The Singing Barber, a local barbershop located at the bustling junction of Market Street and Eighth Avenue Northwest in Ballard, has been hit by a relentless thief for the second time within past year leaving its owner questioning the shop's future in the neighborhood. The break-in, occurring late Saturday night, stripped the barbershop of crucial haircutting gear leaving nothing but shattered glass and the echo of unseen malefactors on the scene.
Owner Demarkis Wigfall, whose dual identity as a Black, queer veteran has been embraced by the Ballard community over a decade of service, opened up about his distress in an interview with KIRO 7, where he expressed his bafflement "It’s really disappointing because the community seems to be very nice, I don’t know where all the burglaries come from," Wigfall told KIRO 7. His sentiments mirror the rupture of trust that theft imposes, not just on his storied establishment but also upon the collective assurance a community cradles in its bosom.
The Singing Barber's staff member Ashley Schoenberger illustrated the scope of the calamity in a statement to KING 5, "So we're looking at thousands of dollars' worth of haircutting scissors that were just taken, thousands of dollars' worth of haircutting clippers." The estimate of the losses, which include the price of a new door and the essential tools, circles a staggering nearly $12,000, as KING 5 reported. This financial depletion comes as another blow for Wigfall, who is already navigating the choppy waters of precariousness that small business owners contend with daily.
Despite the impositions of despair and tumult of uncertainties, Ballard's heartened salute to Wigfall's plight came in the form of overwhelming support through a GoFundMe campaign, which by Monday morning exceeded its $12,000 goal showering in over $15,000 from nearly 200 donors. This surge of communal support echoed a firmament of solidarity, casting rays of possible resurrection on The Singing Barber's battered threshold, "My first thought is, ‘Do I actually need to be here, is there somewhere else I could go, just take my talents somewhere else,’ because I really do like Ballard a lot," Wigfall said I’ve been shown a lot of love here, been here for 10 years…The city really does have to do something about the burglaries, it really needs to step up," according to the KIRO 7 interview.
