Despite plenty of warning, last Wednesday's news that the Sonics are really leaving town to play in a dust bowl in Oklahoma still came as a shock. So, too, did the news that two houses, Dearborn on Woodland and the Central District's the Ark, were going to stop hosting shows. With two of the city's best houses for shows and our basketball team both ceasing to exist, last week was definitely a hard blow to my plentiful optimism.
Such events are sad, they impact our communities deeply, but it's simply the nature of the game. Billion-dollar enterprises like the NBA could care less about their fans as long as the cash flow is abundant.
But house shows are just the opposite: usually hosted for no profit, out of sheer love of the music, by the fans for the fans. It's always sad to see such benevolent endeavors stamped out.
Dearborn on Woodland was a house that specialized in quiet acoustic shows, which were often recorded and sold as live albums. Zoning ordinances, though, have forced the home's tenants to stop hosting shows—they have been given a 60-day notice to call it quits. They have plans to make shows happen somewhere else in 2009, but in the meantime, there is a definite hole in the music scene with them gone.
I'll never forget the night the cops came and busted up one crazy show at the Ark. By the time they arrived, it wasn't even really a show anymore—it was a totally out-of-control rager. But that's sort of what you came to expect from the place. Shows there were always a party, which meant wild crowds and awesome memories (e.g., seeing young punk rippers Seahouse command that basement with adolescent fury the two or three times they played there; I have never seen an audience—all wasted, mind you—ask a band for more encores). But all the wild crowds and good times also brought too much heat to keep going; the last time the cops came to the Ark, its residents decided it really did have to be the last time.
To all the people who worked so hard to keep the Ark and Dearborn rad, thank you! Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, you ruled! Thank you, too! Clay Bennett? Fuck you. I hope your Oklahoma City farmhouse gets tornadoed.
