The Tukwila Days Car Show will be cruising into town on Saturday, Aug. 23rd at the Tukwila Community Center, and residents are being asked to bring their cool cars to show off!

Admission to the show is ABSOLUTELY FREE, and there’s a $10 pre-registration fee to show your car.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Tukwila Days Car Show

WHEN: Saturday, August 21st from 10am – 3pm

WHERE: Tukwila Community Center, located at 12424 42nd Avenue South.

INFO: “Buff those beautiful babies to a mirror shine and cruise on over to the 7th Annual Tukwila Car Show for your chance to show it off. Come on by to check out some of the hottest things on wheels!…”

For more information or application please contact the Tukwila Parks and Recreation Department at 206-768-2822 or by email at djohnson@ci.tukwila.wa.us.

This event is part of Tukwila Days, which also includes:

Music, art, food and fun will be a part of this year’s festival held at the Tukwila Community Center on August 21. This festival offers something for everyone, so bring your friends and family and join the fun! There will be plenty of food, games, music, entertainment, arts and crafts, vendor booths, special kid’s activities and more! Admission and most activities are FREE! For more information about any of these events, please call 206-768-2822.

This year’s schedule:

• Pancake Breakfast, 8:00am – 10:00am: Breakfast service begins at 8:00am in the TCC Social Hall. Supports the Tukwila Sister Cities Committee
• Vendor Fair, 10:00am – 3:00pm: Come check out more than 100 booths! Vendor space is available. For an application please call 206-768-2822.
• Art Show, 10:00am – 3:00pm: Hosted by the Tukwila Arts Commission, the 14th Annual Tukwila Days Art Show showcases local artists.
• Vintage Car Show, 10:00am – 3:00pm: Enter your restored classic car, truck, muscle car or souped-up import, or stop by and vote for your favorite!
• The Fun Zone, 10:00am – 3:00pm:Enjoy inflatable bouncers, giant slide, dunk tank, face painters, roving clowns and special kid’s entertainment!
• Challenge Yourself, 10:00am – 3:00pm: Stop by at the Tukwila Community Center booth to find out how you go about challenging yourself for a prize!
• Chalk It Up!, 10:00am – 2:00pm: Young artists can grab some chalk and create their masterpieces on the sidewalks of the Tukwila Community Center.

The 17th Tukwila Community Garage Sale will be held on Saturday, Aug. 14th, and Sunday, Aug. 15th

To find the sale locations:

• Download the 2010 Garage Sale Locations and Map
• Starting Aug. 10th, pick up a map and list of sale sites during regular operating hours at:
  • Tukwila City Hall – 6200 Southcenter Boulevard
  • Tukwila Community Center – 12424 – 42nd Avenue South
  • Tukwila Pool – 4414 South 144th Street
  • Foster Golf Clubhouse – 13500 Interurban Avenue South
  • Foster Library – 4060 South 144th Street
• Check the ad with a list of sale locations in the August 13 Kent Reporter and Renton Reporter.
• On August 14 and 15, simply drive around Tukwila looking for the bright yellow signs that identify sale locations.
• List of participating addresses
• Map of participating households

By sponsoring the Community Garage Sale for 16 years, the City of Tukwila supports recycling and reuse! Have a great sale and happy shopping!

For more information please contact Rebecca Fox at rfox@ci.tukwila.wa.us or (206) 433-7178.

This Friday’s “Peanut Butter & Jam Kids Concert” will feature the band Caspar Babypants, whose lead singer is Chris Ballew from the Presidents of the United States of America!

The concert will be held from Noon – 1pm in the grassy area near the spray park at the Community Center right here in Tukwila.

More info, along with audio and videos available here: www.babypantsmusic.com

Highline/SeaTac Botanical Gardens will be hosting their annual “Ice Cream Social and Plant Sale” on Sunday, Aug. 15th, with special guest Ciscoe Morris and FREE ice cream to the first 300 guests.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Ice Cream Social & Plant Sale with Ciscoe Morris.

WHEN: Sunday, August 15, 2010, 1:00pm to 4:00pm.

WHERE: Highline/SeaTac Botanical Gardens, located at 13735 24th Ave S, SeaTac, WA 98168.

INFO: From a flier (download PDF here):

Join us in the garden on Sunday, August 15th for our 4th annual Ice Cream Social.

This year’s Celebrity Guest will again be Ciscoe Morris, who hosts “Gardening with Ciscoe” on KIRO 97.3 FM radio and KING 5/NWCN television, and is the author of the best-selling garden tome, “Ask Ciscoe”, as well as a weekly column in the Seattle Times.

