White Center Now: The blog about White Center

Check out the new logo at jubileedays.org – and they’ve even started a Twitter account.

Two more upcoming events to share with you!

Once again, it is time for the White Center for the Arts Open Studio Tour
This coming Saturday, May 16th, 2009 5 PM until 10 PM

Please join us as we present eight artists’ new work.
A wine and cheese event.

White Center for the Arts Building
9639 16th Ave SW
White Center, WA

206-306-6230 for additional information

www.whitecenterforthearts.org

And looking further down the road —

Evergreen High School’s Class of 79
30 year reunion
Saturday, August 8th, 7 pm
Rainier Golf and Country Club
$60 per person

RSVP by July 1st.
email: evergreenclassof79@yahoo.com for details.

If you haven’t already heard, we wanted to put in one more plug – partner site West Seattle Blog sponsors West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day the second Saturday of May, and TOMORROW is the big day, 9 am-3 pm, 180+ sales registered from all over West Seattle, including some close to White Center. You can download the map from this page, where you can also follow the link to a clickable online version.

White Center’s neighboring neighborhood to the north, Highland Park, is offering more chances to dance – here’s the scoop:

Come join our fun-loving, warm-hearted social dance community in Highland Park, West Seattle. We offer swing and waltz classes and will be starting a new 6-week class session on Tuesdays. This time we offer the following:

6 Tuesdays: May 12th – June 16th

6:30 – 7:30 — Beginning East Coast Swing: A great place to begin. Fun and easy, and no experience or partner required! As with all our beginning classes, when you finish you will have moves and confidence to go out dancing!

7:30 – 8:30 — Waltz 2 (Romantic Waltz): Taking beginning slow waltz and turning waltz and adding moves and confidence. Prerequisite: Waltz 1 or instructor permission.

8:30 – 9:30 — East Coast Swing 2 (Footwork, Styling & Charleston): More cool moves and fancy footwork (don’t worry, we’ll take it one step at a time!) and even some Charleston. A rollicking good time! Prerequisite: Swing 1 or instructor permission.

For all the information–including information on class discounts for new students–go to http://www.danceforjoy.biz/classes.html
or call 206-264-5646 or e-mail lilli@att.net to contact the instructor, Lilli Ann.

Trio Lucero Del Norte

Celebrate Cinco de Mayo at Cafe Rozella

Cafe Rozella will host a very special Cinco de Mayo celebration with the music of Trio Lucero del Norte, specializing in Son Huasteca.  The celebration begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5th.  Come listen to some authentic Mexican music tinged with an indigenous feel.

Huasteca Region

The region is composed of six Mexican states: Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Hidalgo, Puebla, and Veracruz.

The land known as la Huasteca derives its name from the people that inhabited the area at the time of the conquest, the Huaxtecos. La Huasteca is a multi state region focused at the mouth of the Pánuco River. The region is bounded to the north by the river Soto la Marina in Tamaulipas, to the south by the Cazones River in Veracruz, to the east by the Gulf of Mexico and to the west by the Sierra Madre Oriental crossing through the states of Hidalgo, Puebla and Querétaro in the west.

The distinctive feature of the huasteca region is the music, a style known as huapango or son Huasteco. The terms son huasteco and huapango can be used interchangeably to denote the music of the region, though huapango is the term most popularly used in Mexico.

The huapango is a style of music that is distinguished by the presence of the Trío Huasteco, and the use of the falsetto voice in singing. The Trío Huasteco is made up of three instruments (thus the term trio) – the European derived violin and two guitar variants of local origin – the large guitarra quinta or huapanguera and smaller jarana huasteca.

May 29th, (Friday) 6pm

Devil’s Dance Parade in White Center

followed by concert at Café Rozella

7pm

9434 Delridge Way SW

Seattle, WA 98106 (206) 763-5805

Cafe Rozella brings the hottest trend in Latin Music to White Center

Afro-Peruvian Dance and Music:  El Son De Los Diablos

NPR States:   “Afro-Peruvian music has complex, sensual rhythms. Its instrumentation is spare, originally just nylon-string guitar, bass and a wooden box called cajon. When it started getting outside attention in the mid-’90s, it felt new. The music’s lean architecture and introspective mood differentiated it from the likes of salsa and merengue.”

“Enslaved Africans had to make two long passages to reach Peru, first across the Atlantic, and then over the landmass of South America. The people of the so-called Black Pacific were so far removed from their African origins that the creators of Afro-Peruvian music couldn’t rely much on cultural memory. So they created instruments, rhythms and a compelling musical aesthetic that was largely a product of their imaginations. The pride of Afro-Peruvian music is the lando, an elegant dance with intertwined rhythms and a seductive undertow.”

El Son De Los Diablos will feature the musicians behind Grammy Award Winner Susana Baca.  Truly a unique experience of a hot new trend in Latin American Music.

