Happy day after Thanksgiving! There are plenty of things to do and see in Greenwood and Phinney Ridge this weekend. Here are a few highlights; check our Events calendar any time for more.

Woodland Park Zoo’s second annual WildLights begins Friday. WildLights runs 5:30-8:30 p.m. nightly through Jan 4 (closed Dec. 24-25). (Daytime zoo admission is not included in WildLights tickets; WildLights is not included in regular zoo admission.) Parking in the zoo’s North, Inner North and Northwest lots is free (unlike last year).

Photo credit: J. Lindgren/Woodland Park Zoo

The all-new WildLights features wild animals and wild places recreated in thousands of sparkling LED lights inspired by exotic destinations from across the globe, including “Northern Lights,” “The Water Hole” and “Jungle Lights.” New additions to the event include “Glow-rillas,” “Komodo Crossing,” “Eagle’s Nest,” and more!

Experience illuminated indoor and outdoor displays, a ride on the zoo’s decorated Historic Carousel (additional fee), and a visit from a couple of reindeer! Festive snacks will be available for purchase during event nights. While the zoo’s animals will be tucked in for the night, the Day Exhibit, a showcase of reptiles and amphibians, and a portion of the Adaptations Building, featuring animals such as sloths, Indian flying foxes and meerkats, will be open for guests. Fridays through Sundays, enjoy an evening animal encounter at the Raptor Barn along with the zoo’s many birds of prey.

Tickets are available online or at zoo gates during regular zoo hours. Night-of-event tickets will be for sale at the zoo’s West Entrance, unless sold out. Cost is Adults (13+) $9.50; Children (3-12) $6.50; Toddlers (2 and under) Free. Adult zoo members receive an admission discount Sunday-Wednesday: $7.50.

Pickled Okra performs at Ridge Romp at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the PNA in the Brick Building.

If Pickled Okra’s special brand of Americana music could be described, you might call it “old-school, porch-settin’, sing into a can-style bluegrass.” Ask one of the band members and they’ll tell you it’s “ham and cheese grass.” Tickets are $5; babes-in-arms free.

Seattle Folklore Society presents Heidi Muller and Bob Webb in concert, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Phinney Neighborhood Center in the Brick Building, 6532 Phinney Ave. N. Cost is $15, $13 SFS/PNA members and seniors; kids half price. Reserve seats online or call 206-528-8523.

Breakaway with DJ Gumbeaux from 10 p.m. Saturday to 2 a.m. Sunday at The Angry Beaver,8412 Greenwood Ave. N.

Singer-Songwriter Showcase from 8-10 p.m. Sunday at Tim’s Tavern, 602 N. 105th St.

Don’t forget tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, where you’re encouraged to shop local and support your neighborhood businesses. Lots of neighborhood businesses are having special events and sales to mark the day, including Couth Buzzard Books, 8310 Greenwood Ave. N., which is hosting a bunch of local authors, including David Volk (aka, The Cheap Bastard, who will share his wisdom on free and cheap events around town), novelist Peter Mountford, poet Elizabeth Austen, novelist Wendy Joseph and true crime writer Rebecca Morris; and Santoro’s Books, 7405 Greenwood Ave. N., which is having several local authors be booksellers for the day, giving readers advice on books and signing their own.

If you’re heading downtown Friday evening, don’t forget the Westlake Tree Lighting Ceremony and Macy’s Star Lighting and Fireworks start at 5 p.m. About 40,000 people are expected, so traffic and sidewalks will be crowded.

Saturday morning the streets around the Seattle Center will be closed for the Seattle Marathon 5K Race and the Seattle Kids Marathon, and on Sunday 15,000 people are expected for the Seattle Marathon.

Last year’s inaugural Ugly Christmas Sweater Pub Crawl saw about 50 participants drinking their way through six Phinney Ridge and Greenwood bars to raise money for charity. This year, organizers are upping their game and have enlisted more than 20 pubs to raise money for the Greenwood Food Bank.

Organized by Tim’s Tavern on 105th, Ugly Christmas Sweater Pub Crawl participants pay $20 for a special bracelet (or $15 with two cans of food) that gives them a special drink discount at participating bars from 6 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, Dec. 7.

Venues range along Phinney/Greenwood avenues between North 62nd and North 105th Street, and nearby Fremont Avenue.

New this year is a free shuttle by Emerald City Trolley that will run from Tim’s Tavern (Fremont Avenue and North 105th Street) down Greenwood Avenue to Park Pub at North 62nd Street and Phinney Avenue North, making one round trip about every 30 minutes. (Click here to download a full list of participating venues and the shuttle schedule.)

