As we reported earlier this month, Toni, in the camera dept from Bartell’s is moving back to New Orleans area the beginning of November. All are invited to a send-off for her from 4-6pm at Serendipity Cafe on Weds, Nov 1st. Some have inquired about gifts-Toni has limited space, but if you feel so inclined, a note with a little cash or a giftcard would be a wonderful way to help make her new experience an easier move. Because it is in the Cafe, children are welcome.
By reporter Steven Smalley
Maybe you saw the white tent on The Boulevard flapping in the wind yesterday. Or perhaps you sat in the line of traffic this morning on 15th near the golf course. All of it belongs to the same folks who are shooting a spinoff of Grey’s Anatomy in Seattle some are calling Seattle Fire.
No, this isn’t a historic production set in 1889 – for newcomers, it’s when the city burned down. The as-yet-untitled TV show is the latest attempt to cash in on the previous successes which have crews shooting at 43rd & Glenmont yesterday, and the new Seattle Firehouse on 15th today. 
The 10-episode run focuses on Seattle firefighters from the captain on down to the newest recruit in their personal and professional lives. It’s produced by the same creators who made the Grey’s spinoff, Private Practice which wrapped its sixth season in 2013.
One of the cast members on hand and pictured here is actor Jay Hayden (The Catch) who plays Travis, “an openly gay firefighter who is well-liked, funny, fun and always plays by the rules.” An Instagram video he posted exhibited our rainy weather as he extolled the virtues of sunny Hollywood. Maybe they didn’t tell him it’s wet here.
The spinoff will debut on ABC midseason on a date not yet determined.
A guest post from Greg Shaw:
Once upon a time in the early 1970’s I lived in small rental home in Magnolia on Hayes Street. Halloween was a big event, but even to this day I can’t talk about how big, except to the people that were there.
So much for once upon a time. Pumpkins, an icon of Halloween are important so when I read on a package of pumpkin seeds; Big Max Pumpkin seeds-Grow 100 pound pumpkins, I immediately bought a pack but my rental house had no place to plant them so I purchased the largest pot I could find, a wood landscape pot about 40 gallons. The pumpkin grew well the only problem, as the plant grew during the peak of summer, late in the afternoon leaves would start to wilt, the plant had consumed all the water. I worked nights as a waiter at the Old Spaghetti Factory so I was around in the afternoon to give a second daily watering.
The plant produced a pumpkin close to 100 pounds, I was not disappointed. The pumpkin was the catalyst for the pumpkins I have been growing for the last 35 years. However, it would be another 6 years before I grew pumpkins
again. I moved to the University District, where I lived in an apartment attending school. After finishing school I returned to Magnolia. A few of you may remember the little house directly behind where I live now on 30th
Ave W, it had a gigantic front yard. It seemed as if this would be a great yard for pumpkins. The little house was on the back on the lot with a small flower bed in front, which is where I planted two pumpkin plants. They did
well, each year I added more pumpkin plants until the entire yard was covered with pumpkins and flowers. The area was about 3 times larger than my current front yard.
I have always found enjoyment in growing giant pumpkins but one of the things that provided extra motivation was catching people off guard when they would first see the giant pumpkins, which they weren’t anticipating. At
that time most people had never seen or even heard of giant pumpkins. I had a few late night problems, my mail box had been moved to the front by the side walk because the postal supervisor told me my yard was too treacherous to maneuver through to deliver my mail to the house. I was told if I wanted mail delivered the mail box would have to be next to the sidewalk. My pumpkins had now become hazard. Because of the rare late night problems, I placed a baby monitor in the back of the mail box as a preemptive pumpkin prowler warning system. It worked very well. It turned out I was also hearing comments from more than prowlers. You couldn’t see the yard until you were almost in front, close to the baby monitor. The top two comments: 1. Holy $@*t and 2. Way cool. Of course I heard more. Another comment heard quite frequently was: A little old man lives there. They must have been looking into the future.
