This is this fourth in an ongoing series of posts profiling the various malls in the Seattle area.  The previous posts in the series can be found here:

• Totem Lake Mall
• Factoria Mall
• Crossroads Bellevue (Part 1 0f 4)

 I wasn’t planning to get around to profiling the Everett mall on this site until after I completed the malls on the Eastside, but since I happened to be in Everett and had my camera with me, I decided to go over and take some pictures to get started on profiling this mall.  For the time being, I will consider this to be incomplete, since I was interrupted by a (very) minor family emergency while I was at the mall taking the pictures, and was not able to take all the ones I wanted to.  I intend to go back and take some more pictures to add to this later.  In the meantime, I am also working on putting together the second part of my profile of Crossroads in Bellevue, and an update on the Factoria redevelopment. 

Facts:

• Opened: 1979
• Extensively remodeled and expanded in 2004-2005
• Total Size: 763,000 Square Feet
• Owner: Steadfast Companies
• Website: http://www.shopeverettmall.com
• Current Anchor stores: 
  • Macy’s (formerly The Bon Marche)
  • Sears
  • Borders Books and Music
  • Old Navy
  • Steve and Barry’s
  • LA Fitness
  • Regal Cinemas Stadium 16
• Other major stores in the Village area:
  • Best Buy
  • PetSmart
  • TJMaxx
  • Bed Bath and Beyond
• Major former stores:
  • Fredrick and Nelson (closed in 1992 when the company folded)
  • Mervyn’s (in former Fredrick and Nelson space, closed in 2006)
  • Cinema I-II-III (closed when the new cinema opened)
• Other features:
  • Food court
  • Play Area
  • Transit Station

 Originally opened in 1979, the Everett Mall follows many of the typical design cues of the other Seventies malls in the area, and has definitely had its share of ups and downs during that time.  In 2000, the mall went into receivership as the owners of the mall defaulted on a $55 million dollar loan.  In 2004, the mall was purchased by Steadfast Companies, which proceeded to give the mall a significant facelift, adding a detached expansion populated with tenants such as Best Buy, PetSmart and Bed, Bath and Beyond, drastically changed the front entrance to the mall and added a couple of smaller anchor tenants (Borders and Old Navy) to the mix as well as a new 16-screen movie theater to   In addition to this, a number of mostly superficial touchups throughout the mall helped to somewhat alleviate its dated appearance. 

(click for an interactive map.  Note that the birds-eye view photos were taken during the remodel, and construction of the movie theater and the Village stores had just begun at the time.)

The mall is located in the southern part of Everett along the I-5 corridor, in a primarily commercial district of town, although there is some apartment housing on the South side of the mall.  This mall’s primary competition comes from the Alderwood Mall, roughly six miles to the south of here along I-5, although it has few competitors to the North.  Aside from a much smaller mall in Marysville with a small JCPenney and one of the few remaining Gottschalks stores in the area, and the Seattle Premium Outlet on the Tulalip reservation next to their casino resort, there are few competitors to the North of here.  In fact, the closest true shopping mall to the North of here is the Bellis Fair, all the way up in Bellingham. 

When Mervyn’s closed their store at the Everett Mall (along with every other store in Washington) in 2006, the 2-story anchor space that the store previously occupied was subdivided, with LA Fitness (a health club) taking most of the lower floor (with no entrance from the inside of the mall,) and Steve and Barry’s taking over the remainder of the first floor and the entire second floor (although there are some indications that they may be headed down the tubes themselves, which would make them the third tenant to occupy and then vacate this anchor space.)  In this picture, you can also see the mall’s new 16-screen cinema that opened in 2006, replacing the mall’s old 3-screen theater and an 8-screen multiplex a couple of blocks away from the mall.

Next to those stores is the Sears store, which received a bit of a facelift (on the exterior anyway) when the remodel took place.

The look of the Macy’s store, on the other hand, does not appear have changed any with the mall’s facelift, and the building still looks like it came straight out of the Seventies.  Prior to the remodel, there was a hallway that  led from the food court area toward the Macy’s store, then turned and connected with the other hallway at the Macy’s entrance.  Many of the spaces in that section of the mall were either vacant or contained short-term tenants, so the decision was made to consolidate the space into a single larger store.

This became the Old Navy store, shown here.  When the remodel took place, there were small portions of what used to be hallway space inside the mall that were removed to make exterior-facing storefronts for the Old Navy and the Borders.  The entrance to this store is just inside the mall entrance, to the right of where this photo was taken.

On the opposite side is the Borders bookstore.  Prior to the remodel, much of the space that the Borders occupies was taken up by Mr. Bill’s Restaurant.  I never ate there, but I seem to recall that the place had some sort of retro diner theme to it.

This is the original main entrance to the mall, which faces Everett Mall Way.  Prior to the remodel, the color scheme of this entrance was primarily green if I recall correctly.

This is one of two new entrances that were constructed as part of the remodel.  The other one is basically identical to this one.

On the west side of the mall property, we find the newly constructed Village portion of the mall.  Nothing too fancy here, basically just some big empty boxes to put retail in.  Best Buy, PetSmart, TJMaxx and Bed, Bath and Beyond are the major stores here, and Sleep Country USA, Hobby Town USA and Quiznos occupy smaller spaces.

