For Julie Pleasant-Albright it was when they moved The Red Door Alehouse in Fremont. For Margaret Anderson it started when there was no longer angle parking on Market Street. Others cited when Ballard was written up in The New York Times or when the Second Saturday Artwalks began. Just as Seattle seemed to be protected from the outside world by the myth of constant rain, so too was Ballard long protected by its reputation as a sleepy Scandinavian enclave. Was it that Ballard changed, or that the outside world discovered that fact?

For some months now I have been asking people about the Ballard transformation: from neighborhood known for lutefisk jokes to area with a serious nightlife. What do you think was the moment of change, I've queried. What do you think transformed Ballard from "small town" to "hip urban" (or post-hip)?

Although the seeds of all change might be traced to the politics that resulted in Ballard's annexation to Seattle in 1907, I think it is safe to say no one is left alive who remembers it first-hand. A Ballard-born woman named Mary Olsen died last week at the age of 101. Despite her long life in Ballard she would have been too young to remember.

Margaret Anderson has lived in the area for 88 years: the last 66 years on the same street in Ballard. For 20 years she has volunteered as librarian in the lower level of Leif Erikson Lodge No. 1, along with other local endeavors. She declared that I'd seen more change in my 20 years in Ballard than she'd seen in 66 years. She remembers when the local activist Jody Haug showed her an article about Ballard's proposed density as an urban village. Her late husband said, "Why are you worrying about it? You'll be dead by then." (Far from it).

Julie Pleasant-Albright is a fourth generation Ballardite whose grandparents and parents built many of the original buildings and businesses. She told me about a letter written by her grandmother along the lines of, "can you believe they are going to annex us to Seattle, and our schools too!" Just as in 1907, in the early 1990's Seattle needed the land in Fremont, Wallingford and Ballard for growth. The old structures gave way to the new in Fremont first, purportedly pushing the artists and small retailers to Ballard. Albright recalls 1997 as a pivotal - the year the Red Door Alehouse was physically moved to the west, off of Fremont Avenue, and another westward migration occurred, the one that sent more of Fremont's quirky "hipness" to Ballard.

Make no mistake, Ballard has been ever-changing up to this point in time: the residents, the demographics, the ability of single income families or blue-collar workers to afford a place to live, much less own. "Proving Belltown has come to Ballard..." read part of a review for the Market Street Grill in 2002. Why didn't that set off warning bells? By the time that most of us realized that "square" Ballard was becoming chic, it was on its way to being deemed post-hip.

Still I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the news on March 25, 2002 - sitting in a Monday a.m. meeting in a conference room so close to the Ship Canal the floor shuddered when tugboats passed. My manager said bluntly, "There was an article about Ballard in the Travel section of The New York Times yesterday." It was as though we couldn't realize that Ballard was changing until we read about our neighborhood in an East Coast newspaper.

The author of "Nordic Knits and Lutefisk in Seattle," Katherine Ashenburg, a writer and frequent travel contributor, correctly identified Ballard at the cusp between old and new, with industrial precariously in balance with the emerging arts and retail scene. As she put it so well, "Since history suggests that these magic moments of coexistence don't last long, this is the time to see Ballard."

I contacted author Katherine Ashenburg confessing that many cite the article as if it was a catalyst. Asked for her response to this and whether she thought the wheels were already in motion her reply by email was, "I think it's funny that the NYT piece has been taken so seriously, because it was definitely a wheel in motion - my sister had been bugging me to write about Ballard for at least a few years as a really happening place, and I used a piece on Seattle's best neighborhoods in Seattle magazine that mentioned Ballard as a great place to bring up children ... so it was an idea whose time had come, and I didn't discover it!"

So here is Ballard in 2007, a Seattle neighborhood for 100 years, with no two people agreeing on an exact moment or agent of change. The urban village is becoming closer to reality, but transportation solutions (and funding) are unable to keep pace with building. Change has been happening all along but its magnitude has greatly increased in the last 20 years. Overwhelmed by new problems it is more pleasant to sift through memories in search of a mythical moment when new Ballard was discovered by the outside world. We do know that here is no longer angle parking on Market Street. Soon the only store featuring Scandinavian gifts will be Olsen's Scandinavian Foods. There are no known living witnesses to provide a firsthand account of the annexation and I first read about Volterra on Ballard Avenue in The New York Times instead of the local paper. The outside world discovered that it didn't always rain in Seattle, and the rest is history.

Peggy's email is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces for the PI's Ballard Webtown at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ballard/.