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All fans of kitsch architecture, great dive bars, giant teapots, and Tacoma—Unite! Save the Java Jive alive!
As the Elliott Bay Book Co. prepares to leave Pioneer Square a business neighborhood without an “anchor tenant,” the Square’s major retail industry, big rowdy bars, is also in decline. The J&M shuttered altogether (it’s rumored to be reopening under new management as less of a bar and more of a cafe). Others are rumored to be in trouble.
I remember the glory days of the Square’s nightlife scene. I remember that milieu’s signature street sound. You’d stand in front of the pergola around midnight on a Saturday. You could hear, from five different bars, five different white blues bands, each cranking out a mediocre rendition of “Mustang Sally,” each band slightly out of tempo with the others. It was a cacophany only avant-garde composer Charles Ives could have dreamt up.
That scene was already waning before the infamous 2001 Mardi Gras melee gave the Square a bad PR rep.
Fast forward almost a decade. Today’s loci for bigtime drinking are Fremont, Pike/Pine, and especially Belltown.
Belltown’s bar scene has its own signature street sound. It’s the arhythmic clippety-clop of dozens of high-heel shoes trotting up and down the sidewalks of First Avenue. Creating this sound are many small groups of bargoers, small seas of black dresses and perfect hairdos.
These women, and their precursors over the past decade and a half, are the reason Belltown won the bar wars.
In my photo-history book Seattle’s Belltown, I described the rise of the upper First Avenue bar scene:
“After the Vogue proved straight people would indeed come to Belltown to drink and dance, larger, more mainstream nightclubs emerged. Among the first, both on First Avenue, were Casa U Betcha (opened 1989) and Downunder (opened 1991). Both places began on a simple premise: Create an exciting yet comfortable place for image-conscious young women, and the fellows would follow in tow (or in search).”
To this target market, the Square was, and would always be, too dark, too grungy, and too iffy. The condo canyons of Belltown, in contrast, were relatively clean (if still barren) with fresh new buildings and sported (at least some) well-lit sidewalks.
The state liquor laws were liberalized later in the 1990s, leading to more and bigger hard-liquor bars. Casa U Betcha and Downunder gave way to slicker fun palaces, all carefully designed and lit, with fancy drinks at fancy prices to be consumed while wearing fancy out-on-the-town clothes and admiring others doing the same.
And, aside from the occasional Sport, nearly all these joints sought to attract, or at least not to offend, the young-adult female market.
You’re free to make your comparisons here to the high-heeled and well-heeled fashionistas of HBO’s old Sex and the City.
I’d prefer a more local comparison, to Sex In Seattle. In case you don’t know, that’s a live stage show that’s presented 17 installments since 2001. Its heroines are social and career strivers, less materialistic and less “arrived” than the Sex and the City women.
And they’re Asian Americans. As are Sex In Seattle’s writers and producers.
As are a healthy proportion of the clientele at Belltown’s megabars these days.
These customers want many of the same things Belltown residents want. They like attractive, clean, safe streets with well-lit sidewalks.
They may make a little more noise outside than some of the residents want to hear.
But we’re all in the same place, geographically and otherwise.
(Cross posted with the Belltown Messenger.)
A kind reader recently slipped me a rare copy of The Hedonist: In Pursuit of Pleasure and Happiness. It’s a self-published local restaurant and entertainment guide from 1970.
“Typeset” on a typewriter (remember those?) with what look like press-type headlines (remember those?), the slim paperback provides a handy, informal peek at what Seattle was like four long decades ago.
It just happens that 1970 was a very pivotal year around here. The Seattle Pilots baseball team split for Milwaukee after just one season, temporarily dashing civic boosters’ hopes of Seattle becoming a “big league city.” Boeing executed its first massive layoffs, plunging the region into a deep recession that stuck around for several years.
The youth culture was also changing. The flower-power era was quickly fading. The “grownup hippie” milieu of mellow blues-rock bands and foodie bistros was slowly emerging.
In this time of uncertainty, The Hedonist’s editors (William L. Hailey, Joan Frederickson, and Sharon Minteer) and a small team of co-writers took it upon themselves to list the ways a young adult in Seattle could eat, drink, dance, shop, and play.
They tell all about such onetime major city attractions as Morningtown Pizza on Roosevelt (“Come as you are—when you get there, you’ll see that everyone else did, too”), the pre-burger-chain Red Robin near Eastlake (“Once a comfortable, clannish tavern suitable for intimate drunken orgies, the Robin now shelters those who would be hip for a few hours on Friday night and sell shoes and encyclopedias the rest of the week”), and First Avenue’s “amusement arcades” (“films are silent, uncensored, and done on extremely short subjects. No minors, no women allowed to view films and ID please”).
