Queen Anne-ers will have two chances this weekend to enjoy the neighborhood’s unique arts and culinary scenes, all while supporting local organizations.

Swing by Counterbalance Park in Lower Queen Anne for the 11th Annual Uptown Stroll: A Festival of Art in Action this Saturday, August 27, and catch local artists creating art work–everything from paintings, pottery and jewelry, to music, poetry and spoken word–right there on the spot from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

After you’ve seen all the art in action you can take, mosey on up to the 2nd annual Happy Hour on the Hill, co-sponsored by FOLKpark and the Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce, from 4 to 7 p.m.

A $15 ticket will get you specials at 14 of Queen Anne’s favorite spots for a bite, a cup of coffee, or a sweet snack. Here’s a look at which merchants are participating and what they’ll be offering:

Bricco della Regina Anna – $3 off all wines by the glass & $2 Happy Hour bruchettas
Charley & May – FREE glass of May’s Spirited Summer Ice Tea plus 15% of store merchandise
Chocolopolis – $1 House truffles (limit 2) & 50% cup of drinking chocolate
Eat Local – Buy one get one FREE on featured wines; plus Dinner for Two: 2-serving entrée and bottle of featured wine for $24.98
Emmer and Rye – $5 Rye Manhattan
Homegrown Sustainable Sandwich Shop – $3 local microbrews
La Luna – 2 tacos for $5 (Al Pastor, Chicken Adobo or Truck); $3 Corona; $2.50 Pacifico
Metropolitan Market (Uptown only) – buy one, get one FREE gelato scoops
Paragon – $6 martinis & $6 appetizers
Queen Anne Dispatch – Buy 2 Hanky Panky and get 1 FREE
Top Pot Donuts – FREE donut with purchase of coffee beverage
T.S. McHugh’s – $2 Miller Lite & $2.50 Mac and Jack’s
Twirl Café – FREE Open Play, $1 off Beer and $2 off wine
Zaw Pizza – $3 off Signature pizzas

Tickets can be purchased at: Charlie + May, Chocolopolis, Eat Local, Homegrown, Queen Anne Dispatch, the Thursday Queen Anne Farmers Market, FOLKpark’s table at Metropolitan Market, and FOLKpark’s table at the Uptown Stroll. Proceeds will go toward helping FOLKpark reach its Department of Neighborhoods Matching Fund requirement. The Uptown Stroll is free.

For more information on FOLKpark at its work to revitalize Lower Kinnear Park, see our past coverage and the FOLKpark website.

Local photographer Chelsea Nesvig snapped these photos from the National Night Out block party at Counterbalance Park in Lower Queen Anne last night, and decided to share them with us.

The Uptown Alliance ran the party, revitalizing a number of popular events from years past all in the name of bringing neighbors together.

Many neighbors brought lightly used clothes to the annual free clothing exchange. All leftovers from the swap/trade event will be donated to local shelters.

Block partiers also indulged in another popular returning event – the “Bite of Uptown,” which provided free food samples from Lower Queen Anne restaurants.

The Counterbalance wishing wall gave neighbors an opportunity to share their hopes and dreams for Lower Queen Anne with each other and local organizations and non-profits.

All in all it was a great time with fun, games and community togetherness.

Check out more pics from Night Out at Counterbalance Park here. If you’d like to share pictures from your Night Out block party, email tips@queenanneview.com or share a link to your pictures online in the comments below.

Tonight is the annual Night Out Against Crime, when neighbors across the country gather in block parties to heighten awareness for crime prevention.

View Night Out Against Crime 2011 in Queen Anne in a larger map

There are a number of block parties planned here in Queen Anne. We’ve put together a map of neighborhood gatherings. Let us know in comments below if your block is holding a get together–please be sure to include cross streets. Or you can email us at tips@queenanneview.com, or submit your block party directly to the Night Out Against Crime 2011 in Queen Anne map.

With national Night Out just around the corner, its time to start planning for your own block party, or finding a nearby event to attend. Lower Queen Anne will be celebrating neighborly love at its own Neighborhood Night Out event at Counterbalance Park on Tuesday, August 2, from 5 to 8 p.m.