From the Rat City Rollergirls‘ “Deadly Aim,” who we profiled recently at partner site West Seattle Blog (see the story here):

Just wanted to give you a heads up … RCRG will be in White Center Saturday from 11-2 for some street cleaning. The 2 mile stretch of SW 16th was adopted 5 years ago, and twice a year ever since we’ve headed down to give it some sprucing and have some fun.

After the cleanup, she adds, there’s an afterparty at Big Al’s.

This info was left as a comment on an old story about trying to keep Evergreen Pool open – so we wanted to republish it here:

April Pool’s Day
Saturday, April 25th from noon to 2:30 pm

This free, annual, family-friendly event promotes water safety & includes fun activities, demonstrations, & even canoe rides in the pool.

Stop by to find out more about saving this great asset of our community from the County’s Chopping Block.

It’s become a monthly tradition – and tonight’s your chance to check it out again: The White Center for the Arts open studio tour, 5-10 pm.

Got this note from a Seattle-based TV production company and thought we’d share (if we weren’t in media, we’d apply ourselves, as absolute experts on house-messiness):

Seattle’s Screaming Flea Productions is shooting an upcoming TV pilot in Seattle:

Do you have clothes from your laundry room, toys from your kids’ rooms, and odds and ends stored in your garage starting to spill out and invade your living spaces? Does your home need some major design updating?

We’re looking for couples to appear on a new design makeover show for a major cable network. This show focuses on couples whose homes are messy, cluttered and disorganized. Our team (an organizer, designer, and carpenter) will organize and redesign rooms in your home at no cost to the homeowner. You just have to be able to let go of the clutter and have a real desire to get organized!

We start shooting very soon.

Please send your story along with pictures of your mess and yourselves to:
makeovertvshow@gmail.com

Since we were at the Gathering of Neighbors at Chief Sealth High School all day (coverage on partner site West Seattle Blog), we only made it down to the festival in the final hour, but that was in time to catch some shots of music and dance – with the crowd having a great time right on into the final moments just before 5 pm:

Just a reminder that we’re now in the season where so many great events overlap, you wish you could be in two (or more) places at any one time.

ADDED SUNDAY: Thanks to Tim LaPlante for sharing more photos!

Though the event is in West Seattle, White Center’s part of it too. DNDA is presenting the Gathering of Neighbors/Biz Expo tomorrow (Saturday 4/4) with the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and tonight we have the full participant list: To see who’ll be there, click here – on behalf of White Center Now and partner site West Seattle Blog, we’ll be there along with more than 70 other local businesses and organizations, including, from White Center, WestSide Baby and the White Center Community Development Association, as well as the White Center-based YWCA Employment and Training Program. Come by and say hi, 11 am-3 pm tomorrow, Chief Sealth HS at Boren (5950 Delridge; here’s a map); one other note — if you’re in West Seattle and you’re thinking about joining in this year’s West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day (May 9), sign up at our table tomorrow — the first day of registration — and get a one-day-only discount on the signup fees (which pay for mapmaking, posters, other fun stuff that gets WSCGSD on the regional radar). See you tomorrow!

Thanks to Ron Angeles, Delridge Neighborhood Services Center coordinator for the city of Seattle, for circulating that flyer so we could share it with you here!

(photo added Saturday afternoon)
Noon-6 pm, old skating rink. More info here; our coverage of #1, with pix, is here.

Lots of great art in the studio rooms upstairs from the 16th SW entry to the old skating rink .. but this was our favorite … with an invitation to do your own creating.

March 28th is now set as the second round of Rat City Rummage in White Center’s old skating rink. First one last weekend was a blast – as we showed you here (and as you can tell from Dina Johnson‘s photos on the Highland Park Action Committee site). RCR’s website says vendor spots are still open, so you can e-mail at ratcityrummage@hotmail.com.

We just stopped by. Lots of vendors and shoppers. Amazing quirky stuff like an item we picked up – Hunter S. Thompson, stenciled onto an old vinyl disc (we looked at the back – Saturday Night Fever, the album – fitting in an odd way).

Adding a video interview with stencil artist Dave Ryan shortly. Rat City Rummage continues till 6 tonight in the old roller rink – you can enter from 16th SW. 11:35 AM UPDATE: Here’s that clip:

ADDED 9:53 PM: Thanks to Highland Park’s Dina Johnson for sharing this page full of photos of other artists and craftspeople who were on hand at Rat City Rummage.

It’s happening at the old roller rink – while the recent swap-meet attempt didn’t quite get off the ground, organizers say all the vendor spots are filled for today’s event, so there should be plenty to browse and buy: ratcityrummage.com

You heard about it here first, two and a half weeks ago – now the big night is here – the first White Center Open Studio Art Tour, 5-10 pm tonight: