Slog
News & ArtsTuesday, April 21, 2009
Visual Art A Memorial to TUBS
Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM
Not having grown up in Seattle, I was not privy to TUBS, the legendarily skeezy hot tub joint I've heard so much about in the U District. It opened in 1982, and then suddenly, in 2007, it was gone, its used tanning beds, hot tubs, and linens and towels up for auction.
Soon the TUBS building will be gone completely. The spot at 50th and Roosevelt is about to be developed into a 60-unit apartment building with ground-level retail.
This building has quite a past: Between 1905 and TUBS-time, it was a residence and small commercial space, a grocery store, the Big Bear Store, the Lucky Store, the P&C Serve U Grocery, a car dealership, the District Tavern, and Fotomat Drive-thru.
Fittingly, Free Sheep Foundation is throwing a memorial party from 2 to 6 pm Sunday (April 26). The building has already been decked out with murals and window installations by more than 20 artists. There's a Flickr page already. (The images this page, both by Slightlynorth, are from there.)
Free Sheep are the people who brought you the Bridge Motel closing and the Belmont sendoff. They're like a roving crew of commemorators, marking the spots where the city is changing, making space for attention to be paid. It's a simple, powerful, and great idea they've got, and if their other projects are any indication, then the TUBS Memorial Mural Project will be worth checking out. From Free Sheep's statement:
FSF would like to invite the public to view this artistic intervention with the same heart as viewing cherry blossoms in spring. This temporary project is meant to serve as a beautiful display of color in the waning days of a building's demise, as well as a re-interpretation of site and celebration of the city. In partnership with the property owners, we offer this gift to the neighborhood and the world, embracing our rapidly transforming urban landscape.
As the project was getting underway last month, KING 5 did a segment on it—not as urban commemoration but as Graffiti Gone Wild!! If there's anything TV news is dumber about than sex, it's art. (See example from just this morning.)
1
Will there be interior installations? I mean, is the party going to be inside, too? That would be wicked.
7
"If there's anything TV news is dumber about than sex, it's art."
Quoting for truth. It's like every story is, "Those wacky "artists", what will they think of next?"
Quoting for truth. It's like every story is, "Those wacky "artists", what will they think of next?"
8
"If there's anything TV news is dumber about than sex, it's art."
there's an irony here seeing how TUBS was always considered the place to go for hot tub handjobs. honestly I'm suprised TV news didn't bother to make the crude connection
"the former hotbed of leisurely sex-for-pay, TUBS, is now a bastion for depraved graffito artists and thugs..."
there's an irony here seeing how TUBS was always considered the place to go for hot tub handjobs. honestly I'm suprised TV news didn't bother to make the crude connection
"the former hotbed of leisurely sex-for-pay, TUBS, is now a bastion for depraved graffito artists and thugs..."
9
Is there anything TV news is really, really incisive about?
PS Tubs rocked, and on a personal level I'd like to thank them for facilitating any number of personal indiscretions (thanks Ursula!), and for keeping the chlorine levels high and my mind at relative ease. The only thing weird about Tubs was the fact they advertised family nights???! Does anyone else remember those signs?
PS Tubs rocked, and on a personal level I'd like to thank them for facilitating any number of personal indiscretions (thanks Ursula!), and for keeping the chlorine levels high and my mind at relative ease. The only thing weird about Tubs was the fact they advertised family nights???! Does anyone else remember those signs?
10
Early in my college years at UW I was convinced by my roomate that my pale complexion needed a little help. We both bought tanning punchcards at Tubs. What an experience! I remember the 80s style checkerboard pattern everywhere and the disgusting little tanning rooms. I never removed my bra and underwear for fear there were hidden cameras. It was just that kind of place. However, if there were hidden cameras they probably would have been located in one of the hot tub rooms. Hubba hubba. What I remember most vividly about Tubs is how disgusting I would feel after tanning there. Not only was the idea of laying almost naked inside a tanning both disgusting, what was more disgusting was the realization that if I was sweating that much in the bed that many many others before me had done so as well. When I would walk out of Tubs I would always hope that no one I knew had actually seen me emerging from such a place. I would then begin my walk down the Ave and back to the dorms with a puffy bright red face. It is thanks to Tubs that I will never go tanning again, and it is also thanks to Tubs that I got to do some amazing people watching. Tubs will be missed. Just as a side note, I was really NOT into the renovation they did there in 2002 or 2003...whenever that was. I loved how they thought that ridiculous fountain might add a touch of class. What they didn't realize is that in its own way, Tubs was already classy.
11
I didn't realize that Free Sheep Foundation was behind this. I drove past it several weeks ago right after they'd done the majority of the painting. It was so fresh you could still smell the fumes wafting off the building.
