Last November, Capitol Hill resident Ferdous Ahmed appeared in a full page photograph in City Arts magazine. He was dressed to the proverbial nines in a vintage black suit, top hat, sunglasses, and high-top boots, accessorized with a gold pocket watch.

A lifelong vintage-wear fan and collector, Ahmed had just opened a boutique on East Olive Way the month before. It specialized in outfitting “steampunk” afficianados in suitably outlandish retro costumery, with garments and accessories mixed and matched from assorted real-world times and places (though mostly of a Victorian sensibility).

Ahmed’s boutique, Capitol Hill Vaudeville, is gone now.

The Solara Building, where the store had been, is mostly vacated (except for a tattoo studio). Entrepreneurs Shanon Thorson and Laura Olson (the team behind Po Dog on Union Street and the Grim bar on 11th Avenue), in partnership with Alex Garcia (Emerson Salon, Banyan Branch Marketing), are turning the place into The Social, a mammoth (3,000 square feet) gay bar and restaurant. Construction crews are now reshaping the building’s interior to sport a dining room and at least four semi-detached bar areas.

Olson and her partners are keeping the tattoo studio on the premises during the construction period, and say they want to bring back some of the building’s other former tenants (including a hair salon and a role-playing game store) in its peripheral spaces.

Ahmed’s boutique, though, might not get invited back. It was just getting off the ground as a business when it got sent packing. Harem, another clothing shop that had been in the Solara (and had previously been in its own storefront on Broadway), is definitely not returning; owner Victoria Landis has held her liquidation sale and is moving on.

Two features had made the Solara ideal for merchants like Landis and Ahmed.

The first was the interior flexibility of its main floor. It featured a big open space, where the gaming store could hold tournaments and the boutiques could hold fashion shows and receptions, without having to pay full time for the extra square footage.

The second was the relatively low rent. None of the Solara’s tenants had its own street-facing storefront. Without this means to attract casual foot traffic, in a building that was already set back from the street by a small parking strip, the tenants had to draw their clientele with clever promotion to identifiable niche markets. The building’s low rents were priced accordingly, to allow these specialty destination spaces to exist.

But a couple of alt-fashion boutiques and a gaming parlor just can’t bring in the kind of money a destination restaurant, and especially a bar/nightclub, can potentially generate.

Thus, the Hill is getting a new, high profile gay club. Olive Way, in particular, is getting another stop on what’s quickly shaping up as the Hill’s next major bar-crawling scene.

And we’re losing an experiment in providing urban spaces for highly specialized retail, the first experiment of its kind here since the Seattle Independent Mall (on East Pike a decade ago.)

Any “artistic” neighborhood needs some cheaper spaces within its mix. Spaces where the unexpected can happen, where new subcultures can form, where new concepts can germinate.

I was reminded of this when I read the University of Washington Press’s new essay collection Seattle Geographies. One of its longer chapters is entitled “Queering Gay Space.”

The chapter’s authors (Michael Brown, Sean Wang, and Larry Knopp) noted that Capitol Hill hadn’t always been the region’s gay culture nexus. In the first half of the last century, gay and lesbian bars, cabarets, and residential homes existed, with varying degrees of “out”-ness, mainly in Pioneer Square, plus a few scattered spots throughout the downtown core and in the University District and Queen Anne.

But when gay pride first really took off in the early 1970s, the Boeing Bust had depressed housing prices throughout the region. The Hill’s housing prices were further held back by what the essay’s authors called “white flight and fears of inner-city decay.” That gave the Hill a “large number of affordable apartments and rooms in shared houses,” which “drew young queer baby boomers into the area.”

The Hill’s desirability as a place to live, aided in part by then-low housing costs, helped spur its growth as a place for gay businesses and hangouts; and also as a place for bohemian art, theater, and fashion scenes.

Thus, four decades later, it can sprout a venture as monumental as The Social.

(Cross posted with the Capitol Hill Times.)

While Hooters may be gone from Seattle now, there are now several other “breastaurant” chains now serving up sports-bar food via low-cut waitress costumes around the country.

And one of them even uses the name “Twin Peaks,” with no permission from David Lynch (thanks to the vagaries of trademark law).

(Thanx and hat tip to Ronald Holden.)

Most of the Hooters restaurants in Washington, including the Seattle location at south Lake Union, are now closed. The parent company insists it’s not due to any lessened popularity in the chain’s concept. It’s just the matter of a regional franchisee that got into a lawsuit with an unspecified “third party.”

This sort of thing has happened before. Here in the late 1990s, a multistore Burger King franchisee suddenly folded.

Of course this could be an opportunity for some new, all local cleavage-themed restaurant. Perhaps with a neo-burlesque concept. After all, there’s nothing either novel or trademarkable about low-cut waitress costumes. The idea goes back at least as far as the serving wenches in English country inns. (And sometimes the food at Hooters tasted almost as old.)

