The best part was the Grateful Dead bizarre and marketplace that operated out of the stalls in the back. Paraphernalia, t-shirts. I remember a lithe young Dead Head in a peasant dress who kept cozeying up to me at the bar, but I was unavailable at the time. Later when I was free, I wandered back in, and all I got a big smile from a drunk with a shiny face that looked like Charles Bronson's. Isn't it...ironic.

Actually, The Comet reopens March 31, and will be back to how you remember it - Neighborhood joint with pinball, pool tables, skeeball and even that same afternoon bartender, Coach.

New bathrooms. Cleaned up a bit. Not too much. More beer taps. Liquor will actually be stocked. It'll take a minute to get some of the patina back, but it'll be a great neighborhood dive.

"Another ghost in a city haunted by them."

Truer words were never blogged.

See, that's the thing. Yes, times change and progress happens etc blah blah etc. Nothing should be preserved in amber.. But when you bulldoze, literally bulldoze everydamnthing about a neighborhood, an area, or a city that made it stand out in the first place... when you throw up one cookie-cutter hyper-expensive condo project after another, just so young programmers can move into a neighborhood they once read was hip'n'happening but now is filled with cookie-cutter condos.. What are you doing but destroying a city's soul and creating a wasteland of yuppies trying to constantly outdo one another with their latest googly glass auto-drive self-vacuuming designer robot puppy accessory?

I know I've been in this town too long. When I got here in '86, it was still a working-class blue collar type of place, there were no pretensions (at least not like now), people could afford to pursue their dreams and STILL pay rent. Not so much, these days. These days, Seattle is pretty much over as a place to live. I'm sure it's still interesting to watch from the outside, what with our legal pot and marriage equality and now the push for 15/hour... But as a person who's put in the time, I can't go anywhere in this town without being assailed by ghosts of the past...

And this "new Comet" that's going to be in that space? What the hell is that going to be but some taxidermied version of a "Real Bar" (TM)? "Hey kids! Check it out! All grungy like you read about, but safe! Totally safe! Check out our tapas menu..." blyecch

Kids, lawn, etc...

I spent a fair portion of the late '80's and early '90's in The Comet. In those days it had a tavern license, meaning beer and wine only. The strongest thing that could be served was port, and man, did we drink a lot of it. So much, in fact, that at some point in there, The Comet was the leading on premise seller of Sandeman's Port in the US. The folks from Sandeman's even paid a visit one night, in well tailored Italian suits, to see who was selling so much of their product. I've always wondered what they felt when they walked into grunge ground zero to find a room full of goateed, tattooed, pony-tailed unemployed musicians and junkies swilling port like it was the elixir of life.

1. Retracted

Wait that was the Blue Moon, not the Comet.

I ate a satsuma and just remembered.

The Kingdome tiles fell in 1994, dummy. 1995 is the year we kicked the Yankees ass.

@2: No it won't. The Frontier Room isn't the same, and neither will the Comet be.

yeah, what @3 said.

I love the pool story. For me, it's one of the most rotten feelings in the world to win on an 8 scratch after getting nothing in. Same thing happened to me and a friend in Montreal. We went to a bar to play pool and ended up in a game of doubles against a guy who said he was from Seattle and, weirdly enough, said his mom had owned the Comet. It was some of the worst pool we've ever played, and it was really humiliating when they ended up scratching while almost all our balls were still on the table.

@2 new bathrooms!!! Where will I smoke my crack @ now!!!! No late night bender on the hill is worth squat without a trip to the comet stall to smoke some sweet sweet rocks.