You learn about some of the hundreds of tiny storefront taverns that dotted the city during those days of more restrictive litter laws. Places like the Rat Hole in Wallingford (“shingled walls are covered with posters and road signs; the floor is barely visible through the sawdust covering”), the Century on upper University Way (“a welcome relief from the swinging world of the university beer halls”), and Your Mother’s Mustache in Pioneer Square (“revisit your childhood in the ‘Pillow Play Room’—a bathtub full of pillows, tinker toys and carpeting to sit on”).
What did they say about Capitol Hill? Glad you asked.
A brief chapter about the neighborhood opens with a brief essay by contributing writer Jeannette Franks: “Capitol Hill still hasn’t decided whether it is a haven for hippies, rich kids or little old ladies. Consequently, it has something for everyone, but not a lot for anyone. Shops spring up like mushrooms and vanish as quickly, so don’t get too attached to any one place. The following are expected to be with us for a while, but one never knows just how long.”
A few of the establishments listed in that chapter, and elsewhere in the book, did last a while. Fillipi’s Book and Record Shop ran until 2000 or so; the Keeg’s and Del-Teet furniture stores lasted into the 1980s
We’ve still got the Harvard Exit (“the only movie house with soul”). And the Comet (“This small, friendly tavern on Capitol Hill caters primarily to hip young people…. The management prefers country music, but this is not adamant.”
Where Joe Bar is now, there was once the Russian Samovar restaurant. (“No reservations are necessary to enjoy this old world Russian cuisine, and ‘a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.'”)
Along the 10th Avenue East business strip near the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, there used to be the New York Style Deli. (“Not quite New York style, but good. A little old lady will appreciate your business. Open until midnight.
Those two places I remember. I have no memory of Oquasa Inc. on Broadway (“a head shop with assorted beads, bells vests and candles but no papers”). Nor did I ever visit Demitri’s Coffee House on East Pine (“Demitri has filled all nine of his rooms with fresh flowers, precious old things, bric-a-brac, statues, music—almost anything”).
A short chapter toward the end of the book lists eleven bars and other sites around town “For the Involved Gay.” Only one of these has a Capitol Hill address—Dorian House, the predecessor to the still-operating Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual Minorities.
Then there’s the chapter about “Things To Do For About a Dollar.” It contains an odd little item entitled “Giant Ice Cube.” It reads: “The ice machine at 18th and Madison sells 25-pound blocks of ice for 60 cents. Take these oversized ice cubes to a grassy hill in the Arboretum and ‘ride’ it to the bottom. This may not be a hot idea, but it will freeze your social position in the community.”
I like to think we’ve got better entertainment options than that now.
(Expanded from a column in the Capitol Hill Times.)
As you may know, film reviewing legend Roger Ebert can no longer speak, following several surgeries in recent years. Turns out he can no longer eat or drink either. But that doesn’t stop him from remembering the great tastes of his past.
Both Canlis and the Sorrento Hotel’s bar now have special cocktails named after characters in the Twilight novels and movies. Sorry, but  this is the only Cullen I’ve ever admired.
Hooters just opened in South Park, the first national chain restaurant in that defiantly unchained pocket neighborhood.
(Update 10/11/09: I got there today. It’s really in Boulevard Park, a tiny commercial strip separated from the South Park neighborhood by a lonely highway overpass. A McDonald’s already exists along this strip.)
I don’t particularly care for Hooters.
I really don’t care for essays that attack Hooters from the standpoint of simplistic gender-ideology, such as Lindy West’s piece in the Stranger.
On the other hand, I love the comment thread following West’s piece.
The commenters hit upon some important points West had elided past:
West, most of the commenters, and I agree on one point—the Hooters Girl look (apparently inspired by the sorority-slut uniforms in the 1979 sexploitation film H.O.T.S.) is, to all of us, decidedly unsexy.
And the whole Hooters aesthetic/experience conjures association with/nostalgia for fraternity-sorority bonding, but is profoundly anti-intellectual and anti-education. The apparent ideal Hooters customer is an adult who went to college but didn’t learn anything.
Item:Â Mary Kay Letourneau and her grownup boytoy Vili Fualaau will cohost a “Hot Teacher” night, this Saturday at the Fuel sports bar in Pioneer Square.
Comment: What, that guy’s old enough to be in bars now?
