It began with a post from “Lurkerbee” in the My Ballard forum asking for ideas on how to sell a few possessions, including her grandmother’s jewelry, to raise money for a rent payment. “I need to come up with some money in the next couple of days,” she explained. “It really is tough being unemployed.”

The forum post exploded as readers offered ideas on how to help. One idea was to throw a yard sale, and WildernessBarbie offering the front yard of her house to hold the event. “Hey! This is shaping up to be a plan!” wrote PennyGirl. “Could we patch something together in the next 24 hours?”

That was Thursday night, and this Saturday morning, nearly two dozen Ballardites dropped off hundreds of items to sell at a yard sale to raise money for Lurkerbee. A steady stream of people bought clothing, books, furniture and even a chandelier, raising over $900.

“It’s amazing,” said Lurkerbee at the event, who doesn’t want her real name publicized. “I don’t know what to say.” A few hours later, she posted a note on the forum. “Thank you all for your time, your emotional support, your items for the sale, thank you WildernessBarbie for the use of your home, and most of all, thank you all so much for caring about a complete stranger,” she wrote. “I will never forget it. Never in a million years did I anticipate this.”

The night before, a few dozen Ballard residents gathered at Golden Gardens Park in an impromptu get-together organized on the forum.

Many wore name tags displaying their forum names and avatars, printed up by iPlod, who wore his tag on his hat. They passed around a donation bucket for Lurkerbee which read, “Ballardites helping Ballardites.”

“There are so many times when we feel the Internet is something that keeps us distant,” said SunriseSunset, who helped organize the yard sale, and recently turned 71 years old. “It brought us all together through the Internet. It’s more like the old days in Ballard — I’ve been here since 1943 — that we can get together, meet each other, have fun and help each other.”

Early this morning, Guardian One, the King County Sheriff’s helicopter, was sent over Ballard in search of an armed robbery suspect.

Police tell us that at approximately 2:45 a.m., officers responded to an armed robbery at a business in the 3200 block of NW 54th (likely the 7-Eleven there). The suspect took cash from the register and left. Officers contained the area and K9 attempted to track him, but he wasn’t located.

According to police, the suspect is described as a black male, in his 40’s, 5’08”, wearing a gray jacket. He was wearing a heavy black ski cap pulled low on his face, and was armed with a black semi-automatic handgun. This description also matches that of an armed robbery that happened an hour and a half earlier in the 13000 block of Roosevelt Way NE. (Thank you Silver for the tip!)

Earlier this week we published pictures of an abandoned sailboat that washed up on the shores of Golden Gardens.

Lunchtime at Golden Gardens from Andrius Simutis on Vimeo.

Andrius sent us this video. “I was down there for lunch yesterday and came across a crew from the parks department who dragged the boat out, smashed it into pieces and carted it off to the dump,” he writes in an email, “The employee I chatted with says they get a few of these a year throughout the parks and that they log their hours and costs involved and bill it to the owner of the boat.”

Saturday at 10:32 a.m. is the official start to spring and it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.

Trident Seafoods bought Portlock six years ago. Now, the Ballard-based company is changing the focus of the retail store at 2821 NW Market St. Just a few weeks ago, the merchandise inside the store went from strictly salmon, to “quick, quality food beyond salmon,” store manager Lo Reichert tells us. This is the first retail location for Trident.

The signs along Market Street prompted Robby to email us the above photo. “I’ve met lots of people who’ve worked for Trident, new retail location is cool!” he writes.

When we stopped by Thursday afternoon there was a steady stream of people. Some were buying the natural fillets, some went for the salmon burgers and others wanted fish sticks. One man bought up two boxes of smoked salmon for his in-laws in Florida. For $7.95/pound, Reichert says you can’t find a better deal on the hot smoked salmon anywhere. (Not pictured.)

“We really do the bounty of the sea. We do Alaska seafood,” Reichert explains. The new focus on the store means there is more selection of seafood, but don’t worry, the Portlock brand will still be there.

Although today feels like spring, it’s really the last day of winter. Come say goodbye to winter with other Ballardites this evening at Golden Gardens. There is a group in the forum planning a meet-up starting around 5 p.m. and going into the evening. Come out, say hi, meet your neighbors and bid this season farewell. Just look for the MyBallard.com banner.

In older parts of the King County sewage system, both rain water and sewage travel down the same pipes to the wastewater treatment plant. During heavy rains, these pipes often overflow sending the untreated water directly into Puget Sound. This is called “Combined Sewer Overflow” or CSO. One of the trouble spots is in the North Beach area.

Three alternatives to combat CSO in this area have been identified:

The first is to create underground storage at Blue Ridge Park (shown above.) This project would include above ground odor control and electrical facilities. Details on this alternative can be found here.