Event wristbands are for sale at most of the participating bars in advance and on the night of, plus on the free shuttle during the event.

Last year’s Ugly Christmas Sweater Pub Crawl raised $500 for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s Mammovan. Organizer Tim Arnot hopes to triple or quadruple that this year to benefit the Volunteers of America Greenwood Food Bank at 9041 Greenwood Ave. N.

Participating venues:

1. Park Pub – 6114 Phinney Ave. N.
2. Sully’s Snowgoose Saloon – 6119 Phinney Ave N.
3. In the Red Wine Bar – 6510 Phinney Ave. N.
4. El Chupacabra – 6711 Greenwood Ave. N. (all day happy hour specials)
5. The Kort Haus – 6732 Greenwood Ave N. (all day happy hour specials
6. The Ridge – 7217 Greenwood Ave. N.
7. Prost! – 7311 Greenwood Ave. N.
8. Wingdome – 7818 Greenwood Ave N. (no wristband presale, $6 PBR and a shot special)
9. Bleacher’s Pub – 8118 Greenwood Ave N.
10. The Angry Beaver – 8412 Greenwood Ave N.
11. Teacher’s Lounge – 8505 Greenwood Ave N.
12. The Baranof – 8549 Greenwood Ave N. (prizes for best sweaters, $3/$4 drink specials)
13. Gainsbourg Lounge – 8550 Greenwood Ave N.
14. The House Sports Bar – 8551 Greenwood Ave N.
15. The Crosswalk Tavern – 8556 Greenwood Ave N.
16. Bill’s On Greenwood – 8560 Greenwood Ave N.
17. Naked City Taphouse and Brewery – 8564 Greenwood Ave N. (beer specials)
18. Yen Wor Garden Lounge – 8580 Greenwood Ave N.
19. The Alibi Room – 10406 Holman Rd.
20. The Pub at Piper’s Creek – 10527 Greenwood Ave N.
21. Tim’s Tavern on 105th – 602 N. 105th St. ($4 cocktail and shooter specials; door prizes for Ugly Xmas Sweaters)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in Phinney Ridge, Greenwood and beyond. We are thankful to live in such a wonderful neighborhood, full of generous and thoughtful neighbors.

After you’ve filled up on turkey and stuffing, don’t forget about Small Business Saturday, where everyone is encouraged to shop at small local businesses. Many Phinney-Greenwood stores are planning special hours, discounts and events for Saturday.

We are especially thankful that our neighborhood has an abundance of locally-owned stores that give back to the community. Where do YOU plan to spend your local dollars on Saturday?

With gratitude –

Doree Armstrong & Dale Steinke (owners/editors) and Jenni Sandmeyer (advertising manager)

The Northwest District Council meets at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, at the Greenwood Senior Center, 525 N. 85th St. The meeting is open to the public.

On the agenda:

• Metro Budget Cuts – Paul Carlson, Transportation Analyst, Metropolitan King County Council

The proposed cuts could mean a loss of an unprecedented 14 million rides annually, and would revert Metro’s service to levels not seen since 1997 – even as ridership nears all-time highs. Metro provides about 400,000 rides each day and is nearing the annual record of 119 million riders reached in 2008.

Metro is hosting a series of public meetings over the next 3 months to inform riders about the cuts due to lack of funding. http://metro.kingcounty.gov/am/future/PDFs/changes/info-sheet.pdf

Please note that there will be a Metro community meeting in the Northwest District on December 5th at North Seattle Community College from 6-8pm.

• Charter Amendment 19 – Eugene Wasserman

Charter Amendment 19 passed in the November 5th election, which means we will still have nine Seattle City Councilmembers, but seven of them will be elected from geographic districts and the other two will be elected to “at large” positions. http://www.seattledistrictsnow.org/proposal.html

For more information or to share your ideas about District Council projects and issues, contact Neighborhood District Coordinator Christa Dumpys at christa.dumpys@seattle.gov or 206-684-4812; or NWDC Chair Eugene Wasserman at NWDistrictCouncil@gmail.com.

All 26 Seattle Parks and Recreation community centers and eight indoor pools (including Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool) plus three teen life centers are now part of the Safe Place network in King County, where teens can ask for help when in crisis.