Being young I was also motivated by various newspaper, TV and even Sunset Magazine stories about the pumpkins; each year I would try and do more. Lots of grade school classes and pre-school classes would come to take in the
pumpkin patch. I also delivered pumpkins to Magnolia Elementary, Catherine Blaine, Ronald McDonald house, Seattle Children’s Home and the Seattle Center.
Then there was Halloween, which had to be bigger every year with more than a 100 pumpkins carved and lit with candles, a scary Halloween tunnel leading to the from door with a strobe light bouncing off 100 pounds of dry-ice
clouds and enough candy for more than the thousand trick or treaters. One question asked many times do you ever take any pumpkins to weigh-in contests. Yes once, the Puyallup fair. At the time I had the perfect vehicle
to transport the pumpkin. An AMC Pacer, most of you don’t even know what one is. They didn’t make them for long but the car looked very much like a pumpkin. Two of us wrestled my largest pumpkin into the front passenger
seat, the seat belt wrapped around it nicely, we were both protected except from those staring at us as I drove down the freeway to the Puyallup Fair Grounds. We felt special driving inside the fair grounds to the agriculture
building. This was the closet any pumpkin I have grown would come to winning pumpkins. My pumpkin weighed 178 pounds, the winning pumpkin around 500 pounds. Last year the world’s record was over 2,600 pounds. Joe Holland won the Puyallup fair that year and is probably the winningest pumpkin grower in the United States. The pumpkins in my yard are descendants of Joe Holland’s seeds. I purchased seeds three years ago from Joe, one seed from a 1,700 pound pumpkin was $35, and another seed from a 1,500 pound pumpkin was $25.
The seeds are called Atlantic Giants. If you want to learn more about growing them just Google Growing Atlantic Giant Pumpkins or go to Joe Holland’s website.
Atlantic Giant Pumpkins were created by Howard Dill of Nova Scotia, I used to purchase my seeds from Howard Dill, and I would call him at home, chat and order my seeds.
Another Giant Pumpkin milestone is Norm Gallagher of Lake Chelan a retired logger. Norm Gallagher set the world record in 1984 with a 612 pound pumpkin. Two years later there was a pumpkin weigh-in at Lake Chelan. Of
course I went except my girlfriend was not happy and said I was acting like a stalker driving by Gallagher’s home over and over hoping to get a glimpse of something. I was really into growing pumpkins then and hadn’t learned yet
I would never even get close to what the winners grow. At the weigh-in I was trying to get as much information as possible, I asked one growers wives how her husband prepares his soil: She told me he digs a hole the size of an
Olympic size swimming pool using his backhoe and then fills it with his secret mix. I don’t think it registered yet what the top pumpkin growers do to win, except gradually I did realize after going to pumpkin weigh-ins for
more than 30 years I would have to be content with the biggest pumpkin in Magnolia.
I did stop growing pumpkins for a few years when I became a realtor 18 years ago. What got me started growing again was when two people told me: When I was growing up my parents would bring me to your pumpkin patch, now I am bringing my children. At one of the pumpkin weigh-ins I bought one of the pumpkins that was too small to place in the contest. I had bales of straw ready, level with the back of the grower’s pick-up truck. It’s amazing how
hard it is to slide a 900 pound pumpkin out of a pick-up truck. I bought more pumpkins that year and had a great display in the yard, that’s when I heard the two comments which is what has keep me growing ever since. I hear
similar comments a few times every year.
What do you do with the pumpkins after Halloween? It’s sort of like I am a villain because I don’t turn them into a thousand pumpkin pies. The reality is they are a hybrid for size and speed of growth, I have tried and I thought I had found the answer when a friend who had attended the Cordon Blue School of Cooking in France asked if she could have a pumpkin to make pies. She reduced and reduced for two days until she could reduce no more,
there was still no flavor.
I boiled a few pieces of pumpkin and tried eating them like squash. I am not sure what happened maybe it was all the large amount of Miracle Grow fertilizer that I use but my head turned into fountain of profuse sweat streaming down my face and head for about 20 minutes after eating two small pieces.
