Lezzy Minell
how much money were they given to put this together? should've donated it to charity. it was lame, poorly organized and crammed into a small space. the decor looked like a garbage dumpster threw up in the parking lot. it was clearly catered to the pseudo-hipster crowd of capitol hill but that is not what the 500 pine block was about as it was inclusive of all capitol hill and seattle residents

We survived our first week of competition for your neighborhood news blog attention. To celebrate, here's your weekly CHS paper edition. If you print it, give it to an angel investor. Have a great weekend.

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Built into the core of CHS is the ability for anybody to come to CHS, create an account and post something to capitolhillseattle.com. The best CHS Community Posts get promoted to the homepage just like an article created by me or one of the other regular site contributors. The rest go into the flow on the CHS All Posts page.

Just because a post doesn't make the main homepage display doesn't mean it won't get seen -- we highlight the latest 'un-promoted' CHS Community Posts in the yellow box in the sidebar (circled in green in the screen grab).

Case in point. This announcement post for an event at the Canterbury on Tuesday night:

Trivia Night & Foosball Tourney @ The Canterbury
Come out and kick cancer in the nuts. 

Tuesday, August 18th

Foosball Tourney starts immediately after trivia.  Winners will go home with "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" foosball trophies and other prizes.

The post is not going to make the CHS homepage and would probably make a better event listing but it's in the flow...

Much of the most interesting neighborhood news and information on this neighborhood news and information site comes from you in the comments on CHS posts. To highlight some of the best points, ideas, questions, etc. from the site, we're going to start this weekly round-up of the best CHS comments. Here is what we found this week.

The 11th/Pine development project inspired a lot of feedback and good questions to consider at this Wednesday's design review meeting. This question raised by CapHillMax is an important one -- is there anything to do from a design standpoint to reduce the tension between the area's existing nightlife and future residents of the building?Meanwhile, we also learned something about sidewalk design and construction and heard from neighborhood activist Dennis Saxman:

Hmmm... by CapHillMax
So while we are talking about preservation, does anyone not see the folly of plopping a residential building right on a street that is full of bars, late-night restaurants and clubs?

I'm not NIMBY, it's just one of the things that makes Pike/Pine a great neighborhood is the nightlife. And infilling with really dense residential developments such as this, plus the one that is being built right above the Cuff's outdoor patio, plus the new condo across from the Satellite Lounge, the new building abutting the Elysian's outdoor patio, etc. etc. to me does not make much sense. It would be better to have a 1/2 block buffer or so, before putting in a ton of residential. Residents will inevitably complain about the noise, the city will simply take it out on the bars.

Maybe I worry to much. Who knows. This just bothers me.

This would only be considered preservation in George Orwell's 1984 by Dennis Saxman
You notice that in one place they talk about preserving the character structure, and then in another place (the drawings), they describe it as "existing character facade shown in foreground to remain."

 The ordinance, on its face, allows development "to a scale that is compatible with the established development pattern." That language is not found in either the Neighborhood Plan or the Design Guidelines.

One of the goals of Phase Two of neighborhood planning for the Pike/Pine was to "preserve, to the extent possible, the neighborhood's built environment of auto-row architecture." One of the Visions of the Plan for 2014 was " "The historic 'auto-row' architecture and other historic buildings ... that give the neighborhood character and preserve important parts of Seattle's twentieth century history." One of the key strategies was " To sustain the character of the Pike/Pine neighborhood by development of Design Guidelines and Design Review process to preserve 'character' buildings ...." As part of this strategy, one item listed was to establish a Community Heritage District that would provide preservation incentives and design review for the rehabilitation and remodeling of existing structures." It also proposed to establish an inclusive Community Heritage Design Review Board.

The Design Guidelines listed, as a high priority, "[preservation] of the physical and social character of the corridor." While they expressed a preference for adaptive re-use of existing buildings, they also encouraged new structures that reflect the architectural heritage of the neighborhood. Throughout the guidelines is an emphasis on buildings that are compatible and consistent with the existing architectural character.

