Sleepy fishing village no more. With new condos aplenty and snarled traffic,

Sleepy fishing village no more. With new condos aplenty and snarled traffic, Ballard seems to have become Easy Rider lite, the epicenter of culture clash, a place to engage in a little guerilla debate over how best to get from A to B. Last month, people were shooting darts at bikers, including on the death trap that is the Ballard Bridge. And just this weekend, the story is that someone was going around and bashing in the windshields of Toyota Priuses. One of the owners whose Prius was bashed tells My Ballard that the perpetrators “sped off in a loud, throaty-sounding SUV.” Thus far, there’s no sign of greenie retaliation. (On the more civilized tip, there’s the dispute/lawsuit between bicyclists and businesses over the Burke Gilman trail.) Still, if you’re rolling all low-carbon-footprint through Seattle’s little Scandinavia, you might want to consider some body armor.