Do you roast the seeds, you mean cremate my children. If you like eating thin pieces of plywood you might enjoy them. I save the seeds for growing, if you knock on my door in the spring I am happy to give you some. There are
up to 600 seeds in a Giant Pumpkin if you had a prize winning pumpkin and sold the seeds for $35 each like I paid for one seed, you would not think about roasting $28,000 dollars.
After Halloween, the pumpkins are composted and used as nutrients for next year’s growth. If a few are still in good shape they will stay through Thanksgiving before returning to the earth. One last question I get: Will you sell me a pumpkin? I have never sold a pumpkin, the whole purpose in growing them is for people to come by to enjoy
looking at them all in one place.
One last bit of trivia: One year I had a bad crop and felt it necessary to purchase a few large pumpkins from Country Farms produce on Aurora, I overlooked the price that had been written on them with a grease pencil. I was soon confronted and accused of being a fraud by an irate pumpkin patch enthusiast.
Many have been asking what is going on with the Seattle Public School Board and the Fort Lawton Redevelopment. Magnolia Voice spoke with Valerie Cooper from the Fort Lawton School Coalition and Queen Anne and Magnolia Parent Leadership Council. Here’s the latest:
“Much thanks to our earnest, hard-working, mindful, forward-thinking School Board who unanimously passed a resolution on 10/4 directing SPS to request to collaborate in the master re-development of Fort Lawton.
The district is asking for the opportunity to have a portion of the land be included for school use – this process will enable a school to eventually be built at this site. If the city allows the school into the redevelopment, (during the cities public comment period regarding the site, the vast majority the of public input favored school here), SPS could receive the land at a substantial discount of 70-80%, or 100% discount for a school to be built there. We, Fort Lawton School Coalition and the Queen Anne and Magnolia Parent Leadership Council believe it behooves the Seattle City Council to openly and earnestly collaborate with Seattle public schools as any development in the city should also address the impact on educational needs. I am happy to announce that each of the PTA boards or full PTA’s of the schools in our McClure feeder cluster also participated in this ask by passing resolutions asking for the school district to make this request for Fort Lawton.
It is important to note that Seattle Public Schools is not asking for all 29 acres of the land. They will be asking for a portion of the land. Seattle public schools is eligible and will be able to qualify for this land through the Department of Education (which requires the district to be a part of the city’s master redevelopment plan). The funding for whatever development SPS plans for this site must be in hand at the time of application to the Department of Education. This application doesn’t take place until the final master development of the land is completed, still at least a year away. However, SPS does not seem to have funds to build a school building in it’s initial use, so the district is unlikely to get the land at no-cost. Approved uses of the land include athletic fields, maintenance facilities, and administrative sites, all of which would require very little development. If SPS’s application is approved, the district can also indicate a timeline for a future school to be built there, or they can amend their application at any point during the 30-year period that the Department of Education oversees the title of the land. After the 30 year oversight, the title is free and clear forever for Seattle public schools.
The School Board Directors recognize that hard work is ahead of them in securing the Fort Lawton site, that the district staff must earnestly and collaboratively work with city partners to develop an implementation of this resolution, but they are willing to think of the students of our district for generations to come!
Please thank the SPS school board!
At this point, we need the city to agree to work with SPS. We will have many calls to action regarding our encouragement of the city to be a good partner with Seattle public schools. To start:
tim.burgess@seattle.gov (mayor)
sally.bagshaw@seattle.gov (our city council rep)
You can see video of the School Board resolution and find lots of resources at our website.”
The Ballard High School Varsity Cheerleading Squad invites all students K-6 to attend their Lil’ Beavs Cheerleading Camp on Sunday, October 8, 9:30 to noon at Ballard High School. Participants will learn cheers, jumps, and a dance! Each camper will receive a t-shirt, bow, set of pom poms, a temporary tattoo, a picture with the squad, and admission to the Ballard High varsity football game on Friday, October 13 at Memorial Stadium (Seattle Center).