On Thursday evening, I attended a Metblogs Seattle meetup at the new Oddfellows bar on Capitol Hill. The meeting’s premise: Start the conversation on what we need in terms of local news in the Internet age. P-I staffers Monica Guzman and Michelle Nicolosi were on hand to directly receive ideas on what a post-print seattlepi.com ought to do.
But the meetup’s organizers want your input too. Live and in person even. They’re putting together a town meeting, basically as soon as they can nail down a location. Stay tuned to nonewsisbadnews.org for details.
Meanwhile, here are more thoughts about the P-I‘s potential fate, from Time magazine and from Laura Porto Stockwell.
Stockwell comments on a KUOW panel discussion, during which someone apparently repeated the figure, previously quoted here yesterday, that an online-only P-I might only keep 20 journalists employed. Stockwell seems confident such a skeleton crew can still produce a copmelling product by deftly coordinating the work of volunteer citizen journalists.
As I’ve already said, I want seattlepi.com to remain a professional site. Bloggers and citizen journalists are terrific, but there are also sounds that can only be made by a well-rehearsed orchestra. I want to preserve as much of the P-I talent pool as possible. Yes, that includes copy editors. (Believe me, I know how valuable they are.)
However, I also see the value of close-to-the-ground contributors such as neighborhood bloggers in bringing reader interest back to local news. Any surviving newspaper and/or news site will have to deal with with I call the “willfully ignorant,” those “smart,” “hip” urbanites who only read the New York fuckin’ Times and only listen to NP fuckin’ R. You’ve gotta get these people to care about what’s going on HERE.
…for a Tuesday morning toast: Here’s additional local joints offering inauguration parties on 1/20.
…for important occasions, no matter how miraculous modern-day media might be.
Thus, the growing list of places holding inauguration parties early Tuesday morning.
Gatherings will occur at places as big as the Paramount and as intimate as Cafe Racer on Roosevelt. Also: Spitfire in Belltown (hosted by the fab Kerri Harrop), the Baltic Room, Bill’s Off Broadway, 88 Keys (hosted by AM 1090), Sport downstairs from KOMO/KVI (hosted by MoveOn), Palace Kitchen Ballroom, Central Cinema, Seattle Center House, and the South Lake Union Discovery Center. Events at Town Hall and the Triple Door are sold out.
Anheuser-Busch surrendered to the Belgian-based InBev. Miller was sold to South African Breweries (which, despite the name, is based in Britain). Coors merged with Molson.
So: What’s the biggest remaining American-owned suds maker?
As you recall, the company now calling itself Pabst is simply a budget-priced marketing company, whose products are made under contract in Miller plants.
Next on BeerInfo.com’s Top 50 list: Boston Beer, a.k.a. Samuel Adams. Boston used to be a “virtual brewer”, like today’s Pabst. But today the majority of its product comes from the former Hudepohl Brewing plant in Cincinnati, bought by Boston a decade ago.
In sixth place stands Pennsylvania’s Yuenling, the biggest remaining regional lager producer.
Several Northwest microbrewers are also on BeerInfo’s list–Widmer, Redhook (both of which have distribution deals with Anheuser-Busch), Pyramid (now merged with a Vermont firm), Deschutes, Full Sail, Mac and Jack’s.
This prominence signifies both the strength of regional specialty brews and the disappearance of the industry’s whole former second tier (Stroh’s, Ballantine, Schaffer, Falstaff, Blatz, Carling, Lucky, Rainier, Oly, Blitz-Weinhard, etc. etc.).
…rolls along, even into primary states. Elsewhere:
…a new month, and largely the same ol’ nooze:
Now, MS wants Y!’s search sites, and will pay big bucks to get ’em. What would happen to the rest of Yahoo!’s sprawling network of sites? MS would likely keep (and rebrand) some, fold others into its existing MSN, and close or sell the rest.
M. Coy Books is indeed shuttering, after 18 years on Pine Street. The last non-chain, general-topics bookstore in the downtown retail district has indeed lost its lease, and the two Michaels who run it have decided the business is too marginal to relocate. The Michaels have always supported my work, even when I was reduced to self-publishing.
THE VIRGINIA INN’S current incarnation closes Jan. 13. It will reopen in an expanded “double wide” format, including a full kitchen, in March.
AND CRANIUM, the local board-game enterprise that got big with a deal to sell games at Starbucks, is selling out to toy mega-monster Hasbro. The latter’s brands include Monopoly, Scrabble, Candy Land, and the locally-invented Magic: The Gathering.
