Update: This story has been updated since it was originally posted. See below for new information.

Counterbalance park, at the corner of Queen Anne Ave and Roy St in Uptown, was graffitied early this morning, covering both the south and west facing walls of the “urban oasis” in red spray paint and the letters “BTM” and “3AK.”

By 10 a.m. Seattle Police Department officers and Parks and Recreation representatives were on the scene. According to officer C.J. Lang, they believe the vandalism happened after 3 a.m. this morning.

Though the actual park is city property, Lang said, the walls belong to the condominium bordering the park. According to a parks department representative, the condominium has agreed to take care of the damage.

As for who is responsible, SPD is still investigating.

Several readers wrote in this morning disturbed by the vandalism.

“I’m so sorry to report that this morning on my walk to work I saw that someone has vandalized the uptown park at the corner of Roy and Queen Anne Avenue,” Sarah wrote. “It is such a shame that someone would ruin this community park with graffiti.”

(Thanks to tipsters Sarah, Cliff, Sean and Josh!)

Update 11:06 a..m.: The manager of The Willis condos bordering the north wall of the park and the Barclay Court business building to the east, Alex Braun, is working to remove the damage today. “I always try to get the tags down as soon as possible because that ruins their game,” he said.

Braun is pressure washing the first 11 feet of the walls, which have been sealed to keep out paint, this morning. Fortunately, he said, the paint is relatively light and hasn’t had a chance to set into the concrete yet due to the cold temperatures. After brushing over a portion of the tag, some of the red paint loosened, a good sign that they will be able to restore the wall quickly. If that doesn’t work, they’ll repaint over it, he said.

As for the unsealed concrete above the 11-foot mark, Braun said he’s called in a graffiti removal specialist who will be coming to the park either late this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning.

“We only sealed it to 11 feet because we thought that was going to be enough,” Braun said. “These taggers usually don’t go around with ladders. They usually repel down over freeways, but that’s hard to do here…concrete is like a sponge–it just sucks it up. If you try to remove it without knowing what you’re doing, you could make it permanent.”

Braun says this is the second largest tag he’s seen in the park since he began managing both bordering buildings 11 years ago – the largest one happened back in 2000. He said the park walls have been targeted before, most recently two months ago, but the tags are usually small and he has been able to remove them before many notice, something he believes discourages repeat offenders.

“They spend a lot of time and effort to make these tags, so if you take them off, they may come back a second time, but they rarely come back a third,” he said.

As for the taggers, Braun said no one in the condos overlooking the park or in the surrounding businesses saw anything. “From 2 until 4 a.m. this is like a dead zone. My condo faces Queen Anne and I can count the cars that go by here between 2 and 4 on one hand.”

Though, Braun said he did remember seeing a similar tag on northbound I-5 just before the convention center just yesterday. “The paint was dripping down…it looked just like this,” he said.

The Queen Anne Community Council has started a new blog to serve as a launching point for community members interested in staying up to speed on council happenings. Items that will be published on the blog include a calendar of meetings for QACC and its eight sub-committees (Land Use Review, Planning, Transportation, Parks, District Council, NAC, Social Issues and Memorials), minutes from all past meetings (QACC and committee), and links to other Queen Anne organizations. The first post went up yesterday. The council member behind the blog, Michael Lapin, encourages community members interested in more in depth information on specific topics to email him at QueenAnneCC@gmail.com so that he may post updates on the blog.

Mayor McGinn is searching for a new chief of police and has asked the public to help develop the selection criteria. Former Chief Gil Kerlikowske left the Seattle Police Department upon his appointment as the nation’s drug czar by President Obama last year. The Seattle Police Chief Search Committee, a 26-member citizen panel, has been tasked with the job of narrowing the pool of potentials down to three finalists to recommend to the mayor in May, in the hopes of making a final selection by June.

The search committee is posing the following questions to community members:

• What qualities are you looking for in a new Police Chief?
• What is the most important public safety issue in Seattle?
• What does the Seattle Police Department do well?
• What changes would you like to see?

To encourage community input the city has set up three ways for those interested to respond – by attending one of three upcoming public forums, visiting the new website or dialing into a dedicated phone line set up for the search.