The second option is to create an underground storage pipe on NW Blue Ridge Drive, in the street right-of-way (shown above.) This, too, would have above ground odor control. Details on this alternative can be found here.

The final alternative is to create a pump station at Blue Ridge Park with above ground odor control and electrical facilities, an underground storage tank in Blue Ridge Park, new force mains from pump station to Holman Road NW, gravity sewer to 8th Avenue Interceptor drop structure on Seattle Parks property at Crown Hill (partially shown above.) Details on this option can be found here.

The King County CSO Beach Project team is looking for questions, concerns and suggestions from the community. “Public input will help to inform King County’s decision to define a proposal for CSO control in the North Beach basin. The proposal will then go through the environmental review process required by state law,” the website states. You can fill out this form until April 16th.

There will also be a community meeting on this project on Tuesday, March 30 at the Loyal Heights Community Center (2101 NW 77th St) from 6 to 8:30 p.m.

Is your teen is ready to take the band out of the garage and make a public appearance? This summer could be their big break.

Each year the Loyal Heights Community Center hosts “Rock the Gardens,” a teen-only concert series at the Golden Garden Bathhouse. Melissa Valenzuela, the Recreation Center Coordinator emailed us to say they are in search of local Loyal Heights and Ballard teen bands to play on the following dates: 7/9, 7/23, 8/20, and 8/27. Bands can contact the teen leader, Alexis Govan, at alexis.govan@seattle.gov or 206-684-4052 for more information.

There’s been a lot of discussion on MyBallard about the car campers, the homeless sleeping in front of the library and the alleged drug activity in our neighborhoods. Now, a new campaign has launched to combat unsafe behavior.

KeepBallardFriendly.org has launched with the goal of educating Ballardites about who to call when you see or hear illegal activity. “If the City recognizes (by getting thousands of phone calls on a consistent basis) that there is a problem here, then the experts who we pay to solve these issues, can be directed to work on a long term solution,” the website states.

Besides the non-emergency line on the blue flyer above, here are the phone numbers listed on the site:
North Precinct Community Policing Team – (206) 684-0794
Report Camped Vehicles – (206) 684-8763
Report Graffiti – (206) 684-7587
Report Trash Carts – (206) 684-7587
Report Encampments – (206) 684-2849

The documentation and plan of action (.pdf) outlines eleven different “problem areas,” shown in the map above.

“The end goal would be that all Ballardites would know this number, have it programmed into their cell phones, etc. and that they would use it whenever they see unsafe behavior or unsafe environments,” according to the plan of action document.

Updated: From keepballardfriendly in the forum:

I am Hovie Hawk, a long time Ballard resident who is the spokesperson for the Keep Ballard Friendly campaign. Even though conspiracy theories abound regarding our group, I can assure you that we’re just normal Ballard residents; moms, dads, young, old, who found ourselves concerned about certain troubling things happening in Ballard and decided to try and do something rather than just sit around and complain about it.

Even though I am a member of the Ballard Chamber of Commerce, founder of inballard.com and a board member of the In Ballard Merchants Association, those organizations are not part of this. We did talk with them, the Seattle Police Department, and the Assistant City Attorney in creating this plan in the hopes of building the best possible plan. They provided comments, advice, critiques, etc. which we sifted through to develop the current plan. But, again, none of those organizations are part of our group.

We are not trying to run anyone out of town or implement some super secret plan to undermine the City. We’re just people looking for the City to notice that we have some issues in Ballard and help us address them. I would welcome any questions people have regarding our group and its intensions.

Finding dim sum in Ballard is just about impossible. In fact Yelp names La Carta De Oaxaca, the Mexican restaurant on Ballard Ave, as having the best dim sum in the neighborhood. That says a lot.

So while the new dim sum restaurant isn’t in Ballard, it is closer than the International District. It’s just in Wallingford (4900 Stone Way.) According to our sister site, My Wallingford, the former owner of House of Hong in the ID has decided to open his new Chinese restaurant, called Bamboo Village, in north Seattle.

Bamboo Village will serve dim sum all day everyday as well as Cantonese and Mandarin dishes. The new restaurant is slated to open in late May or early June. You can read more about the new restaurant here.

One of the play structures at Salmon Bay School has been removed after a two-foot u-shape piece fell on a student.

According to Teresa Wippel with Seattle Public Schools, the principal closed the old equipment and had it assessed after the piece fell onto the second grader’s back. The student was not injured, the father told the principal. Once the equipment was deemed unsafe it was removed.

Wippel spoke with a member of the capital projects group who says there is no money in the budget to replace the old equipment. Some of the parents, according to Wippel, are talking about applying for a “self help grant,” (.pdf) although no decision has been made. (Thank you TumTum for first posting this in the forum.)

We got a kick out of this sign at Zesto’s (6416 15th Ave NW).

(Thanks Bruce for the tip!)