On the side of the mall facing I-5, there isn’t much to see.  This sign is visible from the freeway, and the other side of the sign has a matrix display on it which does not currently seem to be functioning.  There is a slope between the mall and the freeway, so the mall itself is not visible to people in cars on I-5.

The only thing that really caught my attention back here was this surprisingly obvious labelscar from the mall’s old 3-screen cinema, which currently sits vacant, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.  I’m guessing it’s been quite a while since the last time anyone did any painting back here.

Moving to the inside of the mall, the food court is the first thing you see when you enter the mall from the front.  It’s a relatively small food court, with only about 10 choices (give or take a couple, as there has been some turnover here recently) and a moderately sized seating area.  I need to get some more pictures of this at some point, but it’s pretty much a typical small mall food court.

Outside of the major changes to the front of the mall as outlined above, the rest of the changes to the mall are primarily superficial ones. There are a number of these seating areas that have been placed throughout the mall to provide a more contemporary look than the standard issue late 70s mall furnishings they replaced.

Aside from these small islands of updated design, much of the original floor tile used in the mail remains mostly undisturbed, with one exception:

For some reason, throughout the mall they’ve adde these marble accent tiles.  This effect would probably work better if they were the same size, but in more ways than one, these just don’t seem to fit.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this, this profile is currently incomplete, since I was interrupted before I was able to take all of the photos that I wanted to.  At some point I plan to go back and finish this off when I get another chance to visit here and take the rest of the photos.  In the meantime, if anyone has any info on the history of this mall, and some of the troubles it has gone through, I would be interested to get the information.

As discussed previously, last Thursday marked the end of the 45-year run of the old Marina-style Safeway in downtown Bellevue.  Although a largely intact 1960s supermarket may invoke nostalgic longings for days long gone, it was clear that this store was outdated, and that even if it were not being replaced it would have fallen victim to the rapid growth and development of downtown Bellevue sooner or later.

In its place, a brand new Safeway store has now opened a block to the South in the new Avalon Meydenbauer development found near Bellevue Square   Even though there are currently only three Safeway stores operating within the Bellevue City limits (this one, a store located at Factoria Mall and one in the Overlake neighborhood,) Safeway has long been tied to the Eastside, having maintained a distribution center since 1958in the Overlake area, along with an industrial bakery and soda bottling plant.  In keeping with the increasingly urban character of Bellevue. this new store has become Safeway’s new flagship store for the Pacific Northwest, and provides an interesting snapshot that shows a number of ongoing trends in supermarket design as Safeway moves upscale in many of its local stores to keep up with high-end competition from stores such as QFC and Whole Foods Market.  In addition to this, this store ups the ante by adding several new features that you’re not likely to find in your local store anytime soon.

After the jump, a tour of Bellevue’s new Safeway store.

(click for larger image)

The image above came from the old Safeway before it closed, and shows the floor plan of the new store, along with a number of the store’s features.  I apologize for the shadow that makes it a bit hard to see, but this should give you a pretty good idea of the layout of the new store, and how this is put together.  Compared to the old 24,000 square foot Safeway store, this new store has more than twice the space at 55,000 square feet.  And yes, there is still free parking while you’re shopping.  A small, partially covered lot is found in front of the store, although most of the parking spaces are in a garage underneath the store itself. 

On entering the store, one of the first things you notice is that there aren’t a whole lot of checkstands here, compared to what you might find in some stores.  Looking at my photos of the old store, it turns out that there were only six checkstands in that old one, while this store has 7, plus four self-checkout stations.  To be honest, what’s the point in having twelve checkstands if only three of them are going to be open at any given time anyway?

Although a number of the other stores in the area (particularly the Kroger-owned Fred Meyer and QFC stores) have used self checkouts for some time now, this is the first time that I have seen one of these in a Safeway store.  I’ve found that opinions about these tend to be somewhat mixed.  If people know what they’re doing when they use these (and to be honest, it shouldn’t exactly be rocket science in the first place) and things work as expected, I find that self checkouts make life a lot easier.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a whole lot to cause things go to haywire, at which point you may find yourself standing around waiting for someone to swipe the magic card and get things back in order again.  In this case, I ran into some issues with getting the debit card to work.  Since the store had only been open for a day and a half at the time, I suspect this will probably be a matter of working out the bugs in the system as time goes on.

Turning to the store itself, we can that a lot of the old supermarket standbys are still alive and well.  This picture shows the flower department.  Nothing too unusual here.

The same goes for the produce department, although it is interesting to note that organic produce continues to gain ground over conventional produce, to the point that organic products now take up close to half of the department by themselves. 

Is it just me, or is Uncle Sam looking just a tad shifty these days?  No wonder people don’t seem to trust the government anymore.  One other detail you might notice in this photo (and some of the others) is the exposed plumbing and HVAC equipment on the ceiling, as well as the much more subtle “mood lighting” that has largely replaced the industrial-strength fluorescent lighting of grocery stores past.  For some reason, this style seems to be popular with a number of the high-end grocers around here these days.

Next to the produce is the meat department.  Throughout the store, there were a number of different samples on offer.  They were actually grilling steaks out in the front of the store to offer samples of the New York Strip inside.  The seafood department does seem a bit small in comparison to that found in some of the other stores around here, particularly the Whole Foods stores.  Then again, those stores generally have massive seafood departments, and the price tags to match.

