Nightlife Last Stop
posted by November 25 at 12:42 PM
onThe Bus Stop—that mighty little bar being demolished for condos on Pine St—will karaoke its swan song tonight.
It is the end of days…Our last day in this incarnation is today. So please: all of you that we love, or love us, come and celebrate all that we have been together.
The last super awesome Valpak happy hour till 8 with your host Ade and then the final installment of Bus Stop Karaoke…also with you host Ade. Rodney, Susanna, and Niki will all be working. Melt-downs and madness to ensue…as only fitting.
We’ll be starting karaoke at 9:00 PM instead of 10 PM. Due to the nature of the event we strongly encourage people to show up early.
Thanks again to all of you that have helped make this bar something we are all proud to have been a part of. Our time together has been a privilege and you will all be missed more than you know.
-The Bus Stop
Erica wrote about the block’s impending demolition in this excellent feature. Bus Stop and the other businesses between Summit and Belmont Aves on E Pine St will be replaced by this.
If only Metro could serve drinks and play tunes as good as yours… Thanks for the good times, Bus Stop.
Comments
Why all the weeping and nashing of teeth over the lose of a bar, to condos that will be bought by hip young folk looking for entertainment venues on Cap Hill? Oh YOU might not be one of those hipsters, yeah I understand that, but don't begrudge the hipster that can afford to live there.
Drink the bar dry for me!
Contrast this and Brix with the way density is done when it means something more than more SUVs. Take for example the new N Pearl development in Portland where the new development was matched with new parks, broader sidewalks and other amenities to make the neighborhood liveable. Compare that with Seattle where the singular exception to planning codes is to allow more height. No larger setbacks, no public space. No pedestrianized streets. Its simply a giveaway of property to private developpers who then in turn support the Mayor and the members of the council who push this junk fake density stuff through.
Rich SUV driving bastards 5-6, non-hypocrtical tree-hugging hipsters 0.
The Bus Stop was far more than a bar. It was a happening, a community, a moment, a work of art. It was the last place the possibility Seattle once had in such great abundance could be felt, anytime you walked in (but especially - especially - on Sunday nights). Its end is the end of something far greater. It is not the final be-all-and-end-all, because this energy is always convulsing and circling through humanity and popping up in unexpected places. But for Seattle, this was something extremely special, and the circumstances of its being forced out are the same ones that have made the city at large suddenly so lifeless: developers, politicians, uncurious journalists serving the servile wave, people with too much money and too little imagination, and the entire sex-fearing, money-mad machine of America that instead of finding its utopian transformation in Seattle, found its dark and gloomy perfection. Thanks are owed to all who made it "oh so probable": thank you, friends.
I am more sorry that I clicked on comments to read another blathering by Grant than I am at the loss of a "extremely special" local bar. Yes. Grant. No. Special. Bar. Will. EVER. Open. Again. In. Seattle. Ever. No. Fooling. Lets. Move. To. Portland.
I'm not anti-development. Change is inevitable. But it makes me sad to see that block go down, because it makes me feel old.
When I first moved to Seattle, Pike/Pine was creepy, with very little legit business being conducted after dark. I lived in a creepy house on Denny (gone now) next to a women's health clinic (gone now) and used to go to a bar called Squid Row to play pool.
So I moved to the New McDermott (Still there!) where I had a kick-ass view of the Olympics, downtown, and the public market sign from my tiny studio. At night I'd hear the crazies down in the street, along with the occasional gunshot, but I loved it.
Squid Row became the legendary Tugs. R Place moved from their former cozy place to their current location (originally intended for a bigger Tugs) and everyone in the neighborhood gathered at The Brass Connection on Monday nights for seventy-five cent drinks. More and different storefronts started to open up, and the neighborhood started to feel like a neighborhood.
Tugs became Kincora, the parking lot at the corner of Broadway and Pike became a QFC, and I moved to the Olive Crest apartments (gone now), where I had a great little balcony, and we had fun little pool, and a courtyard with a campy, tiki-esque fountain. Pike/Pine was lively and fun, and still a cheap place to live.
