[ Spray can shakes ]
[ Beeping ]
-Hi, I'm Cynthia Brothers,
the founder of Vanishing Seattle.
Vanishing Seattle is a project that documents the displaced
and disappearing institutions,
small businesses, and cultures of Seattle.
It also celebrates the histories of spaces and communities
that give the city its soul.
Its launch in 2016 was inspired
by the closing of Inay's Asian Pacific cuisine on Beacon Hill
and its resident stunning spectacular drag artist,
Atasha Manila.
What started as a few social media posts
grew into something bigger, including this film series,
which was executive produced by myself and Martin Tran.
And it's an ongoing love letter to the spaces and people
that make Seattle an irreplaceably special city.
The first film in the Vanishing Seattle series
is about Wa Na Wari.
Wa Na Wari was co-founded in 2019
by four artists --
Inye Wokoma, Elisheba Johnson,
Rachel Kessler, and Jill Freidberg
and is located in a fifth generation
black-owned home which was owned by Inye's grandparents
in Seattle's formerly redlined Central District.
Wa Na Wari creates space for black ownership,
organizing, and belonging through art,
historic preservation, and connection
amidst increasing gentrification of the Central District,
which was once 80% Black and is now less than 10%.
By reclaiming Black cultural space and making a statement
about the importance of Black land ownership,
Wa Na Wari is an active model for how Black art and culture
can combat gentrification and displacement.
♪♪
-Yeah.
Yeah.
♪ You scratch my back and I scratch yours ♪
♪ Like I'm supposed to ♪
♪ When we first met, I told my friends ♪
♪ Yeah, I knocked a loco ♪
♪ Up top pretty thing ♪
♪ Seattle, what a pretty name ♪
♪ She hit me with that city game ♪
♪ Looks fresher than the northwest rain ♪
♪♪
-Right now, we are in my great aunt's home,
which is to say, this is the home
of my grandfather's sister.
It's also the home that my grandparents owned together.
my grandparents' generation was part of the Great Migration
that era when African-Americans were leaving the south
and coming to northern cities and western states
en mass looking for a better opportunity and better life
and to escape the, you know,
the violent oppression of the American South.
I mean, the Central District was the only place in the city
where Black folks could buy property.
Because of that,
that's where the Black community was.
And that was where all of our, you know,
religious social institutions, everything was centered here.
-♪ We grew up together ♪
♪ I found solace in your back blocks ♪
♪ Alleyways and rap spots ♪
♪ Face heavy off of alchi ♪
♪ With your skyline in the backdrop ♪
♪ Yeah, that's what we posed in front of ♪
♪ Now, supposedly you posing... ♪
-I think there's ways that Black people
naturally organize that is embodied.
Like, when I think about this house, I'm from Seattle,
but my family's not, my grandfather moved
from South Carolina to Chicago
and bought a whole bunch of houses
that family could live in and rent from.
Just like Inye's grandfather, right?
And it was like this upwardly mobile 20th century thing
that Black folks did, right?
So it just feels like it's part of our DNA for us
to rent the house
and then make sure our family of Seattle
can come in and have a space here.
-[ Singing indistinctly ]
-Well, I mean,
the neighborhood has been changing for the past
almost 30 years.
Definitely, the past decade, things have accelerated
the gentrification of the neighborhood.
The neighborhood's gone from being almost 80% Black
to less than 10% Black.
So that's a massive change in every aspect of our daily lives,
the folks who live in the Central District,
you know, throughout the 20th century.
The community that we grew up in,
that we were familiar with,
that we helped to create essentially doesn't exist,
at least not in a concentrated geographic way.
-We've been talking a lot about belonging
and that everybody wants a place to belong, right.
And so people knew that this was their neighborhood.
They knew they belonged here
and that has been taken from them.
When neighbors look at them and say,
"What are you doing here?"
-Biggest thing that folks are, you know,
attempting to sort of pinpoint are,
you know, how do we actually survive this?
How did -- one, how do we survive it?
And then how do we come out on the other end
in some way that feels whole.
-As a Black artist in Seattle,
it gets really lonely in terms of like trying to figure out
where you can share ideas with other people that are like you
and actually, like, push you and see exciting work.
I'm really interested in it being a place
where people can experiment with new materials and new ideas.
And that's why it's really important to have the local,
regional, and national artists conversation
within the house, right?
So when local artists are exhibited in the same space
as national artists, they don't have to leave their city
to be able to feel like they get to that level of their career.
-We need imaginative responses,
ways of imagining ourselves in the future, right,
that have everything to do with us
getting there on our own,
you know, in ways that makes sense to us.
-Times like these, see me for who my neighborhood elders
made me, see me for the fire that I am for the match,
the kindling and the blaze,
but also see me for my ash in these trying times,
the current state of affairs in our current political climate,
in times like these,
we have to remember we will get through this.
We always have.
Thank you so much for being here.
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-I'm excited about the ideas of Black artists
and how they permeate the world.
I've been going to galleries since I was 18 years old
and half the people don't look up at you
and treat you like you shouldn't be there.
And so I intentionally wanted to flip that experience
and make people feel welcome because like I said,
I think artists are the philosophers of our time.
And so for us to kind of think about these big ideas
that we're all trying to solve in the world,
artists are the ones
that are going to be tackling those ideas
in the ways that, like, we just in our heart space.
What does it mean to bring people in?
What does it mean to use the art as a gathering space?
And so I think that helps deconstructs that completely.
You feel welcome. It feels like it's your grandmother's house,
which is what most people say when they come through the door.
Wa Na Wari is about making sure the culture of Black folks
that was part of this neighborhood is not erased
because people come back
and then they feel like they're strangers in the neighborhood
they grew up in, right?
So how do you retain culture?
And I think that you do that through art,
you do that through dance and music
and spoken word and visual art and new media.
And then people know they belong here.