As is customary of most of the supermarkets around here these days, several aisles are dedicated to a natural and organic food section, complete with a large selection of bulk bins (not shown here.)

 Even though this store has a lot more space overall than the old store did, it is apparent that there are still some space constraints that had to be dealt with, which means that instead of having 20 relatively short aisles, as you might find in a typical store, you have a smaller number of longer aisles, with a split in the middle that splits these into two rows.  It’s kind of hard to see this here with the shoppers blocking the view, but this is taken from the back of the store.

The one exception to the split aisles found elsewhere in the store is the freezer section, where everything is placed in one long aisle.

Looking at this from the other direction gives a better idea of just how long this aisle is.  This is a little bit past the halfway point, looking to the back of the store.  Of course, so far nothing we’ve seen here is particularly unusual for a grocery store, especially around here.  Even so, there are a number of things that you may not have ever seen in your local supermarket, much less your local Safeway.

One of the more prevalent trends in the local supermarkets is an expanded selection of cheeses, including a large number of Protected Designation of Origin European imports.  Here we see just a portion of the cheeses on offer in this store.

Of course, there are samples provided.  In addition to an expanded cheese selection, the store also provides the now obligatory olive bar as well.  I’m not sure whose idea it was to sell 23 different types of olives in the local grocery store, but it seems like over the past few years practically every supermarket in town seems to have installed one of the things.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the olive bar here.

If you’re looking for some wine to go with your cheese (or vice versa,) this store has you covered there.  They even include a “wine cellar” area, which presumably houses the store’s higher-end wine selections.

Here’s something you probably haven’t seen at your local Safeway: a nut bar, complete with a surprisingly large selection of nuts roasted in the store.  I think this one has a few types of nuts that I’ve never even heard of.

If you happen to prefer your nuts in a slightly less recognizable form, you can get freshly ground nut butter as well.

In addition to the usual assortment of baked goods offered in your friendly neighborhood Safeway, you’ll find this wood-fired hearth oven baking up an assortment of delicious artisan breads, which you can get sliced any way you would like, thanks to the Bread Slicer (of Doom) shown on the left side of the picture.

In addition to the usual Deli selections found in your friendly neighborhood Safeway, this store adds a sushi bar to the mix.  On the far side of the picture you can see the obligatory Starbucks kiosk.  I think by now, grocery stores are required by law to install one of those things.

Once you’ve ordered your food, they conveniently provide a nice sitting area in which to consume it, complete with a flat screen TV and a fireplace.  For reasons that probably have to do with the fact that the temperature outside was pushing 90 degrees at the time this photo was taken, the fireplace was not in use at this time.  And yes, there are tables on the other side  in addition to comfy chairs.

Of all the features of this new store, I think this one might be my favorite:  a gelato and sorbet counter.  Apparently I’m old enough to remember back in the days when you could go to the drugstore (well, the Thirfty anyway) and get ice cream there, and for some reason I’ve always wished that I could still get ice cream in the store like this (and yes, I am aware that some California, Nevada and Arizona Rite Aid stores still have the Thrifty Ice Cream.  Last year when I was in Las Vegas I took a wrong turn and ended up stumbling into a store that had it.  Just like I remember, down to the oddly cylindrical scoops.)  Apparently it’s not enough to have ice cream these days, you’ve got to have gelato for that extra bit of exotic flair.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  The stuff looks delicious.

And sure enough, it is quite tasty, if a bit expensive compared to some places.  The small cup of the pineapple sorbet cost $2.99, but was plenty to satisfy a craving.

All in all, this new Safeway is a very nice store, and a huge improvement over the old store in many ways.  Although Safeway is generally regarded as a fairly mainstream grocery store, this store is an indication that they can compete with the high-end stores when the need arises.  Of course, it has the advantage of being one of only four grocery stores near downtown Bellevue.  There’s a QFC to the north of Bellevue Square, Nature’s Pantry (a health food store) a block or so away from that and a Whole Foods on the other side of 405, but beyond those your closest options are going to be in the Overlake area.  For comparison, there are no fewer than 2 QFCs, a Safeway , a Fred Meyer, a Whole Foods, Larry’s Market (now basically a Top Foods/Haggen store in all but name) and a Target with a fairly large selection of food items (no meat/produce departments though) within the downtown Redmond area, and several more Safeways, another Fred Meyer and a Costco not too far away. 

In a crowded marketplace, Safeway has been taking steps to rebrand themselves to project a higher end image than they have in the past, but in my experience with some of the “converted” Safeways around here, the whole thing just doesn’t quite seem to work for some reason.  Perhaps this has to do with the memory of the more conventional Safeway branding that used to be there (and  which remains in some of the smaller stores that have been deemed too small to effectively project the newer brand image) and the crowded old Safeway stores of the past.  That said, none of those preconceived notions of the brand seem to apply to this store.  Perhaps this is the result of being able to work with a clean slate, as well as the ability to build a high-end store to cater to high-end clientele in a way that would not be practical in a less affluent neighborhood (relatively speaking, you’re not going to find a lot of more affluent areas than downtown Bellevue and the nearby Hunts Point and Medina) but there’s something about this particular store that seems to set it apart.  That said, I seriously doubt that I’ll be shopping here all that often, since convenience seems to be king when it comes to grocery shopping, and it just wouldn’t be practical to go into Bellevue and wade through the downtown traffic every time I needed milk and eggs.  It’s a really nice store though, and should serve its neighborhood well. 

