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My ex-boss S.P. Miskowski offers the timely reminder that even “little, wonderful, not-like-the-others US” aren’t immune to the economic nonsense.
The Intiman Theater, the third jewel in Seattle’s live theater crown, has called off the rest of its current season. The board says it will regroup and try to figure out whether to mount any more plays next year.
Someone with something to say about this is Alison Narver, who helped start Annex Theatre and was in the process of saving the Empty Space when that company’s board pulled the plug. As you might expect, she’s not pleased with how Intiman’s board has managed or mismanaged that group’s operations.
RULES: Comedian/singer/musician/cabaret improvisor Reggie Watts gets discovered, and fawned upon, in New York magazine.
DROOLS: The long puffy story completely ignores the fourteen years Watts spent as a working musician in Seattle, equally adept at rock, power pop, funk, jazz, and avant-improv.
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.)
Even before the Apple iPad announcement, organizations have been preparing to enter a new era of paid online content. One of them is On the Boards, Seattle’s own bastion of modern dance and performance art. It’s just launched OntheBoards.tv, with pay-per-view streams of live performances that just don’t get around to every town.
5th avenue theater sign closeup
Not to be outdone by their friendly rivals at the Paramount, the folks at the 5th Avenue Theater went and commissioned their own brand new “landmark” vertical sign.
(In its movie-exhibition days, the 5th Avenue did have a big vertical sign. It was removed in 1977, before the theater reopened for touring stage shows. It was a lot less elaborate than this.)
5th Avenue Theater new sign, full view
The new sign (with the rotating “5th” on top) debuted in a public lighting ceremony Thursday night. It was designed and fabricated by Creo Industrial Arts, a local firm that’s made signage and related accoutrements for Safeco Field, the Tulalip Resort, the Universal Studios City Walk, and Vegas casinos.
The NY Times site has a little “slide show” pictorial featurette extolling Seattle’s theater scene as a tourist destination (not necessarily as a generator of art).
Just saw It’s Not In the P-I, the “living newspaper” stage revue at North Seattle Community College (one of my alma maters), co-written by some former Post-Intelligencer newsies.
Well acted and well paced, it’s a quick succession of sketches and running gags featuring wacky F-bombing reporters, clueless bosses, and all your funny newsroom anecdote-type material.
It contained no new insights as to why big newspapers are failing, and no overt ideas about what to replace them with.
But since every well-made satire reveals its alternative ideal world within the aesthetic of its work, one can surmise what the playwrights would like: Something personal, human-scale, telling people’s stories with emotion and frankly admitted bias, unencumbered by corporate restraint.
In short, something more like Seattle’s fringe theater tradition.
…victims of discrimination by female theater-company managers?
The historic Central District meeting hall, known in recent decades as the original home of On the Boards’ performance-art events, now belongs to Historic Seattle. A big restoration/renovation will begin shortly.
(My apologies if that word-wraps weirdly in your browser.) As we await the potential end of at least one party race, knowing we’ve got our own state caucuses this Saturday, here’s some other nooze:
And these are among the stories you might discuss at work, on the bus, or in chatrooms:
…we must say goodbye to one of the legends of “outsider” music, risque cabaret singer-songwriter Ruth Wallis. The creator of “Davy’s Dinghy,” “Drill ‘Em All,” and “A Pizza Every Night” had finally been (re) discovered in recent years with an off-Broadway revue of her compositions, Boobs! The Musical.
The Moore Theatre threw a delightfully casual centennial party Monday evening. It was a textbook lesson in how to mount a fun, populist gala. It hewed to the spirit of the Moore’s original purpose as a vaudeville palace.
The above view is from the now seldom-used top balcony. Originally, this was the only part where black patrons could sit; it was accessed from a separate side entrance.
Theater personnel gave informal tours of backstage areas. Buskers performed outside and throughout the lobbies. Free drinkies and snackies abounded. Original posters and playbills hung everywhere.
Civilians were invited to consume wine and popcorn on stage, while one act after another appeared: Operetta, tap dancing, trapeze, burlesque, modern dance, standup comedy, folk music, soul music.
The night started with an old-time theater organist. It closed with a pick-up rock band, including guitarist Kurt Bloch and singer Kim Virant.
Would that all theatrical parties were this much fun. (Hint hint, Seattle Repertory Organization.)
