There’s a tiny white building on 15th Avenue NW in Ballard where every weekend you’ll see a line of people, all smiles, pushing their way inside the vintage lunchbox- and kitsch-swathed tiny dining room of Lunchbox Laboratory, home to some of the best burgers in Seattle. They’re truly gourmet. Restaurant-owner Scott Simpson ditched his gourmet digs to use his culinary training and homestyle inclinations to create high-end comfort food that spares no expense.
Read the rest of this entry
Ballard, bugers, fries, homestyle, laboratory, lunchbox, Seattle
by Alex Russell
I’m not sure if it was the coyotes or wolves, but it was a chorus a half-mile away behind glass and electric wire, first one dappled cry then another until a cascade of wailing echoed through the trees. This is why I don’t go camping. This is why the closest I’ll get to wild animals is a place like NW Trek, a wildlife park about 25 miles from Tacoma, WA.
The park itself is just over 700 acres full of black bears, grizzly bears, caribou, moose, mountain goats and even bison. While their zoo-like enclosures hold wolves, coyotes, gold and bald eagles, even cougars and bobcats, the centerpiece of the park is it’s free-roaming area where you can ride a tram to be out there with the wildlife. As we rode along our driver/guide told us stories about the animals, how there are only herbivores in the free-range area because if there were carnivores there would not be herbivores for very long. We passed 3,000-pound buffalo lounging in the grass licking their noses. We saw deer graze in the fields. Mountain goats in the road paced us as we passed them by.
Read the rest of this entry
bison, caribou, deer, mountain goat, NW Trek, Washington wildlife, wild animals
by Alex Russell
Turning 30 marks the end to early youth. It’s a moment to take a step back and think seriously about the future coming faster into focus. Turning 30 feels like a step away from the freedom of the 20s. It marks an earnest if unwilling entry into adulthood, a moment to look around, maybe for the first time, and see just where everyone else is at 30 and what they have accomplished—maybe see for the first time how far you are behind them. Or instead a chance to assert once more no ageing at all has happened since turning 21.
I don’t think people these days put very much stock in turning 30. It seems the 30s are a lot like the 20s, with all the same activity and fun, but with more money to spend—and no roommates. People in their 30s seem the same as they were in their 20s, just with designer clothes and mixed-drink doubles replacing PBR and Bud.
Read the rest of this entry
20s, 30s, age, Bud, grey hair, PBR, presents, turning 30
by Alex Russell
Today I’m going today to the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill, where all of King County but the cities of Seattle and Milton, sends their trash to be buried and forgotten.
I’m developing a series of stories around waste and how we as a society manage it. From what I’ve read, the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill is a model for the region, and uses modern waste-management technology—everything from laying thick plastic and runoff collection pipes when they dig a pit, to piping the toxic gas away from the trash pile to be burned.
For how I’ll report about the issue, I’m thinking primarily about how to connect regular people with the process of waste disposal. It’s a process that should be as familiar as how we can see in our supermarkets not only whether the fish behind the glass is wild-caught, but from what region as well as the name of the fisherman. A trip to the dump gives me a chance to literally dig through and see what most people never think about when they throw that bag of trash into a dumpster. I want to see how it all works on a day-to-day basis and report back.
Read the rest of this entry
Cedar Hills, dump, garbage, landfill, Seattle trash, waste
by Alex Russell
In its 2007 opening weekend, Seattle’s waterfront Olympic Sculpture Park was packed. Crowds of families and couples and singles, young and old in-between, came from all over Washington and beyond to see the unveiling of the city’s newest exhibition of public art. I’d intermittently watched the place get built as I drove past, was intrigued immediately by the sculpture “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X” (on loan from Paul Allen, it turns out). I watched crews pour concrete, plant landscaping, and thought about what an undertaking it was to simply build the place, and it wasn’t going to be cheap even without the sculptures themselves.
All told, the park cost $85 million, and today anybody can walk through from sunrise to sunset for free. The only real costs are coffee and pastries at the coffee bar inside PACCAR Pavilion, and the optional donations at the corner for gifts and literature. While researching for a series of stories around Seattle outdoor arts, I started to wonder about the Sculpture Park, about this enormous undertaking of outdoor art installation, and specifically how could a regular guy like me—a guy who walks through the park as often as he can and really appreciates it—could thank those responsible personally, how I could shake a hand or two and share genuine words of appreciation.
Read the rest of this entry
art, Olympic Sculpture Park, PACCAR, SAM, sculpture, Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, Shirley, thanks, waterfront, waves, Wright
The sign was clear. Do not pick the tulips. Do not remove tulip petals from the field. Do not walk between the rows. Of course plenty of people did all of these things.
This weekend the sun was out and there was no rain. The wife and I ended up in acres of tulips of all colors—red, orange, yellow, many shades of purple, tulips with round edges, sharp edges, smooth petals and rough. Tulips of all varieties and yellow and white daffodils thrown in for good measure, all blooming or waiting to bloom in raised rows for acre after acre. This was Tulip Town in Mount Vernon, WA.
Read the rest of this entry
bloom, daffodils, fields, Mount Vernon, spring, Tulip Town, tulips