Seattle's Speakeasy cafe gutted by fire.

May 19, 2001 11:06 AM

Seattle's Speakeasy cafe gutted by fire. A sad day for the city. The Speakeasy cafe is great, and I just switched to them for my DSL account. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
posted by jragon (10 comments total)

Ouch. Well, I guess it's good that we had our Seattle MeFi meeting there last weekend. That was the first time I'd been there.

I presume they had insurance and that they will eventually reopen, but it's going to be a bitch getting furniture as well-worn as they already had. The atmosphere will inevitably be changed.
posted by kindall at 11:10 AM on May 19, 2001

Bummer. I liked that place, too. It's rare to find a public place where you can truly and comfortably put your feet up and lounge like that.

Jen
posted by NsJen at 11:37 AM on May 19, 2001

The fire was actually confined to the second floor, above the cafe. That's not to say the cafe won't be nasty with smoke and water, but it's far from being 'gutted'. It remains to see what will happen with the building; Speakeasy doesn't own it, so the choice to either rebuild or sell the hulk to a condo dev company probably won't be theirs to make.
posted by bizwank at 11:46 AM on May 19, 2001

Aw man!! The Geekeasy was a cool place to hang... and it'll never be the same, I'm sure...
posted by muppetboy at 11:46 AM on May 19, 2001

The 211 Club? Here in Chicago a 2-11 is a second alarm fire. Pretty weird! Ok not really unless Seattle uses the same alarm designations.
posted by @homer at 3:21 PM on May 19, 2001

watch it burn here, or at least see a picture. As a disgruntled former employee, I am very very glad I was not in Seattle last night.
posted by jessamyn at 6:48 PM on May 19, 2001

hey, at least they hadn't moved their offices yet...
posted by sighofrelief at 8:10 PM on May 19, 2001

Sad to see it in the paper this morning... The place had a comfortable and friendly atmosphere and I very much enjoyed performing there a few times. The MeFi gathering pictures are still in my camera. I'll post them somewhere soon.
posted by shinybeast at 9:48 PM on May 19, 2001

Sad to say I'm not surprised. As one who hung out when the 'easy still had Xterms, dsl was but a dream, and who has clambered about the whole block, I can report seeing many fire hazards including an unsafe welding shop (though very cool people), piles of wood scrap, scab amateur rennovations, and meth cooked from innumerable Sudafed packages. I'm still bitter since all the neighboring condo cranks (led by former mayor Rice) demanded the rooftop graffitti buffed. The whole block was slated to be torn down in order to put up condos when the leases ran out anyway. Speakeasy will survive, but what of the rest of the neighborhood that made Belltown cool to begin with?
posted by roboto at 3:03 AM on May 20, 2001

good question, Roboto - kind of like the OK Hotel getting replaced with a parking garage after the earthquake, it seems like this will just be an excuse for developers to tear something cool down and replace it with something more profitable. The Speakeasy was part of the reason I moved to 2nd Avenue in the first place; I'd hate to see it go.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 8:08 AM on May 20, 2001