The Uptown Alliance is hosting the event. They’ll be snacks from nearby eateries, activities, clothing and food drives, and everything else you need to get to know your neighbors on a sunny (hopefully) August evening. From the Uptown Alliance:

This nationwide free event invites neighbors to meet in parks and on closed streets. A popular activity from the 2009 event, free “Bite of Uptown” food samples from local restaurants will be served on the hour.

Non-perishable food donations are requested for Uptown’s local food banks. The free clothing exchange is also returning. Residents bring clean, lightly used clothes and accessories to swap/trade. If you can use it, take it. No one is required to bring something or to take something. Remainders will be donated to local shelters. Board and card games plus storytelling will be available. Information tables from local organizations are included.

If you’d like to volunteer or lead an activity at Queen Anne’s Neighborhood Night Out, or just get more information, please leave a message for the Uptown Alliance at 206-499-2795.

Update 6:30 p.m.: SPD’s bomb squad detonated the suspicious package near Counterbalance Park, at Queen Anne Ave N and W Olympic, at approximately 6:15 p.m. this evening. The park itself was cleared of officials by 6:25, though several police vehicles are still stationed nearby, along W Olympic in Lower Queen Anne.

Original: Seattle police are investigating a suspicious package at Counterbalance Park, at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and W Roy Street, slowing traffic and pedestrians on several streets in Lower Queen Anne. From KIRO7:

No evacuations have been ordered and no streets have been closed, police said. The package is out in the open, under a tree.

According to tips from Queen Anne View Twitter followers, SPD blocked off the park at around 5 p.m. Tuesday. At around 5:30 one follower wrote:

Police tape blocking the stairs up from 1st Ave W and Roy st in Queen Anne. 2 cop cars but no officers in sight.

We’re on our way to the scene now, and will update you as soon as we have more information.

The Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce‘s Roast Toasty Holiday Celebration is happening today, Friday, December 10 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Counterbalance Park, located at the corner of Queen Anne Ave. N. and Roy Street.

The free event, sponsored by Vulcan Inc., is a chance for community members to meet, mingle, and gather around the warmth of a holiday bonfire. There will be s’mores, cookies, hot chocolate, hot apple cider and coffee, generously donated by Starbucks and Metropolitan Market. There will also be musical entertainment by Paul Fedorowicz.

The city is sprucing up Counterbalance Park (no pun intended).

Over the last week nine new trees have appeared at the gravel and concrete laden ‘urban park,’ most of which have yet to be planted.

The new trees make me wonder if we should trade in some of that gravel for fresh grass? What do you think?

If you happen to walk by Counterbalance Park around lunchtime this week, you may notice an addition to the concrete and umbrella-filled scenery—a little live music.

Part of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department’s Busker Program, the city has hired local musicians to bring live tunes to parks in downtown and surrounding areas during the summer.

Lunchtime concerts will be at our own Counterbalance Park (at Queen Anne Ave N and Roy, across from the Uptown Caffe Ladro) from noon to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for the rest of the summer.

Last week 19-year-old Reilly Hutchins brought his own equipment to the park, where he sang classic covers, including a handful of Beatles songs.

The buskers change from day to day, so keep an eye out, and if the weather permits, find a nice place to stop off for lunch or a quick break to enjoy the music. Wondering well else buskers are playing this summer? Follow the SeattleBuskers Twitter feed.

[Editor’s note: For the sake of reporting on graffiti in Queen Anne we have included some photos of vandalism in the neighborhood. However, in an effort to not endorse or encourage vandalism, we have chosen photos that are blurred or show only part of a tag).

Two months ago Queen Anne residents woke up to find graffiti 15 feet tall sprawled across both walls of Counterbalance Park, at the corner of Queen Anne Ave N and Roy St. The next day Alex Braun, the manager of both buildings adjacent to the park’s walls–The Willis condominiums and the Barclay Court retail building–set to work to wash the paint away.

The first eleven feet of the wall had been sealed, and so the paint easily lifted off the concrete. However, the concrete above the 11-foot mark was unprotected, causing the paint to soak in. It took several weeks before the clean-up was complete and the tag entirely removed.

Although graffiti in any urban environment is not uncommon, the size and nature of this particular incident sparked discussion in the Queen Anne community. Some residents claimed vandalism had increased in recent years, while others said graffiti always had been and always would be part of the neighborhood landscape.