The Totem House fish n’ chips stand near the Ballard locks is SAVED!

Red Mill Burgers will open at the site later this year. The location will offer fish and chowder as well as Red Mill’s regular gourmet-burger menu.

It was originally built in the mid 1930s, as a gift shop selling Native American artifacts to locks visitors. It closed in WWII. It reopened in 1945 as a fish stand. The same family owned it for 65 years of gradual decline, until they abruptly shuttered it this past New Year’s.

Just in time for the imminent arrival of baseball season, Grand Slams may again be slammed down within Seattle’s city limits.

The Denny’s restaurant on 4th Avenue South, which became the sort-of indie “4th Avenue Diner” a year or two back, is now a full fledged Denny’s again.

The place had been run all this time by the Denny’s regional franchisee. They had decided the Industrial District branch (the last Denny’s in Seattle proper) could attract just as much business without paying for the Denny’s name, menu, and ad support. Apparently they’ve changed their minds.

A few days late but always more than welcome, it’s the yummy return of the annual MISCmedia In/Out List.

As always, this listing denotes what will become hot or not-so-hot during the next year, not necessarily what’s hot or not-so-hot now. If you believe everything big now will just keep getting bigger, I can get you a Hummer dealership really cheap.

Ballard’s legendary Totem House fish n’ chips stand suddenly closed on New Year’s Eve, after 62 years in business.

The operation had been in decline for many years.

But the building, with its native longhouse-inspired design and iconography, needs to stay.

Any ideas what to put in there?

Cornell University researchers are trying to make one of the gadgets in Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age to life—the futuristic food processor that could turn a streaming input of basic goop into nearly any delicious foodstuff imaginable.

They’ve got a prototype machine that works like an ink jet printer. As a BBC report summarizes,

Just pop the raw food “inks” in the top, load the recipe—or ‘FabApp’—and the machine would do the rest.

As one who has long hailed the promise of food tech, and who has refused the false dichotomy of “processed” vs. “healthy,” I’m intrigued by the possibilities.

Right now, the device only works with ingredients that can be stored in liquid form. But since hot dogs and gyro meat are made with a liquid intermediate stage, meat products (or veggie-friendly fake meat products) can be used in the system. (On-the-bone meats and un-juicified veggies can’t.)

I can foresee great possibilities for creative home cookery (and nutrient-controlled institutional cookery).

Of course, I can also foresee a lot of bad ideas. (Ham cake, anyone?)

(Cross-posted with the Capitol Hill Times.)

Sally Clark had seen the Capitol Hill Block Party.

She’d seen the exuberant crowds bringing life, and business, to Pike/Pine.

She saw that it was good.

She decided she’d like more of it.

All year round.

In July, even before this year’s Block Party occurred, the City Councilmember floated the idea of closing one or more blocks in the Pike/Pine Corridor from vehicular traffic, one or more nights a week.

Her inspiration came partly from the Block Party and partly from the example of Austin. The Texan nightlife hotspot, once billed in the ’90s as the “Next Seattle,” shuts down Sixth Street (its main nightclub drag) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 11 p.m. to closing time. The result: A bustling, vibrant street scene along this part-time pedestrian mall.

Councilmember Clark’s first choice for a year-round block party site here was East Pike Street, from Broadway perhaps as far east as 12th Avenue.

The concept hasn’t progressed very far since it was initially offered. Councilmember Clark says it would need the approval of, and tax assessments from, area businesses.

Still, at this fledgling stage, the every-weekend block party has already attracted detractors.

Writing at PubliCola.net in mid-September, urban planning maven Dan Bertolet (who has described himself as a devout “car hater”) nevertheless disapproved of the street closure concept.

Bertolet believes a late night street party every weekend just couldn’t attract enough regular patrons to be worth the traffic disruptions.

He’d rather have a more modest set of pedestrian amenities on East Pike, such as wider sidewalks and a wider range of permitted foods for street vendors to sell.

I disagree.

I’ve seen the weekend night scene along First Avenue in Belltown (which will get its own quasi-Block Party space next year, when Bell Street gets refitted with wider, landscaped sidewalks).

The late-night scene on First can occasionally get wild and rowdy, particularly in the hour just before and after closing time. But it can also be a blast, an entertainment destination in its own right.

Something like that on The Hill, with its own unique milieu, would be its own kind of blast. Particularly if it’s enhanced by the freedom of milling about without fear of traffic.

Of course, Seattle has something Austin (and New Orleans and Miami) don’t have.

A rainy season, commonly known as winter.

Would The Hill’s party-minded young adults, hipsters, gays, etc. want to wander about on a closed-off street during a drizzling Northwest monsoon season?

For a potential answer to that, don’t look south. Look north.

A long stretch of Vancouver’s Granville Street has been car-free (except for transit buses) for three decades now.

And it works.

