-Hey, everyone. Good to see you.
-Hello. -Thanks so much for coming out
and joining us on a Friday night.
Thanks to Town Hall for having us.
And we're just, yeah,
really excited to share some stories about the book with you.
Yeah. So let's just get right into it.
So I'm going to share a bit about the origin story
of the Signs of Vanishing Seattle book.
It's actually a documentation of a large scale sign exhibit
that happened in July of 2023.
And I was approached in the spring of that year
by the arts nonprofit Forest For the Trees and Archive.
And they've been working with the new owner
of the RailSpur building,
which is this historic brick and timber
building in Pioneer Square.
I don't know if folks remember FX McRory's.
Yeah. Yeah.
Legendary happy hour, whiskey oysters.
But they were located in the ground floor
of that RailSpur building, what is now RailSpur.
And so these artists had been working with the new owners
to activate the building during the summer program,
all the different floors with art exhibits
to coincide with the Seattle Art Fair in July.
So they approached me about taking up a floor,
the fourth floor of the building
so 12,000 square feet of this warehouse building.
And we had this idea to do this large scale immersive exhibit
with Seattle Signs.
And I was like, okay. Cool. Why not?
Never done anything like this before but the type of thing
that you just kind of say yes to and then worry about it later.
So I started out putting out a call through Vanishing Seattle
to my followers,
just to see did people have signs
that they'd be willing to loan us.
And didn't really know what to expect
and what would turn up
but ended up getting hundreds of responses.
People volunteered signs from old businesses
and gathering places, diners, bars, shops,
some places that I'd heard of,
lots that I'd never heard of before.
Some signs dated as back -- as far back as the late 1800s.
Some were of businesses that had closed very recently.
And we also had some signs offered up businesses
that are not vanished and that are still here with us.
And so people had these signs stored, sometimes for years,
in basements, in garages,
backyards, their own businesses, in storage.
And I just felt really encouraged
that people had took it upon themselves,
just like everyday folks of Seattle,
to salvage these signs
that otherwise could have just ended up on --
in the trash heap of history.
And we underwent a massive coordination effort.
So, by hook or by crook, we got about 100 signs into the space.
A lot of them had to be disassembled,
reassembled, and installed.
Some of the signs were massive.
Tom's going to touch on that in a bit.
And we ended up with a pretty diverse array of signs.
So we had neon signs, wood-carved signs,
hand-painted signs.
A lot of them were really works of art in and of themselves.
So we have less than two months from coming up with a concept
to the exhibit opening to the public.
And obviously I had a lot of help to pull it off.
So I'm just really grateful
that we were able to do that with the support
of tons of people, including folks in this room.
Taha and Ryan, wanted to shout them out.
It really was a collective effort.
So the exhibit was only meant to be up for a long weekend,
but I did have a lot of people coming up to me
saying that they wish that it had been up for longer
for them to come back and see it again or really take it in,
or they wish that it was a permanent exhibit.
So I did work with the RailSpur owners
to extend it for about another month of weekends.
And I got really lucky to have Tom approach me
with the idea to do a book to document the exhibit
before the exhibit itself vanished.
And we worked on the book for about a year.
And then we launched it this past July
on the date of the anniversary of the opening reception
of the Vanishing Seattle exhibit.
So, yeah.
So just a little back story,
some context about how this book came to be.
And I'll pass it over to you, Tom.
-Thank you.
Thank you, Town Hall, for hosting us tonight.
Thank you, everyone, for being here tonight.
As Cynthia said, it's a cold Friday evening in January.
We appreciate you're all here.
So like 85,000 other people,
I've been following Vanishing Seattle
on Instagram for a while.
I think misery loves company,
and it's easy to follow along
and kind of commiserate with different, you know,
losses and changes around the city.
But there's also a collective relief
when a beloved business is labeled not vanishing or,
even better, the rare but triumphant unvanished.
These are always important reminders to continue
to support and to celebrate the places and organizations
and communities that you love. So please bear with me.
I'm going to talk a little bit about
how I got involved with all this.
Cynthia touched on that.
And I'll get back to this point about communities
that you love and want to support.
So, after Vanishing Seattle put out the call for old signs,
I have a small art studio in a nondescript DIY
all-ages art and music
space in a quiet corner of Ballard called Woodland Theater.
That's it on the left.
You wouldn't even notice it if you walk by.
It's a rare space in Seattle.
Every square inch of the city sometimes feels developed
and unaffordable.
But, at Woodland,
there's an active community of musicians and artists.
And we host concerts, art shows, craft fairs,
and other events throughout the year.
There's even a recording studio and a screen printing workshop.
Everything's volunteer run.
If there any city officials in the audience
tonight are watching, it's all up to code.
It's all ages. No alcohol is allowed.
Everything's by donation only.
We're actually in the process of finding a fiscal sponsor
at the moment to really kind of develop the space further.
It's also an old building.
And forgotten of one of the back rooms
I found this big carved wooden sign
for the SS Marie Antoinette.
Now, the SSMA was also an all-ages DIY music venue and
artist space in an old boat warehouse near MOHAI
on West Lake Avenue.
Here's a picture from the year that it closed in 2007.
It was founded in 2001 by Victoria Franklin
during the midst of the teen dance ordinance
and the poster ban, which is a whole other talk.
But it was also run by artists and volunteers
and hosted hundreds of bands and artists over the years.
I think you had a specific memory
to the SS Marie Antoinette that --
-Oh, yeah.
So some of my friends were playing a show there one time,
and so I swung by.
And I just remember there was like this --
the front of the venue had this big, kind of rolling, like,
garage door opening.
