I had no idea about this. I'm thinking she passed during all that construction noise, bless her heart.

I am OLD BALLARD and I have one. Really? I'm a HIPSTER? Now, that is IRONY.

For those with negative attitudes about this particular tattoo...GET OVER IT! It's a "personal decision" for each and every person.

BTW, I promise not to make fun of your tasmanian devil tattoo, what you do for a living or what you choose to wear every morning. Strike that last comment, I'll probably poke fun at what you are wearing. :)

This aging "hipster" needs to take a nap after reading all these comments. Hope I don't break a hip on the way to bed.

I heard one of the people that got the E.M.A. tattoo actually asked for "KISS Army".

Any one who gets that tattoo is part of the new Ballard and not the old one. Oh gosh, the irony is overwhelming me. Hipsters...

You really ARE a stupid hippie, aren't you Einstein?

Careful Maria, a whole bunch of whiners have staked their anger on the Edith Macefield vs. progress myth.

Apparently, by their logic, by giving her house to the 'man', she was standing up to the 'man'.

But Meal she DIDN"T refuse the money. She was negotiating when she broke her hip and could not move. The whole thing was hype to sell papers. Geeeeeeez

Stupid Hippie, I think the point that you missed is that she knew she couldn't control the land after she died, you dumbass. If it's sold after she dies, she still refused the money and made the statement.

You dumbass.

I usually drop comments and leave cause most of the time the response is so negative, but I'm alittle surprised this time!
I'm fully aware Edith is gone, but whether it was intentional or not she gave me strength to say no. No! You can't bring people into my apartment to look at it. No! You can't expect me to pack my whole life in two weeks! No! You should not be allowed to advertise for condos when you haven't even bought the building yet!
Working with Lock Vista and so many other amazing people in Seattle that were suffering from an influx of displacement we created change. And maybe everyone forgot about it, but laws were passed. Tenants got more rights then they ever have before. The bursting bubble I'm sure helped our cause, but Lock Vista is still an affordable apartment complex. They have new owners that are very willing to help and are consistantly present.
Moving out of Ballard wasn't a negative experience it was just time for me to move on, but I'm visiting all the time...I read the Ballard blog for heavens sake...kinda shows that it will always be linked to me.
And going over that bridge and seeing that little house brings back the things I fought so hard for.
So if the jokes on me...gosh, it was a great one!

Old Ballard, New Ballard blah blah blah

Wonder what the original inhabitants would have said if they had a blog when the musket-totin' white man came in and decimated their land?

I have no issue with tattoos and in fact sorta like them HOWEVER….getting marked permanently with something that is not even a real story is moronic. I recall an old New Yorker cartoon. As a man is getting that last touches put on a large tattoo that says BAN THE BOMB, a guy runs in and yells, “hey they just banned the bomb!”

good answer, joni.

there are no yuppies in ballard. go to bellevue/kirkland, it's a completely different breed.

I have no tattoos, but I believe they are for person wearing it. Whatever makes people happy! There is enough in the world to be stressed about, if a tat makes you happy, drop your pants or tear off you shirt and break out the credit card!

This old/new stuff is tired, so I won't touch it, but can someone explain what yuppie means anymore, and why the term is still used? Do we not want our young people to live in cities and have jobs?

I like the tattoo. If you're offended by the aesthetic of new Ballard and see condos as sterile and tacky, you probably agree. However, if any of you old Balardites were really concerned about the affects of gentrification, you would know that the amount of un-lived in condos is as evident as the homeless population and should have done something about it by now. And besides, even with the influx of awful new development, Old Ballard is still built upon the fossil fuel based layout the rest of this country is enslaved to.

i think one of my friends, Chelsea Robinson, said it best when interviewed on the news last night about why she got the tattoo. She said she sees it as a "love letter to Ballard". I thought that was a really cool way to look at it.

kara, Candice & Bryan--i agree with you 100%.

Buford @ 72

I am your father (said in dark tones with deep breathing like Darth Vader).

people read into things way way too much. it's a cute tattoo.

Buford I laughed my arse off on your comment. TOOO Funny!

@69. I wish your father had.

Thank you Kara, Candice and Bryan for having good, common sense things to say. :)

Kara I love you, Candice I agree with you entirely.

Ballard has become a quagmire. Time to pull out.

Go Edith? She's dead.

Plus, she gave the house to the man who built the Ballard Blocks, who's gonna sell it and keep the money.

I guess the joke was on you.