-♪ Decide on what makes you happy ♪
♪ Decide on what makes you bold ♪
♪ Decide on, baby, if I knew you ♪
♪♪
-This film was directed by devon le Leña and CHIMAERA,
who both have multigenerational family histories in the CD.
It features music by local artists Yirim Seck and JusMoni.
If you'd like to learn more about Wa Na Wari,
go to wanawari.org.
Hardwick's Hardware is a fourth generation,
family-owned, independent hardware store that,
up until September of 2020,
was located on Roosevelt in the University District.
Hardwick supported boat builders,
woodworkers, metal smiths, artists,
tradespeople, and countless small businesses,
local industries, and everyday Seattleites
for nearly nine decades.
Hardwick's closed and moved out of state
as both they, and their customer base,
faced being priced out by a changing Seattle
and U District.
-No, you're fine.
[ Speaks indistinctly ]
-Hello.
Well, I saw two inexpensive routers.
I saw a used Bosch plunge router for $49.95.
And then I seen a new skill number 1810
that's going for $79.99.
-Okay, Vern. Thank you. -You're welcome. Bye-bye.
♪♪
-I own a portion
of Hardwick's,
which is also known as Hardwick and Son's Inc.
And it was also known as Hardwick's Swap Shop.
And also Hardwick's Hardware by the people out there
in Seattle.
The store is 10,000 square feet
and it's separated into three rooms.
Two rooms are 4,000 each and of course,
the tool room is existed before my father bought it
in 1938 or started here in 1938.
-Well, Hardwick's amongst all of the woodworkers
on the lake, Hardwick's is Mecca.
Okay, I mean, that's -- when I was younger,
I'd save my money up knowing that I was going to spend
all of it at Hardwick's.
And going to Hardwick's
was like, you know, going to heaven.
Jensen's has been going to Hardwick's
since Hardwick's was founded,
and that's where -- that's where we get everything.
I was stoked that they're going to still be online, you know,
because I was, you know, what are we going to do?
You know, especially what are the younger guys going to do
because, you know, I'll be retired here
in another six years or so.
But, you know, you can't buy what you buy at Hardwick's.
You can't get anywhere else so.
-My relationship with the Hardwick's goes back
a long, long time with Dean and his brothers.
My relationship was mainly with Lloyd,
who was the store manager.
One day he called me up and he said,
"Ken, we found a bunch of metric nuts and bolts
that we didn't even know we had."
He goes, "Nobody over here knows anything about metric
nuts and bolts so do you want 'em?"
Said, "Well, how much?"
He goes, "I don't know, you tell me."
So I went over there and he had literally hundreds of boxes.
It filled up the whole back of my truck with boxes.
And I said, "Okay, Lloyd, what do you want for it?"
And he goes, "100 bucks."
So I gave him 100 bucks
and we still have Hardwick boxes on the shelf
from that -- from that time on,
and that was about 15 years ago.
It was pretty clear that
disasters came up.
And, you know, whichever one of us needed help,
we seemed to get it.
I went down with a four-way bypass.
They protected my income, even though there was no
provision to do that.
-For the millionth time, someone said,
"Oh, you got to go to Hardwick's
"just even if you don't know what you need,
go there and you'll probably find it."
And I went and I literally walked down the ramp
and had another one of those stopping experiences
because I saw the desk and no idea what it was.
And I went up to the front desk
and the super nice cat was up there and I said,
there's a desk back there that I really love.
He said, "What's it look like?"
I said, "It's black and it's got a bunch
of locking hardware on it."
And he said, "Oh, Bill's desk."
So, you know, he came back and made sure
that there was a sticker on it.
And okay.
Some things
are just soulful
and some things are more porous
and collect more energy than others,
and this is a thing that had
clearly been used a lot.
-So I have a long relationship with Hardwick's,
and it's just one of those places you just,
you know, stop in regularly just to see what's new,
what's, you know, what's old, what has just come
because it's both used and new tools you can just find.
You never know what you're going to find there, basically.
Every jewelry student in Seattle,
Hardwick's is on their supplier list
because you're going to find tools there
that are going to be useful to you,
whether or not they're jewelry tools.
The other thing that's so special about Hardwick's
is they just have things that nobody else has.
I get lots of ideas just from, you know, from my environment,
and I'll just wander around that hardware store
and I'll find something that I don't even know what it is.
I feel like that's really what's missing
with the digital age
is that you just you don't come across things the same way.
You have to go looking for them specifically,
and you might come across something,
but you're also not going to be experiencing it.
So I just think there's a lot of inspiration that is lost.
And so what's happening is people are just making
other people's stuff, you know?
So anyway. Yeah.
Hardwick's is super valuable.
-Well, yes, we have something here
that we would nice would like to continue,
but I don't think it's going to happen
and there's many forces
working against it.
Most importantly, as my customer base
can no longer afford to live in Seattle,
they can't afford the rents, their property taxes,
and they have to sell or just move out.
-The property tax situation is really hurting a lot of people,
and they rezoned
over there U District
for like nine stories being asked to pay a property tax
like he's of nine-story building.
And the city fathers
have pretty much ruined the ability
to do business in Seattle.
-It takes all your energy out of you thinking
that all you have to do so much sales
and then they're handing it over to somebody else.
The tax increase, no, I can't afford that.
♪♪
They just want to browse around and walk.
It's like -- it's like being in a forest in a way
because the forests,
the -- as I'm lucky to have my home out in Edmonds,
it's surrounded by about 20 trees.
And what it does it buffers against the sound of the city.
And it's actually quiet.
Here, it's the same kind of concept.
It's like escape from the city.
It's like going into a cathedral
and having the Blessed Sacrament there.
There's a quiet and a peace.
There's a presence there that's just different.
And that's what I wanted to create here.
I'm thinking of the little people,
and I'm one of the little people.
Well, I'm not a big shot.
In fact, I don't make a lot of money what I do.
