ANOTHER OF MY FAVORITE HAUNTS closed last week.
The Ditto Tavern was one of the tiny joints where, in the mid-to-late ’80s, you could see the likes of Green River, Soundgarden, Andrew Wood, and the other unsung heroes of what was still a very underground local alterna-rock scene. The place was willing to book this stuff because it was a tiny spot, well off of Belltown’s foot-traffic patterns, and hence needed to attract a “destination” clientele.
But as the Seattle scene actually got popular, the little out-of-the-way Ditto could no longer compete for acts with any real following. The place’s old owner seemed unable or unwilling to do anything to improve its situation.
It closed in early ’98 and reopened that fall, under new management and with a very handsome orange-and-black paint scheme. I was in a fairly decent drinking mode that fall, having been hired from a longtime post, and enjoyed having another regular hangout.
It had good pub meals and 21 (count ’em!) micros and imports on tap. It was clean and bright and had good rotating art exhibits. It did a good lunch business and had a modest but loyal regular evening crowd.
But the location problem remained a problem; and without the capital to hire enough relief staff, Lydia the new owner went on a slow-n’-steady road to burnout.
So when the building’s owner announced plans to raze the whole half-block for yet another office-retail midrise, she was, as she told me later, only too happy to get the heck outta Belltown.
Besides, she said, the type of people she wanted as customers seemed to have all moved away from the neighborhood. The affluent new condo dwellers, furthermore, don’t walk around in the neighborhood, preferring to drive to and from their secured garages.
Belltown really lost its “artist neighborhood” status back in ’97 or so; with the demolition of the SCUD studios (a.k.a. “the Jell-O mold building”) as the signature event of this loss. Developers of condo tower in the neighborhood continue to advertise their luxury homes with hype-words about the “lively urban creativity” their projects have already kicked out–or which the new condo dwellers immediately attempt to kick out, via lobbying for enhanced zoning and anti-noise regulations.
(And no, I don’t consider architects’ offices to be “art studios” or $100-a-plate restaurants to be “avant-hip nightspots.”)
Just don’t count on any potential ’01 economic recession to change this trend. All it might mean is a few projects could take a little longer to get off the ground, and the resulting new abodes could be merely ridiculously expensive instead of obscenely expensive.
So with the situation unlikely to change on its own, perhaps an urban-preservation movement is in order. But I don’t mean that old kind of urban preservation, in which ancient meat-packing plants, brothels, and horse stables were “restored to their original elegance.”
I mean a preservation of usages, not just of structures.
Other activists and thinkers have already suggested officially designating certain buildings (or spaces within buildings) for below-market-rent artist use. I’d go further, and designate certain parts of certain “urban village” neighborhoods for affordable housing (artist and otherwise), non-luxury retail, and entertainment (including bars and live-music clubs). Folks who move into a block that a live-music club is on will be told as they move in that they can’t just kick the music people out.
None of this would’ve saved the Ditto, whose problems were endemic from its first opening. But maybe they’ll save what’s left of the ol’ Belltown scene on First through Fourth Avenues.
And, just maybe, if there does turn out to be an oversupply of luxury home units in Belltown this year, the purveyors of those units might be willing to participate in a scheme that would limit or even cut back these units’ inventory, thus keeping the prices of the remaining units from falling too far.
NEXT: The bad old days of energy crises–they’re baaaaaaaack.
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