Are you kidding? The trendy stuff is often poorly made and poorly designed crap. It's not worth spending ANY amount of money on. Good taste and good design don't go out of style – doesn't matter if you're talking about clothes, furniture, houses or kitchen ware. Unfortunately, the race to the bottom, gotta get me a bargain Wal-Mart mentality of so many people in this country has made this notion somewhat obsolete. As a result we have ugly, cheaply made homes, ugly cars, ugly appliances, ugly clothes that fall apart after a year and cheap produce that has only a fraction of the nutritional value of what it used to have. There are plenty of examples of home decor items that have stood the test of time and survived numerous “trends”. Names like Stickley, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eames, Harvey Ellis, Noguchi, Heywood Wakefield and others all have very different styles but have all stood the test of time.

Saying spending a great deal of money on decor is foolish is comparable to saying you should only eat off the $.99 menu at McDonalds because why pay more for food that you're going to digest and crap out a few hours later.

http://bit.ly/c1HRwP

It's hard to compete with candles for $1.29.

Ballard is a great example of economic Darwinism – “…but they sold stuff we didn't need at prices we didn't want to pay, right?”

Right!

The most interesting thing about it is… none of the stores are the same. They've all changed hands and moved on. Probably many times since these pictures were taken. And yet Ballard is more vibrant and more thriving than ever before. Although it would be cool to still have something called the “Bagdad Theater,” but I digress.

So please stop the whining about “Ballard is losing another store….” This is what happens when small business owners don't plan for and expect an economic downturn. If you don't expect to have one, and therefore have money in reserve to handle it, then you go out of business. And almost every small business does at some point. And, truly, it sucks for Tableau and its owner, but they sold stuff we didn't need at prices we didn't want to pay, right?

The larger question is, to me: Is Ballard resilient enough to handle this temporary downturn and remain strong and full of life? Hang out on the corner of Market and Ballard any evening and answer for yourself. La Isla has more than doubled in size and is still packed. Hamburger Harry's is doing very well. The British pub will arrive soon. QFC is open, and how awesome is that? Oaxaca is literally the old Yogi Berra joke that goes, “No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded”, Bastille and Volterra and Hi-Life serve incredible brunches, the Tractor is thriving, the rotting shell of the bowling alley is gone, I could go on and on… things are really good in Ballard right now.

The very definition of a thriving city is one that constantly renews itself. I love living here, and I can't wait to see what comes into this space next. That's the wonderful creative destruction of capitalism.

Décor is something on which it is foolish to spend a great deal of money because it tends to be trendy.

Still, it's very sad.

All that said, I'll be sorry to see them go. Really don't want to keep losing businesses in the neighborhood.