Fremont Bridgekeeper by Grundlepuck from the Seattlest Flickr pool. more ›

You won't be able to gaze wistfully seaward from the Fremont Bridge this Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is closing the west sidewalk of the Fremont Bridge (from Nickerson Street to N 34th Street) beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday, June 10, and reopening it at 2:30 p.m. on Friday, June 12. They're replacing concrete panels in the bridge sidewalk. You will be able to cross on the eastern sidewalk, and we encourage you to bring a camera for photos of spandex-clad cyclists colliding at high speed because that would warm our little peach pit of a heart. Freaking maniacs. It's a sidewalk. Slow down. more ›

A Ballard woman died after injuries sustained in yesterday's head-on collision on the Fremont Bridge. West Seattle Blog has a photo of the White Center lotto-ticket bandit who may also be responsible for a Fauntleroy heist. If crime and death and taxes have you down, our hilarious college classmate Eugene Mirman is reading at the University Bookstore tonight from his faux self-help book, The Will to Whatevs. more ›

Now that the bridge at the Center of the Universe has reopened, things seem to be moving more freely. We'll be able to make it to the T.C. Boyle reading tonight at Barnes and Noble, and thanks to the Magnolia Voice, we know where to score pizza at late 1970s prices. It is an abundant universe, and in that spirit perhaps, the Seattle Times' Porsche-driving Frank Blethen is asking lawmakers to give newspapers a tax break. more ›

Two vehicles, an SUV and a van, collided head-on on the Fremont Bridge this morning, blocking all lanes of traffic. KIRO 7 has their chopper in the air, and reports no word on when the bridge will reopen. more ›

5:15 p.m.: The Fremont Bridge is closed at this moment due to someone climbing over the concrete railing by the northwest tower. At latest, he was seen sitting on the pier near the edge and tossing bits of paper into the water below. Seattle PD and the Fire Department are on the scene with about 20 vehicles. Some firefighters were tying off, possibly in an attempt to pluck the guy off the bridge. Needless to say the whole bridge is closed to anything but foot/bike traffic on the eastern sidewalk. Southbound Metro route 28 and 31 buses were seen turning down 34th street, presumably to use the Ballard Bridge. [Update] 5:53 p.m.: The bridge is open. Traffic is flowing.
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Yesterday, faced with a rare workday afternoon with not much to do, Seattlest decided to go for a long walk. Our initial goal was to make it to Golden Gardens in time for sunset, followed by happy hour at Ray's. We knew that was kind of a pipe dream because it was 2:30 by the time we got this crazy idea, and we live on First Hill. Instead, we decided to aim for Golden Gardens and just see how far we could get, figuring Gasworks Park was maybe more realistic. more ›

The Fremont Bridge, gateway to the Center of the Universe, could be your future art studio. Some lucky Seattle-area creative type is going to get a workshop in one of the bridge towers, in which to create a diverse, in-depth exploration of what it means to be the city’s busiest bridge 'n' stuff. All that and a $20,000 grant from SDOT. Apply by Jan. 5. Or don’t--we don’t need the competition! more ›

Tonight, if you're not already going to the second sold-out Magnetic Fields show, there's still a few tickets left for John in the Morning at Night at Neumo's, with the Duke Spirit, the Voom Blooms, and Tulsa. There's also PWRFL Power's (aka Kaz Nomura) second CD release show at the Vera Project. Since Kaz won a slot at last year's Capitol Hill Block Party (via the Stranger's Block Star contest last spring), he also won a spot in an Esurance ad, resulting in "the most unusual Esurance commercial to date." Check it: more ›

We were impressed by this morning's Times article about the need to increase bicycle safety on the city's streets. more ›

A few weeks ago, singer/raconteur Jenny Owen Youngs was in town, playing at the High Dive the same time as the Fremont Bridge was being closed evenings, which led to our arriving mid-set in a state of high dudgeon. We decided to skip a half-assed review, and afterwards fired off some impertinent questions via email. We just heard back, and as you'll see, Jenny schools us a bit. Now we adore her even more. If you buy her new album, Batten the Hatches, tell her we sent you. more ›

Thursday, November 15 at 9 p.m. to Friday, November 16 at 6a.m.For those of you on foot or otherwise transportable, here's the non-specific but relevant info in that case:

SDOT’s contractor will provide a shuttle service for pedestrians and bicyclists from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. between the north and south ends of the bridge (from roughly North 34th Street and Fremont Avenue North to roughly Nickerson and Fourth Avenue North) making the loop approximately every 20 to 30 minutes. Signs will be placed noting the pick up and drop off locations. Buses will be rerouted during these closures. As the date approaches, see Metro Online at http://transit.metrokc.gov or call Rider Information, 553-3000.