Day and night, week in and week out, Granville is alive with diners, drinkers, clubgoers, and assorted revelers of all types.

Pike can become more like that.

We could at least try it out.

Close East Pike to cars one Saturday night a month for six months.

Festoon the place with awnings and tents in case of rain.

Bring in artists, a music stage, street performers, fire eaters, and vaudeville/burlesque acts.

Park some mobile vending trucks. But leave out the beer garden. The object is to bring more business to Pike/Pine’s bars, not to compete with them.

If these trials work out, if they attract enough regular revelers, turn them into regular events.

I can see the slogan now:

“Yes, We’re Closed!”

The Cooking Channel (not to be confused with the Food Network!) is showing reruns of The Galloping Gourmet from the ealry 1970s.

This is the earliest cooking show I remember ever watching complete episodes of.

That’s because Graham Kerr was a comedian in the guise of a foodie. He had his schticks, his physical comedy bits, his gags, his mugging funny faces. And because his act was grounded in the presentation of a real recipe of the day, he always had a narrative “through line” to get back to.

The Cooking Channel’s web site calls The Galloping Gourmet “a U.K. import.” Kerr was a Brit, but the show was made in Toronto.

As many of you know, Kerr’s lived in northwest Washington for the past few decades. He’s become an outspoken evangelist for healthy eating and sustainable, local farming.

The buttery, creamy, high-fat-content entrees he used to make on TV are no longer in his repertoire.

But it’s still fun to watch him making them, via the magic of videotape.

As longtime readers of this space know, I have spent my entire adult life in rebellion against “liberal” conservatism as well as regular conservative conservatism.

Among my biggest peeves: The baby boomer Luddites (and their contemporary successors); in particular, their religious devotion to allegedly “natural” foods. This obsession has, over the decades, seeped into the alleged “mainstream,” facilitating the overpriced nonsense that is Whole Foods Markets.

Now I have a champion for the cause of common-sense consumption. She’s Rachel Lauden, and she’s written a whole essay “In Praise of Fast Food.”

Her thesis: People became stronger and lived longer as they developed ways to process and prepare what they ate before they ate it. Industrial food processing as developed over the centuries steadily led to less waste, less malnutrition, less food poisoning, and less drudgery, particularly for women. The Rousseauian Eden fantasy of a past diet of fresh produce and raw roughage is just a fantasy.

Yes, many of us need to eat better. But let’s do it using all the advantages, all the techniques, and all the ingredients available to us.

Embrace your inner warrior and savor these MREs (meals, ready-to-eat) from around the world!

Sorry about the two weeks between posts.

I’ve been on some bigtime freelance gigs, which ought to keep me free from immediate financial worries for at least a while.

I also had another birthday (hint: it’s the same number as a joker in the deck). Didn’t get an iPad, but that’s okay.

I had some recent reminders of what getting older can be like, which I’ll tell you about soon.

Oh, and I do have one piece of good news to report:

The one and only Clark Bar is available locally again! It’s at Bartell’s in milk chocolate and dark chocolate variants. It’s now made by the Necco Wafers people. And don’t even think of confusing it with that brash upstart knockoff, Butterfinger.

Corporate consultant Garland Pollard, at his Brandland USA blog, put out a list three years ago of “100 Brands To Bring Back.”

It has many fondly remembered names you might expect on such a list—Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Marshall Field’s (Pollard also wants the other Macyfied regional retailers brought back), Woolworth, Pan Am, Mutual Radio, GTE.

It’s also got at least a couple of clunkers. It’s way too early to get nostalgic over MCI, and I suspect few people would ever place trust in the Enron name again.

On more recent blog entries, Pollard has added his condolences toward Postum, Pontiac, and Continental Airlines, and expresses his fears toward the future of the Mars-acquired Life Savers.

• There’s another real supermarket in greater downtown!
• It’s got quite decent, everyday low prices on the staples and the perishables. (As long as you’re willing to do without a really broad selection or the high-end artisanal varieties.)
• But on packaged, canned, bottled, and frozen stuff, it really shines. That’s because the franchise chain (130 stores in six states) specializes in buying manufacturers’ surpluses, closeouts, and overstocks. This means the concept can’t spread too big. (As you may have read elsewhere, the U.S. food industry operates at sometimes brutal efficiencies. There’s only so much “remarketable” product for the likes of Grocery Outlet to pick up.)
• But on what Grocery Outlet does obtain, retail prices can be half of what regular stores charge, or even less.
• And what stuff it is! It’s an ever-changing array of the familiar and the exotic. Store brands from stores that don’t exist in this region. (Acme! Jewel! Stop n’ Shop!) Boxes of Cap’n Crunch boldly labeled USA PRODUCT FOR EXPORT ONLY. (Nice to know there’s still some goods we can sell overseas.) Items that never gained great distribution here, such as Vienetta (a “frozen dairy dessert cake”).