Community Climate
Thanks for your excellent Urban Brawl article (“Maintain Mayberry or Bring on the Condos,” March 2008) on concerns with new housing. One issue I missed in the discussion is global warming. National, state, and local experts all agree that creating more housing in walkable transit-friendly communities is essential to reducing global-warming pollution on the scale required. Cleaner fuels and more efficient cars and appliances alone can’t do the job, according to reports from Seattle’s Green Ribbon Commission, Governor Gregoire’s Climate Advisory Team, and the national Urban Land Institute.

I understand that people want to protect what makes neighborhoods special. I have worked in my own neighborhood of Greenwood for high-quality development. But if we are going to stand a chance on global warming, we are going to have to figure out how to share our in-city neighborhoods with more people. We need to create a new vision of neighborhood character that keeps the best parts of the old vision, and rejects the parts that just don’t cut it anymore.
Michael McGinn
Seattle Great City Initiative, Seattle

 

Sipping strangers
The article about the burgeoning wineries on Bainbridge Island (“Day Sippers,” April 2008) accurately portrayed the wine scene there. On the other hand, the photo of a bottle of raspberry wine accompanying the article missed the boat—or should I say ferry?

These days, wineries on BI are about what Gerard Bentryn, owner of Bainbridge Island Vineyards and Winery, called “exciting strangers”: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah, malbec, cabernet franc, sauvignon blanc. In short, we have joined with the rest of Washington and the world. Wineries on our gorgeous island are now very much about wines made from the world’s great, noble grape varietals.
Hugh Remash
Eagle Harbor Wine Company, Bainbridge Island

 

Swallow This
Just received a copy of The Met 200 restaurant guide, listing the best 200 restaurants in Seattle. Glaring omission, folks. You list two restaurants on Bainbridge Island, Madoka and Café Nola, thereby missing the place to eat on BI: the Four Swallows, nicely tucked away in a century-old home on Madison Avenue just off Wyatt Way. 
David M. Jacobi
Bainbridge Island

 

Picture Imperfect
Crai Bower and Courtney Nash’s article (“Second to None,” February 2008) was okay, but the photograph on the section about San Miguel Allende actually depicts my preferred Central Mexican city—Guanajuato—with the Mercado Hidalgo and the Alhóndiga granary in the shot.
Jeff Cortazzo
Steilacoom

 

Sea Change
I am writing with a correction to your “Books and Talks” section (On the Town, April 2008). You listed a talk at Elliott Bay Book Company given by Gary Chamberlain. That’s me. I am not a Harvard professor of economics, although that would be a fine title, but a professor of Christian ethics at Seattle University.
Gary Chamberlain
Seattle University

 

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