The first meeting will he held tomorrow, Wednesday, February 10 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Northgate Community Center, located at 10510 5th Ave NE. The first two hours of the meeting has been allotted for public comment, with the final hour reserved for the search committee “to begin developing competitive selection process and assessment criteria.”

The next two meetings have been set for 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17 (at Franklin High School, located at 3013 Mount Baker S.) and Friday, February 26 (at New Holly Gathering Center, located 7054 32nd Ave. S.) Language interpreters will be available at the third and final meeting in the following languages: Tagalog, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Amharic, Oromiffa, Khmer (Cambodian), Somali, and Tigrinya.

For more information, see the search committee website. Download the meetings flyer here (.pdf). Can’t make it to a meeting? Answer the committee’s four questions online or over the phone by calling 206-684-CITY (206-684-2489).

It seems like every local eatery is hopping on the happy hour bandwagon these days, including two new neighborhood additions to the daily food and drink discount calendar – the Queen Anne location of Via Tribunali and the brand new emmer&rye.

Today Via Tribunali announced their new happy hour times, from 10 p.m. to closing (11 p.m.) daily. The menu includes $5 pizzas, $3 Italian beer and $8 half liters of wine. emmer&rye will be running their happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. daily. No word yet on what their discounted food and drink menu looks like.

Check out more neighborhood happy hour news here and here.

Before joining their friends and family to watch the Superbowl on Sunday, Queen Anne parents, teachers and students volunteered their time running the Help for Haiti Rummage Sale, raising just shy of $20,000 for post-earthquake aide.

This is the second time Coe Elementary, John Hay and McClure Middle School have gotten together to run a major sale event for charity. The three schools first teamed up in 2005, just after the tsunami, and successfully raised $10,000. When the earthquake hit Haiti, the organizers decided to run the event again. This time they raised $19,200.

“The same group all came together and decided to do it again,” said organizers and former John Hay parent Mimi Gan. Their goal was to beat their previous record. “We’ve almost doubled it!” she said.

As for the sale itself, items varied from used toys and clothes, to housewares, baked goods (the in-house bake sale raised $755 alone) and even some last-minute surprise donations, including a car! According to Gan, the principal of Coe Elementary, Mr. Elliott, drove his car to the rummage sale and began taking bids, eventually selling it for $350.

“I don’t know how old it was,” Gan said. “He was very honest about it – there were some things wrong with it. But it sold!”

(This is Mr. Elliott’s fifth and last year at Coe. He will be moving to the new Old Hay, Queen Anne Elementary for the 2010-2011 school year).

Volunteers said the rummage sale stayed relatively busy from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., when the crowds were taken over by football frenzy.

“We had a steady flow of people most of the day. At the end, we did a Craig’s list blast to get rid of as much as we could. We advertised $5 for what you could take out,” said fellow parent and volunteer Stacy Lawson. As for the results, “We were ecstatic,” she said.

“It was great fun,” Gan said. “It was a great community builder and people were so generous.”

According to Gan the money will be dispersed evenly between three aid organizations, the American Red Cross, Partners in Health and Project Hope.

(Thanks to Eileen Nishi for the pictures!)

It’s a little harder to remember when Election Day is now, since King County voters no longer go to an actual polling place, instead voting by mail. So here’s a little reminder: Ballots must be postmarked by tomorrow, Tuesday, February 9 in order to count.

And King County has removed all but two of its drop boxes, so if you can’t make it to the post office by 5 p.m. Tuesday, you’ll have to drop it into a free drop box at the King County Administration Building, 500 Fourth Ave. in downtown Seattle, or at King County Elections Headquarters, 9010 East Marginal Way S. in Tukwila.

You can also drop it off at one of King County’s three accessible voting centers, including one at Seattle’s Union Station 401 S. Jackson St., until 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

On the ballot in Seattle are two Seattle Public School measures to renew existing Operating and Capital levies.

Last month community members gathered to tell FOLKpark what they wanted out of the Lower Kinnear Park enhancement. The developers took notes on your suggestions, but before presenting a draft plan at the next public meeting at the end of the month, there will be another opportunity to discuss the future of the park and share your opinions.