Braun has personally cleaned graffiti off the walls and buildings near Counterbalance Park “countless times” in the 11 years he’s been living and working next to this Lower Queen Anne corner. “It’s always been the same at my building,” he said.

“Last week alone I had–and you have to understand that I also clean up the traffic signs and parking signs that are right outside my building–so those included, last Tuesday I had two big graffities on the building–big like three feet long and a foot wide–and two on signs. So that’s a total of four on Tuesday. And then on Friday morning I had three more, so that’s seven just last week,” he said.

According to Braun, this incident was the second largest he’d ever encountered. The first was back in the early 2000s, and resembled a similar pattern, however this time the lettering was eight feet high and spanned across the entirety of just one of the walls. And though tags of this kind are infrequent, he says in his experience graffiti around the neighborhood has always been prevalent.

“Over the years, quite frankly I’ve lost track of it,” he said. “I only keep track of the really big ones.”

We called Seattle Public Utilities, the department responsible for cleaning up vandalism on public property, to find out if the number of reported incidences had in fact gone up in recent years. After weeks of back and forth, we discovered that SPU does not keep records of the numbers of incidences reported at a given address, in a specific neighborhood or citywide.

“We can give you the last date a report was called in at a specific address,” a SPU representative said. “But that’s it.”

The frequency of incidents citywide means SPU resources are often spread thin, and it is frequently left to the residents–like Braun–to decide how to handle vandalism on both public and private property. Two weekends ago the Uptown Alliance sponsored a graffiti clean-up at Counterbalance Park. Volunteers spent the day painting the top half of the wall, above the 11-foot mark, with primer and another coat of paint to better protect it against a repeat attack.

“The Parks Department could not spend the money to have the wall repainted. So the Parks Department provided us with paint and primer, and then the Uptown Alliance organized a community effort to have those walls painted from the 11-feet up to the very top,” Braun said.

Still, many in the neighborhood disagree over what the best course of action should be. Some suggest the city should hire artists to paint murals over large public walls to deter tagging.

“Personally I think they should open up those walls and allow people to actually put up awesome art. When some of those graffiti guys get time they can make big intricate pieces that would look more unique and interesting than any other city park, especially at night when they were lit up by those lights,” reader Macrus wrote.

However these projects are often targets for even more vandalism, as was the mural at Dexter underpass last year.

“I would not even dignify that aberration by calling it a tag or it’s creator a tagger. He is a petty vandal, through and through,” Rodstewart wrote of the Counterbalance graffiti. “Let’s not kid ourselves here. Real tagging requires planning, skill, technique, and patience.”

After the vandalism of Counterbalance Park, we decided to put the question of how to handle graffiti to the community. Here are some of the responses we got:

Nate wrote,

I frequently take my child to the various parks on top of Queen Anne and am a Queen Anne resident. The playground equipment is nearly always covered in graffiti, sometime vulgar. Stop signs, news paperboxes etc… often have graffiti on them as well. Something needs to be done to clean up the streets, remove this graffiti as soon as it appears and arrest those responsible. Seems we are tolerating it and should not be.

Carol E. wrote,

I am from Chicago, and when I moved to lower Queen Anne I was shocked at the amount of graffiti. In my Chicago neighborhood it gets removed ASAP. The Chicago city council outlawed the sale of spray paint within city limits, which I always thought was ridiculous since they could buy it in the suburbs. But maybe it did make a difference.

Amyalayne wrote,

How about increase funding to the Seattle PD so we can have more patrols in the area? I agree with Carol in that when I lived in CA, graffiti was removed right away and the city just doesn’t seem to care here. In a lot of cases the business owners should also be responsible for cleaning up or coordinating w/the city for removal too. The graffiti has been horrible in the three years I’ve been in lower QA. I think there also needs to be more street lights. There are many dark areas of lower QA (and upper for that matter) that just don’t make it that safe to walk around in anymore. Another idea would be to grow some ivy that covers those walls. If it’s happened once it will happen again I am sure.

Although Braun agrees that this will not be the last time graffiti is seen at Counterbalance Park, he still believes the best way to tackle the tags is to continue to clean or cover them as soon as possible.

“If they tag us again, which I know they will, we’ll just paint over it,” Braun said. “The best thing is to paint over it or remove it, and yes they will come back, but you know, they’re only going to come back two or three times and then that’s it. In my case, with my  building, I noticed that when I first started there we had a lot of graffiti from a lot of famous taggers. And I was right on top of it and just had it removed the day after, as soon as I was able to,”  Braun said.

