i expect serious magic here, people...

how 'bout you go back to mcdonalds and shove another quarter pounder down your hole.

how very exciting

and somebody is getting richer

wow

Not that the arts community is, like, BITTER about once again being displaced from a building that tries to sell itself on the basis of its "artistic cache" or anything...

(And for the record, I do like Linda's establishments, but this is really a sore spot with me - not to mention a lot of other people in the arts community).

i think it sounds pretty good. kudos to these two with the guts to envision and open a risky enterprise like this, on a block that could really use it. You'd prefer what? Another SCCC satellite office? A new wing of BP? A bridge-and-tunnel nightclub?

The arts on capitol hill are going away very very rapidly. Which leaves, well, students. Students are characteristically more interested in lower end/less expensive establishments meaning the bottom is about to fall out of the mid/high end restaurant business on capitol hill. Give it two or three years tops and there will be serious vacancies on broadway.

I wish things were that cut-and-dried, but the fact is, most of the art spaces are being displaced because of the rapid growth of residential development, which is increasing property values, which in turn drives out the funky arts groups that made the neighborhood desireable to live in in the first place.

Of course, those with a will to survive will find other cheap digs (although the irony of Freehold moving into the old Speakeasy space, which used to be Aha! Theatre before it got pushed out of Belltown by increasing development during the dotcom boom should come as some small comfort) in some other depressed part of town - at which point the cycle will no doubt repeat itself, as it generally does.

The City finally seems to be waking up to the issue, as recent meetings held around the Hill and at City Hall would indicate, but until arts tenants are recognized, not only as valuable amenities in the neighborhoods they serve, but in addition as magnets for economic development in and of themselves, you'll continue to see this sort of cyclical displacement.

and i didn't buy my place on capitol hill because of "the arts" or because it was close to the "drink and vomits", i bought because it was walking distance to my job in downtown. i want to have good restaurants and nighttime activities when i'm in my neighborhood - these new restaurants are helping to provide some of that.

i'm sorry, but if your art isn't good enough to help support you living in this neighborhood, find a part of town that is more conducive. land and business owners shouldn't have to give up their pursuit of the good life because of the choices you make.

landowners are not only NOT giving up "the good life" by displacing arts organizations, they're cashing in on the vitality of neighborhoods created in large part BY arts organizations within their midst, then selling their spaces out from underneath them when they get the first chance, mainly because people like you (or the constituency your possibly fake personna represents) continue to be suckered in by the marketeers' appeal to your desire to live a "vibrant, in-city lifestyle" made possible in large part by the presence of these very organizations.