But things started to change. An article in "Sunset" extolling the neighborhood's "funky character" bought tourists up the hill. The Dominoes and daycare at the corner of Bellevue and Pike became a pricey apartment complex. Then the recording studio on Pike. The funky places (Vintage Voola, Righteous Rags) started to disappear.
My rent went up 200 bucks, so I bought a house on Beacon Hill. A year later, the Olive Crest was gone, replaced with a new complex where the apartments are half the size, but have granite countertops.
Like I said, change is inevitable, and I understand market forces, but it's still sad to see the "old neighborhood" disappear.
But there'll be other funky neighborhoods, and other "special" bars. Even now, Georgetown is starting to feel that way.
I went to the Bus Stop and Pony this weekend to say good-bye.
Fifty years from now, the new condos will be torn down to be replaced with something and there will be much sorrow over a loss of "the good ol' days." Perspective, people.
As long as those "bad Actors" aren't there doing what they do best- howling and screetching out Karoke with their equally "bad" voices and generally behaving like they are the center of everyones universe... (insert visual of Bus Stop audience projectile vomiting)...
catalina vel-duray you made me tear up a bit to remember Tugs Belmont & seventy-five cent wells at the Ass Infection… Ah… Youth… (So fleeting.)
Went to the Bus Stop once, watery drinks, and the WORST singing in the world. One exception, they should have let him do an hour set.
A dump, Grant must have been very drunk and scored in the john to be so melodic about the place.
Called a dive, Grant. Connecting some dots - Grant, did the monorail board meet there?
I'm still upset that the Mirror Taver became a t-shirt store. Where were you then, o mighty Stranger?
Bus Stop will be missed by a great many folks...
Here's to its next location!
May it reopen soon! Cheers.
Horse's Ass got it right; it's pretty dumb for the Strangerfolk to be continually complaining about this block getting torn down in favor of density when density is something the Strangerfolk have been pushing, hard, for some time.
Is the new condo development likely to be a soulless loser of a building? Sure, but as pointed out above, that's because of Seattles soulless losers on the City Council who have built up such a terrible zoning code.
The Strangerfolk (which pretty likely includes everyone reading Slog, including me) need to get off their (our) asses and get the city to zone such that density comes with open space, with funky buildings, with small retail spaces wedged in, with all the stuff that we would like to see.
Because, make no mistake about it, density is coming, folks- whether we like it or not.
Hey 'The Stranger', nice job patting yourself on the back about all the effort you put into making this condo project better. I mean, you wrote an article about it in 2006, what more can anyone ask from you?!? And now you are even blogging about it! That's more than anyone even asked of you in college. Such ingrates these other blog readers are!
I mean, why spend some time looking into the other neighborhood incompatible buildings that the developer Murray Franklyn has been building throughout Seattle, or perhaps even asking questions about why POWHAT couldn't get their activist act together to stop this building, or perhaps even the appeal that some folks are trying to file against this building's permit approval?
No, The Stranger, it's unfair for anyone to ask more of you. Instead, it's time for you to rest after a job well done. In fact, to quote from the movie Shrek. 'That'll do, Donkey. That'll do.'
You know, the big picture is that things change and rebound. I think we all understand that. The suburbanization of larger cities (Seattle's starting to look generic like Bellevue) is a problem all over the country, I think. It's a little dismissive to give people crap for feeling bad about losing things they care about - they are personal to them, and you do not have to care about the same things to have a little sympathy.
The other issue at hand is that most of the businesses on that block don't have the resources to move easily. You realize, I hope, that these places are mostly mom-and-pop shops. Small business is blown off in this country and especially by people like Greg Nickels. It is NOT easy to start a viable business and keep it around.
That said, it is clear from a lot of the comments on here that many people like the type of development that's going on. That's great. That's why it will work financially. I have no interest in living in that place. But I think a lot of us that mourn the destruction of the block are artier types and expensive condos run art culture off. Not my thing, though I'm not giving up on Seattle yet.
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