Ciscoe’s topic will be “Create a Hummingbird Haven in a Pot or Garden ”

The fun starts at 1:00 p.m., with Ciscoe taking center stage in the Celebration Rose Garden at around 2:30 p.m.

Local nurseries & designers will plant 10 gorgeous pots. Register to vote for your favorite container & get a chance to take it home for free. Door prizes & free ice cream to the first 300 guests!

More information: www.highlinegarden.org or 206-391-4003.

Other featured events include:

• Silent Auction
  Bid on a variety of great items including two Aw Pots personally planted by Ciscoe, a room at SeaTac’s Radisson Hotel, a sightseeing flight around Seattle with pilot Warren Hendrickson, an original oil painting by Kathy Wyckoff, garden art, garden tools, a complete bird-gardening kit, and more!
• “Humm-dingers!!!”
  Local nurseries and designers will again plant up 10 gorgeous pots donated by Aw Pottery. This year’s theme is plants that attract hummingbirds. Just show up and register to vote for your favorite container and get a chance to take it home for FREE!!! HGBF members get two extra chances to win! Memberships will be on sale the day of the event.

Participating designers and nurseries include Clinton Bamboo Growers, Design of the Times, Dogwood Design, Minter’s Earlington Greenhouse and Nursery, Furney’s, West Seattle Nursery, Herr Backyard Garden Center, and Branches Garden Center.

• Free Aw Pottery Pot to first 40 new members!
  Be one of the first forty people to join the Highline Botanical Garden Foundation during the event and receive a gorgeous, frost-proof Aw Pottery pot! (NOTE: IF YOU PLAN ON ENTERING THE CONTEST, BRING A VEHICLE LARGE ENOUGH TO TAKE HOME YOUR WINNINGS! THE PLANTED POTS ARE BETWEEN 24″ AND 36″ TALL AND MAY WEIGH AS MUCH AS 75 POUNDS!)
• Door Prizes Galore!!!
  Register to win two free passes to the 2010 NW Flower and Garden Show, a “Cascadia” compost bin from the City of SeaTac, and gift packages from Benson’s Best Bites, Hey Paison, The Tin Room Bar and Grill, 909 Coffee and Wine, Vino Bello, Mick Kelly’s Irish Pub, and Elliot Bay Brewpub.
• Free Ice Cream to the first 300 guests!
  Please join us in the garden for an afternoon of the very best in gardening “edu-tainment”, ice cream, and of course, brussels sprouts!

For directions to the garden, click here.

This weekend, local amateur radio operators (“hams”) from the Highline (Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac, Tukwila, as well as the North Highline unincorporated area) Amateur Radio Club will be participating in ham radio’s annual national emergency exercise called Field Day, to simulate a disaster, and especially the loss of normal communications in a disaster.

Members of the Highline Amateur Radio Club will be setting up a radio communications center at Marvista Park (located at SW 200th and 4th Ave. SW in Normandy Park) to communicate with other hams participating from around the world. Antennas will be set up starting Friday and the exercise begins at 11 a. m. Saturday, June 26, and lasts 24 hours until 11 a. m. Sunday. Club members will be making contacts with the other hams utilizing both voice and Morse Code.

Hams have a long history of providing back-up communications for local governments as well as other non-governmental agencies needing communications in a disaster. Hams provide these services, volunteering their time and, often, using their own personal equipment. As more and more professional emergency management personnel (fire fighters, police, EMTs, emergency managers, etc.) are getting Amateur Radio licenses to be able to use this valuable radio resource, the FCC is contemplating changes to the rules to allow these professionals to work with the volunteers (since, normally, hams are not permitted to have any pecuniary interest in the communications that they make (e. g. wages.).

The Highline Amateur Radio Club extends an invitation to anyone interested in observing the exercise to visit Marvista Park on Saturday afternoon, evening or Sunday morning.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The silly "Ham Radio" graphic is our creation, and does not reflect the mindset of these radio operators, who probably wouldn't stoop to such a ridiculous logo like that...]

Sound Transit will be holding a public meeting to discuss Link train noise issues, hear residents concerns, and describe their next steps on Thursday, June 24th from 5:30pm – 8pm at Foster High School in Tukwila.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Sound Transit public meeting on Link train noise.

WHEN: Thursday, June 24th from 5:30pm – 8pm

WHERE: he Commons at Foster High School 
4242 S. 144th St., Tukwila

INFO: From an email:

Sound Transit is working to reduce Link train noise in Tukwila.

