COCA CLASSIC: Over a year since the demolition of the Center on Contemporary Art’s last exhibition space, the nearly 20-year-old anchor of Seattle’s “alternative” arts scene came roaring back to life this month. It opened a brand new headquarters in one of Capitol Hill’s last heretofore non-upscaled warehouse spaces, plentily conveniently situated for most of COCA’s longtime clique.

So there could be no more appropriate way to celebrate the end of the organization’s hiatus than by staging a massive party–at another, far more remote, location.

Thus, the opening fete for Black and Raw, the first show at the new COCA HQ, was mounted instead at the Big Building, a co-op studio space for iron artists and goth blacksmiths. Hundreds of past and present COCA friends had a smashing time in the big, drafty, beautifully dilapidated Big Building down in the Industrial District, beneath the Spokane Street Viaduct and across from the longshoremen’s union hall.

Among the evening’s delights were the Gothic Cheerleaders, doing their part to keep cartoony devil-worship alive…

… DJ (and fellow Stranger refugee) Riz Rollins…

…a skillful hula hoop demonstration…

…and the B-Hives, a (not only accurate but lively) B-52s cover band featuring, at left, longtime music-scene vet Alison Wonderland.

As was often the case at COCA’s previous incarnations, the party atmosphere outshouted the art on display. Those who noticed (and, yes, I was among them) saw a display of wrought-iron pieces, many by the metal artists who work in the Big Building. These ranged from the sublime (an orca’s tail) to the useful (a lot of candle holders) to the outlandish (fetish slave wear; the Henry Leinonen skull chandelier depicted here).