Another Castle Arcade Edition is coming to 305 Pacific Avenue,
former home of Alchemy Tattoo & Gallery.
The Edmonds-based adult “barcade,” which started as a video
store in 2006, expanded to serve drinks to its gaming customers.
They’ll soon open similar barcades in Bellingham and Bremerton,
according to Jason Alloway Greye, the company’s district manager.
The expansion speaks to the state of the industry, he
said.
“Demand is growing exponentially,” he said.
Greye, who happens to be from Bremerton, pitched the idea to the
company to give downtown Bremerton a try. He sees a city that needs
more for younger people — those over 21 — to do. Plus, he figured
there’s plenty of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard workers nearby that
would want to give the place a try as well.
Like Quarters Arcade around the corner, there will be a mix of
old and new games. You’ll be able to play about a dozen
pinball machines and around 30 arcade games.
“We focus on classic and retro but not exclusively,”
Greye said.
Bremerton’s will be the only location with a full bar, he
added.
“Certainly marvelous,” “very fine,” and “awful nice,”
are how some of the first moviegoers at Bremerton’s Roxy Theater
described it to a film crew on opening night. Some of
you may recall this five minute video (above) from
my July tour of the Roxy. Now, at long last, it’s available for
posterity on YouTube.
It was a precarious journey. At some point, the original film —
whose creators are unknown — was transferred to VHS and then to
DVD. A huge thanks is due to the Kitsap County Historical Society
and Museum, who kept it for many years. Crystal Yingling, who is spearheading an effort to
save the Roxy and restore it to its former glory, got a copy.
And at last, we’re able to present it to you now.
The Roxy’s future is still far from certain but I do have a few
developments to tell you. First, Yingling is teaming up with the
nonprofit Downtown Bremerton Association in an effort to proceed
with further fundraising. The 660-seat theater is owned by an
Oregon investment firm.
It will likely take north of $1 million to fully restore the
theater, which has been on sale for $399,000.
In the meantime, please enjoy the film, from the May 31, 1941
opening of the theater. Playing first was “The Devil and Miss
Jones,” featuring Jean Arthur. And, as you may have already
seen, you can wax nostalgic right next door to the shuttered Fourth
Street Theater at the new Wobbly Hops Brewery, which opened earlier
this month.
If you have any idea who might have produced this video, we’d
like to give them credit. Please drop me a line at
jfarley@kitsapsun.com.
Roxy today, Roxy yesterday.
Photo by Meegan M. Reid.
Artists have frequently found inspiration inside
Bremerton’s Quonset hut, an iconic city dwelling near
Evergreen-Rotary Park.
Perhaps a baker will soon, too.
An accomplished pastry chef is rumored to be eyeing the
location, at 301 13th Street, according to the
Eater Seattle blog. His name is Matt Tinder, and his resume
includes stints at Michelin-starred locations including The
Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, California, and Coi in San
Francisco.
Tinder has a sister in Seattle,
the blog says, and has been looking for a bakery location.
Enter Bremerton. From the
piece:
“They ended up finding a space on 13th Street in Bremerton, near
the waterfront and across the street from Evergreen Rotary Park.
The “space” is actually a Quonset hut that Tinder and (his fiance
Kate) Giuggio will transform into their bakery, complete with
retail space too. They’ll start working on the space October 1,
with the aim of opening in February. Ideally they’ll have a “San
Francisco-inspired parklet” in front, as well as picnic space in
the back.
Tinder will mill his own grains on site, and he plans to use
entirely Washington ingredients. Expect breads, morning pastries
like croissants and brioches, and “hard-to-find, naturally-leavened
breads.” Much of the ingredients and offerings list is still
evolving, and Tinder will begin building partnerships once his feet
hit the ground in Bremerton.”
So, exciting! Here’s what I’ve been able to find out so far:
I caught up with Quonset hut owner Andrew Johnston, who I
interviewed a few months ago for
my story on the Quonset hut. Johnston said Tinder is a friend
and that he’d love a bakery in the space. But he stopped short of
making any confirmation that Tinder is a tenant, let alone that a
bakery would be opening in February there, as the blog reports.
I checked with the city’s Community Development Office, but
alas, no permits as yet.
