(TODAY’S PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED CONTENTS, as you might guess, will appear on a future date.)
SHORTLY BEFORE 11 FRIDAY NIGHT, I was doing my typical Friday bar- and gallery-hopping jaunt, and happened to step in at the Lava Lounge.
Within a minute of my arrival, someone ran in and yelled something at the bartender, who turned down the stereo and shouted aloud.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Speakeasy is now on fire.”
I joined the throngs rushing outside and up to the corner of Second and Bell. The building’s entire second floor was already fully inflamed. Window glass and even streetlight lamps were melting in the heat. Fire crews were already there (the place is three blocks from a fire station); a second alarm would draw crews from as far as Fremont.
The fire, while spectacular and lurid, was conquered within a half hour. The cafe and its back performance room had been quickly evacuated (as had been the Marvin Gardens apartments across the alley). Musicians at the back room’s show that night (a Mount St. Helens anniversary-themed show called “Eruptive Dissonance”) had even been able to get some of their instruments out.
Outside, the people who had gathered from the Belltown bars were soon joined by Speakeasy employees and friends who’d heard about the fire from phone calls and the 11:00 newscasts. They shared reminiscences about the place, worried about its future, or just stood silently.
The Speakeasy, which first opened six years ago this month, was Seattle’s first Internet cafe. But it was intended from the start to be more than just a refuge for e-mailers and gamers.
It was a gathering place for real communities as well as virtual ones. Its 5,000-square-foot space (half the main floor of a two-story-and-basement building) hosted art openings, political rallies (including WTO teach-ins), eclectic music shows (all-ages at first), experimental film screenings, plays, and comedy shows (including Mike Daisey’s one-man show about his Amazon.com employee misadventures).
The Internet side of the operation, meanwhile, created websites for many local progressive groups, and hosted many other folks’ sites (including, since June 1995, this one).
Over the years, the cafe became a vestigial side operation to Speakeasy’s Internet business (it now offers DSL hosting in over 20 U.S. cities, and has over 135 employees). Owners Mike and Gretchen Apgar even talked in 1999 about shuttering the cafe altogether.
Instead, late last year they acquired the leases on the rest of the building (including the former 211 pool hall upstairs). At the time of the fire, renovation work had begun on putting Speakeasy’s DSL offices in the upstairs and turning the downstairs into an expanded cafe with full liquor service.
So what’s going to happen to the place now?
As of this writing, nobody knows.
Speakeasy has the lease, and apparently insurance, on the whole building. The daily papers and TV stations say preliminary structural reports show it basically sound. The cafe itself only suffered water damage, amazingly.
But the building owner might just use it as an excuse for some high rise project, possibly preserving only the old building’s facade.
The latter possibility is, for now, just speculation on my part. But if that’s tried, it’ll be a whole community’s tempers that will turn ablaze.
NEXT: A new book treats Las Vegas as a symbol of everything gaudy, corrupt, and crazy about America. And it wasn’t even written by the French.
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