Unfortunately, these goals have come to naught. Chiefly because a handful of powerful individuals in the neighborhood who prefer the individualistic, vain buildings built according to the futuristic fantasies of Le Corbusier and his imitators - fantasies that have been discredited for decades.

The National Historic Preservation Act defines preservation as including: "identification, evaluation, recordation,documentation, curation,acquisition,protection,management,rehabilitation,restoration, stabilization, maintenance, research, interpretation, conservation, and education and training regarding the foregoing activities, or any combination of the foregoing activities. At least one definition of conservation in most dictionaries is "the act of preserving, guarding, or protecting; the keeping (of a thing) in a safe or entire state."

As I have stated before, I do not believe the new ordinance will accomplish any of these things.

For anyone who wants to amend the design guidelines or a neighborhood plan, there are established procedures for doing so. I don't see that any of them were followed. This is just plain wrong.

RE: How about the sidewalks? by Brian
I did concrete, mostly sidewalks and curb & gutter, for five years or so. It's possible to do some kind of independent sidewalk design but especially when the construction is in an established area, it requires a TON of cooperation from whatever body is governing the area.

A couple years ago the city of Olympia made a big PR event out of one of our projects, it was really cool. They hired us to put in a new compact permeable concrete, it retains most of the natural drainage by allowing rain water to pass through rather than direct it to a storm drain, and hired an artist to work with us while we placed the concrete. She was charged with directing all the aesthetic aspects while we did the actual work. It worked out really well for us because we were relieved of all responsibility if anyone complained about the art.

I think Seattle is a different story. Their standards are constantly changing and if you don't meet whatever that standard happens to be at the time, your company has to pay to remove and redo the work. Why do you think the city has it's own concrete crew... companies charge the city more because they're so nutty. The company I worked for started the sidewalks in Fremont and just cut our losses and gave the concrete work to the general contractor rather than messing with the city trying to do art.

A little long, I know

Our check-in with 15th Ave's Victrola Coffee (now owned by Whidbey Coffee Co.) prompted this response from user --. 

Whidbey Island Is Not Local by --
Local is an overused term that is really meaningless. My definition only allows for something being one county away.

Based on all of the arguments on this blog against 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, Whidbey Island does not qualify as local. 

But if it has to be within two counties, Starbucks qualifies as local.

We learned a random -- but useful -- macaroni and cheese tip from Uncle Vinny:

Random food comment...  by Uncle Vinny
Has anyone had the mac 'n' cheese at the Rosebud? I've had it a couple of times lately, and I'm thinking about going back tonight. They use gouda for the cheese, I think. Only $4 during happy hour... YUMTASTIC, give it a try.

And we're in no position to argue with normajean about a potential nickname for this part of Capitol Hill:

thumpers by normajean
I live at the corner of 15th and Pine and will always refer to this areas as Thumpers.

.

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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Just a brief note to let you know I'm working on a little bit more than news this week. CHS continues to grow. In July, more than 43,000 people visited the site for information and news about the place they live and love. It was our biggest month ever. But we need to work harder. I'm well aware that CHS isn't the only Cap Hill organization having to kick it up a notch to survive during these challenging times.

CHS is advertising supported. We have raised about $1,600 in donations this year to help pay for writers and photographers. I am also in discussions about partnerships that will give the site another $5,000 to help us get through the year. The rest must come from the advertisements local businesses purchase to support the site and share their messages with the CHS audience.

You can view our available ad types and rates here:
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/ads/setup/positions

Our ad system is self-serve so you can control your campaign on your own but I'm ready to help with whatever you need. Call me at (206) 399-5959 with any questions or suggestions.

Thanks for reading and being part of CHS.

Justin Carder
jseattle

I'm way up north for a few days on the lovely Kenai Peninsula. Back to the Hill on Monday. In the meantime, here are the CHS highlights from the week that was. As usual, if you print it, share it. Have a great weekend.

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