Before Microsoft, Amazon and the digital gold rush, Seattle's economy was propelled by air and water. The skies were kept friendly by the Boeing Company, while the sea pretzeled in and around the thriving port city, which played host to one of the nation's most formidable industrial waterfronts. This dynamic ensured Seattle's collar retained a bluish hue, even as the oncoming tech boom minted millionaires by the minute.

It just so happened that these same tradesmen enjoyed drinking beer after work as well, and they followed Semandiris indoors when he purchased a small brick building a couple of blocks from the canal and opened Mike's Chili Parlor (1447 NW Ballard Way) —also known as "the Chili”—in 1939. For the next 60 years, these types of regulars would sustain the Chili, just as the Chili sustained them.

Nowhere was this more evident than in a hardy slice of northwest Seattle known as Ballard. The portal to Puget Sound's ship canal, Ballard is where much of Alaska's commercial fishing fleet is moored during the offseason. It's also where a Greek immigrant named Mike Semandiris began selling drizzly, meaty chili from a cart in the 1920s, feeding lunch to hungry commercial fishermen, longshoremen, and ship welders.

If you've lived in or paid attention to what's transpired in most major American cities in the 21st century—especially those situated on or near an ocean—you know the next chapter of this story. As the Seattle area has become a high-tech hub rivaled only by Silicon Valley, it's gotten bougie as all fuck. And Ballard wasn't spared. While a significant amount of its waterfront has remained industrial, its housing stock—much of it now chic and modern—has grown far too expensive for the sort of people who once frequented the Chili.

"It's totally changed," says Semandiris' great-grandson, also named Mike, of the Chili's clientele. "We were predominantly blue-collar workers, people coming around the neighborhood. We still get some of that, but that's not 80 percent of our business anymore. I just left [the bar], and I got a construction guy, a lawyer, a couple of sales guys, a lady with dementia with her son who brings her to the Chili twice a week."