I decided to skip all the comments and just say I am seriously thinking about getting that ink.
When I was working with the tenants at Lock Vista, being a tenant myself at the time, Edith was someone I looked to when things got hard. I was so scared about where I was going to live if Lock Vista got bought. Going to City Council meeting, organizing Ballard residents, etc. she got me through the day and even though I jumped ship and moved out to West Seattle I still think of her strength and have a little spot in my heart for the Ballard I remember. The Ballard that got me to grow-up, live on my own, and fight for what I really wanted. Go Edith!

I'm sure Edith would have said to get over yourselves because its not a "Ballard thing"- new or old that makes this a good tat. Its what she valued that makes her story heartfelt. I'm considering a tat with the 'ole house on my skin and I'm not from Ballard (hope that's ok)- Its what she stood for that does it for me------something old school that most of us never learned or never lived.

The tattoo is missing the quaint and utilitarian chimney.

I think it makes for a fine tattoo.

Oh... and the reason I mentioned my own tattoo is that I often get questioned about it. And the majority of the people who ask just look at me with a blank stare after I try to explain it. That's just the point...

... it's meant for me. Not anyone else.

So stay away from the tattoo parlor if you don't get it. But I say: the more tats the merrier!

For reals... if you don't like it, don't get one.

I hate that so many people have so much to say about other people's tattoos. It means something to them... NOT YOU.

I have "breathe" tattooed on my inner forearm. It's MY tattoo and it means something to ME. If you don't like it, fine. You're not my mom and you don't have to look at it everyday.

If these folks wanna get Edith's house tattooed on 'em, I say, GREAT. It's bringing a sense of community to the folks that have it tattooed on them.

And, Maria, you always sound like such an entitled snob in your posts. I'm sorry to get a bit rude... but you're ALWAYS rude and it's really getting tiresome. Why do you need to piss and moan so much? Lighten up.

Derogatory? They all seem to act like tramps with those stamps.

I'm all for Maria feeling like a genius, I know, it's a preciously rare feeling...
...and 'tramp stamp' is an appropriately used, derogatory term...imho.

So... is this representative of old or new Ballard?

A$100 to the first Ballard 'lady'' who gets this Tramp tatt:

Welcome to Old Ballard

I'm gonna go with NOT a genius, Maria. But that's just my judgement.

sweet, i'm gunna get a tattoo of two bums sucking each other off in Marvin Gardens - my first 'welcome to real ballard' experience growing up here in the 80s!

P*ssing and moaning is all old Ballard has left. So much for graceful exits.

@ 54 True enough it can mean many things, and while it is probably not sectarian, so long as they don't start painting walls with slogans like "You are now Entering Free Ballard" I am fine with it.

Of COURSE I am judgmental. Stories like this make me feel like a genius.

Bill they may judge my kid all they want but chasing her down 22nd is a bit much don’t ya think?

Edog-
I'm pretty Steadfast is not in reference to the neighborhood, but to something else. Perhaps a way of life? Friends? I'm not Joe, so I can't say. Tattoos are art and the best thing about art is that it has different meaning to different people, it's not just one thing. It doesn't reference just one thing. The house doesn't necessarily mean what you might think it means.

Maria, you complain that people judge your daughter for her clothes, then you judge other people's choice of tattoo. Nice.

And since I feel like I'm contradicting myself every time I post, I am going to respectfully stop posting. :-)

When I say "progress" I mean any sort of development, including what is happening/has already happened in Denver with 5-points and other areas. I'm not placing blame by saying artists and students, but those are the people who need cheap rent. So, often those are the folks who create the cool. That's kinda the case in Fremont, anyway. I am an artist and grew up in Fremont with an artist parent. So, that's my context.

Land use could certainly be done better. It's a feeding frenzy and is really gross. Condos are not the answer to a vacant lot. But yuppies love their condos.

Mcoddle - Well thats one model, but its not all down to artists. Sometimes poeple move in to poor areas to take over historic houses and pour money into them simply becuase they can afford it and want to live in a wonderful old house. German village in Columbus Ohio is a pretty good example of that.

The new baseball stadium in DC, displaced several hundred POOR DESITITUE people in public housing, they simply had to go.

I spent some time on a farm where Dad lived, shortly after my grandma moved the owner sold it and it became a strip mall, it was a tragedy I would not call it progress, but I would not hold it against the poeple who live in the area today. Its not their fault land use is all screwed up.

Land Use in Ballard could be done better, and I watch all these new developments with a concerned eye, but that land close in is being used, its a good thing.

Edog, you're right. Change is the constant. Those of us with long enough memories are going to end up sad about one thing or another. You can grieve the changes, but you can't stop them.