In fact, I sometimes I try to figure out
how I could just barely get by.
Or for that -- just the sheer existence of the store
or my involvement over the years,
I've put a lot of energy into it,
and I always wanted to make something special.
-This film was directed by Lisa B. Hammond
and Derek Johnson,
both longtime customers of Hardwick's.
You can still shop the store online at
hardwickandsons.com
and in-person at their Post Falls Idaho store,
opening in early 2022.
Scandinavian Specialties is the last remaining
Nordic-focused retail shop in Ballard,
a neighborhood that has grappled with preserving its Scandinavian
and working-class history
against the backdrop of rapid development and gentrification.
♪♪
-Ballard has a very interesting community feel to it.
There's very much the history of the Scandinavian
and, like, the fishing village,
and I do think people try very hard to keep that alive
and I'm glad that they do.
-When I first lived in Ballard, it was very seedy,
it was very industrial,
and thank goodness some of that is still left.
-Ballard, prior to 1907,
was its own city over a hundred years ago,
when this was a quiet drinking village with a fishing problem.
Ballard had that very authentic old world feel.
They've been defiant in kind of being
their own corner of this city, even as they've been
incorporated into the larger city itself.
-It was cozy, and all the little dimes
and shops like Hattie's Hat
and the smoke shops and all those.
They're just crowding them out.
-When we first lived there,
you could walk down the streets of Ballard
and you could hear Norwegian being spoken.
There were Norwegian flags on the sidewalk
and you could go into several different shops
and enjoy meat that had come from Norway, fishcakes.
It's hard to get used to the fact
that the shops in Ballard aren't here anymore.
And now there's only Scandinavian Specialties.
-Almost out of fish cakes again.
Oh, we're down to the bare bones,
but fish cakes.
That is bread and butter around here.
My name is Bjorn Ruud.
I've been the owner here
of Scandinavian Specialties for two years.
The first owner was a actually a Norwegian sausage master
who was trained in Norway,
came over here, and started this business in '62
and then my family bought it in 2000
and then sold it to me.
And it's been in this location since that time,
and I feel a bit of an honor having a chance
to uphold the heritage of that sort.
I think it's kind of a unique thing
for somebody to get a chance at an old world heritage
that is very much theirs,
and then they get to kind of pass on
a history of Norwegians in this part of the world.
Legacy, culture, and family.
My staff is family to me,
my good customers who I know, they're family to me.
We build that feeling of community here,
and that's the centerpiece of this store.
That's why I own this business.
I'm not looking to get over on anybody.
I go to sleep at night really well,
even though I sell kind of expensive goat cheese
and it's a family vibe for my customers,
to my staff, to everybody involved.
I'd like to think that this store has lasting impact
and can kind of hearken to this heritage of this neighborhood
and speak to it for the future.
It's sad to say unlikely for a store like mine
to be successful in 50 years,
but I'm also an optimist,
and I think that if the story is given,
if the story is sung properly,
if the marketing between myself, the museum, the Swedish club,
Leif Erikson Lodge, the other clingers on
to ancient Scandinavian Seattle can stay in cahoots
and continue promoting this thing.
And if this can be marketed in the proper way,
we can still have appeal.
-I would be devastated if it ever goes away.
I want to hang on to some of this.
-Remember, as a kid, you'd go down to Market Street
and right in front of Pennys there,
all the men would kind of like meet up and talk.
It was kind of like a little gathering area.
And up north on 15th here, there was Norwegian bakeries
and places down there they'd shop every Saturday.
-It's almost like a different town completely.
It just -- the warmth and coziness are going away.
All the buildings look like cracker boxes,
they're all the same color, ugly yellow and green.
And they're sold, they're torn down,
and one of those ugly looking places and put in there,
and it ruins a whole neighborhood.
-I think the whole Market and 15th area
with the loss of Sunset Bowl
and even the Denny's and Louie's Chinese restaurant
and just the way that whole intersection looked.
And now it looks like a completely different city.
And I think that's been hard
on a lot of people to just see those things go so quickly.
-The atmosphere is definitely changed, at least for me it has.
It's not, you know, the same.
-I got the call on the 17th of May,
which is Norwegian Constitution Day.
It's a big day here in Ballard,
and I got the call that morning and said,
"Yeah, the property has been sold."
No further information.
Well, of course, it's sold to a developer, of course,
I'll be gone as soon as this, you know, as soon as he decides
as soon as he gets his permitting in place.
A couple of weeks after that,
when it kind of became public knowledge
that the sale had gone through
K5 came in and they did an interview with me
here in the store.
-Every day, Bjorn Ruud works to keep history alive,
but the future of the store is now uncertain,
which has left him and his customers wondering what's next?
-Apparently, enough people saw it.
They tracked down who the new owner was
and started calling him the next morning,
saying they were going to picket out in front of my store
and stuff like that.
And he came up here literally as I opened the door,
comes in and says,
"Hey, I'm not going to develop for at least five years.
"I'm not saying that's not part of my future plan,
but there's going to be five years of us not doing that."
So being able to continue on here in this particular location
for at least another five years is huge for me
because I don't know if I'd be able to survive
or afford moving to another place here in Ballard.
You can look at different cultural enclaves
in places like New Yorks and Chicagos.
And they may still kind of be able
to protect the Polish district in this certain area.
But if the market came in and the real estate value
was such, it would change.
-I think when it happens more slowly,
people, of course, are sad to see things that they love go.
But it's a little easier to take.
When it happens very quickly
at the rate that Seattle has grown,
it does feel like it's vanishing.
It feels like poof, something else is gone.
-I frequented most of the old parts of Ballard.
I've stopped at Louie's on the late night.
I like the People's Club.
But now Skal is there
and I do business with this new beer hall.
They buy a bunch of my food for their menu.
And so, interestingly enough, even just in the last two years,
there's been a new source for me to sell my products
and something else
that continues along the heritage lines
of this being Scandinavian community.
