Dishing up Katrina, with Brownie for dessert

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Contributing Writer

Articles by Adam Hyla

City’s Sweeps Remove Campers’ Belongings, Leave Trash

by Adam Hyla | October 31st, 2007

“Proactive” approach to clearing out visibly homeless people

Doug McKeehen steps off the sidewalk and into the notched dirt steps of the path heading up Queen Anne Hill. We brush past the laurel; ivy fringes the mud beneath our feet. A right bend, then a left, and at the edge of a clearing not 50 feet from Aurora Avenue, we're standing outside the tarp-covered structure that is a person's only home.

Tree of Smoke

by Adam Hyla | October 31st, 2007

Book Review: Tree of Smoke By Denis Johnson

Tree of Smoke By Denis Johnson, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Hardcover, 614 pages, $27

A G-man on his first assignment stops in at a Catholic Church on a Philippine island. It is 1965, and the young spy is growing his hair out in emulation of his martyred hero, JFK. He still believes in America.

Change Agent Oct 3, 2007

by Adam Hyla | October 3rd, 2007

Presidential contestant Ron Paul got thunderous applause at a Republican presidential candidate's forum last week with the following statement: "We don't have to have more courts and more prisons, we need to repeal the whole War on Drugs."

The warm reaction, wouldn't have surprised legal consultant Jim Doherty, a former prosecutor and member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Day labor site targeted

by Adam Hyla | September 26th, 2007

The public discussion about CASA Latina’s future home got a little more heated this week, as a Washington D.C. legal group made known its desire to halt development of the publicly funded job and community center in the Central District.

Just Heard Sep 26, 2007

by Adam Hyla | September 26th, 2007

Boomtown: busted

Two years since it closed its Pioneer Square storefront restaurant, Boomtown Café is gone for good.

After a series of financial disappointments, treasurer David Hill says the board concluded that “This was a business model that’s not sustainable in Seattle at this time.”

“It was as simple as not being able to realize our fundraising goals,” says board vice-president Laura St. Germain.

Zoned Out

by Adam Hyla | September 26th, 2007

September 20 hearing brings out contradictory opinions on the proper uses of Ballard, Interbay, and SODO industrial areas

Doug Dixon had little reason to be happy when he arrived at City Hall for the evening meeting.

The shipyard that he manages needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in stormwater management and other upgrades. To pay for them, he mortgaged an employee parking lot the shipyard owns nearby. Banks had valued that land at $2.1 million. But if the City Council rezones industrial areas as Mayor Greg Nickels wishes, Dixon says the lot would be worth half that.

An Accident Waiting to Happen?

by Adam Hyla | September 12th, 2007

Despite Metro’s engineering changes, transit operators ask: Is the remodeled transit tunnel safe?

One of the advantages of driving a bus for a living, says Dee Wake- night, is that your supervisor isn't constantly looking over your shoulder.

But the open road is not entirely free; someone had to plot the lanes and pour the concrete. And the road and its rules are the subject of controversy between the Metro and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587, which represents Wakenight and 1,400 other drivers of Metro and Sound Transit buses.

Just Heard Sep 5, 2007

by Adam Hyla | September 5th, 2007

The littlest uninsured

A record 47 million Americans did not have health insurance last year, while the percentage of children without insurance rose for a second consecutive year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released at the end of August.

The census data showed that 8.7 million American children were uninsured last year — 1 million more than in 2004, according to the data.

Saving Seattle’s Industrial Areas

by Adam Hyla | September 5th, 2007

Ballard-Interbay and the Duwamish industrial centers should stay industrial, says a city report — except where Starbucks needs room to grow

What is the future of Seattle's industry? Warren Aakervik, Jr., wants to know.

The second-generation owner of Ballard Oil Co. fuels home furnaces and the engines of the Alaska-bound fishing fleet from his dock on Salmon Bay. But episodic clashes -- with bicyclists and pedestrians who want to extend the Burke-Gilman Trail past the business's driveway, or nearby residents objecting to noise at odd hours -- make him wonder how the city's $2 billion maritime industry can cope as urban resettlement bleaches his neighborhood's blue collar white.