Bainbridge Island occupies a funny place in the local gestalt. Like its even more eccentric cousin, Vashon Island, Bainbridge sees itself as a world onto its own despite its proximity to Seattle. People live on Bainbridge to get a break from development and the big city. The environmentalist utopian retreat IslandWood makes its home here.

This mindset might help you understand the “girl in a tree” phenomenon that began last summer. In August, a 19-year-old college student named Chiara D’Angelo began camping out in a Douglas Fir in order to protest the development of a planned 72,000-square-foot-mall that would house a Walgreens and Key Bank. It’s the kind of shopping center that is utterly commonplace. Yet it roused ire on the island for the “mall sprawl” it would create and the 830 trees it would displace.

D’Angelo’s tree-sit—reminiscent of the grand environmental protests of the late ‘90s and early aughts and prompting coverage by “Good Morning America,” among other outlets– lasted only 36 hours. But an islander named Leif Utne, son of Utne Reader’s founder and an amateur musician, is trying to keep the momentum going. He wrote a song, called “Girl in a Tree” and recorded it in the professional-quality home recording studio of fellow islander Michael Belkin, who normally uses it for his band devoted to anti-vaccine activism. (See our former cover story profiling Belkin.)

Then Utne crowd-sourced a video set to the tune. In it, a cross section of islanders soulfully rock out while holding protest signs with such slogans as “no mall sprawl” and “support local businesses.”

“We’re not backing down cause our island is on sacred ground,” croons Utne. He and his supporters have a plan of attack that includes a petition threatening a boycott of the mall, which is to be developed by an Ohio firm called Visconsi, So far, Utne tells Seattle Weekly, 700 people have signed.

Good luck to them stopping the forces of development. As Seaettlites well know from the current building frenzy, it’s not easy. Maybe Bainbridge isn’t such a different world after all.

Utne, though, says he’s seeing headway. “Last Tuesday, the city council asked the city manager to inquire with the developer about building a planned new police station on a portion of the mall site. Many of us boycott-supporters could get behind that idea, as it would replace some of the planned mall.” That, he says, would make it easier to rally support for others uses on the site, like a park or teen center.