I think that kind of indicates that even though
we're losing things like the Copper Gate
and the Viking, you know, these historic watering holes,
particularly, the fluidity of change,
it's tough to over-sing how that all works.
A city that's this prosperous is going to have those changes.
Yeah, there's market forces at work.
There's corporations that are going to come in
and buy huge sectors of land.
But if the people go to their government
and say this is not what we want,
we want to preserve these parts of our city
and our neighborhood,
that that change can often be effected.
Ballard is one of the vital historic communities in Seattle,
and seeing it preserve that history
and then still participate in New Seattle
is how it can ultimately hold on to that history
and speak to this story.
-I think it's important for your children and grandchildren
to know that where they came from.
Now it's just a mess.
That's my opinion.
♪♪
-This film is directed by Cody Lewis
and produced by Jon Evans,
both Ballard, born and bred.
Although, it will have to seek a new home
within the next couple of years,
Scandi Specialties is currently open for business
and offering a wide and unique selection of gifts,
food, and other Scandinavian goods.
♪♪
We're in the Vanishing Seattle pop-up shop
in the eighth generation store at the Pike Place Market.
When I first started working on the vinyl wall display,
I just had, you know, pretty small square
like this for the prompt,
"What do you miss about Seattle?"
And the post-its kind of grew exponentially
and exploded outwards,
so we added a couple of prompts on either side of the doors.
And then, as you can see, it just kept growing from there.
And every time I come in,
there's a bunch of new responses.
Vino Espresso,
Value Village on Capitol Hill,
Louisa's Café on East Lake.
My favorite part of this is seeing folks come in
and have their moment
and their time kind of reflecting on the wall,
but then be able to talk about it in real time
and connect with other people that are in the space as well.
-Jogs to your memory. -I know.
-Yeah. -Oh, I love Crown now, yeah.
-Yeah, it was really like way up there kind of away.
-Bakeman's is gone?
-Yeah, as of December 22nd, I think, yeah.
And I've had people come in here and, you know,
tear up talking about places and not just places,
but, you know, people associated with them or aspects
that were very much integrated with their life
and their, you know, memories here.
But there's also a lot of, you know,
good stories and feelings
and emotions exchanged, too, because for the most part,
people have really amazing memories
and, you know, good feelings associated with these places,
even though most of them are gone.
People are responding to specific pictures
of places like the Red Apple,
for example, like this is all filled up.
The Chubby & Tubby, people are responding to.
J.P. Patches. KJET Radio.
The tubs in the U District.
A picture of the Buckaroo Tavern.
One person had a very specific comment
that they left about the last night that it was open.
That said, "The bikers peeled out
inside the bar on the last night it was open."
And then someone just came in and was like,
"Oh, yeah, I was there.
That was Nick our neighbor."
Oh, and Inay's.
That's one that I really miss.
So that was a Filipino restaurant on Beacon Hill,
and there was a server and a drag performer
that worked there, Atasha Manila,
and she would do this epic
one-woman drag show every Friday.
But the rent got raised, so they had to close.
And basically, that's like what started the whole
Vanishing Seattle project.
Link's Tackle, the Kingfish Café,
the Harvard Exit.
They'll write down a lot of places,
but they'll also talk about why it was important,
you know, what it meant to communities,
and they'll also talk about things like affordability
and feeling safe
and having a sense of community and neighborhood
being able to live close to their family.
So what it means to have a good quality of life
and have a really, for me,
like what it really means to be a world-class city.
It's not all about
doom and gloom necessarily
or in protest, although yes, it does encompass those things,
but there's also a lot of love.
So it is a love letter and a celebration as well,
and I think people respond to it
and interpret it in different ways.
A city isn't just made up of a collection
of structures and buildings.
It's different spaces that allow for community and culture
and diversity to happen.
♪♪
This next film shares the stories of artists,
nonprofit leaders, and small business owners on Capitol Hill
as they struggle to maintain a thriving presence for arts
and queer culture in the neighborhood.
It features important cultural and social gathering spaces
like Café Pettirosso,
Northwest Film Forum, and Velocity Dance.
-To me, progress is when
you see things grow and change in a direction
that benefits everyone involved.
-I think that progress to the city and progress to us
are two really different things.
-The idea of progress is probably too often thought of
as like financial progress.
-True progress means equity.
-Well, progress is supposed to
be like a forward momentum, right?
So what are we moving towards?
-I always look at the arts like, are there any movements?
-I think that expanding your view of what art is
and making it so that different kinds of art can thrive here,
not just the ones that you think are marketable is progress.
[ Spray can rattling ]
-I got a studio on Capitol Hill in 1989, about 30 years ago,
and I've been in the same studio ever since,
which is a miracle in Seattle.
-I have been living and working on and off the Hill
for 27 years.
-So when I first moved here,
what I really loved about Capitol Hill
was queer neighborhood and art artists neighborhood.
And I just -- I loved the different
sort of coffee shops
and little shops along Broadway
and queer-owned businesses and, you know, art stores
and, like, the newsstand on Broadway.
And they were just the kind of felt like this cool little,
almost bohemian city.
Capitol Hill was once a place where artists and musicians
would come, share their stuff, show their work.
There's a lot of music venues, tons of old really cool,
weird buildings, and the rent was affordable.
It's really sort of dynamic environment.
Lots of different communities felt welcome in that space.
-The founders of Velocity Dance Center
wanted to open a community space for dancers,
in Seattle just so they could rehearse
and do work and find community.
And Capitol Hill at the time was relatively affordable
and also had a big artistic community
already in place.
-Capitol Hill has always been kind of the place
to be in Seattle.
There was always a lot of great venues here.
A lot of cool artists, a lot of poets, a lot of punks.
It was a safe place for freaks,
a safe place for people that were different.
