Seattlest Pix: 07Oct05

"No more moons-over-my-hammy", documented by mary and filed in the Seattlest Flickr pool.

We don't mean to steal Mary's thunder; however, her photograph moved us to write down some of the thoughts we've been having about the Ballard Denny's closure. We knew it was coming; however, just like the presence of vampires in Sunnydale, we didn't actually want to think about it. The light, the clouds, the darkness of the trees, and the Shell sign way in the distance all punctuate the loneliness of the now-derelict sign.

We passed by the late Denny's the other day and cried a little. We ate here on numerous occasions --when we didn't want to trek down to 4th Ave S to take in the spectacle at that Denny's, that is. This was a great place both to get late night breakfast after a show at the Sunset or the Tractor or to have an early-bird dinner with the septuagenarian retirees. The service was sort of slow here, even when they weren't busy; however we never seemed to mind the slowness. It gave us time to wind down and talk to our dining companions.

Perhaps it was the great views out the windows onto this busy Ballardian corner. Somehow, looking at a pollution-enabling gas station, a chi-chi Safeway parking lot, and a soul-less Walgreens was OK while we indulged in cheap coffee, iceberg lettuce salad, and delicious grease. It could have been the sight of people walking by or the electric motor of the urine-soaked #44 Metro whining along Market Street or the sweet, forceful pounding that the tired pavement gave to heavy trucks. Afternoons gave the best views with the long, oblique rays of the setting sun casting a golden light onto the urban bustle as the city punched out and headed home for the evening. That late afternoon lull was relaxing. After the early-birds went home to catch a Matlock re-run, though, the Denny's would perk up with an evening crowd of chatty high-school kids, mutton-chopped alt.country Ballard hipsters, and second-shift machinists with grimy workshirts.

Between the fast-food chains, tire shops, hardware stores, bowling alley, and light industry, this corner --and proceeding southward along 15th onto the Ballard Bridge-- is the Aurora of Ballard. It's one of the few bits of honest, self-unaware, un-ironic, and non-pretentious centers of practical urban grit in this town, at least on the north end, that is. Don't read us incorrectly; we like our farmer's markets, cafes, and the general lack of crappy fast food but we'd hate for every square inch of Seattle to be organic, crunchy, goody-goody, and filled with "Mexican" restaurants owned and entirely staffed by hippies from Oregon. We gotta have a balance.

We haven't checked the sign but we figure we know what's coming. We'll stop before we start rambling too much about some janky quonset hut that some developer will likely vomit up here out of scrap metal, cheap frame construction, shoddy aesthetics, and sub-standard design that will sell for artificially pumped-up prices per unit to chumps who don't know better and will feature much-needed Quizno's, Fed-Ex, T-Mobile, and tanning salon on the ground level. It causes us to write run-on sentences. Instead, we'll remember fondly the Denny's with its marginal food and its odd, enclosed bar that we never went into. We'll remember the great, kitschy, American-roadside presence this Googie structure had in East Ballard's main crossroads. Now, we have no excuse to not grab a greasy bite to eat at the Sunset Bowl... before they decide to run it out of business, too.