And so I spotted them through the door.
And I stuck my head, and I was like, Oh, hey, guys.
Like, when are you going to start playing, whatever.
And I heard this noise above me, and I looked up.
And the garage door had started, like,
rolling down very fast towards my head.
So I think I just, like, yelped and,
you know, yanked my head back just in time.
But that -- I always wondered if that's
where the SS Marie Antoinette got its name from.
-When we donated the sign,
Malaki Stahl was a manage -- one of the managers of the space.
And he had this to say about it.
When the SS Marie Antoinette eventually closed in 2007,
it felt like the ending of any complicated relationship.
There was sadness and anger.
There was a sense, even back then,
that Seattle was changing, vanishing, as it were,
and that this was one of many sad symptoms of that erasure.
The fact that this sign was a requested for this installation
16 years after it closed is a testament to the fact
that we did good and what we did was indelible.
And on KUOW's Let the Kids Dance podcast,
Jonathan Zwickel said,
All ages music is the oxygen
that keeps the community healthy.
It supplies fresh ideas, new fans and artists,
and a spirit of passionate participation.
So many of the artists that the world identifies with Seattle
launched from all ages spaces.
I highly recommend listening to that podcast
if you haven't heard it.
There are also a lot of books about this era in Seattle
that are worth looking up.
And other organizations popped up around this time too.
The Vera Project, in particular, became a model for
how to support all-ages music and arts communities.
It was also founded in 2001;
and it hosts concerts, art shows, workshops,
classes, and much more to this day.
And, recently,
it became home to even another DIY music space
called Black Lodge,
which was also operating in kind of a gray area
and almost closed,
but Vera Project has stepped in to support it.
So the SSMA closed in 2007.
This is a picture of the space today.
It could be anywhere in Seattle.
But manager Malaki Stahl went on
to open another influential all ages
live music venue in Ballard called The Josephine.
The Josephine operated for about eight years,
and it closed in 2015.
And that's now home to Woodland Theater,
and that's where I found the sign.
When the Vanishing Seattle exhibit finally opened,
I was blown away by the variety
and the history of what was on display.
Each visitor seemed to have a deep,
visceral reaction to something that they encountered.
For me, it was this RKCNDY sign.
-Yes. -Exactly. Right.
It was a gritty,
all-ages music venue just off the freeway downtown.
It closed in 1999 which I swear it was not that long ago but.
-Like yesterday.
-It was, yeah. It was basically yesterday.
But I'd seen dozens of shows there at a formative age,
and I think I still smell like cigarette smoke 25 years later.
A couple other signs that really struck me
were from cellophane square on the -- up the Ave.
I -- yeah.
This was a tough one to buy records at
because everything I bought I feel
like I got judged very harshly for.
Like, oh, you don't already own Pearl Jam?
-Your power punk, power pop phase.
-Yes. That too.
Has a lot of Blink 182 back in the day.
These massive letters from the Sunset Bowl in Ballard.
This photo is deceptive,
but those letters are maybe 10 feet tall, the S at least.
Exploring the exhibit,
you started to notice the details of the design
and the craftsmanship of the signs.
The sunset bowl letters were dimensional.
They were cut from sheet metal.
Here you can see shims holding them up
in creative ways for the exhibit.
Like what appears to be a T.
The RKCNDY sign was weathered, had a patina of age.
Other signs had beautiful hand-painted lettering
or creative use of repurposed materials
or stunning displays of neon.
This is the old Coliseum sign.
Each sign was paired with a short written description
and historical text.
And then I started to notice the Post-it notes.
People had written down names and stories of places
they had loved or lost,
kind of like some of you did here tonight.
And they were everywhere.
They covered the walls, other walls, posters;
so many, they were falling off the walls
and covering the floor.
There's one here that says dignity,
which I thought somebody loved and lost dignity,
which there's a story there.
How many did you end up with by the end of the exhibit?
-Thousands. Yeah.
I think I attempted to count them at one point
and kind of lost count.
But, yeah. At least a few thousand.
-It felt like there was a sense of urgency to people's
contributions, to record their memories
because the exhibit was only on display for a few weeks.
And so that's when I had the idea to capture it in a book.
All the ingredients were already there.
The signs were there, the texts were there,
the Post-it notes with people's
stories and anecdotes were there.
So I was introduced to Cynthia
and pitched the idea on the spot.
Fortunately, she was into it.
So we spent the next year organizing content,
checking research, collecting images,
double-checking research, editing text,
triple-checking research, and finally designing
and printing the book right here in Seattle.
And I think when you start looking for connections
in a community, you'll find them everywhere,
between people, between places, through stories.
And, over time,
books and even signs can help strengthen
and preserve these connections.
And this project encouraged me to research the history
of the very space it was created in, Woodland Theater.
After months of research,
digging through online archives
and assisted by UW special collections
in the Seattle Public Libraries,
I discovered that, before Woodland Theater,
the space with The Josephine,
as I mentioned, before that, it was the Estradasphere;
The Chummery, which was home to the Sun City girls;
the 608 Warehouse.
There are actually various names for each of these eras,
so I picked the ones that seem to pop up the most often.
Before that, it was the Ballard Playhouse.
Before that, it was the 65th Street Theater.
And for 20 long years,
it was a print shop that specialized in restaurant menus.
This company actually still exists.
It's not vanished.
It's on the East Side somewhere now.
They won't return my emails.
In 1959, it became an indoor ski slope.
This really caught my eye, and I had to dig deeper.
It turns out they had a giant machine inside this building
where they would grind up ice
and spray it onto a giant indoor hill.