We used to have this like haven, where if you were in any way
feeling like the city was pushing you out,
you could come to Capitol Hill and find 18 people
who would just immediately like you.
And it felt like a [bleep] "Cheers" episode.
Oh, sorry, can I curse?
It just -- it feels like -- it felt
like what "Cheers" was supposed to be like,
where you could just walk up to the Hill
and you would see like rainbows in the street and be like,
"Oh, I can feel safe here."
-In the first few years
that nobody would come up here, really,
and people would kind of harass
you about why do you have an art studio on Capitol Hill?
There's nothing going on up here.
It became quickly
all artists and all small businesses,
and you knew everybody in the neighborhood.
There was a sense of community which was nice
and made you feel part of something.
-I think what always brought me back to the Hill
was that sense of community, you know, artistic community,
gay community, whatever, there was just communities.
-There was no money here.
There wasn't this influx of people here,
and that was the coffee and the cigarette.
And like the poetry that was the moment is like,
that was Capitol Hill.
It was a feeling.
-I started going into Pettirosso when I was answering phones
at Aria which was a hair salon that was right next door.
It was my social group.
Like, everything surrounded Pettirosso
at the time.
So when we got the opportunity to take it over,
we wanted to keep that.
We didn't want to see Pettirosso die.
-It was really fun.
That was, you know, in the '90s
when there, you know, we'd be getting calls from
"Rolling Stone" magazine
asking us if, like, Pearl Jam was drinking coffee there.
So and we were like, you know, kind of like, oh, my God.
"'Rolling Stones' calling. Hang up."
-Places like the old bus stop, Manray, Kincora.
A lot of the -- nightlife spots
that I used to work at and perform at.
And, you know, we would do things
like literary readings there,
and like an arts and crafts night where you come
and have cocktails and do crafting.
You know, just fun stuff like that.
But that was artistically-based and sort of really
helped to foster that community that we were talking about.
-Punctuation Gallery was also happening.
And there's probably a ton of other venues at the time
that were really inspiring and inclusive,
and those venues started to shut down, actually.
And I thought to myself, it might --
it might be important to,
as an experiment, to get a venue
and then to give everyone access to the venue.
So the idea of Love City Love was being inspired
by these other venues that were all-inclusive, multicultural,
hyper-creative and that seemed to be fading out of Seattle
and out of Capitol Hill at that time.
The very nature of gentrification
and how it works just was crushing
all of that culture.
-You brought in the people on the street and, you know,
sort of like "Mister Rogers Neighborhood"
or "Sesame Street" or something where you would
you just see people you know everywhere.
Now it's just a sea of -- a sea of strangers.
-I can walk around in my neighborhood
for two weeks sometimes
and not see anybody I know which never used to happen.
-Capitol Hill's long been a center for cutting edge arts,
LGBT culture,
small businesses, and these great auto row buildings.
What's changed is it's also become
one of the most desirable places on the West Coast to live.
-The most obvious thing that's happened
is that the amazing cultural hubs
that are these really rad spaces and buildings
have been demolished.
And then these crazy concrete and glass buildings go up.
-Private developer bought Oddfellows Hall,
and at the time, many arts nonprofits
were actually housed at Oddfellows
and could not afford the huge rent increase.
And so, it prompted almost all of the nonprofits
to leave Oddfellows Hall to find their other spaces.
-I've watched the whole landscape change, you know?
I mean, it's changed architecturally,
but also the energy has changed
and it's become a lot more mainstream.
-There used to be a giant thrift store
right across the street from us,
which is now being turned into like an office workspace,
and that's where we would get our costumes.
We called it our costume shop and we would just go in there
and we knew everybody who worked there.
And that was kind of the last straw for us
when that giant always busy
thrift store, when they were told to leave,
that was like the first red flag
of like something is happening to Capitol Hill.
-And I think that's the problem with Capitol Hill
is they just decided not to have any balance.
It was just a free for all.
And I think the, you know,
the problem with capitalism is that people lose sight.
They don't understand that a lot of artists, you know,
may only live on like $800 a month.
-I think we're seeing a lot more of the corporate businesses
because it's just too difficult for an independent person
to have an idea and execute it.
It's impossible without massive funding.
Just the rent by itself is, you know,
on average on Capitol Hill,
10 to $15,000 a month just for the rent.
So how does an independent
person navigate that, they don't.
-How do you -- how do you continue
to bring arts and culture to a space that costs
$10,000 a month to rent
and is all-new construction?
And it's kind of cold concrete walls with glass?
That's just not viable.
-What is the language?
The poetry? How do you articulate what happened?
Like all of the feelings that are almost ineffable,
like, you don't even know how to, like, explain the feelings.
And I guess that's what good art does
is it explains things you can't put into words maybe.
-When we're moving through something
or when we're evolving,
there's usually an art movement happening as well,
and there are no movements.
The art movements have become art markets now,
which is obscene.
-It's the same stuff that happened to hip-hop.
It's the same thing that happened to punk.
It's like these things were birthed out of like really
immense struggles of people
that felt really, really deep feelings.
-Because that's where we questioned things, right?
Through the arts,
we question, you're not supposed to accept what is, you know,
you know, you're supposed to creatively start to seek
what you want.
-There was a show that I did
where we worked with this organization
to procure a house on Capitol Hill
that was going to be demolished this so it's about progress
and it was about a brother and sister
who are living together in their childhood home
and the sister's mentally ill and the brother's
trying to sell the house, and their mother has died.
And the very week we were supposed to be open,
we got locked out by the developers.
So it was kind of this very sort of meta like
life imitating art, imitating life,
imitating weird thing.
-Well, we're looking at these high-density buildings
coming up all throughout town.
The ground floors are made for retail that are sitting empty
because no one can actually afford the retail.
And the developers would rather than just sit empty,
than work with an arts organization to fill that space.
And that disconnect, I think, is one of the fundamental problems.