We’ve installed track lubricators to reduce wheel squeal, but more action is needed to lessen the noise and meet the federal criteria.

Sound Transit is hosting a public meeting to discuss train noise issues, hear your concerns, and describe our next steps.

Please join us: 
Thursday, June 24, 2010, 5:30 to 8 p.m., with a presentation at 6 p.m. 
The Commons at Foster High School 
4242 S. 144th St., Tukwila 

This is an opportunity to discuss your noise concerns directly with Sound Transit technical staff.

For more information, contact Roger Pence, Community Outreach Coordinator, at 206-398-5465 or roger.pence@soundtransit.org.

The Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce, along with the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), is sponsoring a seminar called “Limited Visibility!” targeted to business owners, managers, and marketing and sales professionals who want to bring in more sales and expand their outreach.

Four lively, fast-paced presentations by local experts will cover how people shop today, and how businesses can use social media and technology effectively and intelligently to accomplish their goal of business growth. Presentations include Dwayne Fricke of All Seattle Web Design, Marshall Macias, Elizabeth Paulsen of Cascade e-Commerce Solutions, and yours truly, Scott Schaefer of The B-Town (and Tukwila) Blog(s).

On a personal note, we highly recommend not only attending this seminar, but utilizing the free resources of the SBDC, especially with Advisers Rich Shockley and Zev Siegl, who are extremely knowledgeable and helpful about business.

Topics addressed will be:

• Social networking
• Blogging
• Websites
• Search engine optimization

Participants will learn how to build a community among their customers and fans, attract new customers, move ahead of their competition, and further expand their reach. 

The event will be held on Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 8:00 am – 10:00 am in Tukwila. Location will be disclosed upon registration.

Cost is $20 per person.

Presented in partnership by the Small Business Development Center at Highline Community College and the Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce.

Here’s more info from a flier:

LIMITED VISIBILITY!!
One reason people buy from other companies.

Missing a few good customers? Maybe you’re the one that’s gone missing!

Control your marketing expense and still be more visible to the customers you want and the ones you already have. Hear from four local pros on how to get visible and ring up more sales . . .

• Websites that create sales better than others
• Twitter and Facebook create sales
• A company blog creates sales
• Optimizing your website creates sales

Four savvy local pros demonstrate how the customers you don’t yet have will go searching for you . . . on the Web, Google, Facebook and Twitter, often from their phone,not a computer. This 90-minute event will be held at convenient location in Tukwila close to Southcenter. The date is Tuesday June 22nd at 8:00 -10:00 AM. Sign up now!

Limited Visibility is brought to you by The Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce and The Small Business Development Center for Southwest King County [The SBDC] which is based at Highline Community College. You’ll enjoy four fast-paced 20-minute presentations in a row, each one demonstrating clearly just how people actually shop today

1. Marshall Macias, social networks professional:How customers get info from Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc
2. Scott Schaefer, blogging professional: How customers find the info they want from business blogs
3. Dwayne Fricke, website professional: Websites that connect with customers and some that don’t.
4. Elizabeth Paulsen, search engine optimization professional: To Google robots, all websites are not created equal.

The four presenters are good! Learn how to:

• Build a community among your customers and fans
• Attract the customers that you don’t yet have
• Move ahead of your competition
• Spread your reach much further afield

This event is not a how-to for techies! It’s not technical at all. Limited Visibility! is about how customers look for you, for your products and services. [ First Clue: Things aren’t the way the used to be. ]

To reserve your seat, email or call Brenna Arnesen, Marketing and Events Manager, The Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce at staff@swkcc.org or via phone: 206 575-1633.

The fee is $20.00, payable to the Chamber of Commerce. Reservations are required for this event. The event is June 22nd, in Tukwila 8:00–10:00 AM. Brenna Arnesen, the event manager, will provide the location when you reserve your seat.

Web registration link:
 http://swkingcowa.usachamber.com/custom2.asp?pagename=calendar&a=view&eid=55796

An electronics recycling event for area residents will be held the weekend of June 18-20th at the South Center South industrial park off West Valley Hwy at 18435 Olympic Ave South.

Like last year, the event allows residences the opportunity to recycle the following:

• All TVs
• PCs
• Monitors
• Laptops

For FREE.

For more information, visit the website at www.ecycleevents.com or call 1-888-880-1254

Here are the details:

WHAT: Electronics Recycling Event for area residents.

WHEN: Friday June 18 through Sunday June 20th:

• Friday the 18th: 9 am – 3 pm
• Saturday the 19th: 9 am – 4 pm
• Sunday the 20th: 9 am – 3 pm

WHERE: American Electronics Recycling Corp, located at 18435 Olympic Ave South Ste B-100 in Tukwila.