Participants will also be invited to perform during halftime at the game! Kickoff is currently scheduled for 7p.m. (game admission is included for participant only). The registration fee for Lil’ Beavs Cheerleading Camp is $45, and $40 for an additional sibling. Click here to register. More information about the camp and Ballard High Cheerleading is available here.
By reporter Steven Smalley
It’s happened several times recently on 27th Avenue – owners with locked cars come outside to find them unlocked and ransacked, their valuables stolen. How is this possible? How can criminals get inside a locked car without causing any physical damage or obvious signs of forced entry?
One local Magnolia IT professional, who wishes anonymity, found his late-model car opened and possessions missing even though he always secures it.
“We religiously keep our car locked, including the alarm feature,” he says. “In the past six months we’ve come out three times where the car has been unlocked in the morning. It’s been really strange.”
After his car was gone through a few days ago, he walked down his Magnolia street to see if others had similar experiences.
“I found four cars,” he explains. “All of them were wide open without any physical damage. I guess for now we can think our cars can be opened at any time.”
Nationally, police and insurance companies possess video evidence of thieves opening secured cars with unknown electronic devices that has law enforcement stumped. There is even a famous case of soccer star David Beckham’s $100,000 BMW X5 getting ripped-off without a trace.
Published reports suggest the answer may be as easy as plunking down a hundred bucks on Craig’s List.
National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), a trade group for auto insurers, has a YouTube production you can see here revealing surveillance video of criminals effortlessly opening cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqYJi6DV21A
Magnolia Voice spoke with Roger Morris, a manager with NICB in Chicago to find out the latest on this technology and its proliferation.
“We started seeing security videos of people walking up to cars and unlocking them,” Morris explains. “Then they enter the car and ransack it looking for valuables. Then we started seeing cars actually stolen after they were broken into. There was no evidence of a theft. If police don’t know what they’re looking for, they can be clueless about it.”
There are surveillance videos where criminals are seen holding small boxes pointed at car doors. Then the car instantly opens and access is gained. Morris has seen those too.
“There is an ‘amplifier unit.’ It amplifies the signal from your fob sitting in your house to your car. It will take the signal from the fob, amplify it, and open the car.”
Published stories tell of Craig’s List and Ebay listings with these devices for sale. Reportedly, $100 can get you a box.
“It’s frightening stuff,” says Morris. “We are hoping to see some arrests. Catching them in the act has proven difficult.”
Can you protect your fob by putting is a metal box? One man said he put his in the freezer.
“It may help to put it in the freezer, it may not. I don’t know,”
Morris said.
Europe has been on the leading edge of these devices creating havoc all over the continent for several years. These boxes and resulting crimes are reported to have begun there, according to Dr. Boris Danev, co-founder & CEO of 3db, a startup company in Zurich, Switzerland. His firm produces distance measurement computer chips for securing pass-key entry systems for cars. Magnolia Voice spoke with Dr. Danev in an exclusive interview.
“This is a type of ‘relay attack amplifier’ can go after any car that has a passive keyless entry and start system,” he says. “The advantage of these devices is that they leave no trace. If your key is used to start your car, this device can also start your car and be used to steal it. We know these devices have been picked up by the French and German police.”
So, what can we do to keep from being ripped-off?
“I can tell you what I do to protect myself,” Danev says. “I have a Honda CRV. When I go home I leave my keys in a metal box. The best way is to find a thick box that can stop the radio frequency waves. This will not help if you’re outdoors with your keys in your pocket. Someone could still hijack your car. I would not put my keys in the freezer.”
What about the future? Can we put an end to this menace?
“We are working with major German and American car manufacturers,” he says.
A spokesman for the Seattle Police Department states, “At this time we have no confirmable cases of this nature to report.”
SPD says you can report property crimes of this nature by going to their website. It will even give you a case number.
Photo courtesy NICB