And, of course, I knocked on the door of the hut. No luck
yet.
I did find Tinder on Twitter. I followed him, and he followed me back. Here’s
hoping I hear from him soon. As soon as I hear more, I will let you
know.
Muslims in Bremerton and Kitsap County have long
commuted to places of worship in Tacoma and other Puget Sound
communities. But a permanent home locally is now at
hand, with the
Islamic Center of Kitsap County‘s purchase of the old Kitsap
Bank building on Marine Drive.
The building, which had been on the market for $269,000,
sold in mid-August.
The Islamic Center made a video in July
asking for donations to its GoFundMe account, which
you can watch
here. The center has raised more than $14,000 for the mosque.
Its families have been working to convert the old bank into a
masjid, or place of worship.
“We the muslims of Kitsap County have been living in Bremerton,
WA for 20 years,” the GoFundMe page explains.
“There are about 10 muslim families living here currently and the
community is growing. With no masjid in the community, we currently
commute about 60 miles or more to the closest masjid for Friday
prayers and Ramadan.”
I was startled on my commute this morning to find
asphalt — yes asphalt — where concrete sidewalks should be on the
$3.5 million Washington Avenue project.
As you can see from the photo above, it basically looks like
there’s another street where
sidewalks should be. So what gives?
City officials said in an email earlier this week that yes,
asphalt will have to do on the eastern Washington Avenue sidewalk,
between Sixth and Fifth streets. The reason is that there’s a
proposed development, once called the “Towers
Project,” that the city believes will simply rip the street
open again when construction on it begins.
The reason for their confidence: the development,
begun by Absher Construction, paid upwards of $200,000 for the
city to bury power lines on Washington between Sixth and Fifth
streets. That suggests the project is not just one for the
community development department shelves but that they’re serious
about getting going.
Still, it looks odd, don’t you think?
Other project updates: On Monday, work will
shift to the western side of Washington Avenue. That means that
northbound traffic on Washington will take up the new lane on the
east side, with the western side closed down. There won’t be any
southbound traffic allowed on Washington, and the intersections at
Fifth and Sixth streets will be closed. Contractor RV Associates estimates it
will take seven to eight weeks to complete the western work.
The Towers project
rendering.
When completed in mid-October — that’s the hope anyway — the
project will have taken the road from four lanes to two, added
wider sidewalks, bike lanes, landscaping and decorative
lighting.
The project also includes the linking of the 9/11 Memorial park
with the wider Evergreen-Rotary Park. In mid-September, crews will
demolish the old end of Highland Avenue and a sewer pump house
there. They’ll plant grass, put in new pathways and create a new
viewing platform of the Port Washington Narrows. Personally, I am
really looking forward to seeing the new park, the design of which
you can see below.
The selection of bongs and
pipes at the newest pot store in Bremerton.
For most people, smoking pot would not
qualify as a homework assignment. But for staff at
Destination Highway
420, Bremerton’s
newest recreational marijuana shop, it’s a possible part of a
burgeoning quality control program that calls for rating and
reviewing different weed strands and types.
“We want to make sure we have the best quality
product around,” said Michelle Beardsley, the store’s operations
director and a welder at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
Bremerton’s newest
marijuana store, the first on the city’s east side, just got up
and running this week — pot in all forms is coming in from growers
all over the state — and has a grand opening slated for Saturday.
It has been opened by two of the four people who started the
county’s first pot store outside South Kitsap, Highway 420, on
Charleston Beach Road. In fact, Beardsley and co-owner Brian Rose
call it a “sister
store.”
But both say it will be different. Located on Hollis
Street, across from the Cloverleaf Sports Bar & Grill,
the 4,000 square-foot space was once a warehouse. It was last a
thrift store before Beardsley and Rose bought the property.
“It had a lot of junk in it, but the building’s in
great shape,” Beardsley said.
They painted it the building, rebuilt the inside to
give it an “industrial” look, stained the floors, and more. And
while the Bremerton area is now
home to three recreational pot stores, Rose is confident
they’ve found a niche on the East side.
“We’re the closest store in the county until you get
to Bainbridge Island,” said Rose, who worked for the school
district and various jobs before landing what he called his dream.
