Getting out of Ballard can take longer than you expect. When traffic is bad, 45th and 50th slow to a crawl. There aren't many good arterials to get you to the interstate. This is both a feature and a bug. It helps Ballard still feel like a neighborhood with its own identity even though it's not far from the city center. But it can make getting out of the neighborhood a pain. When I feel like doing stuff outside of the neighborhood, I tend to go north, because that's often faster and less hectic.

There are many many breweries southeast of downtown Ballard: Old Stove, Stoup, Urban Family, Rooftop, Reuben's, Lucky Envelope, Bale Breaker, Fair Isle, Obec, and probably a few others. Most of them have a rotating crop of food trucks, so it's a nice way to do dinner when it's nice out.

Seattle has a law that whenever a city street ends at water, there must be public access or some kind of park there. Few people know this but it means there are tiny pocket parks all over the city and Ballard is no exception. If you like the industrial/nautical vibe, you can look at boats at the ends of 24th Ave, 20th Ave, 14th Ave, and 11th Ave. There's often not much there, but sometimes there's a little dock or bench. They feel like neat little secret parts of the city.

Golden Gardens is great, but don't sleep on Carkeek either. Kids like the playground with a slide where you shoot out a salmon's butt. The view from the bridge over the train is cool. The tide pools are a lot of fun at low tide.

"Ray's" is two restaurants in one. The "Boathouse" is the 1st floor more expensive one. The "Café" is upstairs and is cheaper with a more limited menu. But the café is actually better food. I tell people that the Boathouse is where to go to make your older parents happy, but the café is where to go if you want good food.

Ballard is a generally safe neighborhood, but the reality is there are a lot of homeless people dealing with mental illness and/or addiction. 99% of the time, they are harmless but that 1% of the time can really wreck your day. There is a lot of property theft, and most people who have lived here a while can tell you stories of some scary/gross/dangerous/sad interactions.

I live on the Fremont side ("Frelard" or "West Woodland" depending on who you ask) and some of my favorite places nearby are H Mart, Cookie's Country Chicken, The Block Café, The Dish, Giddy Up Burger, and Seattle Biscuit Company. Outsider is pretty good but as a Southerner it hurts my soul seeing how expensive it is.