A refuge in the University District.
A refuge in the University District. ASK

Cafe Racer sits unassumingly on the border of Ravenna and the University District. The coffee bar—which can be more dive bar than coffee shop, depending when you drop in—is home to a strange bunch: crust punks, cartoonists, casual and professional musicians, science-fiction writers, old-timers, students, and a slew of others.

But despite having a dedicated community, the cafe is struggling to stay afloat thanks to a construction project on Roosevelt Way, said Kurt Geissel, who has owned Cafe Racer since it first opened the joint as Lucky Dog in 2004.

“Since the construction started, [the restaurant] hasn't recovered,” he said. “During the day, [business] dropped about 50 percent. It's slowly getting better, but it’s just too much.”

Business dropped back in March when the Seattle Department of Transportation began repaving and making safety improvements along the street. Although the city department did the construction in segments of the street, the lack of cars, buses, and foot traffic took a toll, said Geissel.

When he told friends he was planning to close the restaurant, they panicked. Although Geissel resisted, his friend Angel O’Leary persuaded him to launch a GoFundMe campaign to get support from the community.

Since launching on Nov. 3, the campaign raised nearly $23,000 of its $50,000 goal.

“The outpouring blew me away. If this was just another coffee shop, it would be 'no biggie' or something [if it closed]. People are really upset about it,” said Geissel, who also works full-time as a bio-safety equipment technician at the University of Washington.

“The world is not so bad. It's supporting us [and] it does mean a lot. Personally, it makes me feel good that I made an impact on the world like that,” he said.

Kurt Geissel, owner of Cafe Racer.
Kurt Geissel, owner of Cafe Racer. Angel O'Leary

The donations will go towards reducing the debt Geissel incurred during a city-mandated building renovation, which included maintenance and installing a wheelchair-accessible bathroom per city code. The business went further debt making repairs in the cafe’s kitchen and trying to keep up with payroll during construction, said Geissel.

Geissel claimed that representatives from SDOT did not speak with him or other small business owners along Roosevelt Way about impacts from the construction. A communications officer with SDOT maintained that the department did reach out to Geissel and other business owners along the street. The department regularly sent out e-mail updates about the project and also stayed within its allotted timeframe for construction, the representative noted.

Unlike businesses affected by two other major street reconstruction projects—one along the downtown waterfront and another along 23rd Avenue in the Central District—Cafe Racer is not set to receive any mitigation funding from the city because the project has already been completed, a representative with the city’s Office of Economic Development told The Stranger.

“OED became aware of their financial concerns last week” and has reached out to Geissel, the representative said.

Although he appreciates the outreach from the department, Geissel said "they should've reached out to businesses before [the construction] rather than after." For Cafe Racer, having a city representative help them understand the potential effects of the construction on the business would have helped them plan ahead.

Should the cafe fold, it’s “another nail in the coffin for what made Seattle special,” said Marlow Harris, a long-time friend of Geissel’s and the curator of Cafe Racer’s Official Bad Art Museum of Art (OBAMA), a kitsch gallery housed inside one of the cafe’s rooms.

“There's no dive bars left in Seattle. There's no old Seattle left,” she said. “These little quirky businesses and offbeat places where people can meet and be themselves, it's really what differentiates [Seattle] from cities across the U.S.”

For Harris, losing Cafe Racer would be like losing her friends all over again. In June 2012, Ian Stawicki walked into Cafe Racer and gunned down five people. He fled, fatally shot another person in First Hill, and later killed himself.

“It was the shooting that made everything so important,” said Harris. “After what everybody's gone through, it'd be such a shame [for Cafe Racer to close].”

Aside from honoring his friends’ memories, Geissel said the cafe has become a refuge for the city’s outcasts and weirdos.

Geissel remembers one of his regulars’ mother visiting the cafe: “She thanked me for creating this space and told me, ‘He's found a home here,’” he said. “People need places like this in this isolated city.”

While donations from the GoFundMe campaign continue to roll in, Cafe Racer will reduce its hours. The U-District gem will now be closed in the mornings and open at 3 p.m.

This post has been updated with a response from the Seattle Department of Transportation about its outreach to small business owners along Roosevelt Way.