And the building was insulated,
so you could go in here and practice skiing year round.
That looks like it ran for about five years.
Before this, it was the Olympic Theater.
And, finally, built almost 100 years ago,
it was Woodland Theater.
The original silent movie theater had a stunning facade
and a prominent neon sign hanging out over 65th Street.
This little corner of Ballard
was full of shops and entertainment
for families in nearby lumber yard and dock workers.
It still is, in some ways, but for tech workers.
So after the Vanishing Seattle exhibit,
and with the 100th anniversary of Woodland Theater approaching,
I was inspired to re-create this once iconic sign.
Ironically, today there's a sign making shop
right next door to Woodland Theater.
They make real estate signs, and they always have free plywood.
If you need plywood, check out this sign shop.
It's expensive, but it's free -- well, it's expensive to buy,
but it's free from the shop.
So I used repurposed plywood for the real estate signs,
which felt appropriate for this project.
I painted and assembled the various parts and letters
into a new sign, which now hangs in the space,
which helps connect the past to the present
for future generations.
I haven't quite upgraded to neon signs,
but maybe that's the next step. And, finally,
what I want to talk a little bit about
is that there was a statement that was printed on the wall
of the now vanished Museum of Museums.
I think about it often.
It said, There is no version of a great city
with a declining artist population.
So it's incredibly heartening to see the emergence
of new art spaces all around the city in recent years.
These are just a few. You might notice some of these.
Actualize AiR; it's in the old Banana Republic,
which used to be the old Coliseum,
the letters I showed earlier.
Wa Na Wari, common area maintenance
has a space a little while back.
But they just opened a new space last summer down in Belltown.
Base Camp Studios,
which is probably noticed some media around
since they had a big popular exhibit this past month.
The Fish Bowl and Cannonball Arts later this year,
which is an evolution of Museum of Museums.
Many of these have grown from other projects in DIY spaces
have taken root in unused and forgotten corners of the city,
and some are described by the signs of what came before.
Base Camp is in the old Bergman Luggage building.
You can't miss that sign.
Cannonball will be in the old Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Actualize is in the old Banana Republic, the old Coliseum.
They're also, by the way,
hosting a talk next Friday about this very topic.
And behind each one of these places are teams of passionate
and creative people working hard to make space
for art and culture
and trying to build a vibrant community within the city.
And I hope these places and stories and signs
and book help reinforce what is special
and memorable about Seattle to you
and encourage you to support the places you love.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
-Thanks so much, Tom, and just huge shout-out to Tom.
He not only donated the Marie Antoinette sign
and published the book, he designed it.
I mean, just an incredible artist,
wonderful thought partner, is a joy to work with.
Also very modest.
He cofounded the Seattle Art Book Fair,
which is going to be entering into its third year this --
is it May, this coming up?
-May 10 and 11th.
If you don't have plans on Mother's Day, come on down.
It's at Washington Hall up in Central District.
-Yeah. Bring your mama. Yeah.
Also did this really cool Woodland stock,
like Festival at the Woodland Theater
and had a bunch of bands and did a deep dive into the history.
Yeah.
And also a lot of other cool books
that he puts out through Tone Press, so please check that out.
And, yeah.
We're thinking about working together,
continuing to work together on a Vanishing Seattle imprint.
So, yeah. Keep an eye out.
We'll probably put out some other books and art
projects and things in the future.
So, yeah. All right.
So I'm going to talk about a place
that is featured in the Vanishing Seattle book.
And I chose this spot
because it's actually not too far from here.
It was downtown, just about half a mile away.
And I think it's got a particularly colorful
and uniquely Seattle history,
and that is the Turf Restaurant and Lounge.
Hopefully some of you all remember it.
And for folks who might have the book with them,
if you want a reference, it's on page 42.
So this legendary bar and restaurant
is emblematic of a past era of Seattle
and especially of old downtown,
when the area was rough around the edges
and well into the middle and populated with pawn shops,
peep shows, single residence occupancy hotels,
and plentiful low-income and senior housing,
much in contrast to the luxury high rises
and upscale shops of today.
As ascribed by local paper, The Stranger,
The Turf is one of the last vestiges
of old seedy downtown Seattle and, as such,
it is the civic treasure of a dive.
The Turf first opened in 1927
under the name The Turf Grill and Smoke Shop
at 1407 3rd Avenue and Union.
In addition to food, it sold beer and wine,
cigars and cigarettes, and also had a barber shop.
It was a sprawling old place with a lunch counter and lots
of booths and chairs for dining
plus a few pool tables for good measure.
Although there was a bar in the dining room,
The Turf also had a cocktail lounge called
the Waggin' Tongue Room. I don't know if you can see it,
but under it says, Where Quality is Supreme.
I don't know if they're talking about the cocktails
or the gossip or maybe both.
The Turf was where business people often ate
and held lunchtime meetings alongside those with little
to no money who lived and worked downtown
and everyone in between.
All types were welcome at The Turf.
The Turf was also, at one time,
a hangout of bookmakers and boxers.
In the old days, the big local fights often staged
their weigh-ins at The Turf.
It was also the '90s hangout of former boxer
George Bearcat Baker,
who won the Northwest Heavyweight Championship in 1931
at the tender age of 17. Over his career,
Bearcat fought in 133 boxing matches, losing only 10.
Bearcat ate all his meals at The Turf and rehearsed lines
from his small roles in the movies and commercials
shot around town.
The Turf's owner, Pat Altshuler, would help him with his cues.
And that's a picture of the same sign
that actually is in the possession of MOHAI now.