Community center doors now bear the distinctive yellow decal that signals to young people that they can find help and safety inside. Facility staff have been trained in the protocol to follow when a young person asks for help: offer the young person a safe and quiet place to wait and rest, and call the Safe Place hotline to notify the Safe Place coordinator of the situation. Within 45 minutes, a Safe Place coordinator will arrive to assess the teen’s needs, helping them either return home or go to a youth shelter, as appropriate.

The King County Safe Place network is run in partnership with YouthCare in Seattle, Friends of Youth on the Eastside, and Auburn Youth Resources in South King County. Each agency has a Safe Place coordinator on staff, and has emergency shelter beds available to teens in crisis. This partnership ensures that no matter where a young person is, help is always close at hand.

The goal of the program is to prevent youth homelessness by preventing a young person from spending their first night on the streets, and to help youth who have been on the run for some time to reconnect with family and other services.

Seattle Parks and Recreation’s community centers join a network of agencies and organizations providing more than 1,800 Safe Place sites throughout the county, including King County Metro Transit, King County libraries, YMCA facilities, United Way of King County, and the City of Snoqualmie. Launched in 2011, the program has expanded in 2013 thanks to support from the United Way of King County.

King County Safe Place is part of a national network of more than 20,000 partnering businesses and community locations that display the yellow diamond Safe Place sign.

By Shelby Ehlert, University of Washington News Lab

Most of us can remember a time in our childhood when we visited the local zoo, giddy with excitement to explore the exotic sights, sounds and smells. For one group of people, it’s memory itself that brings them to the Woodland Park Zoo in Phinney Ridge every Monday.

Since its inception in early 2011, the Memory Loss Walk has drawn individuals diagnosed with early-stage memory loss and their caregivers to partake in a morning zoo walk followed by coffee and conversation.

The program is sponsored by several organizations that partnered “because they wanted to offer individuals with mild memory loss the opportunity to join a supportive program that emphasizes socialization as well as the importance of living a healthy lifestyle,” according to Liz Rhine of the Alzheimer’s Association.

The groups involved are the Alzheimer’s Association’s Western and Central Washington State Chapter, Seattle Parks and Recreation’s Lifelong Recreation Program, the Phinney Neighborhood Association and Greenwood Senior Center, Rhine said in an email.

It was a chilly but sunny autumn morning when we met in the Woodland Park Zoo parking lot before heading out for the Northern Trail tour of the zoo.

As soon as the walk began I quickly forgot the environment we were in and became so enthralled in the conversation that it was easy to miss the many animals we passed, as these were clearly not the focus of the walkers.

This was much more than a community activity for individuals with early-stage memory loss and their caregivers – this was a family. They are united by a common experience unique to their group.

“ I think what I benefit most from is the time we spend together,” said Roger Stocker, a participant of the walk since early 2011. “It’s nice to see the stuff we see going around the zoo and I wouldn’t discredit that at all, but I think the big part of it is…the existence and presence of these people. What makes it different from other people is that we have something that we share.”

Memory Loss Walk participants take in the zoo’s bear exhibit.

As Rhine noted, the walk “offers participants an opportunity to hold conversations in a safe and stimulating environment around others who can relate and offer support.”

“You can talk about Alzheimer’s in this group,” said Ruth Mulligan, who has been participating in the walk for a year. “That’s one big difference (compared with other social settings.”

Charlie Reidy, a participant who is affected by Alzheimer’s, said there is a stigma around the disease: People are afraid of it. Because of this, the Alzheimer’s Association provides programs to bridge the gap between individuals with Alzheimer’s and the public. Reidy attends another program that helps people with early-stage memory loss learn to improvise when communicating because the struggle to recall specific words is one of the first symptoms of memory loss.

Reidy said that people react very uncomfortably if they’re talking to someone with memory loss who stops cold in the middle of a sentence. They don’t know how to respond. However, the discomfort can be avoided or at least mitigated if the individual with memory loss can learn to keep talking — even out of context — rather than dwell on the word they’re attempting to recall, Reidy said.

It’s small programs like this that the Alzheimer’s Association, along with its partners, work to provide for individuals with early-stage memory loss that are truly making a difference.

“What we’ve kind of taken as a reminder is that it is what it is,” Stocker said. “What we’ve decided is the only way we can really deal with this is take it one day at a time and live life at the moment.”

“And to the fullest,” added Myriam Marquez, another participant in the walk and an active Alzheimer’s advocate.

For more information on the Alzheimer’s Association’s programs and services and ways to get involved, please contact the 24/7 Helpline at 1-800-272-3900 or visit them online at www.alzwa.org.

Shelby Ehlert is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.