-jay more ›

Alert readers of our last post will notice the date on today's calendar. The Fremont Bridge opened to traffic 90 years ago today. And she's been doing a grand job ever since. more ›

Although all four lanes of the Fremont Bridge's approaches have been open to traffic for a few weeks now, crews have been busy tinkering this and that and putting those pesky last touches in order to complete the project. As tinkerers, we sympathize; the devil is always in those final details. As we've been documenting the work at various points during the process, we stepped outside the other day to take a closer look at the finished work. more ›

As we have reported in the past, Seattlest has been fortunate enough to witness the process of the gorgeous rebuilding of the approaches to the Fremont Bridge. It's mostly completed now, with only a few details being attended to. We can't wait for the grand re-opening; they've really done a beautiful job with the redesigned roadway. more ›

The Seattle Times reported today that commute times all around Seattle are increasing. We've never heard of a metropolitan area that had decreasing commute times, so it's not exactly news that it's taking people here longer and longer to get to work (We'd love to hear of a metro area with decreasing commute times, though, so if you know of someplace please share. No fair citing Detroit during the 90's or something with similarl rapidly declining population). It is vaguely news that commute times are escalating so rapidly, but it doesn't really seem like they're keeping up with population growth, so maybe the actual story is that commute times are not advancing as fast as could be expected given all the new jobs and residents in the area and the lack of any mass transit to speak of. Despite our numerous watery choke points, maybe we had superfluous highway capacity? That could be ridiculous bullshit, of course, because we can't quickly come up with any census data that has the granularity to match the Seattle Times's 2004-2006 time frame. more ›

Emboldened by our satisfactory sushi outing at Nishino, but wanting something a little more Japanese (the menu had that “pan-Asian” thing going, and there wasn’t a Japanese customer or server in sight) and a little less pretentious (two words: Madison Park), we made our way to Kisaku in Tangletown (near Green Lake). more ›

As we reported earlier, construction of the Fremont Bridge continues with the replacement of the west side of the northern approach. The work on this side seems to be going quicker... or maybe it is just that this side is closer to our workplace so we actually see the progress occuring. more ›

We have been eagerly observing the re-construction of the approaches to the Fremont Bridge for some time now--ever since the project started in the late Cretaceous Period and we got inadvertently stuck behind some of its traffic. We watched for weeks and weeks and thought to ourselves, "just how long does it take to rebuild a two-lane approach?" Don't get us wrong; we were ridiculously happy to see actual construction rather than the usual Insipid Civic Seattle Process. more ›

It's hard to determine the primary causal factor, those few extra drinks at the show, our late-night, post-show conversation with Yellow Hawk on the Fremont Bridge, discussing his plans to hitchhike to Montana to take pictures of buffalo, or our snot-spewing roommate unfamiliar with anti-viral tissues, but our sinuses have been overtaken by unfriendlies. more ›

Possibly we first saw this meme in a blog post, but the barely controlled chaos that is our newsreader makes calling it back up not feasible at this time. It caught our eye. Hey, that's smart, we thought, wish we'd thought of it. We're pretty sure the first time we saw someone tie the delays at the Sculputure Park to the striking concrete workers was in a blog post. Ninety percent certain. Then it appeared in the Seattle Times and in about a million other blog posts and each time we see it now the idea loses a little luster. It became annoying and then kind of insulting to the strikers who are trying to do what they feel is the right thing and to news consumers who are trying to figure out what's going on in the world. Now it's in the P-I today, but at least they have the decency to mention a few other projects that are suffering before hitting readers with the cutesy Sculpture Park, and we should be clear that Seattlest is all in favor of the Sculpture Park and we're so there once it opens we'll be there every day. We'll be the Seattlest sculpture. But using the Sculpture Park and its delays (and let's point out that it's also been delayed due to non-concrete related factors) is condescending and belittling. Readers don't care about light rail or the Fremont Bridge - They need to be clobbered with the Sculpture Park! Because this strike is screwing the city, right SDOT? more ›

There's some kind of festival in Fremont this weekend which should be a lot of fun in a distinctly Fremont sort of way, but don't think you're going to get there via the Fremont Bridge. more ›

On the odd days that Seattlest drives to work rather than bus it from Wallingford to downtown and back we generally tend to stay away from 5. Sometimes we do 99, but our prefered route is Dexter / Fremont Bridge, a route that does have one significant drawback: the damn bikers. Note to Lance wannabes: There's no yellow jersey awarded for getting from Denny to Fremont in under six minutes so it may not be absolutely necessary to blow by the peloton in the middle of the road. Stay in your lane. Beating us to Fremont is not going to convince us to sell our car for a downpayment on a bike rig like yours and risk our lives daily racing you down Dexter, so chill out. more ›

As far as we can tell the second installment of the city's super cool OnHold program went into rotation over the weekend. No, we haven't spent the last two days on hold with city hall, but it appeared in our RSS sometime over the weekend so we're assuming it's new. You remember OnHold, right? It's a playlist composed of various Seattle-based musicians that you hear if you're on hold with the city or if you're a big geek and you download the thing and put it on your ipod like Seattlest. Then if you buy music from the playlist a portion of the proceeds goes to the city Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. more ›

Maybe it started when we found out the Urban Hike domain is actually owned by a Pittsburgh group. Pittsburgh, we thought. Huh. more ›