Olsen's closing has Lloyd Christiansen thinking about leaving Ballard. (Photo: Hugo Kugiya)
By Hugo Kugiya
PostGlobe
Business at Olsen’s Scandinavian Foods, now that the small store is going out of business, is brisk these days, its aisles full of new browsers and old customers, none of whom come by all too frequently anymore.
A gentrifying neighborhood and an aging clientele seem to have done in the store on Market Street, which has sold Scandinavian groceries and dry goods in Ballard for almost 50 years.
“It’s been like the Christmas rush” said Kevin Osterhout, whose family owns the business. “They’ve been coming in like they’ll never see this stuff again.”
“We’ve been struggling since Christmas,” said Osterhout, who was busy filling orders and checking customers Saturday with his cousin Veronica Endresen. “We depend on Christmas for the next five months. A lot of people will shop here in December and then we don’t see them again until the next year. And people wonder why we’re going out of business.”
The sign in front of the store reads “store closing sale up to 25 percent off” its stock of tchotchkes, hats, cookbooks, oven mitts, bumper stickers, lefse, pickled herring and homemade sausage.
“This is the best,” said Lloyd Christiansen, 82, pointing to a plastic tub of pickled herring. “I’m sad to see the place close.”
Christiansen grew up in Ballard, and stayed through all his health problems, the collapsed lung, his colon, his thyroid, vertigo, even the car accident.
“I think it’s time to leave Ballard,” Christiansen said, “maybe Arizona.”
Veronica Endresen behind the counter at Olsen's. (Photo by Hugo Kugiya)
He is in many ways a metaphor for the old neighborhood, traces of which are still easily noticed if you look for them. There is Olsen’s of course and the Smoke Shop and the Sunset Tavern, even though the clientele has changed. Chain-smoking deckhands sit outside coffee shops as moms pushing designer strollers pull up. The neighborhood’s watering holes batter their fish and chips with panko bread crumbs and top their burgers with goat cheese.
The fishing industry that put Ballard on the map is still there, although much smaller than it used to be. Fishing crews used to put in large orders at Olsen’s. Boat orders rarely come in anymore. Nonetheless, Ballard remains one of Seattle’s true industrial neighborhoods, with shipyards and supply yards operating on both sides of the canal.
For the most part, working class families do not live in the city anymore. There are fewer children, fewer working-class jobs. Seattle was transformed by intellectual capital and California money. The ages-old spirit of entrepreneurism and salesmanship is largely driven by technology now, not labor. No neighborhood demonstrates that transformation more than Ballard.
If gentrification was a wave, a metaphor often tied to the phenomenon, then Olsen’s is caught in the heart of the swell. It shares Market Street with a Puerto Rican restaurant and a Shakti yoga studio. There are gourmet cupcake shops, wine bars, gourmet pet food stores, tea houses, and boutiques in concentrations that would rival some of the most fashionable blocks in New York.
Kevin Osterhout, whose family, owns the store says business has been brisk since the store announced it is closing. (Photo: Hugo Kugiya)
The announcement of the end of Olsen’s on the neighborhood website, myballard.com, unintentionally started a war of postings between traditionalists who blame yuppies for taking all the sincerity out of the neighborhood, and pragmatists who see the locals’ resentment as close-minded and a bit xenophobic. Some of the exchanges get downright nasty.
The traditionalists come off as sentimental and defensive. The yuppie pragmatists come off as pompous and a bit oblivious. Both sides have their challenges. It’s hard to sound terribly smart or original when you complain about change. But the physical and cultural changes underway in Ballard can seem a little crass and pretentious, the blocks of cookie-cutter condos, the $12 bottles of beer.
The fate of the world and the virtues of commerce and consumption aside, most of the postings miss an important point: Changing demographics of a neighborhood do not necessarily spell the doom of a beloved business. The good ones find a way to survive change.
Take the Lower East Side of Manhattan, once a working-class ghetto of Jews, Puerto Ricans and other immigrants. One of the last Manhattan neighborhoods to gentrify, the LSE and neighboring Nolita are now home to fashionable boutiques, high-end restaurants, trendy bars and offer some of the best celebrity watching in the city. Ballard is quaint by comparison.
And yet, Katz’s Delicatessen still thrives there on Houston Street largely unchanged as does Russ and Daughters, which has been in business for almost 100 years serving smoked fish, caviar and, coincidentally, pickled herring. The food is good to be sure. But the places survived because the places continued to make and attract new customers. Perhaps it was good marketing. Perhaps parents and grandparents passed down traditions of eating to their offspring in ways the old Scandinavians in Ballard did not. Maybe for all the talk, Seattle is simply a city not that in love with its traditions, more willing to change and move on.
But, one way or the other, within the next few weeks, unless a savior arrives, the doors of Olsen’s will close forever.
“We’re still hoping,” Osterhout said, “that someone will buy the place and keep it going.”