In the mid-1980s,
a developer with the Pacific Group
planned to demolish Turf's building
to construct something more swanky.
Owner Pat was afraid she would have to close entirely.
But with support from the Displacement Coalition,
a Save The Turf campaign emerged.
And that's a picture of supporters gathering
in front of the restaurant
getting ready to march down to the office of the developer.
And I believe the man in the middle is Bob Santos,
also known as Uncle Bob, who was in the Gang of Four.
The Turf ultimately did have to move.
But the campaign won relocation costs from the developer,
and The Turf reopened in 1988 in a new spot at 107 Pike Street,
across from the Pike Place Market
when that strip was also known as The Blade.
In the early 2000s, The Turf was displaced by a Johnny Rockets,
which is also now closed, and moved,
yet again, to 200 Pike Street so 2nd and Pike,
situated under a parking structure
where it remained until its closure in 2011.
Turf Lounge was known as a first-of-the-month bar,
an unapologetic come-as-you-are safe haven
and unofficial community center
for folks cashing their monthly government checks.
And characters from all walks of life
for only a couple of bucks could go for a hot sandwich,
cold beer, and social connection.
Danny Westneat wrote in the Seattle Times in 2011,
For decades,
the diner and bar
has been a sort of one-stop shop and service
center for downtown's poor,
its pensioners, odd jobbers, and welfare recipients.
Here, they could get their benefits
or temporary labor checks cashed without having to mess
around with the banks. The Turf had a kiosk in back
where folks could pay utility bills, order MoneyGrams,
and buy stamps, as well as 25 cent pull tabs.
A jukebox often played a reliable stream
of R&B and Isley Brothers during happy hour.
Mike Seely described The Turf in his book,
Seattle's Best Dive Bars, Drinking and Diving
in the Emerald City, which I highly recommend,
If Do the Right Thing had been filmed in Seattle,
The Turf would have been a primary location.
Wary be the tourist
who accidentally stumbles into this place.
During lunch,
there are as many construction workers wolfing
down hot beef sandwiches and teriyaki
as there are flashier types. Once work lets out,
an Asian bartender with a stud earring
who doesn't take shit off anybody assumes the reins.
He's not amused when a cat wearing a velour track suit
tries to pay for his tall boy with $1.75 bus voucher.
The last owner of Turf Lounge, Rose Gregorio Rosas,
now known as Tito Greg who worked there as a dishwasher
since he first immigrated to the US from the Philippines in 1978.
He worked his way up to become a manager and part owner
in the 1980s,
eventually buying The Turf from previous owner, Pat Altshuler.
Pat fiercely protected The Turf from wave of gentrification
in the '70s,
'80s, and early '90s,
as she believed it would always be needed
by the people of Seattle. But, in 2011,
Washington ended its general assistance
cash payments programs,
which had helped keep countless folks who were disabled
or unable to work housed and fed
and out of the shelters and streets.
Thus unable to afford even the diviest joint,
The Turf's main clientele dried up,
while the demand at last resort places
like Union Gospel Mission skyrocketed.
Tito Greg was forced to adapt to avoid closure
and shuttered The Turf in December 2011,
reopening it the next year in the same location,
renamed as Ludi's in honor of the woman
who helped raise Greg and taught him how to cook.
The menu had changed.
While The Turf had already offered lumpia, oxtail,
fried rice, and teriyaki,
Tito Greg added Filipino breakfast favorites
like silogs and ube pancakes. The prices were slightly higher
and thus catered to a slightly higher class of clientele
but still cheap enough to retain its
million dollar people watching
and act as a refuge for people on the fringes
of an increasingly gentrifying downtown.
And, of course, Ludi's continued the tradition of stiff drinks,
huge portions, and friendly no-nonsense service.
When Ludi's lost its lease in August 2019,
many were devastated by news of the impending closure.
Then a kitchen fire broke out, forcing Ludi's to close early.
The diner eventually became subsumed
by the West Edge parking garage.
However, after a four-year search,
Ludi's reopened in June 2023 at 2nd and Stewart,
just two blocks north of their old space
under the same ownership of Tito Greg and his daughter, Rita.
The walls of the new Ludi's are decorated with photos and signs
from its former space
and with pictures of The Turf's previous owners,
friends, family, and regulars,
including Miss Pat Altschuler and Ralph E.
Kelly, also known as Cowboy,
an octogenarian who lived on Social Security,
was at The Turf seven days a week,
often helped Greg with business matters,
and considered The Turf his true home.
He told the Seattle Times, I would die without The Turf.
Ludi's famed Filipino breakfasts,
along with a section on the menu comprised of Turf classics,
continue to draw a crowd to this resilient diner
that has endured in various names and incarnations
through a changing Seattle for nearly a century.
Seattle does indeed still need a place like The Turf and Ludi's.
And, yeah.
You can also see one of The Turf signs installed
at the Diller Room,
which is a historic bar located across
from the Seattle Art Museum. So, yeah.
Thanks for going on that Turf trip with me.
[ Applause ]
And now for the super fun part,
I'm going to read some comments and stories
that people have shared on Vanishing Seattle
social media about The Turf.
I remember waiting outside in the '50s on Third Avenue
when my dad went in to place a bet and schmooze a little.
I cried once, and a stranger took me inside to find my dad.
It seemed very exotic to an 8-year-old.
My memory of The Turf, the original location,
was sitting at the bar enjoying a beer and a sign saying,
I don't come to your workplace to deal drugs,
so don't do it at mine, with a cockroach
that had climbed onto the counter to eat a crumb.
Adorable.