I'll have to go on Sunday.
I'll have to go on Sunday.
14
When I was walking by there a couple weeks ago, I witnessed a woman fall off a ladder while working on the three blue guys on the front of the building. Turns out her friend had just left a few minutes before the ladder gave out and sent her down a couple stories. I went back the next day and heard she broke her wrist.
If any of the crew working on it see this: Tell the girl that the chick who came up that day hopes she's doing alright.
If any of the crew working on it see this: Tell the girl that the chick who came up that day hopes she's doing alright.
17
My four year old keeps asking, "Daddy, when does the fountain come back?" I have had to tell him, many times, "I think never." Now, thanks to SLOG, I can say, "fucking never."
18
@14 She was working on the piece on the end of the wall with the wolves. She broke her wrist and how has a super sweet metal plate in her arm. But even before she had her wrist surgery she was back at that wall to finish painting it.
I'll pass on your note to her! :)
I'll pass on your note to her! :)
19
Re: family night. I was transporting a 12yr old friend of the family around and we drove past Tubs and she was like "Oh, that place closed? I used to got there with my family when I was a kid."
So yeah, people went on family night for family purposes. Hippies, mostly, I'd guess.
So yeah, people went on family night for family purposes. Hippies, mostly, I'd guess.
20
@12: I positively loved that nickname. Tubs will always be "soak and poke" to me, even though I never once had the sack to go in.
21
Weirdly, I used to go there just to use a hot tub with my boyfriend. We never had any other encounters there, and I never found the hot tubs all that unsanitary. Once I was in a position to buy my own hot tub, obviously, I quit going.
22
This is the most sanitized posting about raunch that can be imagined.
TUBS from the beginning was a gay guy, meet, fuck, hot water and shower show - and all cheaper than a hotel.
Over a certain time period I used the place 50 times or more, and always saw friends there at the same time.
Dan knows all about this I am sure.
Too bad it is gone, very functional space.
TUBS from the beginning was a gay guy, meet, fuck, hot water and shower show - and all cheaper than a hotel.
Over a certain time period I used the place 50 times or more, and always saw friends there at the same time.
Dan knows all about this I am sure.
Too bad it is gone, very functional space.
24
I resent TUBS for closing. Mr. Lara's parents has just given us a hefty gift certificate to TUBS one week before they closed. We have been forced to speculate about what we could have contracted, had we been allowed to patronize their tubs.
25
In my early 20's, I lived with my boyfriend and a (male) roommate right down the block from Tubs. A shitty rental house, two doors up from Half Price Books, Where rent was cheap and it was always freezing. The year was 1990.
The three of us would sometimes go to Tubs. Not for tomfoolery, or a weird threesome. We would go, in the WInter months, simply to warm up.
The staff did not like us. They would give the three of us the evil eye, while checking in sketchy couples and college kids, for the infamous soak and poke. We were always half in the bag and, once ensconced in our little creepy room, we would smoke weed and blast the Buzzcocks and sit in the tiny steam room.
Afterward, on the short walk home, we would eat the Hershey's Kisses they gave us upon leaving. I will always love that scummy place. For real.
The three of us would sometimes go to Tubs. Not for tomfoolery, or a weird threesome. We would go, in the WInter months, simply to warm up.
The staff did not like us. They would give the three of us the evil eye, while checking in sketchy couples and college kids, for the infamous soak and poke. We were always half in the bag and, once ensconced in our little creepy room, we would smoke weed and blast the Buzzcocks and sit in the tiny steam room.
Afterward, on the short walk home, we would eat the Hershey's Kisses they gave us upon leaving. I will always love that scummy place. For real.
26
Didn't the Stranger says last year that any project that hasn't broken ground is unlikely to ever happen? Tubs has sat empty for two years.
27
I always thought Tubs was kind of cheesy and that it seemed out of place in the U-District. I like it much better as a Free Sheep Foundation mural. I wish it could remain in it's present state. Oh well.
28
Thanks #14! ~ I remember u.
There a heart on tubs mural w/ "HMC"
for all the rad staff @ Harborview that make save my life of wrist. Im on bicycle again. hooray!
There a heart on tubs mural w/ "HMC"
for all the rad staff @ Harborview that make save my life of wrist. Im on bicycle again. hooray!
29
Jeezeus hell, leave it to King 5 news to report on the blight that is the graffiti on the Tubs building when they've been doing it in broad daylight on very obviously sanctioned ladders for months. Very investigative. Hi Kino!
30
I once went inside TUBS when I was a freshman in college to use the restroom. I was wasted and I have memories of mirrors with gold flecks on them... but that is all.
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