-And that's how colonization works or how classism works,
like, you know when you're not wanted.
It's clear, it's clear, like it's a $6 latte.
Get out, you're not wanted here anymore.
Or we have to be moved out of 4400 East Pike Street
because they want to court Howard Schultz as a client.
They want that to be a Starbucks reserve on 14th and Pike.
Not a Love City Love, not an all inclusive,
creative, multicultural venue valuing health and wellness.
-The way Annex is trying to grow
is we're trying to make an ADA accessible space.
So we either need to put wheelchair elevator
in these stairs or we need to find a new space.
But every time we try to, like, find a secondary space
that we can go to do ADA accessible shows,
we tell them that we're like a theater company
and they literally are like,
"Well, we don't want a theater company here
because we don't think that that's lucrative."
-I mean, I pleaded, I tried so hard with 14th and Pike.
I mean, they seemed like somewhat open,
progressive people, and I would write him
these emails of like the future of culture.
And that, like, trying to illustrate
how much power he has over letting us be in the building.
And like, would he want to collaborate?
Like what if you --
what if we're not just the tenant anymore?
What if you could see like who we are as like people?
-I'm like ground zero.
You know, the six months after Pettirosso
opened was when all the construction on 11th
and we were so sensitive at that time.
We had no sidewalk for three months.
We had a massive building getting built across.
And then the next one started and the next one started.
It was like three years of construction for us,
and there was zero help from the city.
-You know, you look back
and you start walking around this neighborhood
and thinking like what you could have done,
and it just feels so big and lonely and like,
it all happened without you.
-You know, I used to joke
that I was nobody in this neighborhood,
and then for a little while, I felt like I was somebody,
and now when I walk around, I feel like I'm nobody again.
-Individual artists in particular are getting
pushed out every day.
LGBT seniors are getting pushed out every day,
and we could even lose the beloved arts organizations
that we can easily take for granted on Capitol Hill.
-I don't know how to -- I don't know how to preserve
or retain or sustain the soul
or the culture of this neighborhood,
because it's so powerful the way money works.
Like, it's just so powerful and it's so crippling.
I do think that investment like really big scale investment
on the part of the government could really help
because I think we need to work in that scale.
It can't just be building by building.
It's got to be kind of I'm thinking of it
as a whole district
because what I'm seeing right now
is that individual artists and arts organizations
are kind of doing it.
But we've even taken altogether,
we just don't have that kind of power.
So I think if we were able to get that big lift
from our state and local agencies,
like an even bigger lift
than what they're giving us right now.
It would really, really be helpful.
-What are the kind of interventions we can create
maybe on a city level to kind of ensure
that there's more or more transparent community dialog
around the structures that go up around this.
-The old narrative is if you want progress,
well, then we need to dismantle
this and people need to suffer.
That's all life is, right? Somebody is telling a story.
And at the moment, the majority of us believe that story
that becomes a reality.
And it's everybody's always worried about who has the power
and who has the wealth and like who's controlling the narrative.
-I feel like the ability to use our voices
to tell our story is being lost.
-The only way to keep a community going is to be able
to have those people be around to support that, you know,
and have places where they can gather
and places where they can create their work
and find like-minded people.
-Can we activate those spaces and figure out a way
to work with developers and say,
"Hey, how can we work together to activate these empty spaces
"because they sit empty for months,
sometimes years after they build up these big condos."
And we really want to think about, can we figure out some,
I don't know, tax loophole or incentive from the city
or something where there's -- there are spaces
that are dedicated to art, music, health, and wellness.
-So I'm very much about artists as activists and artists
and building momentum together
because we're generally speaking so poor and powerless
that it does require coordination to move policy
change towards our benefit.
-You know, what I would like is everybody
to be able to come back
and support the artists that still remain here.
And, you know,
my hope is that the remaining artists and organizations
that are still fortunate enough to have their spot up here
and just keep working as long as we can.
-And it's not longing for some nostalgic time
that once was is just like, we are really creative.
Human beings are really creative.
And so why are we settling for this?
Why can't we curate the Pike Pine corridor
with a lot more soul?
-We need more affordable retail.
We need more affordable commercial space.
We need more artist ownership. We need more artist control.
We need a lot more resources.
We need particularly government
to step up with more dollars to support all of this.
And there's a way that Capitol Hill can remain
the neighborhood that is both desirable
and affordable for the rest of our lives.
-This film was directed by Angela Bernardoni
and Laura Jean Cronin
who have had studio spaces in and deep ties to Capitol Hill.
Velocity Dance lost its space during the pandemic
and is seeking a new home.
While Northwest Film Forum
will also be searching for a new location in the coming year.
Built in 1962, Four Seas Restaurant
and Dynasty Room Lounge
in Seattle's Chinatown-International District
was a gathering place for people from all walks of life
until its closure in 2017.
As you can see now, the Four Seas is no longer,
but the site is being reactivated
and rebuilt to continue to serve community
for future generations.
-In 1978, I remember I was working the front of the house
and I was watching the NBA final
and the Sonics lost in the seventh game
and they were at home.
And about five minutes after the game ended,
I got a call from Zollie Volchok,
who was a general manager of the Sonics.
We knew him. He'd come down here many times before, and he said,
"We're all coming down. Get three bartenders.
We're coming down in 10 minutes." Click.
So all of the Sonics, they had just lost a seventh game.
They came down here for dinner.
♪♪
My father, Abe, was one of the original co-owners
of the Four Seas Restaurant.
He and my Uncle Wilbur and my grandfather.
They built this place in 1962, and so we were really involved
with it up until he sold it in 1988.
Back then, people didn't really mix.
They didn't go to the same restaurants.
They didn't hang out at the same bars.
We really had a kind of a segregated town.
And the Four Seas was one of the first places
where people from all different races,
all different walks of life could come down
and have a drink.
♪♪
-The interesting thing about Four Seas
is that the age group was also diverse.