I grew up in Seattle proper, and Ballard was a working-class neighborhood. Hattie's was an actual bar, with regular drinkers, and they only had beer in cans. The path of gentrification is such that progress in "cool" neighborhoods will be viewed by people (who have the luxury of doing so) as negative. The artists paved the way for it, though. Take a poor neighborhood, have artists and students move in (displacing the people that lived there), and you're putting out a welcome mat for developers to take advantage of that "cool" factor, thus destroying it.

Steadfast? Thats a joke right?

No place I've ever lived has stayed the same, and that’s a constant of our world. There is no such thing as a steadfast neighborhood; time has away of seeing to it. The things people describe as "old" are not really that "old". I’ve had to hide my laughter when I hear people from Northern California tell me about how great the Old Ballard was, yes all of ten years ago, it was so old!

It is true Old Ballard rules and new Ballard drools. As for the trust fund hippies that think people who aren't independently wealthy don't work as hard, well we all know that these are sad and useless people who believe that their sense of entitlement should be all they need to be respected. They are typically the people who pay to have their homes cleaned and think that a hard days work means watching the market on their Blackberry. These people make no real difference to a true Ballardite. Wear Grundens Eat fish.

I think that tattoos are for other people, basically.
However, the BHO tattoo, soon to be available, may change my mind ;-)

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Seawolfdee is my husband...and no I don't like that tattoo!

..and don`t forget the Aloha monkey by SJ...

Ok, then my judgement of you is that you are judgemental. Thanks for the all clear!

We are most certainly free to judge.

I think HeyThere is the only one who "gets" it, here. If you don't want one...don't get one, and no you aren't free to judge it, unless you want to be judged for something you've done.

I think that there are far worse tattoos you could get. Let's make a list. I'll start it...any Looney Tunes character, random roses on women's boobs, Asian language characters that you don't understand, (true story, my best friend has one that she thought meant free or something, turns out it means cheap!) tribal crap unless you belong to a tribe of some sort...I could go on for days.

Tattoos for New Ballard:

Picture: Matadors
ext: Take your kids and go jump in the ship canal

Picture: Blackbird
Text: We fit you right.....if you are male, 5 ft tall and weigh 95 lbs.

Picture: Chai House
Text: Smelly Hippies welcome

Picture: Hjarta
Text: Norwegian for Yuppie

Picture: Take 5 Urban Market
Text: No more ciggies and lotto tickets.

People get tattoos for worse reasons, and lamer tattoos than a house (Oprah's signature, the guy from the Crow, any celebrity's face). For me personally, any tattoo that has deep meaning is potentially a very bad idea, because one day you'll wake up and no longer have exactly the same values as when you got the tattoo. I knew a guy who had a bunch of bluegrass tattoos and then no longer liked bluegrass and always wore long sleeves.

Know what Andy? We don't care if you really really dislike new Ballard. Things change, accept it.

Tell me this is a joke…..the tattoos are fake right? What kind of an imbecile gets a permanent mark to commemorate a story that is ‘not quite’ true. The woman selling folks, then she broke her hip.

to HeyThere, if you're replying to me, I agree with you and didn't mean to imply that what anyone was thinking was "We're better than" anyone. :-) But it could come across that way. I should have been clearer. And I totally miss the old Ballard, as well as the old Fremont. I still live in Fremont, but it's SO not the same place. And I miss what it used to be. But things are just changing that way...everywhere, I think. It's sad.

And btw, I have many tattoos, so I ain't judging! ;-)

Honestly, I don't think it is to say "We're more Ballrd than you! We are better than you!" It's a way for the people who have lived here for a long time and love this neighborhood to have some symbol of their love for it. We don't get tattoos to make us feel superior and more hardcore than anyone else. We get them to remember something, to symbolize a time and a place that has meaning to us. Ballard, to me, is not about houses and condos and new bars and old bars, it's about the people that live here and have lived here and love this neighborhood for what it is. We are not opposed to change, it's just hard to see change that displaces our friends and families and makes it harder for us to live in a neighborhood that we love. The tattoo is really a love letter to our friends and our community and this time and how much gratitude we feel to live here and love here. At least, that's how I see it.

Tattoos aren't my thing, but I think it's very cool that one was designed, and that some people will actually get one. And although I never met Edith, I have this feeling that she might be pleased about this. At least, I'd like to think so.

If someone made baseball hats with that logo, depending on who would benefit, I'd probably buy one.

I agree that the house would be a great spot for a gathering place or museum.

Also, as a reminder:

“Everybody that’s come in and tried to talk about this has tried to create that image of her,” said Mike Semandiris, whose family has owned a chili parlor around the corner for more than 70 years. “But she didn’t give a damn about preserving old Ballard. The lady just wanted to live in her house.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/us/28edith.ht...