FOLKpark, along with urban advocacy group GreatCity.org, will be hosting a free brown bag discussion this Thursday, February 11 from noon to 1:30 p.m. at architecture and urban design firm GGLO, located at 1301 1st Ave.

Here’s what FOLKpark had to say:

More than a century ago, the Olmstead brothers developed the “Emerald Necklace” plan – a set of paths and vantage points creating a sense of continuity throughout downtown Seattle.  Imagine a looping urban trail that includes a breath of fresh air in Myrtle Edwards Park, art in the Sculpture Park, breakfast spots in Belltown, the Seattle Center, coffee spots in lower Queen Anne, and tennis or picnic in lower Kinnear Park. An entire day of activities, highlighting Seattle’s finest, all in one easy stroll. The hidden and overgrown lower Kinnear Park link is a missing gem in this plan.

Community members and urban designers are invited to talk about how “completing this missing link in an urban loop that dissolves the boundaries between the Waterfront, Belltown, South Lake Union, and Queen Anne.” There’s no need to RSVP – just show up and share your thoughts.

Dean Koontz from HBB Landscape Architects (the firm handling the development of Lower Kinnear Park), Alan Hart of VIA Architecture and Debi Frausto from FOLKpark will be leading the discussion, looking for ways to create an Uptown Loop that “can strengthen pedestrian accessibility and secure the relationship between urban forests, walkable city streets, community amenities, residential living, and waterfront vistas.”

For more information, visit FOLKpark’s website. Read up on past meeting progress here and here. HBB Landscape Architects will be presenting the draft plan for the park at the next public meeting on Thursday, February 25 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Bayview Retirement Community, located at 11 W. Aloha St,

Have some used books looking for a good home? Why not donate them to students in the neighborhood? McClure Middle School, located at 1915 1st Ave W at the top of the hill, is hosting a used book drive through the end of this week. Books for donation can be dropped off in the marked bin at the front of McClure through this Friday, February 12.

Looking for some fun things to do this weekend in the neighborhood? We’ve got tons of ideas!

Friday, February 5

• Hear Massy Ferguson live at the Streamline Tavern, located at 121 W Mercer, at 9 p.m.
• Catch Secondhand Sunday, Tyler Morgan and Give it to me Rusty at El Diablo. The show starts at 8 p.m.

Saturday, February 6 – Neighbor Appreciation Day!

• Tour Fire Station 20 & meet the firefighters from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. as part of Neighbor Appreciation Day! Details here.
• Clean up Uptown from 9 a.m. to noon as part of Neighbor Appreciation Day. Meet at Counterbalance Park. Tools & refreshments provided. Details here.
• Family yoga class at Yogalife benefiting “Stand with Haiti” from 1 to 2 p.m. Details here.
• Hear Nick Lowrey at El Diablo at 8 p.m.

Sunday, February 7

• The Help for Haiti Rummage Sale, run by Coe Elementary, John Hay and McClure Middle School, is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Coe gym (located at located at 2424 7th Ave W). For details on how to get involved or make a donation, click here.
• Superbowl party & potluck at the Streamline at 3:30 p.m. Food is being served at halftime. You can sign up for the potluck with the bartender.

Don’t forget to check out the Seattle skyline on Friday & Saturday nights (hint: look for the Pacific Science Center’s red arches!)

One last reminder: Metro bus schedules & bike policy will change as of Saturday, February 6. Details here.

Looking for some casual, live, and best of all free, music tonight? Head over to the Streamline Tavern (121 W Mercer) for their slightly overdue grand reopening and celebration of their new liquor license.

Massy Ferguson will be playing live at the Lower Queen Anne tavern at 9 p.m. tonight. An extra bonus for Streamline regulars – apparently they have a song named after the bar!

For those looking for a laid back place to enjoy a little football this weekend, the Streamline will also be hosting a Superbowl party at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 7. The tavern, which prides itself in being a home away from home for its many regulars, will be doing their “famous potluck”, to be served at halftime (they’ve been known to do potlucks for Thanksgiving and Christmas too!) Whether you’re rooting for the Colts or the Saints, you can definitely share in the bounty. You can sign up for the potluck with the bartender.