You have people in the middle age at that time.
Bob Santos, for example, would come in quite frequently.
But we also have younger Americans
like Silme Domingo,
who was a famous Filipino-American
in the community,
and he used to come here and drink also.
What we call regular drinkers like in the weekend
they would come they might start at Four Seas
and then they would go down to Hong Kong
and then they would go to Sanya and do a circuit
because each spot has slightly different clientele.
And so sometimes you do the circuit, then you see
pretty much most of your regular drinkers.
-The Four Seas Bar, the Dynasty Room
was a de facto clubhouse
for politically involved people back in the 1960s.
You could see Bob Santos and Bernie Whitebear
in one corner, and in the other corner
you could see Senator Warren Magnuson and his wife.
And then the other corner, you could see a very young
Norman, Constance Rice, the future mayor.
But at that time, they were young on the rise politicians.
♪♪
The relationship between Chinatown,
the International District, and the Kingdom
was a really complex one.
Many people in the ID were opposed to the Kingdom
that I had known from a business standpoint
they absolutely wanted more business
to come through Chinatown and the International District.
On the other hand, they knew
that there would be parking nightmares.
There would be pressures on the social services.
There would be consequences of development
that weren't necessarily desirable.
And so my dad, I remember he was wearing a couple of hats there.
He wanted the business, definitely,
and he was public about that.
But I know that he talked with a number of the activists about
some potential problems that come along with that.
Do you want just kind of drive by,
people just coming by to have Chinese food
and without caring about
the people who actually live there?
-It's easy to come now and see what's wrong
and see the pressures and think this is new,
but it's really -- it's been the same struggle
from the beginning,
and it's the same struggle that Uncle Bob started
when he saw what was happening way back in the early '70s.
And the neighborhood's going to look very different.
Maybe not so much in two years, but in five years, 10 years.
There are taller buildings proposed.
The concern for me is that they will overshadow
the real -- the neighborhood that we know and love today
and push it out, if not like, literally,
then either economically with rising rents
and rising property values.
Culturally with the influx of new people,
new businesses that might not address
the traditional population here.
So it's a scary, scary time.
It's also a time for action.
So community-based development, community control of land
is key for addressing displacement
and for helping the community
to thrive into the future.
So interim's going to own the top floor,
the residential portion of the building
and the Chan family is going to own the commercial.
They're very much committed to uses
that will make a contribution to the neighborhood.
You know, I kind of assumed that everybody knows Uncle Bob
and knows what he's done.
But one thing you know, as time goes on,
I'm sure people who did know him
and worked with them were feeling like...
that this is on our shoulders like
to help people understand just who he was.
You know, I keep talking about contributing
to the neighborhood, sustaining the community
because we have this vibrant community
that welcomes immigrants and refugees
and culturally relevant businesses and services
and that whole range of nonprofits.
And, you know,
I truly believe that this community
would not be intact and strong the way it is
without Uncle Bob's vision and commitment
to all these past decades.
So this project is really coming from the heart.
♪♪
-The previous owners,
the Four Seas and Dynasty Room, ready to move on,
and they're waiting for development.
And in that interim, it's going to be a year or two years out.
They didn't want an abandoned building in this neighborhood,
so they had asked me if I wanted to come in
and run a bar.
And so while we're here,
it's not about how much money we can generate
because I do have other businesses
that can pay the bills.
It's about how to make the biggest impact
in a short amount of time.
♪♪
-Coming in here, even in this modified form,
it brings back incredible memories.
And a lot of it's changed,
but a lot of it's exactly the same.
You walk in here and this fake leather on the bar
is exactly the same as it was from the time I remember,
for as long as I can remember.
-I hope there's a, you know, for the time that we're here,
you know, it's a lot shorter time,
but we can create a new set of memories
for a new generation of people for Dynasty Room.
In this day of technology
and where we have the world in our hands on our smartphones,
I think people, as time goes on,
people will yearn for more emotional connection
in a physical space.
My father would love this remodel
because it makes people happy.
I think this place connects with people,
and that's -- isn't that what we're all looking for?
Connection.
♪♪
-This film was directed by Tuyen Than and Ryan Catabay,
who founded the creative studio in
and have extensive relationships in the CID.
Uncle Bob's place is projected to be completed
in late 2022 or early 2023.
The sixth and final film in the series
is about the iconic Bush Garden restaurant.
In addition to being the first karaoke bar in the country,
since 1953, Bush Gardens has been a hub for connection,
celebration, and multiracial,
multi-generational organizing.
After the historic building
was sold to a private developer in 2017,
a grassroots fight emerged to save both its history
and future as a vital community space.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-We found out after -- after it was already done,
so we didn't hear about it prior to the beginning
and it didn't quite, you know,
feel real and what does it -- what does it mean,
what it would be like to
not have the Bush.
I wasn't sure like how to feel about it in the sense
of what are we going to lose.
A community and our history?
Just having that place that's -- that can stand the test of time
or has stood the test of time that we don't lose that.
-Seattle losing Bush Garden, what that means.
It means that the second oldest Japanese restaurant
in the state of Washington closes,
that a community resource,
a business, a legacy site for the city of Seattle
and all of her citizenry will no longer be here.
It's irreplaceable, and the fact that it's not being respected,
respected by the city,
respected by the preservation board,
respected by the new owners who think they can put cash down
and take whatever they want is [bleep] up.
-This building has always been kind of a gathering place.
It's like there's something about this space
that creates that community.
When Bush Garden moved from the Bush Hotel to here in 1953,
the family actually designed
and built all of this.
-My father-in-law started it with Hasegawa
and his sister-in-law... [ speaks indistinctly ]
He had a vision about things, you know,
it just-- he was before his time.
Invented all the recipes
and designed the interior and everything.
I think it was like a little bit of Japan
because we had our waitresses dressed in kimonos
and we had the tatami rooms.