Of all the subjects I talk about on a regular basis here on my Blog, I tend to avoid talking about much my job too much.  Part of this has to do with keeping some degree of separation between what I do for a living and what I do in my spare time, but mostly this is because my job is in a highly technical field, and I don’t think I could write more than a couple of paragraphs about what I work on without boring most of the people reading this.  I can recall seeing a job posting flyer on the bulletin board many years ago for a team that works on some pretty low-level stuff on their particular product, which had a tagline that read “…Because you never want your mother to understand what you do for a living.”  I think that can be said to be true for what I’ve been working on. as a Software Tester for the past several years.  Then again, back when my Mom was working as a travel agent, I don’t think I would have had the slightest clue how to do anything in SABRE, so we’re even in that regard.

In some sense, I have found the need to hold a job to be something of a limiting factor in what I have been able to do with this Blog.  In my ongoing mall research project, I have been mostly limited to what I have been able to find in the microfilm available at the Bellevue Library.  I suspect that the local historical societies would have plenty of additional information available (or at the very least, actual newspapers that I can get better photos from than the grainy ones I’ve been getting off the microfilm,) but so far I haven’t been able to get over to any of the offices because they are only open when I happen to be at work.  It looks like this week, I may finally get that opportunity though.

The short version is that I have this week off from work..  The long version is that my contract on the team I’ve been working with for the past seven months has ended, but I was able to sign on to a new team before the end of my last one.  I will be starting with this new team on the 7th of July, which basically means that I basically have a week of semi-unplanned vacation.  Having a bit of time on my hands means that I should get the opportunity to get some of the big posts I’ve been sitting on for a while out of the way, as well as a chance to go do some of the research I haven’t been able to do previously. 

Over this past weekend, I was also able to go take a look at the new Bellevue Safeway, so expect some pictures of that later on.

Although you wouldn’t know it by looking at the place today, for much of its history Bellevue has been a predominantly agricultural community.  Strawberries have played an especially prominent role in the growth and development of the city, and at one time before World War 2, there were more than 200 acres of strawberry fields within the present Bellevue city limits.  Because of this, in 1925 a number of civic and business leaders in the community organized the first Strawberry Festival in Bellevue, an event which attracted thousands of visitors, and would continue to grow for years, until World War 2 caused the cancellation of the Strawberry Festival in 1942, as many of the Japanese farmers who grew strawberries in Bellevue were sent to internment camps in California for the duration of the conflict.  For more information of the history of the Strawberry Festival in Bellevue, you can go to this page, and over at HistoryLink there is an essay written in 1934 by a college student describing memories of one of the earliest festivals.

 After the war, it would take more than forty years before the Strawberry Festival was revived; first as a one-night event hosted by the Bellevue Historical Society in 1987, then as a full-scale civic festival by the Eastside Heritage Center in 2003.  This year’s festival was held over the past weekend at Crossroads Park, providing a glance into the history of Bellevue in days now long forgotten, as well as a look at the Bellevue of today.  After the jump you will find some of the highlights of my visit to the Strawberry Festival.

This festival comes with all the standard features you would expect from a civic celebration of this type, including plenty of food, and lots of arts and crafts vendors and representatives from other local businesses.  Here you see someone recruiting volunteers for Microsoft usability studies next to a vendor selling scented candles.

During the time I was attending the festival, the entertainment on the main stage was being provided by one Julius Pierpont Patches, erstwhile Mayor of the City Dump and longtime Seattle childrens’ show host.  This August will mark the 50th anniversary of the debut of the JP Patches show in Seattle (the character was actually created earlier in Minnesota by a different performer), and will be celebrated by he unveiling of a new statue in his honor in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.  Even though the JP Patches show has been off the air since 1981, it would seem that there are still plenty of Patches Pals out there.  HistoryLink also has an essay on JP Patches, along with a number of vintage photos.

As might be expected of a festival being put on by the local historical society, there was plenty of history to be found here.  The most notable of the exhibits was the display of a number of pieces of vintage farming equipment, including this John Deere tractor that was running and being used to power a corn milling machine.

 Also present were a number of manual and gas-powered water pumps, one of which is shown here.

Nearby in some of the tents, there were several collections of various old tools for people to attempt to identify.  The answers couple be found on the backs of each of these.

Of course, a strawberry festival without any strawberries would tend to be somewhat pointless, and they were more than happy to oblige:

Unfortunately, I suspect that the strawberries used  in the festival are probably no longer of local origin (it’s kind of difficult to grow too much stuff when you’ve got houses and skyscrapers covering up most of the old farmland) but with as delicious as the Strawberry Shortcake was, who was complaining?

 Here’s something you don’t see very often: a huge shelf loaded with HDTVs at the Issaquah Costco, all of them completely dark.  I was over there yesterday evening to go try to figure out what shiny new stuff they have currently that I can’t live without (not a lot it would seem,) when suddenly the power to the store went out, plunging the whole store into darkness…  Well OK, maybe not darkness, but definitely a state of moderate dimness.  The store has plenty of skylights to let natural light in, so the risk of doing yourself in by blundering into a pallet of kitchen knives remained fairly minimal.

