EDITOR: Thanks for running "Bleak House" [Christopher Frizzelle, April 6]. It is such a well-written story; I was instantly caught up in it. It's historical and personal and current and reaches beyond an old building in Seattle. I feel like it was generous to let it run because it seems so unlocal, so "big." Yet the big feeling about the big issues is juxtaposed next to the heart of the writer, which, I think, makes it a really great piece.
Amy Baird
GOOD FOR BUSINESSCHRISTOPHER: Your article will ensure that they [Club Z] will be booked until the doors close. Their business was falling off. Who knows, you may have enabled them to find a new location and carry on. In fact you may have saved Club Z in much the same way that the idiot Baptist preacher who picketed the Erotic Bakery (on 45th) saved them from bankruptcy.
Bill
BIASED AND SUPERSTITIOUSEDITOR: Your article on the Zodiac certainly felt like you started with an agenda.
From my experience living in Seattle in those days, The Z was a specialty club, barely inhabited in those days. Volunteer Park was more popular for anonymous sex, as was Club Seattle. Club Z was a place where a few men over 40 went to meet one another.
How could such a place exist for such a narrow following? You yourself reported on how cheap the building was when it was purchased in the '70s.
There was no meth in those days. People used cocaine and MDA. And even at places like the Z, in the mid-'80s guys used to just jack each other off as no one knew how AIDS was transmitted yet.
Of course there was filth and perversion there. There has always been filth and perversion in tiny pockets of every urban area and there always will be. Attributing it all to an "evil place" is simply superstitious.
Mark Davis
EASY, SLEAZY TARGETCHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE: Do you have nothing better to write about than sleazy bathhouses? Thanks for reiterating what straights probably believe about gays already. Fisting with a little goo in a jar—that's really some good writing! The Stranger again really boils my blood. I think the story was supposed to be about the cursed lives of everyone who ever lived or worked inside its walls. But it was more about the drug-induced depravity of a few sex addicts or whatever. Do you have some unresolved anger about what your lover did there? Take it out on a punching bag.
Jeff Macdonald
CURIOSITY SATISFIEDEDITOR: I would like to compliment and thank Christopher Frizzelle and The Stranger for producing such a fascinating and thoughtful article about Club Z and the enigmatic history of the building it inhabits. It was thoroughly engrossing to say the least. I've walked past that building at least a few times a week for the past 5.5 years and I have always wanted to know more about it than what the little bits and pieces of information I could find online would reveal. Thank you for indulging your curiosity and, as a result, mine as well. If that article hadn't been written and Club Z does eventually close, as someone with biological parts that prohibit entry, I think I would have been forever haunted by my curiosity.
Maika Keuben
JUST AWESOMECHRISTOPHER: Your article on Club Z was awesome. Thanks for shedding some light on this building that I've walked by and thought about a countless number of times.
Steve Sawada
FROM THE FORUMSPOSTED BY JOHN CROSBY ON APRIL 6: Early on, AIDS hit Club Z probably the hardest of all the clubs. It was quite amazing that Club Z and the Club Baths were not closed by the health department as happened in San Francisco, San Diego, NYC, etc. (Seattle was very permissive in those days). I still wonder how Club Z survived AIDS. Most of its clientele, and I am certain its owners, were dead by 1990. Back then the drug was MDA. But the killer was HIV. I hope those days never return.
HUSH UP ABOUT THE E!EDITOR: Parts of Dave Segal's piece ["Rave On," March 30] reminded me of some of the kids in my junior-high and high-school classes who, like the dutiful schmucks they were, TRUTHFULLY filled out the drug-use surveys the school system required at the beginning of every school year.
Similarly, Dave's well-intentioned piece was supposed to chill the hysteria of stereotypical notions about raves. Unfortunately, he included nuggets of insight such as "...eardrums pummeled by several hours of hard beats" and "...Is this euphoric feeling partially facilitated by illicit drugs? Sure, some ravers take Ecstasy and various hallucinogens..."
Is that supposed to HELP the rave scene survive the bible-thumping nanny staters? WTF, Dave!? DON'T HELP ME!
Jeremy Smith