“We’re really excited to be able to service the north end.”
Their plans do not end at a pot shop, however. By the
holidays, they plan to open an “annex” on the site that will sell
store merchandise. And come springtime, they hope to open a glass
blowing studio that will attract not just those looking to make
their own pipes and bongs, but any kind of glassware.
The store is open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through
Thursdays; 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 1
p.m. Sunday.
The truth is that such stellar cartography has never
been done on this scale before. It’s truly a game-changer, Kahn
says.
“The answer to that question is that the sky’s a
really big place,” he quips.
And it needs a really big telescope to map it. For
example: The mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope is 2.1 meters
across. By contrast, the LSST’s
will be 8.4 meters.
Kahn, who is the director
of LSST and a Stanford University professor, is no stranger to
big projects, having worked on massive x-ray telescopes and
particle accelerators at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(SLAC).
But LSST is different in at least one regard: the
scientists building all of its parts are scattered throughout the
country.
“Most big projects are built by one team and are in
one place,” he said.
And despite a world with so much connectivity via the
Internet and video conferencing, there’s just no substitute for
face to face interaction. Kahn wants to ensure that the telescope
builders, camera constructors, data keepers and other scientists
don’t bifurcate into fiefdoms but that they’re all working toward
the same unified goal.
“We want LSST to not only be a great telescope and
great for science, but also to be a great team,” he said.
That’s where Bremerton comes in, the city Olympic
College Professor Bob Abel — also a part of LSST — was able to
convince his colleagues to come to for an “all hands on deck”
weeklong meeting.
This week has been productive in solving a
particularly thorny issue facing LSST: how best to map the cosmos.
Kahn refers to the “traveling
salesman” problem: what’s the route to take to make the most
sales and drive the least amount of miles possible?
For LSST, that means finding the most interesting
things to study through LSST’s lens in the 10 years they have to do
so. Even mathematicians have joined the project to help them attain
those efficiencies, using what’s known as “operations
research.”
Kahn says the LSST will focus on four main areas:
near Earth objects, to see what asteroids might imperil Earth; the
science of the Milky Way, to include a first ever 3-D map of it;
examining a changing sky, which includes supernovae and the like;
and potentially solve some fundamental mysteries, such as learning
more about dark energy.
But for the week in Bremerton, Kahn also wanted to
build camaraderie. Abel took the charge of bringing the scientists
in to the community: playing soccer each morning at Kiwanis Park
and hosting talks all week long at SEEFilm Cinemas and around
town.
Kahn has been amazed at the some 1,000 people who’ve
come out to hear from some of astronomy’s brightest minds. They’re
not just asking “surface questions” and show an understanding and
curiosity that’s impressed the director. He wonders if even his
hometown of Palo Alto would draw that kind of response.
“The thing that’s blown us away is the response from
the community,” he said. “In a town this size, that’s
phenomenal.”
Good things are happening in Anderson Cove. A
new park on the waterfront is slated to open in about a month.
Plus, a few new businesses, including an Irish pub and a brewery,
have come to 15th Street.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, I will lead my latest Story Walk through the
cove, starting at
Hi-Lo Cafe at 15th Street and Wycoff Avenue. We’ll hear from
the owners about how they’ve created one of the best breakfast and
lunch spots in all of Kitsap County.
Then, we’ll set off for an approximately 1/2 mile walk to
Bremerton’s newest park, named for Bremerton civil rights pioneers
James and Lillian Walker. The park, with an ampitheater-like
setting overlooking the Port Washington Narrows, will likely open
in September. We’ll get a sneak peak with help from Bremerton Parks
Preservation and Development Manager Colette Berna. The architect
of many of Bremerton’s redeveloped parks will take us through how
the less than 1-acre parcel came together, and how it demonstrates
the state’s newest methods to keep stormwater out of Puget
Sound.
We’ll return to 15th and Wycoff to conclude the walk (you can
also take a bus back for $2) and a stop at Bremerton’s newest
restaurant, Bualadh Bos,
for some food and good company. I am also hopeful we can speak with
the proprietors of soon-to-be opened Hale’s Ales brewery and
taproom, on the corner of 15th and Wycoff as well.