Pretty sure I was able to pay an overdue phone bill there
while I was in college.
The Turf was quite the downtown character, even in the '90s.
I think I even tried my luck with a pull tab or two.
I didn't visit again until it became Ludi's,
but I appreciated
that it was still a great time capsule
of downtown Seattle history.
I cut class a lot at 15 and would hang at The Turf.
Cigarette machine, checks cashed, hot coffee,
it was a place of no questions and no apologies.
Great characters.
I loved it there and soon moved to NYC to get more.
Used to pay my Quest bill there.
I also used to drive for a town car service,
and it was the de facto 6:00 a.m. location for many
after a long night of enjoying nose beers.
And, at 6, the bar would open;
and they could continue with nose and actual beers.
I'm sure I have no idea what they're talking about.
Wow. Thanks for the history.
I'm a social worker and have many clients
who are there regularly. Thank goodness for The Turf.
The Turf is as legendary as Metro Rt.
358. If you know, you know.
I worked in the market for several years
and would go to The Turf and later Ludi's for breakfast,
lunch, or dinner.
When I worked alone and was hungover,
I would call them; and Tony would bring me my breakfast.
It was the absolute best.
One time I was in there, and some lady came in
and ordered a strawberry milkshake
and mashed potatoes to go then
tried to pocket the giant bottle of hot sauce
while the woman behind the counter wasn't looking.
The woman brought the food out, took the money,
then very casually, said, I'll take that hot sauce back too.
The customer took it out of her purse, took her food,
said, Thanks, and left.
Amazing. Cowboy was the cutest, too.
Puffy jacket, no matter what the weather was like.
I worked at the corner produce in Pike Place from 2007 to 2010.
Cowboy was a fixture downtown,
and I still miss the $5 Turf burger.
When it was down closer to the market in the late '90s,
I worked at a restaurant near there
and would go with one of the dishwashers on payday
to get a drink in the afternoon.
I'd never seen a pile of used pull tabs so high.
And a guy was once passed out in a booth
we thought was empty and tried to sit in at 3:00 p.m.
There was enough room, so we just sat on either side of him.
Practical. That place was amazing.
Those booths saw some things.
I worked in Nordstrom Rack in the late aughts,
when it was on 2nd and Pine.
The Turf was definitely a regular idea tossed around
for lunch break options with coworkers.
The food was good and it felt so real.
Good times.
And, finally, in the spirit of sharing stories on the Post-its,
this is a great one that someone shared at one
of our previous events.
When I worked full-time at Pike Place,
we would frequently go to The Turf
after work for cheeseburgers.
That place was like the Switzerland of downtown.
Everyone ate there.
The cops, drug dealers, service industry workers, everyone.
And you know some weird shit went on in the back bar.
But as long as people were cool with each other,
no one said anything.
I'm glad it has lived on as Ludi's.
The burgers there are still great.
So, yeah. Please do go support Ludi's.
They're amazing. Tito Greg's awesome.
So are the staff.
And it's, yeah, just great to see them be able to continue
on the legacy all these years. So, yeah.
Now I think we're going to share back some of the stories
that y'all wrote on the Post-its.
Thank you, Tom.
Okay.
So this one is about the Greyhound bus station.
I took the Greyhound from Seattle to California
in ninth grade, ran away to Venice Beach
and came back home after three days.
I was 86 from -- I was 86'd from Greyhound.
-That's saying something. -Oh, boy.
-I've got one here for the Coliseum.
The last movie I saw at the Coliseum
was Tremors with Kevin Bacon.
We might have been the only people in the theater.
I think that might have been the last movie that played there.
-Yeah.
-It's a great movie.
-Yeah. It's classic. Should have been full.
Had my first pickleback at Speckled and Drake
with my then boyfriend.
Married the fella, despite my hatred of picklebacks.
Hopefully it doesn't take more.
-My best friend's dad's friend owned Cellophane Square.
He threw the best parties for years.
-Oh.
-I did not get to go to those parties
when I went to Cellophane Square,
so I wouldn't know.
-They close the door when they saw you coming.
-Yeah. -This one's about Almond Roca.
My mom and I used to go buy the big bags of imperfect
or broken pieces for dirt cheap.
Yes. Remember Dilettante Factory used to do that too.
Yeah. By Garfield.
That was -- that was another spot to go
when you were skipping school.
Lauren knows. -Something about the fonts
and the color of these grocery aisle signs --
this is about the Red Apple sign -- makes me swoon.
Me too.
-Yes. -Fonts, colors, all about it.
-It's like you're a designer or something.
-Yeah.
-And that's the Red Apple on Jackson and 23rd, RIP.
-Yeah.
-I believe this one is about RKCNDY.
-Oh, that. Yeah. -Huh? Who wrote this?
I saw a man or Astro man here,
and they had a giant Tesla coil that shocked the crowd.
-This is true. I could not believe it existed.
It was up on stage.
It's like a cartoony Tesla coil,
and it was shooting lightning into the crowd.
It was before cell phones and things,
so I don't think people, like, lost electronics.
-Yeah. -But it was -- it was wild.
-Doesn't sound really legal, either, but, you know.
That's why it was special.
Keep them kids entertained.
-This is Nickerson Street Saloon and Bar, RIP,
a great chill place to grab a bite, beer,
and catch a basketball game on TV.
Really miss it.
-So many stories and memories.
Hash after the bash at the off ramp.
And the girls who sold shots of Jaeger and tequila
out of test tubes, kind of like cigarette girls.
-Yeah. They walked around [indistinct]
but all you could get was Jaeger.
-Oh, yeah. It's very glamorous.