Fortunately for the shoppers, it turns out that the registers at this store are on backup power in case of an outage, so as far as I could tell, for the most part things just ran as usual, at least in the front end.  I’m sure the whole thing probably caused a few headaches over there though, particularly in the frozen foods department. 

Over at Vintage Seattle yesterday, I found out that after more than 45 years of continuous operation, the old Marina style Safeway across from Bellevue Square will be closing its doors for the last time tomorrow as Safeway’s new 55,000 square foot flagship store for the Pacific Northwest (more than double the size of this one) prepares to open a block to the south on Friday.  This particular store’s days have been numbered for some time now, and it has already lasted a year longer than it was intended to, as the new Safeway was originally intended to open a year ago.  For the time being, the Bartell Drugs next door will remain open, but this land is now owned by Kemper Freeman, and the chances are good that it will soon become the site of another mixed-use development similar to the nearby Lincoln Square.  As one of the shrinking number of relics from the Bellevue of old, I went to take one last look at this store before it closes for good, and I was also able to find some information from back when it opened.  After the jump, a few photos of the interior of the store, and some background on its history.

This particular Safeway is one of many built in the early to mid 1960s that were patterned after the Marina Avenue store (Google Street View link) in San Francisco that was built in 1959.  That particular store is still in operation today, and has developed a reputation as a singles hangout, which has resulted in the informal nickname of “”Dateway”.  This particular Safeway is in the heart of Downtown Bellevue at the corner of NE 4th and Bellevue Way, across the street from Bellevue Square. 

This was one of a number of Marina style Safeway stores that have been built on the Eastside, although besides this one, I only know of one other one (in Bothell) which is still operating as a Safeway.  The former Eastgate Safeway store in the Sunset Village shopping center closed several years ago, and has since been turned into a Toyota dealership, of all things.  Another former Marina Safeway on Sunset Boulevard in Renton is now a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.

This particular site was previously occupied by an earlier Bartell Drugs store which was located along Bellevue Way in what is now the parking lot, and was torn down in November 1962, shortly before this store (and the new Bartell Drugs located in the same building) opened. 

(From the Bellevue American, November 15 1962, P. 2)

The Safeway store itself opened on January 30th, 1963, complete with all of the requisite fanfare.  It appears that the Bartell Drugs may have been opened shortly before the Safeway did.  The opening of the store made the front page of the Bellevue American on the day that it opened:

(From the Bellevue American, January 30 1963, P. 1)

I apologize for some of the text being difficult to read, but from the article, we find out that this was the largest Safeway store in Western Washington at the time it opened, and that when it opened, it was possible to go between the Safeway and the Bartell Drugs from the inside.  This issue of the BA also had a full page advertisement for the grand opening.  Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the microfilm reader I can’t capture everything at once.

One thing that I’ll note here is that the stone wall texture you see in this image does not match the actual texture of the store’s walls, which are in a stone block pattern (there will be an image of this below.)  Since this was a standard building style used by Safeway at the time this leads me to wonder if this may have been a “stock” image that was modified to add the drugstore.  Then again, line art drawings like this are a fairly common sight in newspaper advertisements of this era, and aside from a pedantic letter-writer to the editor or two, who’s going to care if it’s a little bit off? 

It turns out that they made quite a production out of the opening, with giveaway prizes including a trip to Vegas with a flight on a now defunct airline (the hotel’s still alive and kicking though,) and appearances by local celebrities.  At this time, Stan Boreson, the accordion-playing King of Scandinavian Humor was the host of the childrens’ show King’s Klubhouse on KING-TV, part of a TV career that lasted from 1944-1967, and he continues to perform to this day at the age of 82.  Fred Waring was also a popular radio and TV personality noted primarily for his musical talents, but over the years, he also managed to lend his name to the  Waring Blender by providing the financial backing to bring it to the market.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find much good info on Judith Lane, and I suspect most of the results for that name are for a different person.  Can someone fill in the details here?

Fast forwarding to today, we see what has become of this store in the 45+ years in which it has been operating.  While some people may wax nostalgic for old grocery stores such as this one, it doesn’t take long for it to become clear that this particular store falls short of what is expected of a modern-day grocery store.  The aisles are narrow and crowded, the floors are worn from thousands of shoppers and carts, and many of the fixtures are badly outdated. 

Many of the Safeway stores on the Eastside have been remodeled in recent years to reflect a more modern image for Safeway, but this store remains something of an oddity.  Although it is somewhat difficult to see here, the sign on this refrigerator would seem to indicate sixties origin (I’d have to guess this one is probably original to the store,) while the sign on top shows a clear 80s influence.

These juxtapositions in style are found throughout the store.  The dairy sign in this picture comes from the early part of this decade before Safeway embarked on their last rebranding campaign, while the background sign comes from the mid Nineties.  The clock above these, on the other hand, is most likely a leftover from 1963.

The flower department, near the front of the store, somehow seems to have avoided much change over the years, and seems to be surprisingly true to original form.  Here, you can see the stone blocks on the wall, the brown linoleum floor, and a pattern on the mirrored glass that was probably outlawed at some point during the Nixon administration.

