Did the pandemic change Seattle's retail spaces?: Today So Far

• Poet Billy Collins is commonly spotted around Bainbridge Island, yet he's not a resident. Why does he frequent the island so much?
• A look at the Northwest spring and summer weather ahead.
• As Seattle area emerges from the pandemic, retail spaces are filled up in most of the region. Part of this is a shift to local neighborhoods.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for April 28, 2023.

A bit of a local secret is that rather well-known people are often spotted on Bainbridge Island. It's not like people are being swarmed by crowds wanting autographs, but it's an aspect of the island I picked up on while working as a newspaper reporter in the area.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to interview famed poet Billy Collins while he was helping raise funds for the emerging Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. He comes with a range of impressive credentials: U.S. poet laureate, Mark Twain prize winner, etc. I thought it was pretty cool, but when I mentioned this to an island friend, the response was: "That guy? I know him. I grew up with him coming over to dinner parties all the time."

I've boarded a ferry to Bainbridge Island alongside actor/comedian Chris Kattan, who went to high school there. Blues Traveler's drummer, Brendan Hill, runs a cannabis store on the island, and Nirvana's original drummer Chad Channing hails from Bainbridge. There's a long list of other notables with island connections: Authors David Guterson and Rebecca Wells, Russell Johnson, aka "the professor" on "Gilligan's Island," actress Elizabeth Mitchell ("Lost," "ER," "The Expanse"). But all these folks are, to some degree, locals.

Collins on the other hand, grew up in New York and lives in Florida. Still, he frequents the island's golf course, checks out records at Winslow's Backstreet Beat, or apparently attends dinner parties as if he's just a neighbor from down the street. He'll be there this weekend, helping raise funds for the island's performing arts center. Why does Collins hang out on Bainbridge Island so much? What's the connection? The short answer is that it's all about "gemütlichkeit." But for the full, non-German answer, read here.

That brings up a curiosity? Any local notables like this that you have spotted frequenting our small towns? Let me know at dyer@kuow.org.

Talk of Seattle's vacant stores and boarded up shop windows has been common over the past few pandemic years. That conversation might have been incomplete and missing an important piece of nuance. The Seattle area's more suburban neighborhoods, like Northgate or Alderwood, don't seem to have any problem filling up retail space. In fact, as KUOW's Joshua McNichols reports, the Seattle metro area has a very low retail vacancy rate of 2.6%.

This fact may be a part of the ongoing story around downtown Seattle, where a lot of effort is being put toward revitalizing the area and getting more people to visit again.

Elliot Krivenko, an analyst with real estate data tracker CoStar, tells KUOW that one factor behind all this is that people are spending less time downtown, and more time in their own neighborhoods, where they can live and work. At the same time, malls in places like Northgate and Alderwood are being remodeled. The old Sears at Alderwood is now an apartment building.

Huh, who would have thunk it? Living and working in the same area. Well that's interesting. And if you think I'm being sarcastic ... it's because I am. This is not to take away from the challenges facing downtown Seattle, but perhaps a lesson that has come out of the pandemic is the experience of living, working, and thriving in your local community (instead of driving, parking, working, driving, parking, sleeping). Maybe that's a lesson that can help downtown moving forward.

Read McNichol's full story here.

I started this week writing about the weather, and I'm going to end this week writing about the weather. Here's what to expect ahead.

We already know that this April will go down as among the coldest on record, though the recent warm days make it easy to forget that. Western Washington will be quite warm this weekend. Seattle could get close to 80 degrees today. By Sunday, we'll dip back down into the 60s (the best weather, in my opinion).

Looking further out is more difficult, but as of right now, State Climatologist Nick Bond says May is looking to be "on the warm side." And summer is likely to be warm and dry. Read more weather insights about what's ahead here.

The Friday Five: News you may have missed this week, and other cool stuff on KUOW.org

• Why more city dwellers are falling 'Under the Henfluence' of backyard chicken coops
• Seattle mourns loss of two food and drink pioneers
• The Chevy Bolt, GM's popular electric vehicle, is on its way out
• U.S. unveils plan to discourage border crossings when pandemic restrictions lift
• The Abstract: Why is some of our NW snow turning pink?

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Family and friends of Ebenezer Haile gathered outside Ingraham High School for a vigil on Wednesday. Haile was killed in a shooting there Nov. 8, 2022. Haile's mom, Tsedale Woldemariam, and his younger brother, wearing masks, take in the moment. Attendees, many of whom wore white T-shirts with a photo of Haile, also called on schools and lawmakers to keep kids safe from gun violence. (Sami West / KUOW)

DID YOU KNOW?

Bainbridge Island has gone through quite an evolution over the past 150ish years. The island was originally occupied by the Suquamish. The 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott moved the tribe to its reservation on the Kitsap Peninsula. By the 1880s, a wave of immigrants came to the island from many places. The first generation of Japanese immigrants (known as "Issei") worked at the local sawmill and on island farms. Two small towns emerged on the island, Yama and Nagaya. Yama was more for families, while Nagaya was where bachelors lived. The villages thrived with more than 300 people utilizing homes, a Baptist church, a Buddhist temple, laundries, a hotel, a photo studio, and a grocery store. A nearby village, Dagotown, also sprung up where Hawaiian laborers lived. For generations, the island operated among a patchwork of small villages like this, which also included Italians, Portuguese, and more. When operations like the sawmill closed down in the early 1900s, many of the villages faded away, but the communities remained. There have been efforts in recent years to unearth archeological sites where the villages once stood.

The Japanese community became tightly woven into island life. Bainbridge Island's farming industry, which was known for its strawberries, was largely held up by this group. Much of the island's industry halted when the United States removed Japanese-American citizens from their homes and sent them to camps during WWII, despite such communities being rooted in the country for more than 50 years, with generations that were born locally.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

Hard times are here for news sites and social media. Is this the end of Web 2.0?

Vice is slashing staff and closing its flagship broadcast program, Vice News Tonight. BuzzFeed News is shutting down. Vox recently laid off nearly 10% of its staff. Gawker went out of business, again, in February. It has been trying times for digital media. And there are no signs of when the punishing developments will let up.

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