I hope you’ll join us for a walk through this changing
Bremerton neighborhood Saturday! Please RSVP here, and
here’s links to our previous walks.
The Nite Shift is no longer for
sale. It will be demolished in mere days.
Dale Sperling was one of more than a dozen people who
gave an earful to the Bremerton City Council last Wednesday
night. The 41-year Kitsap resident and longtime developer
praised what he called “one of the best physical settings in Puget
Sound,” with a “high value” workforce and a ferry to Seattle.
“So why is downtown Bremerton not taking off?” he asked the
Council.
Sperling’s now the owner of the old Nite Shift tavern, which
hasn’t been open for years. During an inspection inside a colleague
of his actually fell partially through the floor — hence his
reference to the epitome of blight.
The building, home to both the Nite Shift and Scotty’s taverns
in decades gone by, had been bought by the owners of the
Horse & Cow a few years ago. But Mike Looby and Larry Timby
have found success on the recently
brick-lined section of Fourth Street. In came Sperling, seeking
an opportunity in downtown Bremerton. The 1946-built tavern sold
for $250,000, according to the Kitsap County Assessor’s Office.
Sperling, once the president and CEO of Unico Properties, owner of around
15 million square feet of commercial real estate in the western
United States, says he’s “bullish” on Bremerton and Kitsap County.
More recently, he founded a company known as OneBuild, which manufactures
prefabricated modular units — “everything but the toilet paper,” he
told me — and then stacks them like legos into contemporary
apartments.
The bulldozers should get going at the site, 242 Burwell Street,
within days.
What will happen after demolition is still up in the air.
Sperling, who is working through the permitting process and has
presented plans to construct 30 units there, says there’s no
timetable for construction. He does not want to put the cart before
the horse, he told me.
If he goes forward with his plans, his project will join the
list of downtown apartment projects including The
606, a 71-unit venture being constructed by Lorax Partners down
the street, as well as
The Spyglass Hill apartments, an 80-unit apartment complex
overlooking the Manette Bridge. Other projects have been planned
near Evergreen Park and
on Washington Avenue as well. All told, Bremerton could have
hundreds more apartments in its downtown core in just a few
years.
Sperling is confident Bremerton will soon thrive. And he’d like
to be a part of that. He shakes his head when he sees surface
parking lots in downtown Bremerton.
“To think, the highest and best use is surface parking,” he told
the Council. “It’s a complete non-sequitur.”
That little blue house perched under the Manette Bridge
is soon to be demolished.
The Bremerton City Council recently approved purchasing the home
for $132,000, plus closing costs, and for the residence to be torn
down.
It’s one of the
few waterfront homes left. There was a day when the Bremerton
waterfront was filled with such beach houses. They’ve been slowly
disappearing over time. One particular day in 1990, eight of
them were condemned by the city after one collapsed.
The reason you also don’t see many today is because state
environmental regulations forbid building over Puget Sound. Only
one now remains habitable on the Bremerton waterfront,
which I wrote about last year.
The reason for the demolition this time around has to do with
the city’s sewer system.
As part of the
Washington Avenue project, an aging and problematic sewer line
along the beach — between the boardwalk and Manette Bridge — will
be closed down. Instead, sewer systems in houses along Washington
Avenue now have “grinder” pumps, which pull sewage up into lines
being constructed on Washington, rather than falling to the beach
line below.
To install a grinder pump to the little home at 646 Washington
would’ve cost around $40,000, Bremerton Public Works Director Chal
Martin told the City Council. And in buying the house, the city
will have a small slice of waterfront that could one day be
developed.
“It could be beach access in the future,” Martin said.
The other reason the city bought it: officials said the house
would give them something called “mitigation credits.” That’s a
fancy way of saying that in the future, if there are objections to
a city project for environmental reasons, the city could proceed
with the project anyway because it mitigated environmental problems
elsewhere.
Only Councilman Roy Runyon objected to the purchase, while the
other six on the Council approved it. Runyon said he did not
believe it was worth the city’s money.
UPDATE: Martin told me Friday that the home couldn’t be moved
because it just wasn’t “economically viable.” Also, the city has
condemned the yellow house that remains on the beach but there’s no
timetable yet for demolition. The other beach house — soon the lone
one left — will remain.
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