Finally, we see the checkout area, complete with a sign for a slogan that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been used during my lifetime.  While I was over here taking these pictures, I took a walk over to the new Safeway a block to the south, and took a peek into the window. 

Inside this store is a sign touting some of the features of the new store, including such urban essentials as the obligatory olive bar, a nut bar, an expanded selection of cheeses, a home decor section, and even gelato.  As the article referenced above indicates, this new Safeway store is intended to be a flagship for the chain in the Pacific Northwest, and from the looks of things they’re going all out on this one.  Once the new store opens, I will report on it to see if it lives up to the hype.  It would seem that they have a legacy to maintain…

Update: Here are some additional items found on the Internet that may be of interest:

• Groceteria.com is a site chronicling old supermarkets, and provides a fairly comprehensive history of Safeway.  Their page for Safeway in the 1960s has a number of photos of well-preserved examples of Marina style stores as they would have looked at that time. 
• ‘The Eastside Heritage Center’s archives contain several older photos of this store.  From roughly 1969, we have an aerial photo showing the store and the area to the south on Bellevue Way, as well as a photo of the store’s sign (which was still around in 1987 (as was the Safeway logo on the front of the store,) but had been removed by the time I moved to this area in 1994.

(sunset, as seen from Highway 410 leaving Bonney Lake on Saturday.)

Surprisingly enough, in spite of all the not-so-great weather we’ve been getting for the better part of June, Summer actually seems to have arrived on time, and the past several days have seen (us with (mostly) clear skies and temperatures that might even be considered junelike.  This is definitely a good thing, because I was starting to worry that the new pair of Tevas that I bought last month were going to end up spending the better part of the Summer in the closet.  With the weather improving, Brooks and Heather in town and the one major Saturday obligation (see below) out of the way fairly early on, this  provided plenty of time to use the rest of the day for other things, most of which involved sitting around my parents’ house watching a race on TV and occasionally keeping Connor and Cory happy while my Mom and Jacki were off on some errands.

Later on in the afternoon, a number of us headed down to the Sirrine house in Bonney Lake for an informal Saturday get-together (which apparently occurs on a regular basis, but I usually don’t find out about them until after the fact.)  With the nice weather (I think Saturday was only the third time this year that I’ve actually used the air conditioning in my car,) it was a nice day to go hang out on their back porch.  As seems to be the case with most Vanderhoeven family get-togethers, fire was involved and figured prominently in the festivities. 

Eventually, someone decided that Smores sounded good, and since in the long run this would probably prove to be a better outcome than the usual descent into pyromania that results from the combination of Vanderhoevens and fire, me and Terence made a quick trip out to Target to pick up the stuff.  Although toasting marshmallows over an open fire is a time-honored tradition, some people seem to have different ideas about how this is supposed to be done.  Some people prefer to just toast it lightly over glowing coals…

…while I, on the other hand, tend to be a bit less subtle about the whole thing, and prefer to just set the things on fire.  Of course, there’s the minor issue of making sure that the things are not still flaming before eating them (I imagine you’d learn that lesson rather quickly.)  Meanwhile, while everyone was happily burning things over in the brazier, someone seems to have lost track of Connor for a minute.  Earlier in the day, Aunt Pam had set up a wading pool for Connor out in the yard, which he quite enjoyed. In fact, he enjoyed it so much that a little while later, after he had been dressed in a brand new pair of pajamas, he decided that he wanted to go back into the pool. Before anyone could catch him, he managed to jump back into the pool fully clothed, shoes and all!

After getting out, he came to the realization that perhaps he hadn’t thought that one all the way through, and as a result it was going to turn out to be a rather cold ride home.  Fortunately, someone managed to dig up a towel and a ridiculously oversized T-shirt for him to wear on the way home, so in the end all that came out of it was a slightly soggy pair of pajamas and a photo that will probably get shown to girls he takes out on dates in about fifteen years or so.  I suppose there was the possibility that a valuable lesson could have been learned out of the whole thing, but I’m guessing that those are still a few months off at this point.

All things considered, given the fact that a 1 1/2 year old toddler may not quite have developed  the brain capacity for things like cause and effect, you pretty much EXPECT them to do things like jumping into the pool while wearing their pajamas.  What you might not expect is for a teenager to do the exact same thing.  Through some set of circumstances that I didn’t quite catch at the time (I’m guessing it involved some sort of double-dog dare,) Sarah ended up jumping into the pool just a few minutes later.  I’m not even going to try to figure that one out.  I don’t even think that all the cool kids were doing it at the time…

Watery antics and flaming desserts aside, it was a nice day to go spend some time outside, and it was also kind of nice conveniently forgetting how much gas costs around here these days for a little while and just driving down to Bonney Lake.  All in all, it seems like one of those Saturdays when you end up somehow finding time to do everything (and you have to include “doing nothing” in “everything” there too, right?)