Greenwood resident Jeanna Lee is part of a team attempting a sky diving world record for women’s vertical head-down formation. The attempt will happen this coming weekend at Skydive Arizona in Eloy, Arizona.

Jeanna said the team of 90 women are freeflyers. That means that instead of sky diving in the traditional belly-down position at around 120 mph, they fly at every axis at speeds of at least 150 mph.

Jeanna is an accomplished sky diver with more than 700 jumps. (You may also know her from Kalbi Grill Express, where she works.) This year she was also part of teams that set an Oregon record for 18-way and a Texas record for 34-way jump.

To help offset some of the costs involved in record events, we are selling raffle tickets as a fundraiser. $20/ticket for a chance to win almost $10k worth of skydiving gear! All the proceeds from the tickets I sell will directly support me. The drawing is during the attempts over Thanksgiving weekend. If a non-skydiver wins, you would either have all the gear you need to become a skydiver or I can help them sell everything. If you are interested in purchasing a ticket, you can paypal me at jeannalee@me.com and send me a message with your name, phone number, and email address. Thank you so much!!

Here’s Jeanna’s team setting the Texas record earlier this month. (That’s her by the pink arrow.)

Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is asking for customer feedback on the Greenwood/Crown Hill Chip Seal Project completed this summer. SDOT chip sealed most roads from North/NW 110th Street to North/NW 85th Street, and from 15th Avenue NW to Greenwood Avenue North.

SDOT says the survey will help it improve outreach for future projects and help develop maintenance strategies for future projects.

Here are some highlights of what’s happening in Greenwood and Phinney Ridge this weekend. Check our Events calendar any time for more.

Illumination Learning Studio, 7720 Greenwood Ave. N., presents “Self-Care for the Holidays: Mini Workshop Series” from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Friday.

Couth Buzzard Books, 8310 Greenwood Ave. N., presents Classical Guitar Cabaret — Robert Vierschilling, Jessica Papkoff, Matthew Anderson and Stella Stephanie at 7:30 p.m. Friday; and Pint & Dale — Disasters At Sea concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.

Metropolis cards and gift shop is having its annual Holiday Open House from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, at 7319 Greenwood Ave. N.

Seattle Folklore Society presents Antje Duvekot in concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Phinney Neighborhood Association in the Brick Building. Cost is $16 general, $14 SFS/PNA members and seniors; kids half price. Reserve seats online or call 206-528-8523.

Boston-based Antje Duvekot (pronounced AUNT-yuh DOO-va-kott), was born in Heidelberg, Germany, and moved to the U.S. with her mother at the age of 13. Turning to music as a way to learn English and her new country, Antje has become known for her thoughtful lyrics, often personal and insightful. A prolific writer early, she holds three top songwriting awards, including the Kerrville New Folk Competition’s Best New Folk Award, the Boston Music Award for Outstanding Folk Act, and Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.

The Angry Beaver, 8412 Greenwood Ave. N., hosts Breakaway with DJ Gumbeaux starting at 10 p.m. Saturday.

Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space is celebrating its new outdoor gym, Fitness Zone, from 1-2 p.m. Saturday at North 143rd Street and Linden Avenue North.

A Fitness Zone provides free, low-impact cardio equipment and strengthening machines. Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space’s Fitness Zone comprises of a free runner, flex trainer, leg lift and sit-up bench stations. Outdoor gyms offer an affordable way to stay fit and contribute to a healthy community.

Green Lake Gobble 10K/5K & Mashed Potato Munch Off happens this Sunday morning at Green Lake. The event will use the inner lane of road around Green Lake so traffic will be dicey, and Metro Route 48 will be rerouted during the event. Staging starts at 8:30 a.m.; running/walking starts at 9:30 a.m. at the Aqua Theatre.

The Green Lake Gobble & Mashed Potato Munch Off is a fifth year event that celebrates the Thanksgiving season in Seattle. The event consists of a 5K run/walk, a 10K run/walk, the free PCC Healthy Kids Tiny Turkey Trot kids dash, an exhibitor area, a beer garden and the Mashed Potato Munch Off competitive eating contest. In total, 1,700 people are expected to participate in the event this year. Partial proceeds from the event as well as nearly 2,000 pounds of the canned food collected onsite will be donated to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, the official event benefactor of the event.

Northwest Clarinet Choir presents a free concert at 4 p.m. Sunday at Woodland Park United Methodist Church, 302 N. 78th St.

Looking ahead to next week, all branches of the Seattle Public Library will be closed on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day. And both the North and South Transfer Stations will be closed, and there will be no solid waste pickup service.