Spent today running around with Viv. We ate breakfast at the new-to-us Caprice Kitchen, at 80th and 15th in upper Ballard, and enjoyed it. Looks like it might be worth a trip for dinner. Google Street View shows fewer businesses at that corner than there are now, most of which look newish. However it also looks like there was a bar in the process of opening in mid-December which has stalled out, and as we wandered around Ballard I noticed tons of work-stopped condo development sites. Not necessarily a bad thing considering the general fugliness of the majority of the condo-vomit that got tossed up around town between 2002 and 2008, but clear evidence of the local effects of the sudden change in financing.

As it happened we also walked into three small businesses advertising closing sales and walked by a couple more vacant storefronts on Ballard Avenue. We did our bit, though. We bought a new-construction bedframe, in fact, a not-inexpensive proposition.

However the only place we dropped by that was elbows-to-asses at all was the Ballard Goodwill. The place was packed! It’s at 8th and 60th, and as we left I realized how close it was to the old Ballard Playhouse and the bars up there like Reading Gaol. I actually counted a total of SEVEN bars in that two-block strip, and nominate it for future League consideration.