Is progress tearing down the Seattle dive bar?
Sep 15, 2016, 12:26 PM | Updated: Sep 16, 2016, 7:46 am
(Rachel Chapdelaine, Flickr)
The Seattle dive bar has oft been the first to go in city’s ever-growing list of developing neighborhoods. Historic Seattle is trying to save some of those establishments but “Jason and Burns” debated whether that’s really the best way to preserve the culture of a neighborhood.
Stories have been building of community activists trying to save the Seattle dive bar — many of which are under threat of closing down to make way for new development. From Hurricane Café, which was sold to Amazon, to more recent concerns over Rebar in South Lake Union, Belltown’s Five Point Café and Loretta’s in South Park.
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Kji Kelly, with Historic Seattle, told KOMO that the group’s mission is to work with the city of Seattle to grant special status for those kinds of dive bars that may not technically qualify as historic.
“When it’s lost, it’s lost, and we’re losing a lot of them. Help us, Historic Seattle, save more of the places. It’s really simple,” Kelly told KOMO. “… Dirt in this city is more valuable than the buildings that sit on it, that’s just a fact of life.”
Modern city vs. Seattle dive bar
While Zac Burns says it’s nice to see a neighborhood join together to try to save one of their local businesses, Rantz rolls his eyes.
“I’m fine with the local quirky businesses, so long as they actually offer something useful,” Rantz said. “This whole idea that because it’s quirky automatically it should be looked at as a gem in a neighborhood is absolutely ridiculous.”
Rantz said places like Hurricane Café go under because the customer base isn’t as strong as it seems. That’s why those kinds of businesses are susceptible in the first place.
Burns: I agree with you to a point. You hear people lament about losing the character of the downtown, meanwhile, they are all shopping at the Wal-Mart 15 minutes into the suburbs. But I still believe we should mourn the losses of these places.
Rantz: Of course mourn the losses. Set up a Twitter account talking about how you wish it was there.
Burns: I understand you are against slacktivism, so what is the better way because I think we should be trying to preserve the character as much as we can in Seattle. Progress is inevitable. Eventually, Amazon is going to own us all. It is going to be Amazon.com presents: Seattle. What can we do to at least slow the progress?
Rantz: The character is defined by the people who live in the neighborhoods, not necessarily the quirkiness of individual businesses. I don’t think that Capitol Hill is Capitol Hill because of the bars and restaurants. I think it is that because of the people. I don’t think the culture of South Park or Tacoma or Everett is anything outside of the people who choose to live there. I live in South Lake Union, which is often said to have no culture. Well, there is a culture there. The culture is defined by the people who don’t talk, who don’t look away from their phones. It may not be the culture that we like, or the one we want in every single neighborhood, but that is the culture of that particular neighborhood. So that is what is being defined here. We pretend there is a cool restaurant in Tacoma, a cool restaurant in Kirkland that can never go away because it’s quirky and weird and has character.
Burns: You keep using the word quirky. Look at Loretta’s, I don’t think of it as a quirky place, it’s just a place that’s become part of the fabric of the neighborhood.
Rantz: It’s old, you mean. It’s been there a long time.
Burns: Yes, it’s historic.
Rantz: But it’s not historic because that’s ridiculous. It’s a dive bar, let’s not pretend that a dive bar is anything more.
Burns: Why can’t a dive bar be historic?
Rantz: Because it’s a dump! It’s called a dive bar!
Burns: Let’s say you sit and drink at the same barstool that your dad did. To you, that place would feel historic. I think a dive bar can absolutely be historic.
Rantz: If those people who claim to care about the character of the neighborhood actually went there and patronized, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Burns: The problem is, maybe they are frequenting. And for years, before the progress spread into that neighborhood, Loretta’s was profitable enough to keep up. But now – and the owners have to be partially blamed because they don’t just decide to go out of business, they take the quick payday and sell to developers — once another a plan is at least proposed where Loretta’s could make this much money but if we brought in a high-end restaurant we could make this much money. Well then, the neighborhoods could have supported Loretta’s it just the other business could make more money. I understand that’s capitalism, and that’s the way things work, but it’s also kind of sad.
Listen to how Jason and Burns further feel about the Seattle dive bar and how they would define a historic building.