INFO: From their website:

American Electronics Recycling will be holding an electronics recycling event for King and Pierce county residences.

This event will be held in the South Center South Industrial park off West Valley Hwy in Tukwila.

Residents are welcome to recycle all TVs, PCs, Laptops, and Monitors for free. A variety of other electronic items will be accepted, but a small disposal fee may be charged.

A full list of the items can be viewed on our website: www.ecycleevents.com

All of our recycling efforts meet the Washington State Department of Ecology standards.

We want to thank our local communities in advance for helping to keep Washington green.

WHY WE RECYCLE:
Every year more than 50 monitors and pcs are estimated to be discarded.  A typical CRT can contain 3 lbs of lead.  PCs and Macs can contain environmental toxins as well. Many laptops have a small fluorescent lamp in the screen that contains mercury, a toxic material when inhaled or digested.

*computers leaving your home or business may still contain personal, sensitive information. American Electronics Recycling will ensure that your hard drive is handled and destroyed properly

Seattle Southside Visitor Services, the official tourism department for the cities of Tukwila, SeaTac, Kent and Des Moines, will be holding its Grand Opening event for a new visitor center in SeaTac on Thursday, May 13th from 4pm – 8pm.

This event will feature ribbon cutting and welcome speeches by Mayor Jim Haggerton of Tukwila, Program Director of Seattle Southside Katherine Kertzman and other local public officials.

If you wish to attend, you are encouraged to RSVP by Monday, May 10 by calling 206.575.2489.

Seattle Southside’s New Visitor Center is located at 3100 South 176th Street in SeaTac.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Grand Opening Event for Seattle Southside Visitor Services’ new Visitor Center. Event to feature ribbon cutting and welcome speeches by Mayor Jim Haggerton of Tukwila, Program Director of Seattle Southside Katherine Kertzman and other local public officials.

WHEN: Thursday, May 13, 2010, 4-8 p.m.

WHERE: Seattle Southside’s New Visitor Center, located at 3100 South 176th Street, SeaTac, WA 98188

INFO: On Thursday, May 13, Seattle Southside Visitor Services will host a Grand Opening Event for the new Visitor Center located in the City of SeaTac. The Grand Opening Event will coincide with National Tourism Week and will feature a ribbon cutting and welcome speeches by Mayor Jim Haggerton, Program Director of Seattle Southside Katherine Kertzman and local public officials. Guests will enjoy wine tasting, appetizers, music performances and prize giveaways that include an Apple iPad.

In March 2010, Seattle Southside relocated the Visitor Center to its new location in the City of SeaTac. At this location, the Visitor Center will have greater visibility and access to airport travelers and hotel guests visiting the region. It also offers flexibility for future growth and better transportation access for volunteers and interns from Highline Community College and South Seattle Community College, both of which have hospitality management and tourism programs.

More information on Seattle Southside is available at their website here.

Starting at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20, emergency managers from King County and the cities of Tukwila, Auburn, Kent and Renton will conduct a test of the CodeRED and MyStateUSA emergency notification systems. These systems give officials the ability to deliver urgent pre-recorded telephone, cell phone, email or text messages to targeted areas, at a rate of up to 60,000 contacts per hour.

The day-long test is an effort to ensure the proper functioning of the system. It is estimated that up to 175,000 listed phone, email and text contacts in the Green River Valley area will be involved in the test.

All messages will begin with the words: “This is a test…” If a phone is not answered, the system will re-dial up to three times and leave a message if the phone is not answered. The systems uses listed “landline” phone numbers of residents and businesses in the target area, as well as messages to those who register with a notification list.

CodeRED and MyStateUSA are geography-based notification systems that use street addresses to select which phone numbers will receive emergency notification calls. In addition to telephone calls, residents and businesses may sign up to receive emergency notifications via text or e-mail.

Getting the word out quickly to Green River Valley residents and businesses about flooding or other emergencies is the thrust behind the test of a rapid notification system. Anyone wishing to register with the emergency notification database can do so through their local emergency management office:

• City of Auburn: www.auburnwa.gov (click on “Auburn Alert”)
• City of Kent: www.kentCodeRED.com
• City of Renton: http://rentonwa.gov (click on “CodeRED”)
• City of Tukwila: http://www.ci.tukwila.wa.us/listserv/hhdam_elist.html
• King County (unincorporated areas): call 206-296-3830 or email ecc.kc@kingcounty.gov