And as summer approaches, Braun says vandalism will only increase with the warmer weather, when paint sticks more easily. “If you have a rainy cold day, there’s very few taggers out there because they know the paint doesn’t stick very well on a wet surface,” he said.

Still, in the hopes of deterring potential vandals, Braun advises community members continue to remove graffiti as quickly as possible.

“Yes they’re going to come back, but once they see that you’ve removed it, they realize that you’re on top of things and they’re not going to go there anymore because they know that you’ll just erase it–you make their soup sour, which is what they don’t like. It’s been working for me in my building, and I’m going to continue taking them off as soon as they come up,” he said.

A community group called “Neighbors Working Together for a Clean and Safe Queen Anne” has taken a Block Watch approach to deterring vandalism, posting fliers around the neighborhood warning that the area is patrolled by Graffiti Watch Volunteers.

To report vandalism to Seattle Public Utilities, call the graffiti line at 206-684-7587. Get tips on how to prevent and remove graffiti here.

Volunteers got together over the weekend at Counterbalance Park, at the corner of Queen Anne Ave N and Roy St, to work to better protect the park against vandalism.

Counterbalance Park was vandalized overnight back in February, when both concrete walls of the “urban park” were covered with red lettering almost 15 feet high. Alex Braun, the manager of The Willis condos that border the north wall of the park and the Barclay Court business building to the east, was able to remove the majority of the tags the next day.

However, because the park walls were only sealed up to 11 feet, it took another three weeks and a graffiti specialist to remove the final traces.

On Saturday morning a handful of volunteers brought paint, rollers, ladders and snacks to the park, where they painted the top half of both walls with a protective seal and then another coat of matching gray paint on top of that, in the hopes of protecting the park against future acts of vandalism.

Yesterday, Saturday, February 27, Parks and Recreation crews removed the last of the graffiti sprawled over the concrete walls at Counterbalance Park almost three weeks ago.

Reader Cliff Cooper sent in these photos. He wrote,

It looks as though the left side is completely clean, but there clearly having difficulty removing from the corrugated siding.

Through most of the graffiti is gone, there is still a faint indication of the paint on the metal siding. The majority of the tags were removed the day after the vandalism took place, however because the concrete walls were only sealed up to 11 feet high, it has taken this long to remove the remainder.

(Thanks to Cliff Cooper for the pictures and tip!)

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 Uptown Alliance’s long awaited Roasty Toasty (post) Holiday Celebration is happening tomorrow, Saturday, January 23 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Counterbalance Park (on the corner of Queen Anne Ave N and Roy St.), after being rescheduled last month due to the severely cold weather.

The festivities on the docket for the evening include live accordion music, guessing games, information tables for the Department of Neighborhoods and FOLKpark, two big barrel bond fires for making s’mores, and a light show – all the fixings needed to re-celebrate the holiday season. The group will also be collecting non-perishable food donations for the Feeding Program at Sacred Heart Church in Lower Queen Anne.

The Uptown Alliance has organized the event on virtually no budget so that neighbors in the Lower and Upper Queen Anne may have a venue to stop by and meet each other. The Uptown Alliance meets on the second Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. at the Department of Neighborhoods, located at 160 Roy St. To become a member all you have to do is attend a meeting. For more information, or to get involved, call (206) 733-9435. And if you’re in the neighborhood tomorrow evening, swing by the Roasty Toasty for some s’mores and a good time!

The ninth annual “Uptown Stroll: A Festival of Art in Action” is happening tomorrow, Saturday, August 28, at Counterbalance Park. The event will be going on all day – from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. – and will include around 50 local artists who will be creating artwork right there on the spot.

Many of the artists are returning participants, though quite a few are newcomers eager to join in the festival tradition. The event is free to the public, and viewers are encouraged to watch the artists at work, ask questions and engage in conversation.

Art ranges from paintings and pottery to jewelry making, puppeteering, balloon art, craft projects, and music and spoken word (to name just a few). Works created at the “Uptown Stroll” will be available for purchase during the event.

Counterbalance Park is located at the intersection of Roy Street and Queen Anne Ave. N. For more information call (206) 283-9047.