-[Indistinct]
-Nice.
-Also some other places shouted out the store room,
which I think became Venus and Mars or Victory Lounge.
Or it was on the East Lake strip
when there were tons of music venues there, Jade Pagoda, yeah.
Remember getting like $2 whiskeys there.
You couldn't see through all the smoke, smoke in the room.
You didn't want to eat there.
Ernie Steele's, another good Broadway old school joint.
Entrose. Thank you, Deborah.
-Celebrities.
-Celebrities nightclub.
-[Indistinct]
-Sounds awesome.
-Nice. -Right on.
-This post, it says, I might not have my facts correct,
but a former Rat City Roller Derby --
we're loose on facts here.
-Yes.
-A lot of them are in the haze of time or die of bars.
-Substances.
-But it goes on to say,
a former Rat City Roller Derby teammate told me
that her grandmother made the Elephant Car Wash sign
and that the tiny elephants that parade along the bottom
represented her grandkids, and one of them was her.
That's very sweet.
-I think that is true because the person
who designed that sign was Bay Haverfield.
And she did a bunch of signs around Seattle.
I think she also did a Dick sign, maybe Chubby and Tubby.
If you Google her,
I think there's some pretty good articles written about her
within the last couple years.
And I remember reading that the little elephants at the bottom
were after her kids.
So, yeah.
Very talented undersung, yeah, local designer.
-Which sign from the exhibit would you steal
and put in your own home if you could pick?
-That's a good one.
-I think for me it's the first one I saw, the RKCNDY sign.
I mean, it would take up a whole wall,
and it would probably be kind of musty.
But it's just so iconic.
-Oh, he took my answer.
Well, I really love the aisle sign from Red Apple.
And I didn't steal it,
but I actually still is in my possession
because that's like the last one
that the donor hasn't picked up yet.
So I get to look at it and pretend that it's mine.
And I think it was from when the Red Apple,
that space temporarily was a punk rock flea market one time.
And I think one of the volunteers
there was able to salvage that sign
and then kind of took this mishmash of different,
like, aisle markers and put it onto that one.
So, yeah.
But the font, the font is so good.
-Good fonts. -Hi.
So my question is,
the book features ephemera from everything
from restaurants and bars to public transit.
Do you feel like there were any gaps in that collection
that you couldn't find any physical material for?
-Yeah.
I mean, I think we kind of just had to rely
on what folks came up with in a very short --
like, volunteered in a very short amount of time.
There were also some restraints just around,
like, pickup and delivery and getting it through the doors.
Yeah.
I feel like there could have been more representation
of certain neighborhoods.
I think we had a lot from, like, Belltown;
fair amount from Ballard and, like, old,
like, industrial signs, which I thought was cool.
Didn't have that many, like, Black-owned businesses, for one.
I was happy we were able to have enough to assemble,
like, a queer bar,
and, like, Asian-owned International District section.
But I would have had liked
to have more representation amongst, you know,
the very many various communities of Seattle.
Great question. Thank you.
-I think, like, one of the things I noticed right away
and a lot of people commented was, like,
where's the Pink Elephant Car Wash sign?
But in the back of the exhibit --
and some people didn't make it back to this,
but there was a looping video of all the neon signs of Seattle
that were documented or probably another 50
or so businesses
that were documented in a video installation
that Kaleidoscope put together.
Elephant Car Wash made it into that.
So technically got in under the wire.
-Yeah.
There were some people
who came who I think really were expecting to see it there or,
like, put on Post-its.
Like, where's the pink elephant? -They were almost angry, like.
-That thing's like 100, like, feet tall.
Like, yeah. Maybe one day. -When I saw the Post-it notes,
I immediately thought of the gum wall in Seattle.
They're both spaces of granular participation,
and it makes me think how it's granular participation
that fills up these spaces, these restaurants.
Thank you for creating a space
for us to participate and place all these memories
that would have otherwise fallen away.
But it's a curatorial problem.
Can you talk about how you decide what to show
and what to leave unsaid?
How do you hold space for all of this?
-Wow.
-Do, do, do, do.
-That's a doozy.
Also, I love the gum wall comparison.
Hopefully ours isn't quite as gross.
It's not covered in saliva.
But, yeah.
I mean, I think in the editing process
we did kind of struggle with that
because there were just so many good stories and memories.
Or sometimes people would just put the names
of all these different places that were gone,
and you just can't include it all.
You know, it's like a content issue.
It's a design challenge.
And I think up to when we were down to the wire with,
like, trying to get, like, the last minute edits in,
I think the things that we still struggled over the most
were which Post-its do we include
and which ones we have to let go for the book so --
and I personally haven't been able -- I still have all --
as much of the Post-its that I could save,
I just have them, like, stuffed in bags in my place.
And sometimes I'll take them out,
look at them and be like, oh.
You know, maybe I'd like to find something
to do with them in the future.
But I haven't been able to let them go
because I do feel it is a gift that people took the time
to, like, write down this remembrance
and share it with everyone.
So, yeah.
I kind of feel like I'm a little bit the caretaker
of all these scraps of paper.
Or maybe I'm just a little OCD hoarder.
I don't know.
-I think as we were putting the book together,
at first we would transcribe the Post-it notes
and then just input them in the font of the rest of the book.
And then, over time, we didn't quite have, like,
kind of a visual motif that tied everything together.
And then we kept coming back to the Post-it notes,
and it became really apparent
that that was kind of the heart of everything.
These were people's, like, authentic experiences.
And so we felt it was really important to represent them.