We had 40 of them.
My father-in-law invented the hole
that was underneath the table.
So you could sit down like you were in a chair.
And he said none of the Americans
could sit down on their legs and be comfortable.
So he decided that he put a rug underneath.
And then we had little cushions so we all sat on.
And so and then the tablecloth covered the hole
so you couldn't really see anything.
But we had a lot of hanky panky going on.
We had actually Princess... [ speaks indistinctly ]
...in Japan now and her aunt and uncle came
and we had to close up the whole restaurant for security sake
because they wouldn't allow anybody.
So we had to make all this Japanese food.
I don't know if it was as good as the ones they got in Japan,
but they ate it.
We had cooks and we had a hard time getting chefs
because immigration would only let so many people in.
They kept saying, "Well, they're taking away,
you know, the jobs from the American people."
So I said, "How many people here know
how to make sushi or make Japanese food, you know."
And a lot of the chefs that came over finally got their visas
and they opened up their own restaurant.
So a lot of the restaurants today
are run by people that worked for us at one time or another.
We started that karaoke bar later on in the '60s,
and we are the first karaoke to be
in the whole United States, actually.
And at that time, they didn't have the key changers
and, you know, the video with the words popping up.
It was more seeing a video that was on a screen.
-We had karaoke here,
Japanese karaoke back, you know, eight-track tapes.
You're thinking eight-track.
And the menus for the songs were handwritten in Japanese.
So if you didn't read Japanese,
there's no way you're going to sing
and it was still wasn't popular everywhere.
So really, in the API community,
it was a different kind of world here.
I mean, how it looks now and how it looked then
was quite different.
I think now I really like how it feels.
People come in, they sing, they support each other.
If somebody doesn't remember the song
and they're having a tough time,
the whole room starts singing with them.
I love that here people are --
have learned the culture of karaoke
in a way that,
you know, is more of a sharing, sharing and supportive way.
Being at Bush Garden and being not only
with some of the best singers in the city
and the best drinkers in the city,
but also meeting Congress members,
City Council members, right, state legislators,
journalists, artists,
activists, advocates,
and exchanging knowledge, exchanging wisdom,
working wisdom and lessons learned
and really becoming a stronger organizer,
becoming a stronger advocate at the same time
as you build a community, right.
-They started in January,
and at that time they said a year, year and a half.
And then as we were approaching the year time,
they said potentially it could be, you know, two years.
There's been a lot of support
for us to try and continue somewhere.
♪♪
I'm feeling a little more hopeful
and energized about the future of Bush.
When the opportunity came up for us
to move into the new development, Uncle Bob's Place,
that interim was doing, it was very exciting.
I think all of those things were things
that felt really good for us, that they want to build a space
that is going to be a community gathering space
so people can come in and share right there on the corner.
I think it's going to be really exciting
and then we get to be a part of that.
Just it -- just feels like it is in sync
with what Bush Garden is now.
♪♪
-♪ Together ♪
-I feel this idea about, you know, losing, you know,
losing valuable things in in our community and our city,
that there's a part of me
that really wants to push to preserve
and not, you know, not just as a museum place to go
recognize and see the story,
but something that people can come and experience
in a very authentic way.
But I don't want to lose the neighborhood
and its history and the story it has to tell.
♪♪
-First, we put out every possible
aspect of demolition of a place where
civil rights leaders that I looked up to
and mentored me for years saying
and taught me to sing and have fun
and do more than just advocate for new laws.
-I pose through redevelopment of
the historic Bush Garden building
because the proposed building
will not serve a majority of CID residents,
immigrants, and refugees in both price and unwieldy scale.
I oppose the redevelopment
of the historic Bush Garden building
because the very soul of our neighborhood
is threatened by developments such as this.
-You know, once you lose the building,
Bush Garden building, you're going to lose a lot of history.
And it's not -- it's not necessarily Chinese history.
I think the International-District
Chinatown was called that for a reason.
It includes a lot of other people besides Chinese people
and we all lived and worked together
in the same neighborhood.
And I don't feel like raising a hundred years of that history
is worth this development.
♪♪
-This film was directed by Ellison Shieh,
Christopher Woon-Chen, and Martin Tran,
long-time Bush Garden patrons.
Bush Gardens also holds a special place in my heart
as I consider it my "Cheers,"
a home for both my personal and political development.
It's where my parents took me as a kid to eat
in the beautiful to tatami rooms,
and where I later migrated over to the bar as an adult,
making lifelong friendships over a big bottle of kirin
and a karaoke mic.
Many thanks and gratitude to all the filmmakers
who worked with Vanishing Seattle
and to the small business owners,
artists, activists, and community leaders
who share their stories with us and who truly make Seattle
a world-class city.
There are so many more stories to tell.
So stay tuned for an upcoming second series
of Vanishing Seattle films.
If you know of spaces in your community
that are vanishing, in danger of vanishing,
or resisting vanishing,
Get in touch with us through Instagram,
Facebook at vanishingseattle.org.
Thanks for joining.
♪♪
-♪ Come gather 'round Seattleites wherever you are ♪
♪ Those stuck on 520 get out of your cars ♪
♪ And admit what they're saying in Wallingford bars ♪
♪ Our lifestyle is fading ♪
♪ And "The Most Liveable City" is now a parking lot ♪
♪ For the town it is a changing ♪
♪ The Food Giant's gone, bid The Dog House adieu ♪
♪ And Frederick & Nelson it's history, too ♪
♪ But we've got lots of Tully's and bagels to chew ♪
♪ And there's pesto and sundried tomato ♪
♪ And you just wash it down with a peach microbrew ♪
♪ For the town it is a changing ♪
♪♪
♪ Yuppies are taking Ballard they now think it's cool ♪
♪ And they're kicking out the old farts ♪
♪ Who drive slow and drool ♪
[ Spray can shakes ]