1896 to 1927

Unsettled by the Panic of 1896, suffering an exodus of skilled workers in search of gold in the Klondike, and far behind schedule and over budget, the Keller brothers, sixth-generation German immigrants, had resorted to building the structure at 925 East Pike Street with inexpensive Chinese labor. During the pouring of the foundation, one particularly onerous worker—who had been nicknamed "Ming" by the foreman (after the Ming Dynasty)—went missing. As Ming was fond of the drink (plum wine, to be exact), some of the laborers speculated that he had fallen down an obscured shaft as the cement was pouring. Indeed, after finding a sandal at the bottom of the shaft, one of the Keller brothers discovered part of a man's foot rising out of the fresh cement. By then, the cement had been setting for four days—longer than anyone could have survived its suffocating mass. Under cover of night, the Kellers poured an extra layer of cement to conceal their discovery. Anti-Chinese sentiment was rampant around the turn of the century, so Ming was simply declared missing and never seen again, according to microfiche archives of the Seattle Sentinel. Years later, long after construction had finished (and, incidentally, after both Keller brothers perished in an experimental aviation accident), the building acted as an automobile repair shop. Mechanics reported many instances of arriving in the morning to find vehicles' distributor caps knocked loose and tools bizarrely re-arranged, although no signs of forced entry into the building were ever recorded. Since the legend of the missing Chinese laborer had passed via word of mouth over the decades, the post–World War I mechanics referred to the phenomenon as "The Revenge of Ming."

1929 to 1987

By September of 1929, the auto repair shop at 925 East Pike Street had fallen under the proprietorship of Berry Leif Sizzles, whose gloomy life story belied the "sizzle" in his name—within the previous year and a half, he'd lost his wife to tuberculosis and an infant daughter to polio. One account of the Berry Leif Sizzles Auto Shop comes from the unpublished journals of Berry Leif Sizzles Jr., who ran the shop while his father holed up in an office downstairs, listening to Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 on his phonograph repeatedly and weeping audibly. The most striking passage in the journals occurs on September 17, 1929, when a well-heeled customer named Harold Preston and his 17-year-old granddaughter, who happened to be the future literary luminary Mary McCarthy, showed up at the shop "lightly dusted in white down feathers." According to Sizzles Jr.'s understanding, Preston had discovered cigarettes in the young McCarthy's satchel and was forcefully upbraiding her when he rear-ended a truck transporting stacks of caged chickens. The flirtatious McCarthy, secretly thrilled at her grandfather's accident and the detour it provided, remarked to the mechanic, "Are you Berry Sizzles? I like a man whose name is a full sentence." A conversation about the name Leif led to a conversation about America versus Europe, and McCarthy observed, "Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof." Then she said, tilting her head, "Do I hear Schubert?"

A month later, the stock market crashed, and Berry Leif Sizzles took his own life, as well as the life of Berry Leif Sizzles Jr., an unknown customer, and a vendor who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For six ensuing decades, neighborhood residents reported hearing ambient strains of Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 while walking past the building. In 1987, in honor of the site's history, an ice cream shop opened at 925 East Pike Street called Schubert's Sherbet, but it did not survive into the 1990s.

2012

As of press time and arguably due to the persistent Ming-Sizzles Curse, the opening of a new 200-something- capacity club called Barboza, underneath Neumos, is still plagued with setbacks. During what was supposed to be Barboza's first two weekends, shows by My Goodness, Caveman, Main Attrakionz, Tanlines, Frankie Rose, Brent Amaker and the Rodeo, the comedian John Benjamin, and a showcase of bands on the label Good to Die Records were all inexplicably canceled, rescheduled, or relocated. Requests for comment and photographer access to the club have been rejected or unanswered. The following acts are scheduled to perform at Barboza within the next week, but as of press time, it's unclear whether they will: Yuni in Taxco on May 2; Side Pony with Clutch Douglas and DJs Hoot & Howl on May 3; Willis Earl Beal and Hollyhood on May 4; Lotus Plaza, Wymond Miles, and Frankie Broyles on May 5; Gauntlet Hair and Dana Buoy on May 6; Turnt Up on May 7; etc.

Will the Ming-Sizzles Curse ever lift? Only time will tell. recommended