I think that striking back at TTTCOTTH for his or her comment is kinda divisive. And kinda snobbish in the "I stand for the more authentic [insert neighborhood here]" way. But I do agree that Ballard was WAY better before, and building condos at the rate they were/are in the face of the recession/depression is an invitation to create an ugly slum out of what was once and could still be a lovely neighborhood. I think the tattoo is neat, but I am not getting one.

"I was renting on 64th was demolished after I was kicked out for a new development."

So the owners who sold it, by their own free will, violated the renters contract you read and legally signed?

"us old Ballard folks really really dislike new Ballard"

Well, why don't you move, Kent awaits!!

what a cool idea. i love it when folks actually think "outside of the box". Edith would be quite happy i bet! Even though she may not approve, it would make her feel happy in her soul.

Feeling good in your soul is where it's at.....

long live Edith!!!

I'd really like to see the developer rehab the house and put in a coffee house. I think small rememberances of what used to be are better than nothing....

I wonder if we will see any house tattoo peeps shopping at Trader Joes. That would be most amusing.

I will be getting one and anyone who doesn't like it can lick my bags-

and when he's fifty, it'll be a 2 story house.

Nice Tats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j03GBQoTBg

LA Fitness Signature Club there goes the neighborhood. The site used to house a hundred garbage trucks that would all roll out at 5:30 every morning. Business at Mike's Chili was better in those days.

Nah, then they'll just be that much more Old Ballard. :)

The tattoo recipients are going to feel a little silly when the house is sold by the foreman, demolished, and the land is integrated into the shopping center.

Pretty awesome IMO

@3 it'd only be hardcore if it wasn't Denny's but a MANNINGS tat. HA!

So did the old lady ultimately die of some type of haz mat exposure via that old factory she originally refused to move away from? I wonder as the dump trucks coming out of that site during initial de/construction were getting power washed down before leaving the site to keep not good for humans...PCBs?...dioxins?...on site and off the streets.

As a former Tractor employee, Ballard resident and Anchor Tattoo devotee... I love this!

Quite literally the 90 year old home I was renting on 64th was demolished after I was kicked out for a new development. It was a beautiful home that I was renting for over a year when they told me it was time to leave. For those of you who have found ways to live and work in Ballard in spite of the changing face of it, I salute you! I miss you from afar on Guemes Island.

So Kittensox

What exactly do I do for the community? You seem to know me so well and all. My guess is I do in one year more then you've done in your entire life. I'm sure your idea of doing something mean talking about, and not actually doing anything about it.

PS> Does this mean I'm off your Christmas card list?

Well, and I've seen tour busses stop in front of her house, which is strange/weird. Her house should be turned into something where people can gather and interact.

That's awesome.

I doubt Edith would have approved, though!

TTCOTH does not know the meaning of community with a remark like "I’m retired and wealthy. Unlike yourself, I can do whatever I want. whenever I want." You sound sad. Get out and do something useful for your community instaed of just using your community.
These tattoos represent courage, integrity and community. Super beautiful!

Tats aren't my thing, but this is great! Good for these guys.

TTTCOTTH,

Read a book, take a walk, volunteer somewhere, make some friends....just stop posting negative comments on this blog.

This is what a tattoo is supposed to be. Something with meaning. Not just a way to be Indy and cool.

Get over the fact that us old Ballard folks really really dislike new Ballard. I don't care if you think it is divisive. It is a fact, accept it.

Free Ballard!

Andy- will you marry me??

Just kidding but SOOO sick of the New Ballard apologists. Someone on the bus said I am "New Ballard" (A guy in a tam o shanter no less) and I was trying to remember how long I've lived here.

Old Ballard is kind of like Edith's house. Sort of non descript and old, but also inexpensive and paid for. Also, notably, Scandinavian.

I love this community! I can't tell any more who's intentionally engaging in, and who's /unintentionally/ engaging in, hilarious self-parody.

Who's going to design the Geeky Swede Army tat? I'm thinking a pink boomerang flying over a half-built condo.

Can I get a 'LA Fitness' tattooed on my arm with these words underneath:

'Spandex is a right not a privilege'

I'm retired and wealthy. Unlike yourself, I can do whatever I want. whenever I want.

I wonder how many of the MHC goers will be sporting these.

@5... much like posting in threads you don't seem to care about?

Another waste of time for people with nothing better to do.

Yawn

HD, I LOVE that idea!

Pffftt.... if he was hardcore he would have gotten a tattoo of the old Denny's with "Googie 4 Life".

Wow! Looking at the tattoo concept drawing, I was expecting the on-skin version to be maybe 2" wide, but Joe in the last pic clearly had a different idea!

Edith Macefield's house itself was more parsimonious in its use of real estate....

sigh, more divisiveness.