Happy grand opening Streamline, and happy Superbowl Sunday Queen Anne!

Yogalife‘s Queen Anne location is offering a class from 1 to 2 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, February 6 benefiting “Stand With Haiti”, a project of Partners In Health, an organization that has been working to improve health care in Haiti for over 20 years. Tomorrow’s class will be donation-only, and open to individuals and families with members of all ages. Read more about Liv’s family yoga classes here. For more information, call (206) 283-9642.

As of tomorrow, Saturday, February 6, Metro will be making a number of changes to citywide bus routes and its bike policy. The affected routes in Queen Anne include (from Metro website):

• 1 – On evenings and Sunday, all trips that have been shuttles between 10th Ave W & W Fulton St and 1st Ave N & N Republican St will begin operating the regular route to and from downtown Seattle. Also, the number of trips operating between Seattle Center West and downtown Seattle will increase on evenings and Sunday. The number of trips serving Kinnear will remain unchanged.
• 2 – Two southbound express trips from 7th Ave W & W Raye St at 6:07 and 6:43 am will be discontinued. The southbound express trip from Queen Anne Ave N & W Mercer St at 7:36 am will also be discontinued. On Sunday, early morning and late evening service frequencies will be reduced from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.
• 3/4/13 – The northbound Route 4 shuttle trip from 25th Ave S & S Walker St to 23rd Ave & E Jefferson St at 11:44 pm weekdays will be discontinued. On Sunday, early morning and late evening service frequencies on routes 3, 4 and 13 will be reduced from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.
• 8 – Service will improve to every 15 minutes weekdays from about 4:45 am to 7:30 pm. On Saturday, service will improve to every 15 minutes from about 8 am to 7 pm.
• 16 – In early February, several Route 16 bus stops will be closed to improve schedule reliability. Visit Metro Online or refer to the posted Rider Alert at your bus stop for more details.
• 17 – On Sunday, service frequency before about 9 am and after 7 pm will be reduced from 30 minutes to 60 minutes.
• 26 – The southbound trip to downtown Seattle from Ravenna Blvd & Woodlawn Ave N at 4:02 pm will leave at 4:12 pm.
• 26, 28 – On Saturday and Sunday, some late evening trips will be adjusted or canceled, reducing frequency from 30 minutes to 60 minutes during some periods.
• 33 – On Sunday, service frequency will be reduced from 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

If you’d like to check the changes to a specific route, new timetables were just posted today. To see the full list of route changes citywide, check the Metro website.

As of tomorrow, Metro will also be easing its bike rules, allowing cyclists to load and unload their bikes at any downtown bus stop, and all buses for that matter, at any time. This decision came in response “increased demand for linking bike and bus trips,” according to Metro, who will be conducting a safety and operations evaluation over the one-year demonstration project before making it permanent. Up until this point cyclists were restricted from loading bikes onto Metro buses downtown during peak hours.

To ensure the success of the new policy, Metro reminds bicyclists to:

• Always alert the bus driver prior to loading or unloading a bike
• Make sure the driver acknowledges you before stepping in front of a bus
• Be aware of traffic around you when loading and unloading your bike
• Use caution in stepping up and down from high curbs

For more information on taking bikes on Metro buses, click here.

And lastly, Metro has also extended its no-fee ORCA card promotion through the end of the month due to popular demand. Anyone who wants to get an ORCA card for free should do so by Sunday, February 28. As of Monday, March 1, the $5 fee for the card will be reinstated.

Chocolopolis is teaming up with Woodinville’s Chateau Ste. Michelle again tomorrow, Saturday, February 6 to pair five in-house chocolates with five Chateau wines.

The event is from 2 to 4 p.m. tomorrow at Chateau Ste. Michelle, located at 14111 NE 145th Street in Woodinville. The cost $30 for the public and $25 for VRC members. The cost includes a logo glass and a 20 percent discount on the chocolates and wines tasted at the event. For more information, contact  Chateau Ste. Michelle.