As you probably know if you’ve been reading this Blog for long enough, my family contains its fair share of auto racing enthusiasts, to the point that in our family the sporting world tends to be divided into baseball (as long as we have a team worth watching, which isn’t entirely certain this season,) auto racing, and a bunch of other stuff that happens somewhere in between those two.  Unfortunately, the high speed world of motorsports tends to come with a high pricetag to match, so there aren’t a lot of opportunities out there for the average Joe to go out racing (it has been said that if you want to make a small fortune in auto racing, you need to start with a large one.)  For most people, the closest that they are ever going to be able to get to real racing is a trip to the local Go-kart track.  Although I’m pretty sure this doesn’t exactly match the thrill of screaming down the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans or trying to find a way to get your own car around the world-famous Nürburgring in one piece, there’s plenty of adrenaline to be found here, and this place is just a bit closer.

As with just about everything else in auto racing, a trip to the track comes with a fairly steep pricetag, but it seems that my family always finds one excuse or another to make at least one trip to the go-kart track per year.  In this case, it was a somewhat belated birthday celebration for myself, and a less belated one for my brother-in-law Terence.  In addition to these birthdays, Heather and Brooks are in town for a visit this weekend, so we had a field of ten people to go racing.  The track we raced at was K1 Speed, a place that is somewhat hidden in the Overlake area of Redmond.  Until a change of ownership last year, this was known as Champs Karting (link goes to the archived website,) (which also had locations in Bothell and the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, although those two have since closed) and before that was Crazy Redhead Raceway (link goes to the archived version of their website, which unfortunately has broken links for the track layout,) although I never raced there when that one was around.  Before there was a go-kart track here there was Zones, a small arcade/mini golf amusement center which I believe closed around 1997-1998 or so.  K1 Speed has a number of other locations in California (many with multiple tracks that can be combined into one giant rrack.)

The space in which this K1 Speed is located is fairly small for a kart track, which means that there’s going to be plenty of turning involved.  When Champs Karting was in this space, they actually had a fairly fast layout with straightaways on the outside and tight turns on the inside (you can see the old layout here) which provided for more open-throttle driving but less importance on the turns.  Although the turns on this aren’t quite as narrow as the graphic above indicates, it is still surprisingly easy for the back end of the kart to get loose on you, which will scrub off valuable time, or in some cases spin you around or put you into the wall (which is not an uncommon occurrence here.)  Combine this with the tight steering, the lateral G-forces in the turns and the relative lack of suspension on these karts, and even a short 14-16 lap run can turn out to be quite a workout.  In terms of absolute speed, these karts aren’t really all that fast (I believe they max out somewhere in the range of 20-25 MPH for general use, but can be made to go faster for more experienced drivers,) but speed can be a relative thing, especially when you’re blasting down a narrow straightaway three inches off the ground with some guy trynig to find a way around you. 

Of course, it can’t hurt to look the part while you’re at it.  Decked out in the finest Italian delusions of grandeur, I prepared for the first run.

With a total of ten racers, we ran five people at a time (the track would start to get pretty crowded with many more than that.)  On my first run (a practice run,) I managed to get the second fastest lap out of the group  at 18.14 seconds.  Unfortunately, it was difficult to take photos of the actual racing due to reflections on the glass and the speed of the karts (as you can see above, everything is kind of a blur going by,) so there wasn’t much point in taking a lot of action photos.  The second run (the qualifying run) didn’t go so well for me, as I only managed an 18.91 for my fastest lap, which was well off the pace.  I suspect that I was trying too hard to keep the kart from sliding in the turns and ended up not using enough throttle as a result. 

This put me at the back of the field for the final run, where I stayed for pretty much the whole race.  With all the tight turns and narrow straightaways, there just isn’t a lot of opportunity to pass people in front of you, although I did manage to get in a pretty good run at Jared nonetheless.  In the end, even though I was in fifth place, I significantly lowered my best lap time in the race to a 17.15, which ended up being the third fastest lap time for the whole group of ten racers (for comparison, Terence got the best lap of the day at 16.95, followed by Brooks with a 17.09.  The second race heat (for the other group of racers) was somewhat marred by a couple of scoring glitches and several spinouts which slowed the pace significantly, but the heat I was in managed to get in a nice clean race.

The results ended up being about the same as those of just about any competitive event that happens in our family (Terence and Brooks beating everyone, me ending up somewhere well behind them)  but even so, the whole thing is more about having fun and limiting maniacal driving habits to a socially acceptable context anyway, even if I did find myself worried that I’d break the back end of my car loose on the 520 onramp while I was heading home…  That might turn out to be slightly less entertaining if it happened.

(Warning:  This post contains boring video game nerd content, which some of you out there who aren’t boring video game nerds (and some of those who are, for that matter) might want to just pass on.  If any of the stuff in this post begins to sound like technobabble, I would recommend just scrolling down for the usual content.)

This post expands on some thoughts that I originally posted as a comment on a thread over at Kotaku, but ended up being a bit longer than I planned on, so I decided to move it here.  The topic of the original thread was a statement made by Warren Spector (a game developer who has made a number of popular games that I haven’t ever bothered to play) which stated that lengthy games were on the way out, being replaced by shorter ones.   As someone who probably plays way too many video games for his own good and doesn’t bother finishing up 80% of them, I realize that the big 100-hour epics have their place in the market, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t fit into the target audience for such things.

