OK, so here is my WTO story. I was working for [REDACTED] at the time and they put us up in a sketchy place not far from where we were working. It was not far from the Space Needle, on Denny street? way? Anyway, there was a very very sketchy dive bar across the alley from the hotel. Kids in mowhawks, tats in places that should have probably not had tattoos, Everything pierced, Jukebox full of Punk (real punk on vinyl) and cheap drinks. The food there was not bad, and they were open late at night, well they were always open and I was working second shift. So it is me, pasty straight-laced white guy, a 60's burnout ex hippie, and three people who lived their whole lives in a gated community who had never in a million years known that a place like this existed outside of a movie. I knew the bands they played (Bad Religion and Dead Kennedey's were about the most mainstream they played, and they cranked up Cyprus Hill every time a Cop showed up, which was often.) I'm certain at this point that the bar was a front for drugs. One of the groups of regulars were planning WTO protests and I overheard them talk about marches and disobedience actions but did not think anything else about it. Meanwhile I talk to the bartender and cook, share some laughs, ask them what to do and see in town that is not normal tourist crap etc. Then, shit goes down. And my dumb ass is spending his time in a fucking anarchist bar. So we get off work at about 3AM the day of, walk down the street and the whole city is just fucking dead. No people at all, but sirens everywhere and red and blue lights in every direction. We walk up to the bar and there are all the cops there. All of them. Bartender and cook are screaming "DOWN WITH PIGS!" and "FIGHT THE POWER" and shit, so I assume that they got caught with drugs. I walk past the bar to get a look and for one of the few times in my life, guns are pointed at me. Now, I'm in khakis and a collared polo with about a dozen security badges dangling about my neck. This is also pre-smartphone, pre-internet, and I have no fucking clue what is going on. Hands up, people yelling, and one of the three walks up to the cop and in his "rich northern preppie" accent says to the cops "hey sorry for interrupting, but here are our badges, we were just coming in for dinner, sorry ol' chaps." I'm expecting to get the shit beat out of me, having flashbacks to my youth, while the hippie is shaking, and the other three have an air of 'Oh thank god the cops are here' about them. After about 20 minutes of them explaining what is going on we get to the hotel, and I freak the fuck out for about an hour before going to sleep. We got locked in place for a few days and then [REDACTED] told up to collect our gear and bail. Good times, man.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Former-home-of-Skoochies-DV8-Cirque-Playhouse-3894066.php Woulda been DV8 back in '99. http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/rip-dead-nightclubs-of-seattle/ I think I mixed in about 2/3rds of those clubs.
That place looks way too fancy. I went and did a Google street view of the area and it looks like they razed everything and replaced it with tall mixed use buildings. This place was not more than a block off Denny; memory is fuzzy but I think we were holed up in the Best Western. hard to say as all the building are different. The bar that got raided was not more than 20,000 feet, was a bit run down on the outside and did not have a lot of signage on the building indicating it was a business. The only reason we knew this place served food is that we saw the "A rating" Health inspector sign on the door from the parking garage of the hotel. I'm 90% certain it was on Denny. We walked by that park every night and talked to the drunks and weird kids as we walked from the site to the hotel, so it is possible the place was on Thomas. Then again there is a ton of Amazon offices and a fucking Whole Foods in that area near the park now that was not there when I was working, so who knows. In other news, holy shit has Seattle changed in the 17ish years since I was last there.
Nope. Sorry. Just confirmed with a guy who used to DJ at Skootchies and DV8. The building in question was at 8th and Denny. It was Scoochies until '85, when it became Oz, then a skating rink, then something else, then DV8, then an abysmal interpretation of that gawdawful Polly Esther's/Culture Club franchise bullshit universe, then Amp, then a hole in the ground. The article shows what it looked like as Amp. Here's what it looked like as Polly Esther's: Seattle has changed a lot. Westlake Electric was on Westlake for 40 years, then they moved to Woodinville, then they died. In the time I was mixing in the clubs, the "hot spot" went from First Hill to Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square to Downtown to Ballard to Fremont. The club Real World Seattle went to (after we refused to let them into our club) became a righteous 5-star restaurant and then the home of Go2Net/Metacrawler and now office space.
EDIT! Turns out I did not move the Google Maps slider far enough. Name of the place was the Hurricane Cafe on Bell Street. For those who do not know, when you go to street view, you can click on the date and move the slider to go back in time. Looks like it has been closed pending land use change for a few years. Turns out I was looking at the wrong exit to the parking garage. It WAS a block off Denny. Your picture jogged something loose in the ol' noggin. We walked past that place a few times, I never went in there. That park was awesome when the sun was up; the sun went down and even I was all "let's go across the street, people."