We put the actual scanned Post-it notes in the book,
so it's -- we didn't touch them or anything.
So it's people's actual handwriting;
so it's a real kind of like stamp
of their presence in the history.
And I think we're --
we also kind of benefited from the show
being put together so quickly that --
and there was a whole flurry of energy and activity
and contributions to that.
But it also was kind of the limiting factor.
Like, if it was in the show, it was in the book.
But there wasn't --
the whole concept was to encapsulate the show.
So even though there's a whole wealth of things
we couldn't put in,
it was kind of a nice limitation to work within.
-Hello, and thank you for another lovely event.
From a design perspective, Tom, can you share
about the landscape orientation of the book?
And also you mentioned some books
that you would recommend that are --
that articulate a little bit more about old Seattle,
and can you share some of those titles
with folks in the audience who might not know?
-Yeah. I'll speak to the design.
I feel like a landscape format book,
without getting too nerdy about design things, is kind of risky.
-Do it.
-Landscape books kind of like flop open weird.
They're hard to handle.
But, in this case,
it felt like a lot of the signs are landscape format
because of the nature of advertising in a public space.
It takes up kind of more horizontal real estate.
And so it felt appropriate to have a wider format book
to feature the signs more like at a larger scale on the page.
And there's also kind of a cost consideration.
You can have a wide book.
But, if it's all tall,
it's going to be more expensive to produce.
And we're really conscientious of making this something
that's affordable. It was kind of a requirement,
like a self-imposed requirement
that the book is printed here in Seattle.
If we had printed it anywhere else,
it probably could have been a lot cheaper to print.
But it felt important to keep all aspects of the book local.
It was printed at Consolidated Press down in SoDo,
which is an amazing company.
-And it's not for sale on Amazon.
Sorry. -Yeah.
We've kept it off Amazon.
As far as books that kind of capture the era,
there's one Sasquatch published --
or Sasquatch published earlier this year,
and I can't think of its title.
It documents like 100 different bands.
And -- -Oh. Sound of Seattle.
-Yeah.
Sound of Seattle is an excellent one.
-Eva Walker. And, yeah. That's great.
-UW Press, like, full disclosure,
I worked there for a long time.
But they publish regularly kind of histories
of cultural aspects of Seattle.
One called Stomp and Shout came out recently.
One called Before Seattle Rocked,
which is like pre Jimi Hendrix music scene in Seattle so
a lot of the jazz clubs that have disappeared.
Any others come to mind?
-Yeah. You're kind of jogging my memory.
And, like, the music tip, jazz on -- Jackson After Hours,
something it's called, by Paul Debaros.
Also, there's a book called My Unforgotten Seattle by Ron Chu,
local community leader.
And, yeah.
So much good stuff about the ID and just Seattle,
in general, Beacon Hill. And then there's one book,
just as I happen to be reading it now,
but it's called One Week to Change the World.
And I got it at MOHAI.
There's an amazing exhibit there now on the WTO
because it's the 25th anniversary just passed,
and I think it's more relevant and needed than ever.
And it's like oral histories,
just people talking about the before,
during, and after of the WTO and it -- I mean, at the time,
I think a lot of what I was absorbing about WTO I was, like,
seeing on the news and mainstream media.
But, yeah. Just reading about what --
how innovative, you know, Seattle is
and its resistance and protests and situating that within, like,
this long history since basically the founding
of the city, you know, from like the 1919 strike to Gang of Four
to, you know, up till now.
But, anyway, yeah. That's a really good book.
-Thank you.
-Las Vegas has gathered a lot of their signs
together in the Neon Museum as a permanent collection.
Has there been any thought of gathering these signs together,
maybe working with MOHAI,
to create a permanent exhibit of Seattle signs?
-I would love to do something like that.
I mean, shout-out to MOHAI.
I mean, I feel like they're, yeah,
one of the only kind of repositories.
Like, when any -- anytime anyone has a sign or artifacts,
it's like, give it to MOHAI.
But, you know, they're not able to take everything.
And then, you know, they have collections,
but there's only so much that can be displayed at once.
But, yeah, I mean, if anyone wants to give me
a big ass space for free,
I mean, I think it would be cool to have something like that.
It's just kind of like a resource thing.
But, yeah. I love the idea. I'm into it.
Thank you.
-It's a digitally submitted question.
Healthy cities grow and change.
How do you think about celebrating
these beloved institutions while welcoming our new institutions
and new neighbors,
including those who live in new apartment buildings?
Unfortunately, single family homes are hard to come by.
-I think that's a totally fair question.
In fact, I'm guilty of, like,
with the SS Marie Antoinette, the new building,
it's easy to kind of scoff at.
But, at the same time,
that's probably, you know, 200 new units of living space
that weren't there before.
It's a necessary part of the city to kind of grow and thrive.
And I feel like the book and the exhibit
and the social media account and everything
are ways for people new to the area,
new to the city to kind of connect to the past.
Through documenting things,
they have a way in that they might feel excluded from
if they didn't have, you know,
different available ways to learn about their history.
Hopefully, like, through the book
and through the social media account and everything
it becomes kind of a positive, constructive,
welcoming way for people who are curious about their histories
or the history here.
And, yeah.
It's a tricky question because change is unavoidable so.
-Yeah. That's a great question.
I mean, I think for me kind of the intent is
for it to be inviting and inclusive
in this great collective experiment of Seattle.
And I think the past really does inform
if we pay attention the present and also
where we're going in the future. So I think all these,
like, little stories together and individually are kind of,
I hope, raising these larger questions around
where we're headed as a city, who gets to determine that,
what does progress look like, and who gets included in that,
and who gets left out.