Every year Seattle magazine published the city’s “best of” businesses for the previous year based on reader votes. This year several Queen Anne businesses and organizations topped the magazine’s ‘Reader’s Choice’ list. Congratulations to the following neighborhood businesses:

• Best Theater Company – Teatro ZinZanni (located at 222 Mercer St.)
• Best Performing Arts Venue – Marion Oliver McCaw Hall at Seattle Center (305 Harrison St.
• Best Hairstylist – Jonathan Flint at Salon Joseph (600 W McGraw St.)
• Best Grocery Store – Metropolitan Market (Two locations in QA: 1908 Queen Anne Ave N. & 100 Mercer St.)
• Best Doggy Day Care – Downtown Dog Lounge (1405 Elliott Ave W)
• Best Pizza Place – Zeeks Pizza (41 Dravus St. near SPU)

Not too far away, Ballard raked in quite a few best of awards, including Best New Restaurant, Best Hospital, Best Neighborhood Farmers’ Market and Best Neighborhood Blog (congrats to sister-site MyBallard!) to name a few. Check out Ballard’s best of awards here.

Don’t forget, BECU is going to be giving away $2,000 in $1 bills both today and tomorrow in Queen Anne as part of their new grand opening promotion. At 10:30 a.m. today, representatives will be walking around Lower Queen Anne, between the new branch at 29 W Mercer St and Metropolitan Market, handing out cold hard cash until they run out. Tomorrow, Saturday, February 6, they’ll venture to the top of the hill near the closed-down Blockbuster to hand out another $2,000 in singles starting at 9:30 a.m. Though it’s just a buck per person, $1 can buy a chocolate bar, half a bus ticket, or a fifth of the happy hour specials at many of Queen Anne’s local eateries. Not bad!

Tonight the arches at the Pacific Science Center will be going red in commemoration with the American Heart Association’s “Go Red for Women” program, a campaign to increase awareness and lessen the risk of heart disease, the number one killer among women.

(Photo courtesy of Andrew Abernathy via Flickr).

For the next three days the Pacific Science Center, along with 200 other building across the country, will “Go Red” to stand in solidarity with women and the fight against heart disease.

Pacific Science Center is proud to bridge the gap between science and health and engage awareness by lighting our arches red!

Look to the Queen Anne skyline as the sun goes down – the arches will turn red at dusk starting tonight, Thursday, February 4 through Saturday, February 6.

Want to get involved in the battle against heart disease? Celebrate National Wear Red Day tomorrow, Friday, February 5, and join hundreds of thousands of other people across the country in wearing red – whether it’s your favorite red T-shirt, red handbag, a red tie, red socks or red lipstick!

New “seasonally inspired, locally derived” restaurant emmer&rye, after having a “successful opening weekend” last week, according to chef Seth Caswell, will start serving weekend breakfast from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, beginning this week.

A glimpse at the menu includes farro fries, poached egg, wild mushrooms with hollandaise, emmer&rye biscuits, house-made sausage gravy, roasted potatoes and for those with a sweet tooth, vanilla rum french toast with strawberry compote.

emmer&rye will also be introducing a happy hour menu soon. They haven’t finalized the selection yet, but the times will from 4 to 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. to midnight daily.

Read about check Caswell’s vision for the restaurant here.

It’s Free Museum Day in Seattle today, a time once a month where our local arts organizations give free admission to their exhibits. Right here in Queen Anne, both EMP and the Science Fiction Museum will be opening their doors free of charge from 5 to 8 p.m. tonight, Thursday, February 4. If you can’t make it today, don’t worry! They do this on the first Thursday of every month! If you’re venturing off the hill, check out this list of other Seattle museums and galleries (including the Seattle Art Museum!) you can get into for free today.

SeattleCrime.com is reporting a strange incident last month, just released in an SPD report. Apparently a woman told police she was attacked by a man inside his Interbay apartment, in the 3800 block of 14th Ave W, on January 27 after she refused to sleep with him. According to SeattleCrime.com, the police report noted that the woman had been recently arrested for prostitution and is currently homeless. The records state that the woman went with the man to a party at his apartment that evening, later sleeping on his couch. She told police that the man, described as a white male wearing an eye patch, woke her in the during the night and put “his thing in [her] face”, kicking and punching her when she “wouldn’t put out.” Police took the woman’s report and attempted to contact the man at his apartment, but were unable to find him.