For years now, I’ve referred to something that I like to call the “Shelf of Oblivion” (note: Actual shelf does not exist, nor does the Shelf of Oblivion currently contain a copy of Oblivion, although that’s probably because I haven’t ever bought it) which is the nominal place where the games in my collection that I have completely lost interest in seem to end up.  I’m pretty sure that an attempt to catalog the contents of this “shelf” would result in a 15,000 word post that would take me three weeks to write, so I won’t go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that a significant number of the games that I do purchase seem to end up here after some period.  There are some big name titles that I’ve put down after 45 minutes, never to touch them again (Morrowind comes to mind, as does Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy III for the DS.) On the other side of the coin, there are games that I have spent hundreds of hours playing, and enjoyed them the whole time. 

The vast majority of games out there fall somewhere in between these two extremes.  Here are some games that I’ve enjoyed playing, but they were just way too long to bother finishing off. Some examples:

-Twilight Princess (Wii): Fun while I played it, but there just came a point when it seemed that I had been playing forever and still had a long way to go in order to finish it. I made it to the fourth dungeon last time I played it, and haven’t touched it since then.

-Half Life 2: Same as TP, just felt like I had played it forever and had way too long to go. I’ll probably finish this off at some point though when I’m in the right mood… On the other hand, I thought Portal was quite enjoyable in spite of its shortness. Haven’t played either HL2 episode because I want to finish the main game first.

-Earth Defense Force 2017(360): Fun for a while, but there comes a point when you realize that things aren’t getting any harder, they’re just getting more cheaty and/or broken as you go along, and you’ve got 25 more levels of the stuff to slog through to get a single achievement point out of the thing (all the achievements are “complete the game on easy/medium/hard/really hard/you’re pretty much doomed” type things.)

-Most modern racing games (Project Gotham Racing 3 and Forza 2 being the most recent examples I’ve played): There’s a certain type of person who loves all the races and events you’re going to find in a typical career mode. I don’t quite have the patience for this, but I’ll enjoy playing for a while nonetheless. At least the majority of these games nowdays provide ways to just race around using all of the cars and/or tracks without needing to unlock a ton of stuff.

-Most modern RPGs.  I actually used to play a lot of these back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, but at some point, they just became too much hassle to deal with, either by reason of excessive complexity (every Final Tantasy after 6) or just turned into way too much wading through repetitive stuff to get into the story.  How many times do I need to see the heroes celebrating their victory over the 73rd pack of wolves they’ve vanquished in the past hour anyway?  There are exceptions to this, but in general, a game will have to be incredibly compelling in order to gain enough momentum to get past the tedium barrier.  The fact that many of these games seem to come with big heavy overwrought epic stories that make you feel like you’re playing through someone’s weekly visit with the psychiatrist don’t help much here either.

This said, If a game is engaging, I have no problem dumping a bunch of time into it (which is probably how I ended up dumping a far greater quantity of time into Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness on the PSP than I’d care to admit on a Blog that my mother might be reading.)  Since I tend to be, well, less than stellar when it comes to action games (another post for another time) my preferences these days tend heavily toward turn-based and puzzle style gameplay, which gives be a bit more time to think things over and react.  The tactical RPG genre is one that I haven’t explored much, but I found Disgaea to be something of a “perfect storm” combining elements that I enjoy.  If you just want to play through the main storyline, you should be able to do so by playing for roughly 30-40 hours with characters up around level 100-120 or so.  On the other hand, the game allows levelling characters up to level 9,999, then transmigrating (restarting them at level 1 with higher stats) and doing the whole thing over again.  There are bosses in the game with a base level of 3,000 or higher (you can increase the level of enemies by going through the Dark Assembly, a sort of “Parliament” in the game that can approve or reject various proposals put forth by the player) and plenty in between. 

Probably the greatest source of replay value in Disgaea comes in the form of the Item world, which allows you to go inside items to raise their stats by fighting through the hordes of demons that live inside.  This provides a virtually limitless number of procedurally generated levels to fight through, even though you’ll eventually reach a point where you begin to outlevel these (at least for lower level items) this provides a lot of replay value for the game, which accounts for the sheer quantity of time I’ve spent on it (although on the minus side, this means if you get enough into the game, you’re probably going to seriously outlevel the final boss by the time you get there, completely trivializing the encounter.)    Combine this with a relatively light story that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you have a game that is compelling enough to keep me playing it (although I’m sure the exploding penguins don’t hurt either.)

All things considered, do we even really need big 100+ hour games?  If people can figure out how to make the entire experience enjoyable for a significant majority of the people who are going to play the game, then go for it.  The problem is that I’m pretty sure that my definition of “enjoyable” on that type of game is going to expire long before it does for most of the mainstream audience.  Then again, I’m pretty sure I’m a bit of a game snob anyway (more on that subject will be coming up here eventually.)

I think someone at the supermarket was having some math issues when they came up with this one:

So let me get this straight…  The green bell peppers are 2 for a dollar with the “Sell your Soul and Save” card, and $2.50 for two without it, but somehow you end up saving $4.00 on the whole deal?  I wish my bank account worked like that.  Maybe if I worked for the government…

Oh, and by the way, welcome to the people who somehow seem to be ending up over here (specifically, over at my Totem Lake Mall post) from Metafilter, by way of deadmalls.com.  What would you call that, a meta-metalanche or something like that?