Like, if we are going towards something
where there are no places like The Turf for people to gather,
if there are no places -- there are no, like,
living spaces for people,
type of people that frequented The Turf, like,
what's the implication for us as a city?
Like, are we growing and developing in a way
that can hold all of us and all of our diversity?
So I think it's just these kind of larger questions and themes
that I hope people are,
yeah, picking up on and kind of asking ourselves
and each other and our elected officials.
-Yeah.
-So from 1984 to 2000
I worked at the Two Bells in Belltown.
But, when they tore that building down,
I was able to get underneath the wire
and grab a couple of bricks off the facade.
And I'm just wondering if anybody knows
where the neon sign went.
The last I saw it was at some,
I don't know, like a consignment shop on Capitol Hill.
But I'm not sure where that neon went.
And if anybody has any ideas where that sign went,
I'd be interested.
Thanks. -Thank you. Yeah.
I've had that question come up several times.
I would love to know what the Two Bells sign is too.
Hopefully it's in good hands somewhere.
But, yeah.
-[Indistinct] some of the bells.
Some of the [indistinct]
But I don't know where it is now.
-Yeah. Cafe Racer is closed at the moment too.
-They're gone.
-So, yeah. But, if anyone knows, DM me.
-What about the V-I-T-T-O place, Vito's.
What about Vito's?
-Oh, thank you so much for bringing up Vito's.
Yeah. I think from the response in the room, it's just, yeah.
Dearly missed. A favorite of mine.
A favorite of a lot of folks.
I don't know what happened to the Vito's sign,
though, that big one.
-Oh, no. -Went to the dump, you think.
Oh. I mean, that building got torn down real quick.
So I don't know if anybody had a chance
to swoop in there and save it.
I hope so.
But -- oh, Barbara,
the Cougar was also stolen out of the Cougar room.
And, as far as I know, she was not recovered.
Yeah. But, yeah. -Did they let you in Vito's?
They did -- they weren't -- they weren't carding?
-The restaurant side.
-Asked where -- what that block near here was.
-Ah, yes. -Yeah. Two or three blocks up.
-Yeah.
-I think kids could sit on the restaurant side of it.
-Oh, that's fair. -Yeah.
I think it was that kind of a place where the bar,
when you couldn't.
But if you were on the restaurant side,
you could bring your family.
Yeah. -Maybe play the piano.
-Sure. -Thank you.
-Thanks for having us for the presentation.
Not really a question.
Just wanted to say we were at Second Use last weekend,
and they have a Red Apple sign sitting outside so just --
-My friend just bought that.
-Oh, really. -She texted it to me.
-Wow.
-I was like, Get it. Get it now.
-So there you go. That was my hot tip.
But you're already in the know, so thank you.
-Yeah. I think she's seen if Black Heritage Society might --
might want to take it.
But, yeah. Yes. Connections are made.
-I just wanted to briefly express some gratitude broadly
for this project.
It gives validity to the anecdote.
And it's like an oral history, but it's visual.
It suggests the value of individual testimony
as useful historical experience.
And you're doing something really good
to keep old Seattle alive,
especially when the city is changing so much.
So thank you both.
-Thank you, Nathan. -Thank you, Nathan.
Shout-out to Nathan Vass, driver of the famed 7
and also working on a book project with you.
Yeah? -Also for Chin Music Press.
Keep an eye out.
-That book The Lines That Make Us.
It is fantastic. Very touching.
-This is another digitally submitted question.
Did you have fun stories or signs from the Ave, UW,
or ones you hoped to get?
-There's Cellophane Square.
I'm trying to think if there's others.
I would have loved to get --
I actually kind of remember if they had a sign,
but I would have loved to have something
from the original Earls on the Ave.
Does anyone remember the old Earls.
-Yeah. -I feel like it has some --
had some Turf-like qualities and characters.
I think that's for myself.
I'm sure many others did their 21 run,
and that's probably why I can't remember a whole lot.
But, yeah. -Bulldog, Bulldog.
-Bulldog. Yeah. -Bulldog is still there.
-Still there. -Yeah.
-The Doghouse. -The Doghouse.
Yeah. -Yeah.
We do have the Doghouse. That was on Denny.
That's in the book.
And that, along with some of the other music-related signs,
are now installed at the Hereafter
in the new Crocodile building,
so you can check out old menus and place mats
and some things that were taken down from the bar
on the last night that it was open from the Doghouse
is hanging there.
And I think Cellophane Square, sorry, Charlie's,
Romper Room, Highway 99. And, yeah.
There's a few others that are there through
at least the end of this year.
-I also want to -- also want to thank you for doing this
and especially for including Sunset Bowl in your book
because it was an amazing thing.
If you ever had insomnia,
it didn't matter if it was 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m.
You could go bowl,
and there's something very meditative and smooth.
And it's a great cure for insomnia
or just a great way to spend the time you would normally sleep.
-3:00 a.m. karaoke.
-Yeah. Great.
Well, looks like no more -- no more questions.
Well, thank you so much, everyone.
Really appreciate you coming out.
Thank you for sharing all your memories
and your great questions.
Yeah. We'll be hanging out for a bit, so come say hi.
Got some books for sale and book signing.
Also, shameless plug.
I have some Vanishing Seattle merch.
There's a risograph poster of all the signs
that are in the book and then some pins like Tow Truck,
Mama's Mexican Kitchen, Pink Elephant, stuff like that.
But, yeah.
Come and, you know, share your stories with us and say hi.
And thank you so much.
And thank you Town Hall.
-Thank you, everybody.